Is this spec any good for an all rounder?

aeropars

aeropars

aeropars

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HI Guys,

Not been in to hardward for a while and my new found interest comes as part of a new PC!

Here is what i have earmarked for the guts of a system. I am on a budgit!

Abit IP35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - £85.76
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (0A33435) - £50.51
OcUK GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail - £76.36
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX (2x1GB) - £35.24
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.00GHz (1333FSB) - Retail - £205.61

Hows that look? eEverything compatable?

Also, are these new wolfdale chips worth shelling out the extra for over their Conroe counterparts?

Your help is much apreciated!

Lee
 
I'm not fussed about overclocking to be honest. I'm not confident i could do it without melting the whole thing down! :)

I do want to play some games on it though. I'm not a heavy gamer but i'd like to have the odd go on half life 2 and some of the newser games.
 
I forgot to add, I will be doing video editing on this using Ulead Video Studo so i presume i need a fair amount of processor beef!
 
What impact woudl that have on processing power? Its not as essential to play games that got get good video editing performance you see.

Is there really that muck duifference between them 2 graphics cards?

Also, i dont appear to get much savings from them changes? I see the processor is a quad core and only really saved me £30. Please correct me if i'm wrong.
 
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Having thought about it I think I'd prefer the newer processor.

Does anyone know if there would be any problems with my chosen motherboard and the new wolfdale CPU's?
 
Thanks for the reply guys.

I've never really concidered an ATI card as i thought they were inferiour to the Nvidia ones. I hear that they dont support DX10, is this true?

Incidentally, don't nvidia do the same as crossfire with their SLI technologies?
 
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I admit i have seen the wolfdale chips for £70 cheaper elsewhere but overclockers come out on top for pretty much everything else that i want to get, expecially the monitor.

Price aside, is it worth getting the wolfdale over the conroe? I'm a little confused as to how much better a quad core at a slower speed would be over a duel core at 3ghz. Am i right in thinking that not many apps can take advantage of quad core technologies?
 
What cooling would i need to getif i was to go for the overcloking option? I am intrigued by it all but i'm so scared of blowing up my new hardware! What kind of motherboard would i need to overclock it?

I'm all for saving money :) Thanks for your input to this so far. I think the fog in my mind is clearing!
 
Wow.. a good spec and under budgit! I do have spare cash though and like the idea of the quad core but i just cant decide.

I need to spend it otherwise the missus will only go and buy more shoes with it! :)

Taking that last rig, what could i upgrade to max out my budgit of around £400 - £450? As good as that rig is I'd prefer not to at the bottom rung of the current ladder and i like the iodea of the higher cache that the higher specs offer.

sorry for all the questios guys. I'm on a very steep learning curve! Your help and patience is much apreciated.

Incidentally, whats the quad coors like at overclocking? easy enough for a beginner overclocker?

Ohhh the decisions :)
 
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Does that motherboard support the quad cores? Looking at the spec it only says core 2 duo?

Is it worth overclocking a quad core?
 
And i assume both the motherboard and cooling option is sufficient for a 3ghz clock?

incidentally, whats the difference between the P31 and P35 boards? Just to satisfy my curiosity :)
 
Thanks for your help. I'm almost at the point where i'm confident I can press the buy button :)

for the sake of a few quid, would it be worth getting a P35?
 
Right, I might have a look into a P35 board then. Are we looking at over the £100 mark for a good one? I've seen some ones which are not the cheapest for about £85 which i'd e happt to stretch to if it would give be some performance benefit.
 
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