Help with speccing a Gaming Rig!

Burton156

Burton156

Burton156

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Joined
5 Aug 2008
Posts
8
Hey guys,

Im looking to upgrade from my current setup to a new rig for heavy gaming but also for CAD and Photoshop/Web dev.

My current setup is:

MOBO - Asus A8N-E SKT 939 NFORCE 4 AUDIO LAN PCI-Express ATX
CPU - AMD (Venice) Athlon 64 3500+ 939pin 512Kb L2 Cache 90nm Retail Boxed Processor With 3 Year Warranty and Fan Included.
RAM - Geil® Value 2Gb PC3200 Dual Chan DDR Kit (2x1GB) (Cas 3 8-4-4) with Aluminium heat spreader
GFX - Gainward BLISS GeForce 6800 GS Goes Like Hell 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out VGA + DVI PCI-E
PSU - Hiper 525W Triple fan PSU
CASE - ThermalTake Tsunami Black Aluminum (VA3000BWA) +Window c/w 3x case fans +USB2 +Firewire NO PSU
H Disk - Western Digital WD2500KS Caviar SE 250GB 7200RPM SATA2/300 16MB Cache - OEM
CD/DVD RW - LiteOn SHM-165P6S-09C 16x DVD±RW/RAM Int Black - OEM
MONITOR - 19" Sony SDM-S95AB 8ms Black TFT Monitor (3yr onsite warranty)

Im a little confused by xfire/sli, but I would like my new rig to not only be powerful just now, but to be a good baseline for the future
ie. just to buy another gfx for xfire/sli

Im sticking with my case and monitor (for just now), but apart from that, everything else can be changed.
I also run XP64bit, but I will change to Vista if recommended.

Im thinking Q6600 quad, with 8gb ram ...........budget approx £600 (flexible)

Id appreciate any help/advice with this as I can put them together easy enough, but I tend to get lost on all the jargin ;)

Thanks. :D
 
hows this?

ocukspechb2.jpg
 
Thanks for a fast response - excellent start ;)

I see youve recommended 4gb - would 8gb be overkill?
Mobo - would it be ok to upgrade that to a P5Q-E so that I could run 2x HD4850 xfire?
 
I'd say that 8Gb was overkill tbh, depending on use of course. You might find some benefit for large scale CAD/PS work perhaps, but if you're only using PS for web development then I don't think you'll need more than 4gb. You'd need to be editing some massive 300dpi images to need 8gb! :D

I would go for this motherboard: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...X38 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

Reason: PCI-e 2, meaning both PCI-e slots can run at 16x. I'm not sure how much difference this would make tbh, but it's technically a sound solution, especially if you may then want to add a second 4850 card.

Otherwise the spec above looks nice to me :)
 
Burton156 said:
Thanks for a fast response - excellent start ;)
I see youve recommended 4gb - would 8gb be overkill?
Mobo - would it be ok to upgrade that to a P5Q-E so that I could run 2x HD4850 xfire?
Click to expand...

Mobo - your PC & your budget. :D
8GB is overkill if you're using a 32 bit OS (can only handle just over 3GB).
 
PhoenixUK said:
I would swap CPU for new E8400 or E8500 E0 and PSU for thermaltake toughpower 750.

Thats pretty much it, and if you want to crossfire you need x38/x48 chipset.
p45s do only 1,5 crossfire ;).
Click to expand...

I would've thought Q6600 would be better for CAD & Photoshop.

His case will take those fans BTW (it was my previous case) but the Thermaltake fans were quiet enough for me in any case.
 
Last edited:
Grimley said:
I would've thought Q6600 would be better for CAD & Photoshop.

His case will take those fans BTW (it was my previous case) but the Thermaltake fans were quiet enough for me in any case.
Click to expand...

Yeh sorry I've missed the part about the CAD.
But then I would stretch to the 9xxx series due to extra cache.
 
The x38 mobo is a bit of a waste of meney unless you do plan on using crossfire. A p45 mobo should be fine, and often clock better, and offer a level of crossfire performace that is not far behind the x38/48 chipsets.
 
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