Gaming Comp

[ItzAlex]

I'm planning on making a new Gaming computer. Its going to be the first computer I'll make since 1994. Needless to say things are alot different now. I did my online research as well as asking around at my local BestBuy and Circuit City. Please give me suggestions on what I should get.

What I want:
Gaming PC
Roughly around $1000 buget
Main reason is I dont want to invest in the best parts because this is going to be my first pc.
Newegg.com is my source for parts. Surprising living in NYC theres a lack of stores that sells motherboards and other components.
I'm building it ASAP my school starts in a week and I need to get it done before then.

From what I gathered from asking around and online research I should get:
Motherboard 2-3 PCI Express with 4 slots for RAM.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16813130158R is what I have my eyes on, and thats also because it comes with the SB X-Fi Extreme (something I was planning to get otherwise).
Dule Core. Other that that I have no idea what to get.
NIVIDA 8800
Hard drive I have no idea, i guess the bigger the better?
Vista? Whats the difference between the versions?

Things I already have avaliable:
Floppy (do I even need this?)
52x CD Rom
12V Power Supply
Tower (I took apart a old custom-build from 2001)

Please let me know what you think and if I should change anything but please tell me the reason why, I want to learn about parts and stuff. Thanks guys for taking the time to read all that. =)

 

[DSF]

Actually, I would recommend going with a motherboard that only has a single PCI-express x16 slot on your budget.

I would go with something like this:
Motherboard: Gigabyte EP35-DS3L
CPU: Intel E7200 or E8400
RAM: 2x2GB DDR2-1000 if you're overclocking, 2x2GB DDR2-800 if you're not
Video Card: Nvidia 8800GT or 8800GTS.
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar 640GB
DVD Burner: Samsung SH-203B or 203N
PSU: Corsair 450VX or similar

I'm going to guess the PSU you've got lying around isn't a good fit for this build, but you could post the brand and model number to be sure.

 

[ItzAlex]

What is the difference between a E7200 and E8400? Also with the video card whats the difference between GT and GTS?

Thnx for the parts suggestions, didnt think i coulda went lower on the prices? I might actually get this build within $800? Thats sweet.

 

[Winterpool]

$1000 is enough of a budget that you should be able to put together an excellent modern system. Erm, presuming you already own a decent monitor...

My new Wolfdale workstation cost less than $1000, and that's before rebates. You should be able to do better than me, considering I bought most of my parts three months ago. So buy a new case, power supply, and optical drive. (Don't you want a dvd writer? They're $20 - $30! And Vista, Mac OS X, etc only come on dvds.)

I really doubt you'll need a $200 SLI-capable motherboard (you only require dual PCI-Express slots if you plan to run two video cards in SLI or Crossfire). At $100, get the Gigabyte board that DSF recommended. For a little more, get the Abit IP35 Pro ($130 after rebate on Newegg, and there's a free shipping coupon that might still work as well). Also, Creative has become the audio company to hate; you'll probably be advised not to get their cards or their chips on board. Quite frankly, unless you've specialised audio requirements or kick-arse speakers, the onboard audio (ALC888 or better) on most motherboards is probably more than sufficient. Otherwise, go for one of ASUS's Xonar cards.

You should easily be able to afford the E8400 (3 GHz dualcore Wolfdale) -- it's about $200. It's the sweet spot so far as high-end dualcores go.

The 8800 GT is the card to get at $150 or less (see the many rebates going round). If you want to spend about $200, look at the 8800 GTS. New video cards are imminent, however.

Get a reasonably fast, good price ratio (less than 20 cents per GB) hard drive as your primary drive. When you need more space, buy bigger drives to hold your essays, movies, and pr0n.

If you're a gamer, buy Vista Home Premium. If you need Active Directory, then get Business or Ultimate.

 

[Winterpool]

E8400 is the high-end Wolfdale dualcore: it has 6 MB of L2 cache and runs 'stock' at 3 GHz.

E7200 is the budget Wolfdale dualcore: only 3 MB of cache and stock clockspeed of 2.53 GHz.

If you're going to overclock, the E7200 has similar potential clockspeed to the E8400. Note, however, that the smaller cache will affect many games.

 

[Winterpool]

The 8800 GT and GTS (presuming it's a 512 MB version) are both G92-based video cards. The GTS has a few more stream processors and is clocked a little faster. It wasn't worth the price differential until recently when the GTS fell to $200. Some would argue it's still not worth the difference, considering you can find the 8800 GT for < $150. You may want to read this TechReport piece for one way of looking at the value of video cards.

 

[Winterpool]

For many geeks, the case of choice is the Antec P182, which is available for $110 after rebate on Newegg. But should your needs be less ambitious, I'd give serious consideration to the Antec NSK6580, only $60 after rebate today on Newegg. It comes with a 430 W EarthWatts power supply that should be quite enough for your components. Otherwise a good case and power supply will probably cost you $150 to $250.

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: Winterpool
If you're going to overclock, the E7200 has similar potential clockspeed to the E8400. Note, however, that the smaller cache will affect many games.

Meh. Crysis runs fine on a 2MB cache Conroe. I haven't seen benches where cache makes that much difference, but I'd be interested to see them if you know of some.

 

[angry hampster]

Originally posted by: DSF

Originally posted by: Winterpool
If you're going to overclock, the E7200 has similar potential clockspeed to the E8400. Note, however, that the smaller cache will affect many games.

Meh. Crysis runs fine on a 2MB cache Conroe. I haven't seen benches where cache makes that much difference, but I'd be interested to see them if you know of some.

Crysis ran fine on my 1mb cache Athlon. I actually haven't been able to play it on the new machine -- lost my discs.

 

[chinaman1472]

Originally posted by: DSF

Originally posted by: Winterpool
If you're going to overclock, the E7200 has similar potential clockspeed to the E8400. Note, however, that the smaller cache will affect many games.

Meh. Crysis runs fine on a 2MB cache Conroe. I haven't seen benches where cache makes that much difference, but I'd be interested to see them if you know of some.

Agreed. Tom's Hardware had a benchmark of an OCed E2160 nearly on par with an OCed Q6600.

 

[Winterpool]

Here's X-bit labs' analysis of Wolfdale performance varying with L2 cache.. As one might expect, the effect was greater in games than in video encoding or graphics editing. That said, in real-life situations, almost every current game is going to be graphics-limited, not cpu-limited, especially since one will probably be playing at res above 1024x768! In most gaming benchmarks comparing cpus and controlling for graphics, differences amongst modern high-end cpus tend to be marginal at higher resolutions.

You might want to read the Tom's piece on the importance (or unimportance) of cache in Core 2 performance.

Now, if the punter's choice is between spending an extra $50 to 75 on the cpu (ie upgrading to E8400) v spending that amount on the video card, obviously the latter is the choice that will make a significant difference.