Spec me a budget gaming PC

DizzyEgg

DizzyEgg

DizzyEgg

Associate
Joined
12 May 2005
Posts
618
Location
Stoke, UK
Hey need a budget PC and was hoping some1 could help me out on the spec, im hoping it to be a ath64 with a gig of ram.

need the full tower, a monitor but no keyboard and mouse.

Would be nice to keep it between 500-600

Any help??

Thanks
 
CP-131-AM AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-131-AM)
£69.95 £69.95
MY-046-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 (GE2GB3200BDC) (MY-046-GL)
£114.95 £114.95
GX-044-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO)
£139.95 £139.95
HD-055-WD Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 120GB 1200JS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-055-WD)
£38.95 £38.95
CD-020-AS Asus DRW-1608P3S 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - Retail (CD-020-AS)
£24.50 £24.50
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£14.95 £14.95
CA-000-SS Seasonic S12 430W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply (CA-000-SS)
£44.95 £44.95
CA-017-TT Thermaltake VB1000BNS Soprano SuperMidi Tower - Black (CA-017-TT)
£39.60 £39.60
MB-122-AS Asus A8V-MX VIA K8M800 Micro ATX (Socket 939) Motherboard (MB-122-AS)
£33.95 £33.95
Subtotal £521.75
VAT £91.31
Total £613.06

A bit over.. But you have a lovely rig there. Nice clocking CPUand you should see 2.6Ghz. 2GB GeIL Value - good stuff. X1800XT 256MB is the best value graphics card out at the moment and has been for a while. The Seasonic S12 is one of if not the best PSU on the market at the moment.

All in all a cracking spec for the money :cool:.
 
srry bout not reading title, i was lost in reading another article while posting.

wait till 24th n get a dual core athlon 64 3800+, prime example of why my thread bout amd price dropping is still needed. the cpu above should drop to bout £100 later this month, from that this is what i would get

CPU - AMD athlon 64 2x 3800+ (bout £100 at end of month)
MOBO - Abit KN8 nForce4, skt 939, PCI-E (MB-086-AB) £54.46
RAM - GeIL 1GB,(2x512MB),PC3200,(MY-005-GL) £77.44
HardDrive - WesternDigitalCaviarSpecial Edition 120GB(HD-055-WD) - £45.77
G-Card - XFX GeForce 7600 GS 256MB(GX-080-XF) - £90.30
Case/PSU - Antec Sonata II Piano Black-450W PSU - £77.49
CD/DVD - LiteonDRW-6S160P-05CDVD±RWDualLayerReWriter(CD-059-LO) £21.44
Moniter - BenQ FP71G+ 17" LCD Monitor (MO-015-BQ) - £123.32

roughly £590 so about £600 with delivery
 
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CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-121-AM) 1
£79.95 £79.95
MY-006-OK OcUK Value 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory Dual Channel Kit (MY-006-OK) 1
£99.95 £99.95
GX-044-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO) 1
£139.95 £139.95
CA-040-AN Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN) 1
£65.95 £65.95
CD-035-NE NEC ND3550 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-035-NE) 1
£19.95 £19.95
MO-016-OK OcUK Gamer Extreme 178GP 17" LCD Monitor - Black (MO-016-OK) 1
£93.95 £93.95
MB-063-AB Abit AX8 VIA K8T890 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-063-AB) 1
£29.00 £29.00
HD-023-WD Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 80GB 800JD SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-023-WD) 1
£28.50 £28.50


Subtotal £557.20
VAT £97.51
Total £654.71
 
well the machine needs to be built today or tommorrow and the budget is 500-600 not 600-700, can anyone spec me?

Thanks
 
CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-121-AM) 1
£79.95 £79.95
MB-155-AS Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard - OEM (MB-155-AS) 1
£44.95 £44.95
MY-005-GL GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL) 1
£59.95 £59.95
HD-023-WD Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 80GB 800JD SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-023-WD) 1
£28.50 £28.50
CD-035-NE NEC ND3550 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-035-NE) 1
£19.95 £19.95
CA-040-AN Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN) 1
£65.95 £65.95
MO-016-OK OcUK Gamer Extreme 178GP 17" LCD Monitor - Black (MO-016-OK) 1
£93.95 £93.95
GX-080-LT Leadtek GeForce 7600 GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-080-LT) 1
£111.95 £111.95


Subtotal £505.15
VAT £88.41
Total £593.56
 
if its for gaming get the single best gfx you can afford, a 200Mhz faster cpu can't do anything for quality, a 4-8pipe better card can increase performance a lot thats where the money should go if this is a gaming rig no question.

the best option would be the spec kizz did, aren't many crt's at the main shops now so can't really save money there, a venice 3000+ for £64 inc vat would save you £40 which would be the difference i think so you could afford the x1800xt.

for gaming that would be way way faster, 7600 being 12 pipes, x1800xt being 16.
 
drunkenmaster said:
if its for gaming get the single best gfx you can afford, a 200Mhz faster cpu can't do anything for quality.
Click to expand...

