EggXpert

uninformed:

Hi Jsv,

 I'm looking to build my own Gaming PC and I am looking in the 500-600 dollar price range.  I found your builds and basically have one question.  For someone who is not planning on overclock or tweaking specs much and wants a powerful performance would you recommend the AMD or the Intel system at this point?  Please feel free to tell me the benefits of minimal tweaking on either.  I really would be able to make the tweaks, I just have no plans from the get-go to do so.
I appreciate any help anyone could provide, and will let you know how everything goes afterwards.  Thanks so much for keeping this up to date and answering all of our questions.

Hi uninformed,

I think that you would be satisfied with either the AMD or Intel builds, they really are quite competitive with each other.  The minor differences between them is that the Intel system will overclock much higher but with an aftermarket cooler.  AMD's stock coolers are pretty sufficient for doing a bit of playing around with and a medium overclock.

The Intel CPU is also going to use much less energy than the AMD as it is made on the 45nm process and the AMD is still on the aging 65nm process.  Basically, the smaller the process, the less heat which generally translates to better overclocking.

If you've got any other questions, don't hesitate to post them!

jsv

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Hey Jsv35,

Just a thought but could you add some builds in the HTPC category?  Or am I missing them on this super thread?

~TK

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Hey all, i need help with a build I have in mind. Looking at about $1200 budget.

 I would like to have crossfired two saphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB's in the machine. Would like to have the Q6600 in there as I heard with proper cooling I can overclock the son B pretty good.. Other than those two items, I have no idea what I need/should get.. I imagine I will need a full tower case with plenty of room for cooling..

 I dont know if any more than 4gb of ram is necessary... I don't play Crysis but if I had those two video cards crossfired with a Q6600 OC'd just over 3.0ghz, what FPS do you imagine I would be getting on highest settings?

 Thanks friends!

Greetings, this is what makes this such a great forum. People  giving of their time and ideas to others.This is a very useful thread and I have learned much.

Thank You

 cuggie

What..No RaidMax Tornado cases???    They are fantanstic cases for the money (under 40 bucks) and offer great cooling for OCing...Plus they will take a full Mobo and a Freezer Pro 7 cooler....

Very nice job you have done here....   Can a i7 with 3X1 get by for gaming?

bevelboy:

Hey all, i need help with a build I have in mind. Looking at about $1200 budget.

 I would like to have crossfired two saphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB's in the machine. Would like to have the Q6600 in there as I heard with proper cooling I can overclock the son B pretty good.. Other than those two items, I have no idea what I need/should get.. I imagine I will need a full tower case with plenty of room for cooling..

 I dont know if any more than 4gb of ram is necessary... I don't play Crysis but if I had those two video cards crossfired with a Q6600 OC'd just over 3.0ghz, what FPS do you imagine I would be getting on highest settings?

 Thanks friends!

What OS are you going to run? 32 bit OS's can't access more than 3.something GB of RAM, so unless you get an x64 OS of some type, it doesn't matter. With that said, I always think that more RAM is better, no matter what. If you're running 8GB of RAM with those specs that you laid out, you're probably looking at 70+ FPS, just off the top of my head.

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I pwn n00bs.

Jsv hasn't updated probably because he doesn't have the time. When he first started he was able to do monthly updates, but that's no longer the case. Heck, he changed the format to make it so the list wasn't as easily outdated.

It's not that he's ignoring us, its probably more accurate to say he hasn't visited the site long enough to do anything. Be patient. He'll update when he can.

Carcharocles58:

Jsv hasn't updated probably because he doesn't have the time. When he first started he was able to do monthly updates, but that's no longer the case. Heck, he changed the format to make it so the list wasn't as easily outdated.

It's not that he's ignoring us, its probably more accurate to say he hasn't visited the site long enough to do anything. Be patient. He'll update when he can.

You're quite right, haven't had very much free time over the summer months and its been a matter of choosing priorities.  I hope to get back to updating things this week!

Thanks for understanding Carcharocles58!  Of course it sucks that I haven't been able to be on here.  I'm really looking forward to being able to put Core i5 and ATI's DX11 cards up soon!

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I hope you don't mind if I make a couple suggestions.

For either the 80 dollar or the 115 dollar AMD CPU, you might consider listing the Phenom II X2 545. Right now its 89.99 on Newegg, and not strictly an 80 dollar processor, but should be close enough. It also falls only 0.1ghz behind its big brother, the X2 550. Very nice processor for the money.

There is now a 95 watt variant of the Phenom II X4 945. I can't find any reviews on it, but supposedly it is just a lower power version of the old 125 watt model. They can both be posted together, as they likely perform similar. They are also very similar in price; in fact, the new version is only 179 dollars and currently on sale for the 125 watt's 169.

Carcharocles58:

I hope you don't mind if I make a couple suggestions.

For either the 80 dollar or the 115 dollar AMD CPU, you might consider listing the Phenom II X2 545. Right now its 89.99 on Newegg, and not strictly an 80 dollar processor, but should be close enough. It also falls only 0.1ghz behind its big brother, the X2 550. Very nice processor for the money.

There is now a 95 watt variant of the Phenom II X4 945. I can't find any reviews on it, but supposedly it is just a lower power version of the old 125 watt model. They can both be posted together, as they likely perform similar. They are also very similar in price; in fact, the new version is only 179 dollars and currently on sale for the 125 watt's 169.

Thank you for the feedback!

I don't know why I didn't include the Phenom II X2 545 in the first place, I've added it along with the Athlon II.  I also didn't even realize there was a different version of the X4 945, so I've added that in there as well.

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