stiscooby

I am about to upgrade my bro's PC for him and just looking for parts at the mo....

Regarding the processor, which one do I want (for some normal windows stuff and playing the odd game or three ) I have seen either the Intel P4 640 3.2 Ghz, smithfield core, whatever that is? or the Intel Pentium D PreslerCore 930 2x 3.0Ghz (I believe this one is dual core so assume its better???).

Also what graphics cards are reasonable these days? Nvidia 6800, 7600, 7800 etc??

He is looking to spend around £500 or so to get a new motherboard, memory, processor, HDD & graphics card so doesn't want to spend silly amounts on the graphics card and processor alone (e.g £250 on just the graphics card )

Thanks

Soulgirl

I'm soooo excited.. getting the intel dual core Friday coupled with a raptor 10000+ hd for my OS... replacing my current storage with two 250 giggers

Have two nvidia's for graphics.. not the most brilliant but then I don't play games.

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

could buy an amd64bit 3200 with 1 gig of quality memory and 2 nvidia geforce 6600gt's and sli motherboard from me for £250 + postage. Motherboard is a MSI K8N diamond sli, memory is kingston ddr 3500 and the graphics cards are made by gigabyte

TonyFlow

Go for the Pentium 2.6 Dual core, it is overclockable to around 3.44gHz on Air!
http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/05/10...uk/page19.html

And at only ~£60

Scooby Dooby Blue

For your £500 budget, this is the sort of kit i'd suggest (ballpark figures):

AMD AM2 Athlon64 Dual Core 3800+ CPU (£100)
ASUS M2N-E Motherboard (£60)
OCZ 2GB Dual Channel DDR800 (£140)
ASUS 7600GS 512MB VGA Card (£105)
400GB SATA2 Hard Drive (£95)

Remember you may need to add a reasonable good PSU to the bundle.

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

over 4 ghz by pc format, I run mine at 3.8 ghz at the moment all in pure dual core loveliness

cong

lot of money on ahard drive i would buy 2 160 and raid em much better then a big 400 .....unlesss you like download like theres no pop corn for tommorow

Soulgirl

What mobo have you got in that set-up?

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

abit aw8d but there is an asus one that is suppost to be better. Needs decent memory to achieve the speeds though. I got a different cooler as well that moves more air than the standard, however before I got the cooler I was still running over 3ghz. Temps average less than 50c in the abit monitoring software (you can overclock from windows as well and adjust voltages etc)

Soulgirl

I can't remember what mobo I'm getting but it's certainly not one right at the top end because my Hubby said this morning that there are better ones that'll attain the speeds you're talking about. Stupid question, but at those speeds are you still rock solid or is it a bit tempremental?

I'll report back with my bench speeds once I'm installed at the weekend. I'm quite looking forward to testing out my new OS hardrive though - 10,500 rpm. Should be nice and snappy

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

yes it is stable at the moment, I have had a few moments but that has when I have been messing with voltages and memory timings etc. I found higher voltage doesnt always help!