Anyone upgrade/build a new PC recently?

Zoglog

Zoglog

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Well I couldn't resist, i saw the E6600 Core 2 Duo @ frys for $199 (My Prescott P4 was sure showing it's age) and I jumped on. Then I realized I needed to upgrade EVERYTHING, PCI-Express.... MB.... DDR2.... and even the power supply. Much sadness D:....

Here was my original Decision

OCZ OCZ2P800R22GK 2GB Kit DDR2 PC2-6400 Platinum Revision 2 Dual Channel Memory Retail 123.75 ZZF

GA-965P-DS3 GBT 134.66 ClubIT

E6600 Core 2 Duo 216.49 frys

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 COOL-ACFZ7-Pro 29.45 Directron

PNY XLR8 GeForce 8800GTS 320MB 264.2 Buy.com

CMPSU-520HX 520W 102.61 ZZF

Seagate 500GB Serial ATA/300 16MB Buffer 129.89 frys

Total: 1001.05

4/5 Of the merchants shipped out on day 1 except for Buy.com. Then I ran into a fiasco with buy.com support... The GFX Card dropped in price by $20 and they wouldn't adjust the price even though they STILL hadn't shipped it out. So I strongly recommend anyone building a PC to AVOID buy.com. In the end I decided to get an EVGA Overclocked version instead @ amazon for $312 instead. I didn't care that I had to pay more, I don't intend to support buy.com anymore.

But yeah, I should get the vid card next week and I can start building.

Anyway I was wondering if people are upgrading with the great games coming out later this year (Quake wars/Hellgate London/Crysis) and the price drops on the Core 2 Duos.

My main concern is the 320MB on my new GFX card, do you guys think that'll be enough to run games in the future? Also should I install Vista or XP? I have both handy now but I only have the OEM Vista 32bit.....
 
If you decide you'd rather have the 640mb option, EVGA has a nice Step Up program you can take advantage of. I'm amazed at how many people buy from EVGA and don't know it exists.

My computer is really similar to the one you built, except I went for the E6400 and overclocked it, I've got it at 2.8 now.

There is no game out right now that my computer can't mangle and spit out at all the options on high with extremely high frame rates. I think I was averaging almost 100 FPS in F.E.A.R.

In the future, just do all your computer shopping with Newegg... I ordered all my parts through them and never once had a problem. That power supply is bordering on the minimum that you'd need as well... I always go for more wattage since I'd rather have too much then not enough.

I upgraded before the Core 2 Duo price drop... I still don't regret it. I'd also suggest getting an awesome monitor if you don't already have one. I went for the Samsung 941BW 19" LCD.
 
[quote name='Roufuss']If you decide you'd rather have the 640mb option, EVGA has a nice Step Up program you can take advantage of. I'm amazed at how many people buy from EVGA and don't know it exists.

My computer is really similar to the one you built, except I went for the E6400 and overclocked it, I've got it at 2.8 now.

There is no game out right now that my computer can't mangle and spit out at all the options on high with extremely high frame rates. I think I was averaging almost 100 FPS in F.E.A.R.

In the future, just do all your computer shopping with Newegg... I ordered all my parts through them and never once had a problem. That power supply is bordering on the minimum that you'd need as well... I always go for more wattage since I'd rather have too much then not enough.[/QUOTE]

Sweet, that's good to hear. I actually could have gone for the 640MB 8800GTS for a bit more than the overclocked 320MB ver. But from the benchmarks I saw the overclocked vers with the overclocked shader engines makes a large difference and they actually run today's games better than the 640 on normal resolutions.

I'm wondering if I should buy another 2GB of ram since it seems that memory gets more expensive the older it is... strangely.
 
im currently upgrading my computer it looks like im in a similar situation with Zoglog. what started as buying a new video card(nVidia 7300 GS not the best card but linux is much less demanding then other OSs) has turned into upgrading my whole computer, needed to buy a new motherboard because it didnt have a PCI-e slot, then needed more RAM, now i need a new case.
 
