Budget PC - For Gaming

magicturkey

magicturkey

magicturkey

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Joined
16 Apr 2006
Posts
2
Hi,

I have already placed an order for the following items. Have I made any major mistakes here? I have no intention of running my graphics cards as SLI, hence me not getting a board that supports it.

Antec Sonata II Case

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Socket 939 Dual Core 2

Asus A8N-E SKT 939

Gainward BLISS GeForce 6800 GS Goes Like Hell 512MB

Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3

I am really worried that the Gainward 6800 GLH card was a mistake. Searching on here, everyone seems to slate it. However, it has received some very favourable reviews on other websites. This card is about £170. I cannot afford to spend more. (well, maybe an extra 30)

Have I made any major mistakes? (I still have the distance selling regulations to fall back on at this stage - I haven't opened anything).

Cheers
 
send that gfx card back and get this... much much much better...

Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO)
Price: £184.95 (£217.32 Including VAT at 17.5%)


rest of your spec looks pretty spot on. :)
 
Mr Crap is right, x1800xt is in another dimension compared to the 6800. Also if you are considering clocking you may want to look at the MSI Neo4 motherboard instead as the A8N doesn't clock very well.

As far as the ram goes the Geil is very good and IMO you have to spend quite a bit more to see any noticable difference in performance. Something like the OCZ PC3200 Platinum perhaps, but it's £165 for 2gb.
 
the 6800GS was the card i was going to go for when building my new machine, as it had the best 'bangs per buck'. Then i saw that 2 in SLI was about the same as a 7900GT, so i got that instead. The video card you're looking at is in between a regular 6800GS and 7900GT, price and performance wise. But i'd get a 7900GT (highly overclockable with a very simple volt mod, but you'd need a good cooler too), and downgrade the processor to a 3500+ or so to stay in budget.

(Good GPU + OK CPU) > (OK GPU + good CPU)
 
sr4470 said:
Why not a 7900GT instead of the X1800XT? Also, I'd get a 3700 for the CPU, unless you're sure you'll make use of the dualcore.
Click to expand...

Agreed that the 7900gt is about on par with the x1800xt, but IMO the image quality with ATI is superior to Nvidia. However I have to totally disagree with you on the dual core issue. They have already released a dual core patch for Quake4 which is showing around a 60% increase in performance over single core!
 
Monstermunch said:
Agreed that the 7900gt is about on par with the x1800xt, but IMO the image quality with ATI is superior to Nvidia.
Click to expand...

Even if you use 8xAA on the Nvidia?

Monstermunch said:
However I have to totally disagree with you on the dual core issue. They have already released a dual core patch for Quake4 which is showing around a 60% increase in performance over single core!
Click to expand...

Point taken.
 
Thanks for the advice people. I am in the process of returning the graphics card. Today, I place an order on OCUK. Guess whats on special?

PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC) for £199.95 + VAT (was 214.95 + VAT).

Hopefully I have got it right this time !!

MT
 
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