:thumbsup: Its been a few years since my last build and its time to do it again, I really love the process and try to research what im looking at for weeks. I buy all my stuff from Microcenter, yes they are more expensive then online retailers but I am very loyal to them as they have never wronged me on returns or anything before plus I like being able to look at the stuff and hold it before purchase. Heres what im thinking: AMD® Boxed Phenom X4 Quad-Core Black Edition Processor 9950 $150.00 nForce 730a AM2+ ATX Motherboard $100.00 Crucial Ballistix Tracer 4GB DDR2-800 $80.00 e-GeForce GTX 260 896MB GDDR3 PCIe 2.0 Graphics Card (Core 216) $255.00 of course a case and power supply but those are easy to pick out on the day I go there. What do you think of the above build? My widescreen monitor only does 1440x900 at max so thats the biggest res Im playing at and I would like to max crisis and some other things at that res. Do you think that card is enough? Please let me know and dont just say I should buy online from tigerdirect or newegg please.
Looking at a few reviews it seems that the GTX 260 can handle about 40-55 fps at the resolution you want. Seems acceptable.
Any specific reason you are going with the 730a? If it is for Hybrid SLI, well that's really only for use with weaker video cards. You will not be able to use GeForce boost with the GTX 260, however you will be able to use Hybrid Power, which essentially lets you "turns off" your discrete card and change over to on-board video to save power. If you already knew all that, forget what I just said. If not, then I'd recommend going with one of AMD's chipsets instead, and of those you should probably look into the 790FX. The GTX 260 will perform great at 1440 x 900, so I'm sure you won't be disappointed with it. However, if you do go with an AMD platform you might look into the ATI HD4870: http://www.xfxforce.com/en-us/products/graphiccards/HD 4000series/4870.aspx Performance is pretty much on par with the GTX260, and again, if you do go with the AMD platform, there is always the possibility of going CrossFire if you decide to upgrade your display later on. As for RAM, Crucial is good... but I'd go with Mushkin. It's generally cheaper than Crucial, and is as good as or better quality wise. Plus, you can buy direct from Mushkin for cheaper than you'll find ANYWHERE else. Check these out: http://www.mushkin.com/doc/products/memory_detail.asp?id=661 4GB of DDR2-1066 for only $67.31 Anyway, these are just some of my opinions. Though, I think in the long run a "full" AMD platform would be more beneficial than an AMD CPU with an nVidia chipset and gpu.
its hard for me to go stright AMD platform because for as long as I can remember I have built AMD and Nvidia and its always worked for me. How are the Core 2 Duos compared to the CPU I am looking at now? If I can get one thats a little cheaper I can go with a better GPU
From what review(s) i've read the intel CPU's are about on par with the Phenom X4 Black Edition 9950 CPU you are lookinng at and niether of them have an major performance boost over the other.
Well, what are you looking to do? If you are looking to overclock, benchmark, and do serious PC gaming, intel CPU's are destroying anything AMD is putting out at the moment. AMD is in a pretty tough spot right now. If you don't plan on overclocking, then either chip will be fine. I've currently got an intel E8400 Core 2 Duo in my computer OC'd to 4.05GHz on air, and it destroys everything I throw at it. However, I also have 4GB of DDR3 RAM at 1800MHz and a GTX285 (soon to be two). However, socket 775 is dead , so if you go with a Core 2 you will be limiting yourself on upgrades from the start. At least with AMD, you can put an AM3 processor in an AM2+ socket (under most circumstances). On the intel side of things, Core i7 has been called a lot of things and cheap is not one of them. So basically, if you are building "on the cheap" and don't care about overclocking, go with AMD. If you're building "on the cheap", don't care about upgrading, but want to do some major overclocking, go with the Core 2 Duo. If you have money to spare, i7 all the way.
Im not big into overclocking I like stuff thats fast enough from the factory lol Im willing to go Intel with Nvidia. Im looking at a i7 but by no means is it cheap. I think the i7 I can get at MicroCenter is like 250. Basically I would LOVE to be able to max crysis at 1440x900 and any other current games of that nature at that Res. What about the Core 2 Quad Q9400? Is it solid for PC gaming? I dont know alot about intels CPUs but they seem good enough at the moment Im also looking at getting a GTX 280 rather then the 260 if money permits.
You really aren't going to notice a huge difference between quad cores and dual cores when it comes to gaming. That being said, if you are really just stuck on the idea of getting a quad core CPU, the Q9650 is the best one to get on intel's side of things (ignoring the QX9650, which is a $1000+ cpu). As far as dual core CPU's are concerned, the E8400 rules the roost. Um, if I were you I'd look into the GTX285 rather than the GTX280. The GTX285 is pretty much a GTX280 built using a smaller fabrication process (55nm as opposed to 65nm) so it can produce higher frequencies while having lower power consumption and heat generation. It will be hard to say for certain that "Yes, this particular hardware setup will max out Crysis at these settings" though, with a GTX285 and a small resolution like 1440 x 900, it might be possible. However, it will also greatly depend on the CPU and RAM as well. A GTX285 will perform a lot better when paired with a highly clocked CPU and very fast DDR3 RAM than it would with a slow (sub 3GHz) CPU and DDR2 RAM.
