Gaming and Rendering System

guladig

guladig

guladig

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Joined
4 Oct 2006
Posts
4
I'm in the process of wanting to purchase a new system and I have around £1500 to spend.

I love gaming and I also do a lot of video editing, conversions, rendering, graphics, etc. So I'm looking for a balanced system.

I'm considering quad core E6600, 8800GTX, and 2 gigs of good RAM. Also I want the system to be dual boot WinXP and Vista. A friend has said that its not a good time to buy because of availability of RAM, along with pricing and timings.

I'm already considering a couple of 320 gig harddrives, one for system and one for data. Please no suggestions for RAID I don't need it. I am also happy with 19" 1280X1024 resolution LCD's but I might consider a wide screen option. Not really interested in 20" and above monitors.

I love gaming but I find 1280X1024 with some AA and AF absolutely fine and do not have any truck with ultra high res gaming. I have to consider all of the productivity apps that I use and require fast rendering on 3D, Video and the like.

Any suggestions and comments.
Thanks
 
How does this look...

Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard
(£93.99) £79.99

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "LGA775 Kentsfield" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
(£234.99) £199.99

Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200AAKS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
(£54.04) £91.98

Dell Ultrasharp 2007WFP 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Midnight Grey
(£252.61) £214.99

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66I-00788)
(£66.96) £56.99

Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK)
(£64.61) £54.99

Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Aluminium Midi-Tower Case - Black
(£58.74) £49.99

EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (768-P2-E831-AR)
(£370.11) £314.99

OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-5400C5 Dual Channel Vista Upgrade Gold Series DDR2
(£105.74) £89.99

Samsung SH-S203BEBN 20x20 DVD±RW Dual Layer Serial ATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM
(£18.79) £15.99

Noctua NF-S12 800RPM 120mm Silent Case Fan - 3 Pin
(£14.09) £11.99

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music 7.1 Soundcard - OEM
(£49.34) £41.99

Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme (Socket AM2/LGA775) Heatsink
(£43.46) £36.99

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition inc. SP2 - OEM - 1Pk
(£58.74) £49.99

Sub Total : £1,310.85
Shipping : £24.95
VAT : £229.40
Total : £1,569.57

This is pretty much the same spec as below, although I've included a CPU cooler + Fan, and also a decent soundcard, though no disregard to stickroad of course! :D
 
Last edited:
Here you go:

Samsung SM-206BW 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Glossy Black
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "LGA775 Kentsfield" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
Gigabyte GA_P35_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2
BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB 5000AAKS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM X2
Samsung SH-183LBEBN 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer Serial ATA Lightscribe
Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU
Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Aluminium Midi-Tower Case - Black

Total : £1,450.35

Their you go. I have put in a nice 20inch screen for you paired along with a GTX you wont have any problems running games. :p

A Quad will help since you do a lot of multitasking as will 4GB of Memory. Remember to use all 4GB you will have to be using Vista, should be to much of a problem as you said your going to dual boot.
 
Thanks very much.

Have your specs taken dual boot into consideration. Am I blind or where is there mention of winxp home within the price.
(winxp pro has no benefits for me that I can think of and it takes more system resources anyway)

Also is it true that there is no decent ram around?
What I mean about that is I was told there is no fast memory timing around.
ie. 3.0-4-4-8 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS)as an example. (Im not saying this is fast by the way, its just to explain what I am referring to)

When are the quad cores prices dropping by the way?

But otherwise it looks like I've got a shopping list :)
 
All you are referring to with respect to the RAM there are the timings.

To say there is no fast RAM available just because the timings are higher is inaccurate. As the speed of the RAM increases (in Mhz) so the timings must become 'slacker' to remain stable.

And besides for Gaming and rendering memory timings will have little or no effect on performance. Its raw data crunching power you'll need and that will come with a higher speed (mhz) ram.
 
Completely agree with the above. Sorry, forgot about WinXP, I'll edit my original post to include it. There are Intel price cuts on the 22nd July, so you should be able to get the Q6600 for a bit less be then.
 
Thanks again. The memory timing thing was something a friend was advising me on. Thanks for putting me straight on the matter.

Looks like a good list. Cheers
 
raw clock speeds of the CPU and amount of cores made impact for me in max 9 rendering ram and a half descent gpu helped as well, then again the things i worked on for uni used a lot of fog and raw poly counts
 
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