Budget gaming computer?

[sephroth777]

With a budget of $500 is it possible to build a gaming computer that can play the current generation of games with some future longetivity? Already have a monitor, keyboard, mouse and a case Cooler Master Centurion 5 with 380w PSU.

Need the following:
Motherboard
CPU
CPU Heatsink/Fan
Hard Drive
DVD Burner
Video Card
Memory

I looked at Anand's latest budget system guide however they do not really recommend it for gaming. I was thinking along my current setup AMD XP 2800 /Asus A7N8X Deluxe/1GB PC3500/200GB Seagate/Pioneer DVD-109/ATI 9700 PRO however it is still way out of the $500 budget. The system will mainly be used for Counter-Strike:Source, UT2004, etc.

I really appreciate all the help...Thanks!

 

[bigal40]

Motherboard: Take a chance with a refurb Gigabyte K8nf
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128268R
CPU: AMD 64 3000 Venice Core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103537
CPU Heatsink/Fan: Included above
Hard Drive: Hitachi 250gb 7k250
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822145058
DVD Burner: Lite-ON 16x DVD+RW DL
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827106990
Video Card: Leadtek 6600gt
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814122206
Memory: Patriot DDR 400 (PC 3200) 1GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820220057
That comes to 611 bucks
I wouldn't want to get less than that for a gaming PC.
If you really can't go above 500 bucks then swap the Hitachi HD for a Seagate Barracuda 160GB.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148021
That saves 36 bucks and brings it down to 575.
Further more you could save 79 dollars by going down to a refurbished JATON 6600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814139168R
That would really limit your gaming ability however.

 

[sephroth777]

Thanks...is it worth going 64bit? or should I stick with socket A AMD XP line of CPU?
Also forgot to add I would like to get an ASUS motherboard since I am familiar with them and their good quality.

 

[Tostada]

bigal40:

Let me get this straight. He asks for suggestions on a $500 system and you tell him to spend $657.79? Because that's how much that system costs with shipping before you get back your $34 in rebates (in about 8 months, or maybe never).

Why do people always do that? What's the point in replying?

 

[bchreng]

A good gaming card will set you back about $200. A nice CPU and motherboard will cost another $175 or so that leaves $125 left to budget for a hard drive, memory and dvd burner. 1GB of memory would cost about $100, dvd burners usually start at $50 and a hard drive would be another 50 or so. I don't think it's possible without significantly skimping on gaming performance.

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: sephroth777
Thanks...is it worth going 64bit? or should I stick with socket A AMD XP line of CPU?
Also forgot to add I would like to get an ASUS motherboard since I am familiar with them and their good quality.

Actually, neither. The XP is too old unless you're on a ridiculously tight budget, but it's not like many things will be optimized for 64-bit for a long time. 64-bit Windows still isn't even out. You've probably got about 2 years till you see much benefit from 64-bit. The best bang for the buck at the low end is the 90nm Sempron CPUs.

An ASUS board makes your budget pretty tough. While I would definitely stay away from brands like Foxconn, ECS and PC Chips, most of the other ones are fine. ASUS boards are pretty expensive and don't have many overclocking options. For example, with an EPoX or DFI board, you can overclock a Sempron 2800 (1.6 GHz) up to the 2.4 GHz range pretty easily with the stock voltage and heatsink.

Anyway, what I'd get in that budget:

CPU: AMD Sempron 2800+ Retail $84 (newegg)
mainboard: ASUS K8N $79.5 (newegg)
video: Chaintech GeForce 6600 128MB $119.5 (newegg)
HDD: Seagate 160GB SATA 7200.7 $89.99 (ZipZoomFly)
CD: Pioneer DVR-109 black DVD-R $47.99 (newegg)
RAM: Corsair 2 x 512MB DDR400 $75 (newegg)

That's $495.98 delivered.

I don't see much else you can do to meet the requirements of a $500 budget, an ASUS board and a DVD burner.

