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. :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Virtualbody1234

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

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Aww, then a good replacement would be?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Seedler

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.

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also, I am not sure what graphics card it is, but I was reading about one that has a special driver for dual core machines that transferes phisics off the graphics card and on to the unused core when running graphics intenisive programs like games. something like a 30% increase in a quite a few gaming benchmarks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Seedler

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.

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rather than an FX chip, get an opteron 100 series chip- it fits on 939s, and overclocks like crazy. up to Opteron 154 is singal core, everything above that is dual core. about the same price if you compare Ghz, but the Opteron is much higher quality and will most likely overclock more.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Seedler

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.

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The 4000+ is effectively a renamed S939 FX53, except that the 4000+ uses 90nm technology and the FX53 never got beyond 130nm technology.

The FX55 would certainly give better performance, but how much I wouldn't like to say. In Gaming benchmarks, the FX60 gives about 4.5% improvement over the FX57, I would imagine the same would be true when comparing the FX55 with the 4000+. There's a big jump in power consumption between the 4000+ and the FX55 - 85W to 104W.

Performance difference between the 4000+ and the Opteron 150? Zero. However, the Opteron is likely to run slightly cooler (marginal) or overclock better. Worth considering since the price should be about the same, about £5 difference in UK.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Virtualbody1234

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

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Sorry to hear it.
K then...whatever brand you can get, make sure it runs tight timings (i.e. 2,3,2,5 @1T or better)...the 90nm AMDs thrive on fast RAM.
Since you are getting one of the premier OCing motherboards why not just go for a nominally slower chip and plan on clocking it?
The money you save could go towards better cooling.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Seedler

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.

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No Hardrive? is he gonna use his current one?

I'd take swap out the dual-core with a sata 3.0gb/s hardrive. He'd see faster load times with that.

Okay, thx for replies, the parts are coming in soon.

Decided to go with Oppy 150 for CPU.

Should get some nice benchmark results from this beast.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Seedler

Okay, thx for replies, the parts are coming in soon.

Decided to go with Oppy 150 for CPU.

Should get some nice benchmark results from this beast.

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Good choice