Considering the following build:

E

Endiment

Baron O'Beefdip
Joined
Feb 1, 2008
Messages
3,596
I'm on a budget here, so right now I'll get the price for this rig out of the way:

1287$US

now then, what I've got.

AMD Phenom X4 9850
Asus M3N-HD/HDMI motherboard
HP DVD1040i LightScribe DVD RW
Lite-On PLDS DVDROM CDRW drive
I need a new wifi-N adapter so I'm getting this
OCZ Dual Channel 2048 MB DDR2 1066MHz memory
Thermaltake Soprano RS101 mid-tower ATX case
EVGA GeForce 9600 GT (x2)
Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit (I'm considering getting a cheap copy of XP and using my upgrade CD to get free home premium)
OCZ 700-watt SLI ready ATX power supply
Western Digital 500GB SATA 7200 RPM hard drive

not sure what to do in terms of heat sinks/other fans
 
Do you have any flexing room with your budget? or is 1300 your max atm?

My first problem with the rig fall under the "1 is better than 2" philosophy. Your video cards. Doesn't the 8800gts(92) out perform 2 9600gts? If it doesn't then whoops. But I've been under the impression that one good card is better than 2 cards rigged together.

I'd work with the AC Freezer 7 Pro for your CPU heatsink. Unless you plan to OC, then get Tuniq or better.

Also, do you have any room to get yourself a better case for Air Flow? Especially if you plan to use 2 vid cards then you will get more use out of something like a 900 or a Windtunnel. Look around. It's really only an extra 40-60 bucks or so if you can manage.
 
I can always strike some 190$ off the price by doing a little magic with the operating system since I have like 24 OS restore disks from other computers we've owned over the years.

I think dual 9600GT outperforms the 8800GTS but again not 100% certain on that.

thanks for the additional advice ^_^
 
The 9600GTs just BARELY beat the GTS. They're crap imho...just a rebranded and OCed 8800GT.

Are you set on AMD? If not, you can get one of Intel's quads/motherboards for much cheaper than what you have right now.

~Gooda~
 
Havegooda {A|R} said:
Are you set on AMD? If not, you can get one of Intel's quads/motherboards for much cheaper than what you have right now.

~Gooda~
Click to expand...

a quad isnt going to get you squat. very few games are built to take advantage of them, your OS wont, theres just little reason to go quad.

when i build systems i usually start with a barebones kit from tigerdirect or the like. they often bundle stuff together cheeper than what you can buy it for.
 
then what would you recommend over the dual GT?

actually I do a lot of video editing and some other multi-threaded apps so a quad is nice
 
Please explain yourself further.

I'm running a Q6600 right now, and I love it. I multitask a lot, and the extra cores really help. I don't know what you're talking about when you say that your OS won't take advantage of the extra cores...

More and more games/programs are becoming multithreaded. He'll be happy he chose a quad when they do, so he doesn't have to upgrade again.

He already had a quad in his original list, I just suggested he try Intel if he's not an AMD fanboy.

EDIT: There...he does video editing and other stuff that supports quads...GO QUAD!

For the price of the 9600GTs, I'd recommend an ATI 4870...

~Gooda~
 
Endiment, trust me.. Don't get duel 9600's. I have a single one, it hardly keeps up. Get 2 4850's and you'd have a Card/s better than GTX 280. I was An Nvidia fanboy, now ATI is at the top with it's VERY cheap cards that outperform Nvidia.

A single 4850 outperforms a GTX 260.
 
gonna go with Gooda's advice on this one and go for the 4870. I'm hearing a lot of good about ATI's cards.

thanks so much for the advice everyone, really appreciate your help ^_^
 
Tylantt said:
Endiment, trust me.. Don't get duel 9600's. I have a single one, it hardly keeps up. Get 2 4850's and you'd have a Card/s better than GTX 280. I was An Nvidia fanboy, now ATI is at the top with it's VERY cheap cards that outperform Nvidia.

A single 4850 outperforms a GTX 260.
Click to expand...


my 9600gt smokes any thing ive seen every game i play is 60+ fps on high @ 1920x1200, so unless youre wanting to run Crysis at Uber high at 1920x1200 with like 200fps+ a 9600gt works fine, plus 60 fps and 120 fps and 240fps look the same (i have the XFX 9600GT XXX [Extreme] Edtion)
 
That's awesome! But the problem is that the 9600 series (GT at least) uses the exact same core as the 8800 series. It has the same setup/layout, except the frequencies are bumped up a notch and is given a new name. You could have saved your money and gotten a $70 8800GT and spend 5 minutes moving a slide in RivaTuner up two notches.

If you like it, good. But I'm a huge enthusiast, and as such I look at every little detail in a card, CPU, or motherboard. It pains me to see people being tricked (essentially) into paying more for something that you can get for a LOT less. Same thing goes with cards with 1GB (or more!) of vRAM and a 256-bit memory bus...it's a waste. The only time you'd EVER use 1GB vRAM is if you were running two or more 24" screens and maxing out Crysis...and then they'd still be bottlenecked by the memory bus.

~Gooda~
 
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only thing i want to suggest here is that you go with a bigger tower. That mid tower is going to horrible overflow. If your will still going to stick with 2 9600 they would over heat in that tower for sure. My one 9600 has heat problems in my large tower with 5 fans. that is my 2 cents.
 
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