New gaming Dualcore Built

TJcan

I am going to build a friend a decent gaming machine for under $1500 CAD.

The parts I've looked at are:
CPU: AMD Opteron 248 2.2 GHz Socket 940 1MB L2 Cache (Retail Box) $429

OR

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz Dual Core Socket 939 512K L2 Cache ( Retail Box ) $435

Mobo: DFI Lanparty UT nF4 Ultra-D nForce4 Ultra Chipset Socket 939 Dual Xpress Graphics Supported Dual-Ch DDR 8-Ch Audio Raid 0/1 IEEE 1394 Dual GB Lan $160

RAM: OCZ PC-3200 DDR400 Enhanced Latency Gold Edition 1GB (2x512MB) Dual Channel Kit CAS2 (OCZ4001024ELDCGE-K) $193

PSU: Enermax EG-495P-VE SFMA NoiseTaker P Series 485 Watt ATX Power Supply w/ Dual Fan, Smart Fan, P4, SATA $90

Video Card: Leadtek PX7800GT TDH MyVIVO Extreme SLI Ready nVidia GeForce 7800GT(450MHz) 256MB DDR3 (525MHz) HDtv-Out/DVI-I PCI Express Video Card $420

HD: Maxtor DiamondMax 10 SATA/150 100GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache (OEM) X 2 probably in a RAID config $72 X 2

That's it. He doesn't want to nor need to OC very much, so I'll just OC a bit on stock cooling. This machine is purely for gaming plus some school work. See anything wrong with this build?

madmat

If you go with the 248 that's a single core proc requiring a sckt 940 board and registered DDR so for a dually system you're looking at 2x248's and twice the ram as the SLI 940 boards require ram for each chipset...it has 2 chipsets, one for each CPU.

You're better off going with either an X2 A64 or a 165-up opty.

TJcan

I will go with the x2 4200 then

Also, should I get him a SLI board and 2 7800GTs and a cheaper processor? Would this increase gaming performance? Remember he solely use the machine for gaming.

Thrax

For gaming, the X2 is slower than the non-dual core CPUs. Food for thought.

madmat

Future games are going to appear that have support for SMP built in so to be future-proof stick with a dually. The DFI Ultra can be modded to SLI fairly simply but if that's bothersome get the DFI SLI board for a bit more.

Let him upgrade to sLI in the future when the cost of the 7800GT has dropped a bit, for right now the single card setup should be pretty decent for current games.

jradmin

madmat wrote:

Future games are going to appear that have support for SMP built in so to be future-proof stick with a dually. The DFI Ultra can be modded to SLI fairly simply but if that's bothersome get the DFI SLI board for a bit more.

Let him upgrade to sLI in the future when the cost of the 7800GT has dropped a bit, for right now the single card setup should be pretty decent for current games.

I agree with madmat on this totally. If your gonna drop a loaf on 2 GT's then just get him one GTX and leave him with something to really look forward to. Your not gonna tell a whole hell of alot of difference between 2 GT's VS 1 GTX especially if you knock the core up to around 510 and knock the DDR3 up to 1300.

You can get an EVGA 7800GTX card from newegg for around $450 US.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130254

Leonardo

If he's not going to overclock, why buy such horribly expensive RAM? You could back off by $50 on the same quantity of RAM, saving your friend money and he would not be able to tell the performance difference.

TJcan

Leonardo wrote:

If he's not going to overclock, why buy such horribly expensive RAM? You could back off by $50 on the same quantity of RAM, saving your friend money and he would not be able to tell the performance difference.

Yes that's true, so what about the OCz ultra performance series 2X512mb that I'm using now?:smiles: Or should I even degrade lower and go with a value ram?

madmat

I'd go with at least 2 gigs of a value type ram. If he decides a gig is teh suxor later on he'll find that his bandwidth will tank due to the nForce 4 not running 4 banks of ram at 1T. Going with a set of 2 gigs now will allow the tighter 1T setting and still be future proof.

Omega65

Thrax wrote:

For gaming, the X2 is slower than the non-dual core CPUs. Food for thought.

Not true. You'll note here (X2 3800+ Review) that the X2 4200+ (2x 3500+) and X2 4800+ (2x 4000+) Consistently outperform their single core counterparts in games. Dual Core can use spare cycles to perform OS housekeeping & run background processes without losing speed unlike a Single core CPU.

And Nvidia and ATI have recently updated their drivers to take advantage of the DC CPUs extra power.

Omega65

TJcan wrote:

I am going to build a friend a decent gaming machine for under $1500 CAD.

The parts I've looked at are:
CPU: AMD Opteron 248 2.2 GHz Socket 940 1MB L2 Cache (Retail Box) $429

OR

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz Dual Core Socket 939 512K L2 Cache ( Retail Box ) $435

Mobo: DFI Lanparty UT nF4 Ultra-D nForce4 Ultra Chipset Socket 939 Dual Xpress Graphics Supported Dual-Ch DDR 8-Ch Audio Raid 0/1 IEEE 1394 Dual GB Lan $160

RAM: OCZ PC-3200 DDR400 Enhanced Latency Gold Edition 1GB (2x512MB) Dual Channel Kit CAS2 (OCZ4001024ELDCGE-K) $193

PSU: Enermax EG-495P-VE SFMA NoiseTaker P Series 485 Watt ATX Power Supply w/ Dual Fan, Smart Fan, P4, SATA $90

Video Card: Leadtek PX7800GT TDH MyVIVO Extreme SLI Ready nVidia GeForce 7800GT(450MHz) 256MB DDR3 (525MHz) HDtv-Out/DVI-I PCI Express Video Card $420

HD: Maxtor DiamondMax 10 SATA/150 100GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache (OEM) X 2 probably in a RAID config $72 X 2

That's it. He doesn't want to nor need to OC very much, so I'll just OC a bit on stock cooling. This machine is purely for gaming plus some school work. See anything wrong with this build?

Get an Opty 165 or 170. For about the same price they'll do 2.4-2.5ghz (X2 4800+) on stock cooling with a (very) small increase in Vcore