That system certainly isn't going to have any trouble playing current generation games. If you keep the resolution at 1024x768 you should be able to turn on almost all the eye candy except AA in most games. It's not like you need a $200 video card to play games, and anybody that says so has been spending too much time on enthusiast forums.

That said, your best bang for the buck if you're going to be playing higher resolutions than 1024x768 is definitely the Radeon X800 $189 (newegg). It has almost 3X the memory bandwidth of the 6600, and it blows away the 6600GT which costs about the same.

 

[sephroth777]

It seems like he has his heart set on a ATI 9800 PRO which newegg has for $129ish...worth getting?

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: sephroth777
It seems like he has his heart set on a ATI 9800 PRO which newegg has for $129ish...worth getting?

I didn't realize those had gotten so cheap.

Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 128M
$124 (newegg)
$119 (ChiefValue)

In that case, you'd be an idiot not to get one. It looks like ATI has NVidia beat at every price point right now.

 

[bigal40]

Originally posted by: Tostada

Originally posted by: sephroth777
Thanks...is it worth going 64bit? or should I stick with socket A AMD XP line of CPU?
Also forgot to add I would like to get an ASUS motherboard since I am familiar with them and their good quality.

Actually, neither. The XP is too old unless you're on a ridiculously tight budget, but it's not like many things will be optimized for 64-bit for a long time. 64-bit Windows still isn't even out. You've probably got about 2 years till you see much benefit from 64-bit. The best bang for the buck at the low end is the 90nm Sempron CPUs.

An ASUS board makes your budget pretty tough. While I would definitely stay away from brands like Foxconn, ECS and PC Chips, most of the other ones are fine. ASUS boards are pretty expensive and don't have many overclocking options. For example, with an EPoX or DFI board, you can overclock a Sempron 2800 (1.6 GHz) up to the 2.4 GHz range pretty easily with the stock voltage and heatsink.

Anyway, what I'd get in that budget:

CPU: AMD Sempron 2800+ Retail $84 (newegg)
mainboard: ASUS K8N $79.5 (newegg)
video: Chaintech GeForce 6600 128MB $119.5 (newegg)
HDD: Seagate 160GB SATA 7200.7 $89.99 (ZipZoomFly)
CD: Pioneer DVR-109 black DVD-R $47.99 (newegg)
RAM: Corsair 2 x 512MB DDR400 $75 (newegg)

That's $495.98 delivered.

I don't see much else you can do to meet the requirements of a $500 budget, an ASUS board and a DVD burner.

That system certainly isn't going to have any trouble playing current generation games. If you keep the resolution at 1024x768 you should be able to turn on almost all the eye candy except AA in most games. It's not like you need a $200 video card to play games, and anybody that says so has been spending too much time on enthusiast forums.

That said, your best bang for the buck if you're going to be playing higher resolutions than 1024x768 is definitely the Radeon X800 $189 (newegg). It has almost 3X the memory bandwidth of the 6600, and it blows away the 6600GT which costs about the same.

I gave him a computer that, like he requested, "can play the current generation of games with some future longetivity"
What did you give him? A PC that will stuggle to play todays games and has no future longevity.
In my post I mentioned
"I wouldn't want to get less than that for a gaming PC."
I was saying you may not be able to get something that meets your requirements for 500 bucks.

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: bigal40
I gave him a computer that, like he requested, "can play the current generation of games with some future longetivity"
What did you give him? A PC that will stuggle to play todays games and has no future longevity.
In my post I mentioned
"I wouldn't want to get less than that for a gaming PC."
I was saying you may not be able to get something that meets your requirements for 500 bucks.

So you are now arguing that your post pretty much just says, "You can't build anything that doesn't suck on that budget."? Nice!

Besides, you're wrong. A 6800 doesn't struggle to play games unless you play over 1024x768, and a 90nm Sempron is a ridiculously good CPU (and only xbitlabs.com and a couple people on this forum seem to notice).

Now that he pointed out the 9800 Pro was so cheap, that's a really good gaming system. The 9800 Pro has 22 GB/sec of memory bandwidth and 8 pipes at 380 MHz. That's the same memory bandwidth as a plain X800 or GF6800. That's going to be a decent card even at pretty high resolutions.

