£1000 to spend

phileeny · 14 Mar 2006 at 17:11

I Need the following

Graphics card: single card with VIVO and quiet cooling
Motherboard: Dual PCI-E to add second Graphics card next year
Processor: AMD 64x2 maybe
CPU heat sink/fan cooling (Quiet)
4GB ram

To use for top gaming and graphic video work, with a buget of £1000 what would you recommend.

quadboi · 14 Mar 2006 at 17:25

Is 4gb ram required seriously? :rolleyes:

Also is a monitor, and keybaord mouse etc.. all required within the £1000

phileeny · 14 Mar 2006 at 17:33

Is 4GB needed you tell me, using for video image editing and gaming, nothing else needed only CPU and coolers, Motherboard, Graphics and ram.

fenderbass86 · 14 Mar 2006 at 17:46

MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS) 1
£69.95 £69.95
CP-127-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4400CDBOX) (CP-127-AM) 1
£276.95 £276.95
MY-046-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 (GE2GB3200BDC) (MY-046-GL) 1
£94.95 £94.95
GX-112-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-112-SP) 1
£279.95 £279.95
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR) 1
£12.95 £12.95
Subtotal £734.75
VAT £128.59
Total £863.34

I think this will easily be suitable for your needs and it's way under budget. It leaves you with plenty to suit your personal preference.

ACESHIGH · 14 Mar 2006 at 17:59

fenderbass86 said:
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS) 1
£69.95 £69.95
CP-127-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4400CDBOX) (CP-127-AM) 1
£276.95 £276.95
MY-046-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 (GE2GB3200BDC) (MY-046-GL) 1
£94.95 £94.95
GX-112-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-112-SP) 1
£279.95 £279.95
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR) 1
£12.95 £12.95
Subtotal £734.75
VAT £128.59
Total £863.34

I think this will easily be suitable for your needs and it's way under budget. It leaves you with plenty to suit your personal preference.

Yep that looks very good. Only you may want to got for this mobo .. due to having a newer chipset ..
Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-131-AS)
£135.07 Including VAT

phileeny · 14 Mar 2006 at 18:28

Look pretty good spec, but I've heard that the ATI X1900's are very loud and the drivers are not very good yet. is this still the case?

Do you think 2GB is plenty for my use?

ACESHIGH · 14 Mar 2006 at 18:51

People who own the X1900XT & X1800XT all say the cards are not loud at all. I have played with one (a good mates) & also agree, my case fans are louder.

ATI had a problem with drivers long ago, but their drivers are great now, with regular updates & releases. Also you can use the Omega "modded" drivers for extra peformance. No problems with their drivers at all imo. At present Nvidia seem to be having more problems with their high end card, graphics shimmering problems.

phileeny · 14 Mar 2006 at 20:09

I've been looking at some info on the Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe motherboard, is this the best board for crossfire? I think out of all the items I need, the motherboard is the most important, I've read that the Asus A8N32 Deluxe or the Asus A8N-SLi Premium is a better board, but only if I go for Nvidia SLi

Phoenix211 · 15 Mar 2006 at 05:43

2gb is plenty for video editing. The most imortant thing I would say at the moment is the x2 cpu as people say it helps. That and mahoooosive storage.

GAMEfreak · 15 Mar 2006 at 11:56

yeah a 250gb HDD with 16mb cache and an x2 series chip will help a lot.

ACESHIGH · 15 Mar 2006 at 12:12

phileeny said:
I've been looking at some info on the Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe motherboard, is this the best board for crossfire? I think out of all the items I need, the motherboard is the most important, I've read that the Asus A8N32 Deluxe or the Asus A8N-SLi Premium is a better board, but only if I go for Nvidia SLi

The newest bios seems to have fixed the earlier problems. The Asus A8R32-MVP is a good board & would come close to the A8N32 Deluxe. You could also go for the Abit AT8 ATI RD480 Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-091-AB) - this has been a very solid board.

BTW you can run ATI Radeon cards on Nvidia (Nforce) motherboards.

But as said above, getting the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ is going to help the most.

lay-z-boy · 15 Mar 2006 at 13:05

ok, first windows doesnt work with any more ram than 3gb so its a waste, the a64 memory controller isnt designed for running dense sticks of ram in numbers either, you also dont need that much.

2nd, chances of you adding a second video card are very low, in a few months they will be out of production and a new generation in place.

so i did this,

a64 x2 4400
dfi sli dr expert / asus a8r32-mvp (would rather get the manta sapphire xfire board)
gskill 2gb zx (hz if you intend to overclock)
nvidia 7900gtx 512 / ati x1900xt-x
freezer 64 pro

green for nvida dual graphics, red for ati

comes to just under your max.

i would strongly advise you have a mo-fo of a psu for this new rig or say hello to stability problems and pathetic oc'

phileeny · 15 Mar 2006 at 15:13

My system at it stands at the moment:

Two Hiper 580W PSU one for Motherboard, graphics, HDD's with OS, CD/DVD
the second PSU is for the data storage HDD's

My system will take the following
9 HDD's internal
4 Sata II hot swap (Icy Dock)
2 CD/DVD Drives
and space for up to 5 other 5.25" day devices

I will be getting:
Temp/Fan control
Extra Sata II PCI card
AMD 64x2 4400