Another Spec help thread.....

[ACESHIGH]

I should mention one thing. The entire X1800 series is now discontinued and replaced by the far more superior X1900 series. So, if you wish to crossfire next year or so, you will have to source a second hand X1800 from that famous auction site.

Same is true for the Nv 7800GT / GTX cards -all discontinued now also.

 

[ACESHIGH]

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-152-AM)
£193.82
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2 (OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K) (MY-057-OC)
£158.57
Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£82.19
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO)
£234.94
Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-046-WD)
£71.62
NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-026-NE)
£32.84
Tagan TG530-U15 530W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU (CA-008-TG)
£70.44
Antec SLK3000B Midi Tower Case - No PSU (CA-027-AN)
£35.19
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£17.04

Total inc VAT: £896.65

Can go lower if you want GeIL Value RAM, but OCZ has tighter timings which AMDs love.

this seems to be the rig to go for. Good components & should be very quick.

Unless you have money to throw away at present ATI cards are the only way at the topend as they are often quicker & cheaper than the Nvidia cards they competing with.


get the X1800XT & you wont be dissapointed (7800GTX speeds at a cheaper price)

 

[Wildkard]

Sitting at work thinking about this today (having put off ordering till after diner tonight lol) Two questions came to mind...

1)Whats the Asus motherboard like? Never looked at it before last night and it seems quite plain

2)How does the dual core compare to the sd3700? It appears to have less lvl2 cache..will that make much of a difference?

 

[iraiguana]

2) the dual core will run at slower clocks than the single core, so for games which do not have multicore threading possible it will be slower, but it can be overclocked to a similar speed if you feel up for it.

1) I have an asus board and find them to be nice, easy to use, stable and give a pretty good overclock to boot. but if you are wanting the most out of the overclock then get a dfi. also i wouldnt get sli or crossfire unless u are actually going to get the second card now or in the very near future as the next cards to be released will blow 2x old cards out of the water as will have to be vista compatible.