And if he overclocks the Sempron a little, it would totally kick ass.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/sempron-3100e_8.html
*edit* OK, that benchmark is overclocking more than a little, and you need a decent board to do that, but it's still by far the best CPU you're going to get under $100

Even if he doesn't overclock it, it's about even with an A64 2800. I don't see how you could possibly find a game in the next couple years that the system wouldn't play at close to max settings.

 

[crimson117]

Originally posted by: Tostada

Originally posted by: sephroth777
Thanks...is it worth going 64bit? or should I stick with socket A AMD XP line of CPU?
Also forgot to add I would like to get an ASUS motherboard since I am familiar with them and their good quality.

For example, with an EPoX or DFI board, you can overclock a Sempron 2800 (1.6 GHz) up to the 2.4 GHz range pretty easily with the stock voltage and heatsink.

...
CPU: AMD Sempron 2800+ Retail $84 (newegg)
RAM: Corsair 2 x 512MB DDR400 $75 (newegg)

Nice setup, Tostada.

That ram is great at 200mhz (standard), but doesn't overclock very well, and neither does the mobo, so you'd basically be stuck at stock speeds. Unless you plan on upgrading your processor in the next few months, I'd invest $62 more and get an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ $146 (newegg)

You could even save $32 and get a Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive $58 (newegg) instead of the 160gb Seagate. For just gaming, you don't need a ton of storage space. Even if you had 30gb of MP3's, you'd still have 40+gb left over for OS, apps, and games. And hard drive capacity is trivial to add in the future once more funds are available - just plug it in, and you're done.

That extra $62 for the Athlon 64 3000+ would get you 37.7% better performance in UT2004 over the Sempron 2800+.

If you spent that $62 on a better graphics card, gaming performance would still be limited by the slow Sempron 2800+ processor.

So if you switch to my HD and CPU recommendation, your total would be only $30 more. Place your order, and mow 2 or 3 neighbors' lawns this saturday and you're all set

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: crimson117
That ram is great at 200mhz (standard), but doesn't overclock very well, and neither does the mobo, so you'd basically be stuck at stock speeds.

How is the RAM an issue? For example, say you're running a Sempron at 300 HTT, you set the RAM for DDR266 and it actually runs at DDR400. No need to overclock the memory. Corsair overclocks fine up to about DDR450, and that's probably all that motherboard would be good for anyway. Still, you're right about the motherboard.

Unless you plan on upgrading your processor in the next few months, I'd invest $62 more and get an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ $146 (newegg)

You could even save $32 and get a Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive $58 (newegg) instead of the 160gb Seagate. For just gaming, you don't need a ton of storage space. Even if you had 30gb of MP3's, you'd still have 40+gb left over for OS, apps, and games. And hard drive capacity is trivial to add in the future once more funds are available - just plug it in, and you're done.

That extra $62 for the Athlon 64 3000+ would get you 37.7% better performance in UT2004 over the Sempron 2800+.

Wow. You are wrong on so many levels. That's hilarious. Yes, we all know that an Athlon 64 is better than a Socket A Sempron. I'm shocked that it's only 37.7% faster.


You're trying to say an A64 3000+ Newcastle (Socket 754, 130nm) is better than a Sempron 2800+ Palermo (Socket 754, 90nm). The benchmark you posted, however, is comparing an A64 3000+ Winchester (Socket 939, 90nm) to a Sempron 2800+ Thoroughbred (Socket A, 130nm).

You didn't even get the socket type right for either of the CPUs you were comparing.

*edit*

Also, he wanted a DVD burner. 160GB is probably plenty, but cutting your hard drive space in half to save $32 isn't a very good idea for someone who's going to be burning DVDs.

If you spent that $62 on a better graphics card, gaming performance would still be limited by the slow Sempron 2800+ processor.

So if you switch to my HD and CPU recommendation, your total would be only $30 more. Place your order, and mow 2 or 3 neighbors' lawns this saturday and you're all set

What game would be limited by a 90nm Sempron? That's essentially the same as saying the game would be limited by a 90nm Winchester, because it's about the same CPU (given that nothing is 64-bit optimized), and that's a ridiculous statement.