[quote name='qwerty32423434']im currently upgrading my computer it looks like im in a similar situation with Zoglog. what started as buying a new video card(nVidia 7300 GS not the best card but linux is much less demanding then other OSs) has turned into upgrading my whole computer, needed to buy a new motherboard because it didnt have a PCI-e slot, then needed more RAM, now i need a new case.[/QUOTE]

That's usually how it goes if you put up off upgrading for a few years... I had to do the same exact thing.
 
First off, I'm glad to see those prices coming down on dual cores as I've been pretty excited about getting one of those.

[quote name='Roufuss']In the future, just do all your computer shopping with Newegg... I ordered all my parts through them and never once had a problem. [/QUOTE]

Again, QFT. Sometimes you can get individual parts cheaper buying multiple places, but really if you buy everything from Newegg you win in the end. I, too, have bought tons of stuff from this place and have never had to return it. And their shipping is always fast.

My favorite feature is the customer reviews... not the scores but what customer's comments are... I have made some great buys with their advice on things you normally don't know what they're like until you use them - such as headphones, microphones, cpu cases, frak, everything! Love it.
 
Well I think it was just sort of bad timing in a ways? However I thnk upgrading to a DX10 card is going to get me some decent milage in time. And I'm pretty certain PCI-Express isn't dissappearing anytime soon.

As for buying everything at Newegg, i'm not too certain about that. I'd definetly recommend people avoid crappy merchants like buy.com. But I ended up buying from 5 different merchants and all 4 got the packages to me at around the same time.... except buy.com.

So right now i'm just waiting for my damn Video card so I can start building this stuff! Real annoying if you ask me =/
 
[quote name='Zoglog']As for buying everything at Newegg, i'm not too certain about that. I'd definitely recommend people avoid crappy merchants like buy.com. But I ended up buying from 5 different merchants and all 4 got the packages to me at around the same time.... except buy.com. [/quote]I
 
[quote name='Zoglog']I usually like to use pricegrabber to compare prices a bit before I just go with newegg. After awhile you can kind of decide on which ones are reliable merchants. Newegg does exceed in speediness, but usually shipping+TAX kill the price for me in CA. I found Club IT rather good with many products with free shipping and ZZF as well. Actually Club IT is located in the same place where Newegg is (City of industry) so I get speedy shipping from either one. ZZF shipped from San Jose which itook about a day more but still quick.

It's cool that you got a PC for free, but i'd avoid AMD for now. I actually had a nice AM2 Board i had in a raffle http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813130047
and was planning on upgrading with AMD (I really don't have any preference), but after researching it's pretty obvious that Intel's Core 2 Duo are just signifigantly better price/performance than the AMD Processors. The Processor I got benches higher than the highest end AMD right now and it's only a mid-range Core 2 Duo. Plus it was only $199. IT also explains why AMD is losing so much money at the moment. But yeah, with these Core 2 DUo price Drops recently it's a great time to upgrade. People say they're gonna be dropping prices even more in June, but who knows.[/quote]

I've always been an AMD guy, but decided to check out your chip in some reviews, and your right: it's apparently very good (especially when OC). The review I read was at neoseeker, and was pretty much just the first site I found with google, but I looked up the AMD chip they were using (Athlon 64 X2 5000) and the chip you bought on newegg, and the AMD chip (at least at newegg) is about $70 cheaper (or about $50 cheaper than the price you paid, as neweggs is a bit higher. Both offer free 3 day shipping). I guess point being that I would probably pick up that athlon chip over the Intel simply because of the price difference and my natural bias :p But the review really praised that chip you bought, and I'm glad you got a nice one at a nice price.

My chip, on the other hand (3800+) did just about the worst across the board. Oh well, can't beat free!

Oh, but as for the falling prices on Dual Cores, isn't it mostly because quad core has hit? Oh, and was the athlon 5000+ the chip you were comparing to, cause I've not really kept up on stuff at all, so I don't know what the AMDs top of the line is. So my limited research may mean nothing at all. But I am envious of your super fast computer.
 
