New Pc

[Kaos]

Well, Im 16, and I dont currently have a job. So If I buy something for 6k, I will want it to play good games for a long time. And not have to upgrade for a while. I have been looking into the pc's on extreme prometia, and the Hurricane is amazing. However it is 6k. And my budget was 6k, for the pc, a nice screen, good speakers, and some other peripherals. I have been able to configure a top pc on a well known online retailer, with their 3xs system, leaving out the screen, for the amazing 30" dell screen. However I did include, some excellent speakers, and a speaker extension, a logitech sphere webcam, logitech g15 keyboard, and g7 mouse, and some logitech headphones (essential for games I play) for £5000, leaving 1000 for the screen. Im really unsure what to do at the moment. Can you please recommend what I should do, and If it would be better to buy a conroe chip, or a fx62, and what about double processors? Advice please

Mod comment: No competitors please. Thanks.

 

[boardy]

Conroe is the cream of the crop atm. I personally would wait for that as it's still beating the FX62 at lower clock speeds.

Boardy

 

[Kaos]

Yea, but what about upgrades? From past experience Amd Has always had the better chips, and I dont think it will be long before they release a better chip. Also Intel doesnt have SLI, so what would be the equivalent of quad SLI in Intels perspective? Thanks

 

[boardy]

Intel has the upcoming Quad Core processor which from the stories I've heard and results I've seen are unbelievable!

SLI is available on Intel using the nForce Intel chipsets if you don't have the Intel SLI Driver. Quad SLI is very overrated and in some cases is being beaten by 7900GTX's in SLI.

Boardy

 

[imported_Bazza]

wait for Conroe, t

hen get an Intel Bad-Axe mobo,

some insane DDR2 RAM,

X1900 X-Fire

Modded Mach 2 on the CPU,

Water cooled everything...

PCp&C !K...

you could pretty much get anything.......

you could even go for Dual Xeons or Dual Dual Core Opterons.....

 

[Kaos]

Whens this new quad core processor coming out? Also, how much do you think it will come to, if I ask phil to build me a Hurricane with conroe processor, or the new quad coming out =D, sorry for all the questions.

 

[boardy]

Why the Bad-Axe?? Just because it's the only board out now doesn't mean it's going to be the only one when they are released.

Asus have 2 boards coming out soon all designed for Conroe with the new 965 chipset, BUT these do NOT worth with crossfire!!! They also have a 975x board coming which works with Crossfire.

The nVidia 57x series chipsets for Intel may provide better SLI support anyway. No one has tested this yet I don't think if they are even out yet.

Boardy

edit : Quad core is Q1 '07 codename "Kentsfield"

 

[Firelord]

16 and dropping 6k on a system.... wish I had that cash! You don't need to spend a fortune to get a great system. Why not spend 3K and save the rest for something more useful like driving lessons and a car when you turn 17

 

[Baldrick]

Or spend 1k now and save the rest for future upgrades would last you much longer, dx10 gpu specs from the looks of it will make all setups but quad sli obselete.

 

[unreal]

16 and dropping 6k on a system.... wish I had that cash! You don't need to spend a fortune to get a great system. Why not spend 3K and save the rest for something more useful like driving lessons and a car when you turn 17

Also there is a point of negligble gain, spend less for almost equal performance. Next years graphics cards will always outperform todays. Sometimes better to spend moderately - you can buy high end but not highest end to get great performance and value.

At 16, 2k max i'd say. Drop a load for a machine at 18 for uni if your going but any machine bought today will be obsolite in 2 years.

 

[imported_Iceman]

Build your own

As an alternative, you might consider building a system using board/system level components. Below is an open case photo followed a list of the system components. I put this system together for about $4,000 US.

Cheers,

Iceman

Technical Specs

• Asus P5WDG2-WS motherboard
  
• Intel Pentium D940 Dual Core CPU, 4.16 GHz (30% overclocked) at -47oC
  
• Prometeia Mach 2 GT vapor phase-change cooling unit, case integrated
  
• 4 x 1GB Kingston DDR2 667 MHz FB-DIMM memory modules
  
• 2 x ATI Radeon 1600 PRO, 512MB, PCI-E
  
• Intel SRCU42X Dual-channel Ultra320 SCSI RAID Controller, 128MB, PCI-X
  
• 6 x Maxtor Atlas Ultra320 SCSI hard drives. 36.7 GB, 15,000 RPM
  
• 3 x WD Raptor SATA hard drives, 74GB, 10,000 RPM
  
• Plextor PX-740A Dual Layer DVD+RW/-RW drive
  
• Enermax 620W SLI Modular power supply
  
• Lian Li PC-V2000B-Plus server chassis
  
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, x64 Enterprise Edition

 

[jellybeard999]

As an alternative, you might consider building a system using board/system level components. Below is an open case photo followed a list of the system components. I put this system together for about $4,000 US.

Cheers,

Iceman

Technical Specs

• Asus P5WDG2-WS motherboard
  
• Intel Pentium D940 Dual Core CPU, 4.16 GHz (30% overclocked) at -47oC
  
• Prometeia Mach 2 GT vapor phase-change cooling unit, case integrated
  
• 4 x 1GB Kingston DDR2 667 MHz FB-DIMM memory modules
  
• 2 x ATI Radeon 1600 PRO, 512MB, PCI-E
  
• Intel SRCU42X Dual-channel Ultra320 SCSI RAID Controller, 128MB, PCI-X
  
• 6 x Maxtor Atlas Ultra320 SCSI hard drives. 36.7 GB, 15,000 RPM
  
• 3 x WD Raptor SATA hard drives, 74GB, 10,000 RPM
  
• Plextor PX-740A Dual Layer DVD+RW/-RW drive
  
• Enermax 620W SLI Modular power supply
  
• Lian Li PC-V2000B-Plus server chassis
  
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, x64 Enterprise Edition

hmmm a bit unbalanced i think....

why bother with a 6 disk SCSI array and a 3 disk raptor array ???? JUST the raptor array is already enough tbh... and the graphics are stupidly unbalanced :sad:

 

[nick25]

Well it depends on what he uses it for, not everyone games 24/7. Iceman can I see some HD benches like HDtach, thanks.

 

[jellybeard999]

Well it depends on what he uses it for, not everyone games 24/7. Iceman can I see some HD benches like HDtach, thanks.

i suppose, but i thought he was recommending this for the OP, who does want to game

 

[imported_Iceman]

My use of this system is primarily for digital video editing with Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0, Adobe After Effects 7.0, et al. The six SCSI drives are dedicated to this, and are striped (RAID 0). The other major component of access time is the drive's rotational delay (p = 0.5 * rpm). Also consider the transfer rate of 320 Mb/s verus 160 Mb/s. Hence the choice of the 15K RPM drives over the 10K RPM Raptors.

With repect to the three SATA Raptors, two are mirrored (RAID 1) and are used for the Windows Server 2003 x64 system and user directories. The remaining SATA drive holds finished DVD images and J2EE related files.

Video wise, I assume you're suggesting the use of an 8-bit PCI-E as the second GPU board as "balanced". Perhaps, but this way I had a built-in spare.

I am interested in your thoughts on this.

Thanks, Iceman

 

[imported_Iceman]

Very peceptive of you, Nick. In fact, I don't "game" at all, and use the SCSI array for digital video editing.

Sure, I'll download/install HDTach 3.0.1 and publish the results. Hopefully there will not be any drivers included (I'm running a 64-bit OS). I ran into this limitation with the Mach II CD offering only a 32-bit USB driver.

Thanks, Iceman