$500 Buld Challenge - Part Duex

[patonb]

You're not really "skimping on the gpu. It's more of the best bang for the buck, as gaming is more than gpu dependant. Also The 980gtx+is getting old.. but still decent. The 4830 was choosen to keep you on budget. With the 4850 being a match.

Gpus are the easiest upgrade, so, getting a better base, youre better off.

 

[kmote]

You're not really "skimping on the gpu. It's more of the best bang for the buck, as gaming is more than gpu dependant. Also The 980gtx+is getting old.. but still decent. The 4830 was choosen to keep you on budget. With the 4850 being a match.

Gpus are the easiest upgrade, so, getting a better base, youre better off.

Wise words there.

 

[FailBoat]

Well that makes sense. I'll put more emphasis on processor then... So the question I have now is what is going to be the best bang for my buck for processors? I suppose I can bring down the cost on my Mobo because I'm not going to be doing anything crazy like raiding a bunch of HDs together

 

[patonb]

^^

I'll tell you, the rig I have was recommended by this forum, other than the ram they recommended, who expected crucial to start sucking, the recommended build has been solid, upgradeable, and saved me money.

So if the amd rig was recommended, it'll be solid as is. If you want an intel based cpu, say so, and someone will build you one.

Not me... I no NOTHING on that stuff

 

[Evolv]

I think the AMD build would be better overall. The X3 720 is an awsome processor and for the price, it holds great value.

 

[veg1992]

In addition, it can become a Quad-core with the right board

 

[Evolv]

^ Yea, what do you need, a 790gx? I want a 720 like a fat kid loves cake. The possibility of unlocking the 4th core is icing on the cake.

 

[FailBoat]

That works. I actually work at a job tech support where there are a lot of computer and gaming enthusiasts. Though I know a decent amount about software and can fiddle around with hardware enough to fix things, by comparison, I am one of the guys who likes sports. I qualified for "sports guy" because I occassionally watch basketball and football games

Anyway, there are 3 of us all building computers and I think we've managed to start a mini-war about AMD vs Intel and nVidia vs ATI. It has been a pretty fun week.

Well, if I got that AMD build, I would probably still bump the Graphics Card up to the 4850 models. A couple of people at work are saying that there aren't a lot of games that really take full advantage of more than 2 core processor. Is that true?

 

[Evolv]

Some games are supporting quads. Like Bioshock, COD4, Crysis, Source engine, Far Cry 2, UT3, the up-coming Alan Wake. In the near future more games will be supporting 4 cores.

 

[FailBoat]

Ah ok. One of my work friends made an interesting argument. He was arguing that the driving force behind game development is not bigger, better and brighter but rather what can be ported from PCs to Consoles as well. And since consoles stick around for about 4 or 5 years until the next model comes out, many game development companies are less likely to develop and release games that can't run on multiple platforms.

There are obviously games that do not fall under this idea, but meh... Sounds reasonable to me. The last time I was buying computer components, I remember things overall costing a lot more. In terms of price to performance. Overclocking seemed to be more difficult or dangerous to do back then too

Oh another question. What are good brands for 4850s?
I won't be able to purchase this until the beginning of March. That means a lot of those mail in rebate offers will be gone and new ones will be popping up. Going to have to see what new deals come up here in March.