[quote name='GrilledWitOnions']I've always been an AMD guy, but decided to check out your chip in some reviews, and your right: it's apparently very good (especially when OC). The review I read was at neoseeker, and was pretty much just the first site I found with google, but I looked up the AMD chip they were using (Athlon 64 X2 5000) and the chip you bought on newegg, and the AMD chip (at least at newegg) is about $70 cheaper (or about $50 cheaper than the price you paid, as neweggs is a bit higher. Both offer free 3 day shipping). I guess point being that I would probably pick up that athlon chip over the Intel simply because of the price difference and my natural bias :p But the review really praised that chip you bought, and I'm glad you got a nice one at a nice price.

My chip, on the other hand (3800+) did just about the worst across the board. Oh well, can't beat free!

Oh, but as for the falling prices on Dual Cores, isn't it mostly because quad core has hit? Oh, and was the athlon 5000+ the chip you were comparing to, cause I've not really kept up on stuff at all, so I don't know what the AMDs top of the line is. So my limited research may mean nothing at all. But I am envious of your super fast computer.[/QUOTE]

Dunno, all I know is that it was the highest Athlon at the time they reviewed my chip at release. I'm not sure about the price points now but back a couple of months ago when I had the AM2 board, things didn't look so good for AMD. And esp when you OC some of the lower end Core 2 Duos, you can get some crazy performance boosts. But i'm not a crazy OCer, probably only going to get mine up to 3 ghz.

The prices on the Core 2 Duos are dropping, because they're going to be introducing the new 1333MHz FSB version Core 2 Duos soon. Supposedly there's a rumor that in Fall the Quad Core E6600 is going to drop to $244. If that's the case AMD's new Quad Core better be a real killer or else they're going to be in trouble.
 
[quote name='Roufuss']In the future, just do all your computer shopping with Newegg... [/quote]
they are the best for buying computer parts
 
another note, Frys.com is also just as fast as newegg. I'm quite suprised at how good frys.com is. They use DHL now which is suprisingly good now too. My packages arrived pretty damn swiftly.
 
well finally built my PC last night and installed vista. Good to build a new system but reminds me of what a pain in the ass wires can be. Even with modular PSU and SATA it's a pain. I still have 2 IDE devices so I hope to swap those for SATA in the future. Once it's all SATA wiring should be Much more smooth. But it seems like when you have 4 HDs, wiring is always a pain in the arse. Esp that front port audigy 2.

I must admit the DX10 tech demos were a little disappointing. I just hope crysis really comes this fall
 
If you plan on running any OS other than Windows I would recommend against getting any motherboard with the Intel P965 Chipset. It has no native PATA support and instead uses a JMicron PATA controller to supply a PATA port. The downside to this is that current Linux distros do not support this controller, so you're SOL if you want to install from a PATA based optical drive or use an PATA storage. You can still install other OSs, but you'll need a clever work around or a SATA based drive.

(I wish I had known this before I built my system, spent $1700 on the damn thing)
 
It's all good, I have no intentions of using Linux really.

I installed vista and I've been testing it out. Strangely both games I tried (Quake 4 and Dark Messiah) didnt work properly. Dark Messiah I got some error loading it up and Quake 4 would crash in the middle. I was using a beta version 1.41.. so that might have been it but damn...
 
Well I fixed the Quake 4 crashing, turns out I just had to change audio to openAL. Creative drivers on Vista suck major. But oh man.... 1920x1080 Res on 42" Monitor and flawless frame rates on high quality... amazing....

Battlefield 2 on the other hand is sucking major nuts. Still sucks as much as always. Worst GUI interface and optimization ever......

Titan's Quest runs perfectly @ 1080p as well with max quality and same with Oblivion.... this card is a monster o_O....

On my Geforce 6800, titans quest was incredibly choppy down to the 5fps level at only 1280x720...... crazy..

I have yet to try supreme commander and I haven't even started OCing yet. This is all stock.
 
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