Do you seriously think it's worth blowing this guy's budget just to make a couple FPS difference in an UT2004 stress test? 120 FPS just isn't good enough at 1280x1024?

 

[crimson117]

Whoa, cool down cowboy! There's no need to get so hostile over my recommendations.

I didn't realize the sempron in the comparison was the craptastic Socket A version; you're right, that'd be a lousy way to spend extra money.

If he had said he wants a Media Center PC for ripping DVD's and recording TV shows, or if he asked for a DVD Read-only drive and some good ripping software, I'd say go for the biggest HD he can find, because 4.7gb DVD images add up very quickly. But if he's going to burn them for his archives, he only needs to reserve 5 or 6 gb for one image at a time.

But I stand by my HD recommendation. A gaming rig doesn't need 160gb. And HD is very easy to expand later on, without sacrificing your existing capacity; unlike a processor or graphics card, which need to be totally replaced if you want to upgrade. Skimping on a HD at the start to meet a budget is much better than skimping on a CPU / Video card, especially for a gaming PC.

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: crimson117
Whoa, cool down cowboy! There's no need to get so hostile over my recommendations.

Sorry. I normally come off as an "only slightly annoying smartass" IRL, but that seems to translate into "complete jerk" in an online forum, and it's certainly not what I intended.

If you're going to burn DVDs, that requires almost 9GB for the disc image and almost 5GB for the recompression. I burn a lot of DVDs, and right now I only have 260GB on my system, and it's actually quite a pain. I don't want to spend too much time talking about my quasi-ethical practices, but having a NetFlix subscription or going to the library and getting 5 DVDs at a time really makes you want to have at least a solid 100 GB of free space.

$500 is a hard budget to try and squeeze good gaming performance out of, and it's certainly up for debate what kind of compromises would be better.

 

[crimson117]

Originally posted by: Tostada

Originally posted by: crimson117
Whoa, cool down cowboy! There's no need to get so hostile over my recommendations.

Sorry. I normally come off as an "only slightly annoying smartass" IRL, but that seems to translate into "complete jerk" in an online forum, and it's certainly not what I intended.

yeah np man. writing is too impersonal - too easy to misinterpret.

If you're going to burn DVDs, that requires almost 9GB for the disc image and almost 5GB for the recompression. I burn a lot of DVDs, and right now I only have 260GB on my system, and it's actually quite a pain. I don't want to spend too much time talking about my quasi-ethical practices, but having a NetFlix subscription or going to the library and getting 5 DVDs at a time really makes you want to have at least a solid 100 GB of free space.

I keep dvd images on my drives too; already filled up a 160gb, just bought a 300gb (sale at outpost) to expand my capacity.

$500 is a hard budget to try and squeeze good gaming performance out of, and it's certainly up for debate what kind of compromises would be better.

It'd be nice to have a little input from the original poster to help clarify his needs, too

 

[shoRunner]

i definately second the socket 754 sempron. if he did decide to overclock get could go with some G.Skill so he wouldn't have to run a divider for his memory because there is almost no way your gonna get 250mhz outta that corsair. its great memory but most ppl get about 210mhz out of it. but if the OP has no plans to overclock that corsair will do just fine.

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: shoRunner
i definately second the socket 754 sempron. if he did decide to overclock get could go with some G.Skill so he wouldn't have to run a divider for his memory because there is almost no way your gonna get 250mhz outta that corsair. its great memory but most ppl get about 210mhz out of it. but if the OP has no plans to overclock that corsair will do just fine.

If you're going to overclock, though, you're going to need to use a divider. The CPU will be able to handle HTT 300. That puts your memory at DDR600. Even if it can handle it, your timings will probably be bad enough to want to bump it down.

Regardless, I doubt the OP is going to do much overclocking. He's demanding the ASUS board, and I don't know if they even have any boards that'll let you overclock past about 230 HTT (since they can'd turn down the LDT).