new purchase questions

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Nagasama

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hi everyone.
i am looking into buying this system from dell. i think i have done enough research to know it will be a good system for general use as well as games.
i do know also through research that the graphics card sucks, but i will not buy good one from dell, and they won't make me one without this card at least. i will upgrade it to either a geforce 7600gt or an ati x1900 or x1650 in the near future.
i also know i could build my own computer, but at this time i am not inclined to do so.
not too worried about gc because i think the types of games i will play often (rts) will depend on the cpu more.
i know a e6300 conroe will be faster if it is overclocked. i'm not gonna do that, either (at least not for a long while). but the benchmarks i have seen suggest that the 4600+ at stock will perform in the neighborhood of the e6400-e6600, also at stock speeds. the 5000+ a little better than the conroes (listed above) at stock.
anyways...
a few questions...
will ati gc be better choice with the amd cpu?
is it worth another 100 bucks to get the 5000+?
as far as upgrades in the future...does anyone know, will i be able to upgrade the mobo (say if i want to run sli with nvidia, will need another pcie slot)?
will this system supprt ddr2800 ram (wouldn't that be better?)? i think, based on my reading, that the cpu will. just don't know if everything else will work with it. and it's kind of costly (as i'm sure you all know) to buy 2gb of ocz...and doooo! no workie.

Components
PROCESSOR AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4600+ (am2 socket) nforce 4 chipset
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 edit
MEMORY 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz- 2DIMMs edit
HARD DRIVE 160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™ edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 16x DVD+/-RW Drive edit
MONITOR 20 inch Ultrasharp™ 2007FP Digital Flat Panel edit
VIDEO CARD 256MB NVIDIA Geforce 7300LE TurboCache edit
SOUND Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
total price (incl. shipping) 1109.00 us

any help is appreciated and thanks in advance.
 
if you have to go dell then I would suggest if they have the 4400 x2, get it, it gives you the faster L2 cache. but it's ok... the video card sucs, but that's what you get from dell... the 5K isn't worth it to me for the extra Ghz... the L2 makes a bigger difference, than clock speed.

BTW.. link please if you have one...

why not build if you have the money?
 
nukem thanks.
unfortuantely the 4400 and the 4800 that have the larger cache are no longer available (from dell anyway).
that's about what i figured with the 5k+.
about building, well, it's not really money or ability (haha), i just don't have much free time. what a great excuse!
and to be honest, i just want something to perform straight out of the box with no tweaking or heat problems, adjustments, etc.
do you mean the link to the dell site?
also, what do you all think about the upgradeability and the other questions in my post?
 
then save a few bucks and go for the 3800 x2... no sense paying 150 more for a couple of extra Ghz you might be able to get yourself. but honestly even the 4600 isn't worth the price. get the Audigy sound and maybe even the remote so you can watch you stuff from afar.. :)
 
i have noticed that most people who have x2's in their signature have 3800's. i guess they are really almost as good. maybe can spend the dough on a waaaay better vid card.
and yes, fork, they do. a 256 card can use as much as 256 of your system memory.
which is sketchy.
but, i have no reason to spend the 50 bucks to "upgrade" to a x1300 pro...cos it sucks, too.
will consider the 3800+
are there any benchmark comparisons that will give me a real idea of the stock performance difference between x2's and conroe's?
does anyone know?
 
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