About to pull the trigger and build a new system...

[Ghost]

1. What will my pc be used for? Gaming

2. What is my budget? $1200 US.

3. What country will I be buying from? USA.

4. Brand preference? At the moment, Intel for CPU, Nvidia for GPU.

5. Current parts I?ll be re-using? DVD-RW, 19? CRT.

6. Yes, been reading up.

7. I plan on running the system at default speeds.


Intel Core 2 Duo
E8400 Wolfdale
3.0GHz LGA 775
$220.00 @ Newegg

Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 Rev 2
LGA 775
$126.00 @ Newegg

Memory
Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
$110 @ Newegg

Video Card
EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0
$250 @ Newegg

Power Supply
Corsair CMPSU-550VX ATX12V V2.2 550W Power Supply
$100 @ Newegg

Harddrive
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive ? oem
$52 @ Newegg

Case
Rosewill R6AR6-BK 0.8mm SECC 120mm Fan ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
$54 @ Newegg

Total price $912


Don't feel like waiting for the new Quad Core chips, and it looks like the dual core processors run games a little better than the older quad core anyway.

Looks like my motherboard doesn't support the newer PCI 2.0 for the video card, but those 2.0 video cards are fully backward compatible, right? I won't have any issues, will I? Or do I need to buy a PCI express x 16 card?

Currently running Windows XP. Heard some headaches with Vista, but I may upgrade to Vista. If I do go to Vista, would 4 gigs of RAM be more suitable?

Is my power supply enough?

What about my choice of ram for my mobo cpu combination? I'm a little confused on the Memory speeds and FSB stuff. My mobo runs either at 1333 or 1066. The CPU I selected runs at 1333. The RAM howerver runs at 1066. Will I have much of a performance issue with the RAM running slower than the FSB? DDR3 seems a little too expensive at this point. Thoughts?

 

[Roguestar]

Antec 500W PSU $50 after rebate: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817371007

Get 4GB of RAM now, whether running x64 or not. Vista x64 is pretty good, for the record. It's too cheap to miss out on. Don't buy Ballistix Tracer, it's hugely overpriced and is overkill even for an overclock, as much as I like Crucial.
Check this out: $56 for 2x2GB http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=40&threadid=2145142 Pay half and get twice as much? Makes sense, doesn't it?

The video card you've selected is PCI-Express, and so are the motherboard. They're fine, don't get confused by PCI 2.0 which isn't so widely used and certainly not for graphics cards for gamers.

The RAM is not going to run slower than the CPU. 1333 CPU FSB = 333 FSB actual speed. 1066 DDR2 = 533 memory speed. So your memory will actually be slowing down to run at 333MHz. BASICALLY: Don't worry about the memory, get the DDR2-800 I linked as it's more than enough. Avoid DDR3 for now.

 

[Ghost]

Well, now I'm even a little more confused.

If the FSB is 333, why do they keep coming out with faster RAM, if the RAM has to slow down to the FSB speed?

Why don't I just go with DDR2 667, that runs at 333?

 

[LOUISSSSS]

Originally posted by: Ghost
Well, now I'm even a little more confused.

If the FSB is 333, why do they keep coming out with faster RAM, if the RAM has to slow down to the FSB speed?

Why don't I just go with DDR2 667, that runs at 333?

for people that want to overclock their CPU to 400mhz fsb

 

[chuckm]

The Corsair PSU is cheaper here;
http://www.buy.com/prod/Corsai...loc/101/205852646.html

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: Ghost
Well, now I'm even a little more confused.

If the FSB is 333, why do they keep coming out with faster RAM, if the RAM has to slow down to the FSB speed?

Why don't I just go with DDR2 667, that runs at 333?

For one thing, computer component marketing is very specs-driven. Whether or not there's any benefit to faster RAM is irrelevant if the customer thinks he's buying an upgrade just because it says DDR2-1066 on the box instead of DDR2-667. It's all the same to the company who's taking his money.

You could go with DDR2-667 without any problems. However, the price difference between DDR2-667 and DDR2-800 is very small at the moment (with occasional exceptions) that you may as well buy the slightly faster RAM.

 

[Roguestar]

What DSF said. Also, it's good that RAM manufacturers are pushing the envelope in a technological sense, memory speeds don't increase anywhere near the same rate that CPU speeds do with Moore's Law. This, however, leads to manufacturers slapping huge numbers on the front of their specifications because people assume that means they're better. You're right, DDR2-667 would indeed run 1:1 synchronously with your FSB, but for overclocking overhead, DDR2-800 is pretty cheap right now. There's also the ability to run your FSB at a higher ratio than 1:1, for example if your FSB was 233 and you ran the RAM at 533 (DDR2-1066) speeds with a 2:1 FSB ratio you'd see a small performance increase.

 

[Ghost]

Thanks for your help!