It can raise the framerate and stop being the bottleneck which again will increase framerates.
 
gpu is always the bottle neck, theres no point having the extra 200Mhz if the gpu is underpowered and can't generate any extra frames. to a point, being limited at 1280x1024 does mean that maybe it won't be as gpu limited as it would be at 1600x1200, but the x1800xt will still allow for higher framerates and higher quality settings than the 7600gt card and as games get more demanding even at 1280x1024 the x1800xt can come under intensive loads. more pipes on a gpu will always give more fps than a few hundred Mhz on a cpu unless you're gaming at lowest possible quality at 1024x768 type resolutions.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2575&p=5

this isn't bad, if you check the difference between the x1800xt and x1800xl(16/12 pipes respectively) it drops about 25% in performance with 25% less pipes. as you can see the cpu isn't the limit here at all, just the raw gpu power as it literally decreases in performance at the same amount as it loses pipes. its not even very cpu limited at 640x480 let alone anything inbetween. any modern cpu is fine for gaming, its all gpu.
 
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drunkenmaster said:
gpu is always the bottle neck, theres no point having the extra 200Mhz if the gpu is underpowered and can't generate any extra frames. to a point, being limited at 1280x1024 does mean that maybe it won't be as gpu limited as it would be at 1600x1200, but the x1800xt will still allow for higher framerates and higher quality settings than the 7600gt card and as games get more demanding even at 1280x1024 the x1800xt can come under intensive loads. more pipes on a gpu will always give more fps than a few hundred Mhz on a cpu unless you're gaming at lowest possible quality at 1024x768 type resolutions.
Click to expand...

Gpu isnt always the bottleneck, if for example you have a x1900xt and a 3000 venice, the cpu is going to be bottlenecking the card and not letting it run at full speed, also in sli and crossfire systems the cpu always bottlenecks the gpus.
 
Energize said:
Gpu isnt always the bottleneck, if for example you have a x1900xt and a 3000 venice, the cpu is going to be bottlenecking the card and not letting it run at full speed, also in sli and crossfire systems the cpu always bottlenecks the gpus.
Click to expand...

a 3000+ venice doesn't bottleneck a x1900xt at all, a few fps at the most. if you play at 1024x768 then yes you'll notice a bigger difference with a faster cpu, but no one actually plays games at a lower res than their card can handle, the only exception being when your monitor can't support a higher resolution, which is why matching a card to a monitor is important too. for instance 2x7900gtx's in sli on a 1280x1024 monitor is stupid, let alone 2x7950gtx's on that monitor.

once you're playing at a resolution that pushes the gfx card you simply won't be cpu limited. with 2 cards in sli a few people do it just for benchmarks and get very cpu limited, but most people get a very good crt, or very very good(and expensive :( ) high res tft and still become gpu limited. 3dmark runs in a pretty low resolution which is why it tends to become cpu limited very quickly.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-games2_4.html

even a celery, old and slow is fine.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-games2_5.html

really low end cpu's still make a difference even at 1280x1024 in some games but its still not huge, and the difference between a 3200 and a fx57, 5% ?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-games2_6.html

sempron mildly overclocked pretty damned close to a fx 57. its not that the fx57 isn't faster, its just gpu limited already, but for a games machine why spend £700 when £50 and a moderate overclock is fine for games. sure the fx57 will overclock further but at that point it won't change the framerate, overclock it by 25% and you'll get a 1% increase in fps. in encoding the difference would be huge, but this is games we're talking here.


http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-games2_8.html

conclusion is spot on.
 
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http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2747

As you can see here there is more than 25fps difference the 3000 and fx-60 in some cases.

"In many ways, the message this article sends is something we've already known: a fast GPU needs a fast CPU."

"As we've continually seen during the past couple of years, AMD's Athlon 64 and X2 processors are the best of the best, but even within the family you'll still want to opt for something faster than an Athlon 64 3500+ in order to make good use of any high end GPU."
 
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Energize said:
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2747

As you can see here there is more than 25fps difference the 3000 and fx-60 in some cases.
Click to expand...

well they are using 2x x1900xt's in crossfire at what, for x1900xt alone is a lowish res, for two is no where near gpu limited, on this budget the x1800xt is without doubt as far as he could stretch, its got less than half the gpu power of that setup, as i said this is not how people with 2 cards will be playing the game.

also i think i got it wrong, the x1800xt is just way lower clocked but same pipes, i couldnt' remember which it was, the x800 pro's had 12 pipes, but the 1800's had them all, but much much lower clocks.

edit;-, i'm trying to show that for 1280x1024 a x1800xt will clearly be better than a slightly faster cpu, anandtech is saying that for 2 x1900xt's in crossfire then the best cpu around is best. even then they tested at 1280x1024 and not the 1920x1200 most people with sli'd cards are going to play at.
 
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http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2746&p=4

lol, same review, the x1800xt beats sli'd 7600gt, and beats the hell out of a 7600gt. oblivion is a messed up game, over used effects that don't provide much of a quality increase for huge performance drop, everyone and their brother says its a poorly coded game and not the best one to base things on anyway.

EDIT:- last link you did just seems to give me a blank page :(
 
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