AMD check -up

Grumpy · 5 Mar 2008 at 21:01

This is what is currently in my basket, already got

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-111-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=805

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6400+ Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail £99.99
(£117.49) £99.99
(£117.49)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro PWM CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2) £11.99
(£14.09) £11.99
(£14.09)
Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK) £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
PowerColor ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro Extreme 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £99.99
(£117.49) £99.99
(£117.49)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3250410AS) £38.99
(£45.81) £38.99
(£45.81)
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £27.99
(£32.89) £55.98
(£65.78)
Sub Total : £366.93
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £65.78
Total : £441.66

It's a bit over budget tbh I was hoping for £300 plus vat.

The idea is to upgrade my current XP2400 and IDE drives to a system that runs more comparible to todays systems and has some longevity (runs Phenom) so that I can buy some newer games. As you can see from my current machine, I don't upgrade very often. I play games on it and the usual surfing, I don't do any encoding / programming.

(Tried playing the crysis demo just to see and could hardly move/see anything in all low settings.)

Oh, please, no 'you should go Intel route', thanks

semi-pro waster · 5 Mar 2008 at 21:12

You've got me a bit confused with the "runs Phenom" comment unless you mean the motherboard is capable in the future, however given you seem to upgrade rarely the benefit is somewhat moot. Phenoms are the new quad-cores, the Black Editions are simply multiplier unlocked dual cores as far as I am aware. You could get the Black Edition 5000+, you get half the cache and a lower starting speed but still a massive improvement over what you have and it would put you closer to your budget.

I'd buy 4gb Ram as 2x2gb sticks, this G.Skill kit is also cheaper than the OCZ you have selected already.

Other than that you could pick the OcUK branded 3850pro to save a bit more cash unless you specifically want it to be Powercolor (I'm not sure who is supplying OcUK with the cards at the moment so you might get Powercolor anyway).

Finally you could pick a slightly cheaper PSU, the Corsair VX 450w costs a bit less but should be easily capable for that system.

Trunks9486 · 5 Mar 2008 at 21:44

Go for the Black 5000+, the difference between the 6400+ aint that big, most 5000+ clock to at least 3GHz anyway!

Grumpy · 6 Mar 2008 at 06:52

Thanks for replies, didn't notice I had selected the 4 sticks of 1gb ram, swapped that out for the gskill 2 x 2.

Yes the board takes the Phenom, which was what I was looking forward towards in the future. Once they get them sorted and a bit cheaper it's an easy upgrade.

I was originally looking at the 5600 as it's the first in the series with 1mb l2 cache, the 5000BE only has 512. Don't know how much difference that would make tbh but more is better, no?

Ofcourse, once I started looking at the 5600 I lgot suckered into looking at the 6400BE and thought that would be better to overclock and ofcourse faster stock anyway.

VX450 out of stock atm