New PC

Q and I were up last night when I asked if he wanted to help me pick out parts for a new pc. Either one of us on our own are completely capable, but 2 heads are better than 1, ya know? Here's what we came up with:

AMD Athlon64 X2 5200+
DFI Infiinity
4GB PC6400 OCZ
Sapphire Radeon X1950XTX 512MB (DVI)
2x 250GB WD SATA 3.0Gbps
750W PSU (+12@60A!)
Lite-On DVD Burner
Horizontal LIAN LI Case =) Retro ftw
X-Fi Fatal1ty Sound Card
Samsung 2ms high contrast 19" Widescreen LCD (DVI)
Logitech MX518 Mouse
Logitech Ultra Flat Keyboard

high-end dual core, 500GB of space, extreme graphics 'n' shiz, high-end 19" Widescreen 'n' more. yay!

[SacredTbag]

that's a good rig, but you can do much better. first off, ditch the amd. it's cool if you're a fan boy and all that, i love my amd rig too, but the fact is, intel is smackin that ass right now in performance and price. and when i mean performance, it's not a small margin. same goes for nvidia and ati. as it stands right now the 8800 series completely blows away anything ati has, and nvidia's own last generation product. a single 8800gtx will beat any dual card setup, whether it be nvidia or ati. next, the monitor. using any high end card with anything smaller than 1680x1050 is a waste of horsepower. you're gpu will be sitting there waiting to do something while your cpu get's stuck with most of the load. getting a larger screen with a higher resolution will actually increase your performance with the top-end cards. then the cards are actually being used, not sitting idle waiting for something. last, the memory. there's no real reason to have 4gb or ram, unless you're planning on running vista or doing a ton of video editing. gaming in xp is completely capable with 2gb. in most cases, xp won't even recognize 4gb without some tinkering. even so, if you stick with amd, you'll have better performance with 2 sticks vs 4. the memory controller can't keep 1T timings with all 4 dimms filled. you'll have to stick with the slower, 2T timing setting.

with that all said, here's the rig i'd build:

cpu: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115013
mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813188012
ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145015
gpu: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130071
monitor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824009094

everything else would do fine. my setup may cost about $100 more, but it will completely shred the amd setup.

Corsair ram has had so many problems, so little gain in performance for so much more money that it's not worth it. Q and I often joke about ram being "almost as bad as corsair" when the company fucks up somethin' big with their RAM products. (like OCZ's hike in prices). 1T is marginal, at best, over 2T.

Intel might have the CPU war won RIGHT NOW, and yes that applies to this spec set, but I'd rather support the innovation to come, the same that has been proven in the past. The same principal applies to ATI.

Lastly for my hole-poking I'll note the monitor. When is too big too big? When it's uncomfortable to look at. Anything over a 19" Widescreen (and I've played on a 21" widescreen before) is too big for me.

Bang/buck is pretty great for my purposes.

BTW: I do loads of video work and multi-tasking (in it's true sense). I like to compile shit on one core, encode a video on another, etc. The dual-processes change a lot but the fact remains my dual-core gets used. Remember, I use my PC for more than XP and games. My foremost OS is Linux which doesn't have the petty problems XP/Vista have. In addition, my stuff usually runs better on Linux (I'm not getting into details here because fact is fact, I prefer Linux and wether or not XXXXX task can be done on Win-DOHs or not is totally irrelevant, I use Linux.)

I will give you that ATI is more of a bitch under Linux. I'm hoping that will change and will be helping to make that happen. Yes, I actually *do* contribute to the open source community as I can.

Hope this makes more sense.

Innovation over benchmarks,
Future over present,
AMD/ATI/Linux over Intel/nVidia/m$.

Has nothing to do with fanboyism. I love them for their reasons and my uses. It works out best like this so I exploit that.

[Rathious]

I Also once used Intel and switched to AMD. I believe I will be going back to intel chips although I buy my pc parts for the price and performance range I am looking for. I am however a huge fan of the nvidia driver support and ease of use with nvidia cards. I used ati and it was more hassle then it was worth for me anyway. Inside news ATi is developing a really nice new card (my friend is designing the GPU he works for AMD/ATI designing there chips). He has worked on the X-Box 360 and helped in designing the GPU for that. I thought i would just give my 2 cents on this. I am not knocking or promoting either way. I build a bunch of customs and they are tailored top individual needs of the user. Anyway the system looks pretty damn nice to me.

I built this SLI system I run on a budget of about $1200 for the tower. Not bad and get great performance. I wasn't willing to shell out the cash for the 8800 series cards so I went with dual 7900 gs cards. Budget with great results. I play Vanguard in it's current state on the highest Quality performance settings and get about 30 FPS and that is withoput the game even taking advantage of SLI I can't wait for the SLI optimization they are going to add to the game.

Anyway that is all I have to say besides you designed a nice rig and I think it will work well for what you want to do with it. If you need help wiht it in anyway just holler.

me and tbag actually chatted on AIM for a while about things. He linked me to the old forums I used to go to and it turns out some people still post there. Strange, i figured there would be a buncha new faces. The way it was explained to TBag:

I'd rather support the person taking the step forward. Each company makes great products for different things, etc. They both have their ups and downs but in the end, AMD always is the one to make that big step forward with their technology.

Great news about ATI, too, Rath. It's somewhat reassuring in my beliefs that ATI will make a come-back :)

[SacredTbag]

ya that was a good talk we had there :)

i can't WAIT to see ati's next gen cards. i love my 7900gt's, and the 8800 series is awesome, but i'd love to see ati come and whoop some nvidia ass. just so the prices go down :D

[Rathious]

There new cards should be out in the next month or 2 but you didn't hear that from me. I will get in touch with my buddy and find out some inside info if I can. last I heard the card they are releasing next is going to be DX 10 and compete very well with the 8850 series that nvidia is releasing that is all I know right now.

I also run dual 7900's and like Mcdonalds I'm lovin it lol.