New Dual-Core budget gaming rig

A friend has asked me to put together a dual-core gaming rig for him, and the budget is $2000 CAD max (around $1700 USD).

Here are the parts and any suggestion/revision is welcome:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz Dual Core Socket 939 512K L2 Cache ( Retail Box ) $425

GFX card: Asus EN7900GT nVidia GeForce 7900GT(450MHz) 256Mb DDR3(1.3GHz) 256-Bit Dual DVI-I HDTV-Out PCI Express Graphics Card $449.00

Mobo: DFI Lanparty nF4 SLI-DR Socket 939 nForce4 SLI w/ Dual-Ch DDR400, Dual Gb LAN, PCI-Express (SLI), SATA 3Gb/s, Dual RAID, 8-Ch Audio, SPDIF, IEEE $240

RAM: OCZ PC-3200 DDR400 Performance Series 2GB (2x1024) Dual Channel Kit CAS3 (OCZ4002048PFDC-K) $250

PSU: Antec SmartPower 2.0 500 Watt ATX12V v2.0 PSU PCI-E Ready $88

Case: Antec P160W Anodized Aluminum Super Mid Tower with side window $125

That's all.

After tax price is $1813 CAD, so maybe I should upgrade some of the parts.

Sounds good to me :D the X2 4200 is great :D For ram id get 2 packs of this
instead http://search.ncix.com/displayproduc...Z%20Technology

Although good multithreaded games may be in the pipeline, they aren't here yet.

However, games do use lots of memory, and would benefit from larger cache.

For those reasons you would probably be better off getting the single core Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego.

2000 is a shitload of money for a custom built computer nowadays, and ya, I'd go with a single core unless your friend doesnt plan on upgrading for a looong time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lynx

Although good multithreaded games may be in the pipeline, they aren't here yet.

However, games do use lots of memory, and would benefit from larger cache.

For those reasons you would probably be better off getting the single core Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego.

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Bingo.
Dual core does nothing for gaming.
I'm partial to the s939 Opteron's myself.

Once you get that settled, forget the high latency RAM.
For the same price you can get 2x1024mb Patriot PC3500 (cas2,3,5,2) which gives the CPU something to work with.

I would get the Expert board over the SLI-DR just for the better northbridge placement and superior power handling but your PSU will need the 8 pin power connector.

man my build came in around $864, didnt go dual core, but as others have stated it's not a huge deal for gaming. 2k...thatd be a lcd, surround sound, and a couple games with my build heh.

I wouldn't say that $1700 us is a budget build of a gaming computer.
I agree with clocker on the Opterons- a friend of mine has a 148 running at 2.8 on water, and it is damn fast.
I would get the best ram avalable and any other money I would put into the best graphics card that you can afford

yeah thats definatly not budget computer building, budget building is more around 500-800 which i was on when i built mine, hey my computer works great

Okay thx for replies, the reason why I recommanded dual-core to him was because Vista is coming out next year, and games run better under vista with dual-core cpus.

Anyways, here's the revised CPU+Mobo:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4GHz w/1MB L2 Cache Socket 939 (Retail Box) $395

Mobo: DFI Lanparty UT nF4 SLI-DR Expert nVidia nForce SLI Chipset Dual CH DDR400 8 Ch Audio S/PDIF In/Out Dual Gigabit Lan Serial ATA 3Gb/s Raid 0,1,0+1 and JBOD IEEE 1394 Software Control SLI Switch $ 250


I couldn't find a Canadian site with the Patriot ram clocker suggested.

Also, would it be worth it to get a fx-55 instead of the 4000+? The FX-55 is still around $850, twice that of a 4000+. If so, I would need to cut back on the cost of other parts because otherwise it would total over $2000.

I don't think you'll find Patriot here in Canada. I haven't even seen any distributors that carry them. :(