5punk

The time has come to retire Hehulk 1.0 (My current machine) and rebuild it's core from scratch. Now, I'm assuming a £300 budget, so really high end stuff is out of the question, but I do know I want an AM2 socket processor (3800+, 4000+?) with some DDR2 RAM and a PCI-E gfx card with shader model 3.0. Rest of my machine should cope fine as I've already got the DVD-roms, 500W branded PSU and case so these don't need to be included. Onboard LAN would be helpful, but I've got 3 LAN cards from when I tried to make a server anyway so it's not a requirement.

Spec me bitches!

I'm assuming you already have a suitable mobo? (this is why I ask people to post their specs somewhere)

Hehulk wrote:The time has come to retire Hehulk 1.0 (My current machine) and rebuild it's core from scratch. Now, I'm assuming a £300 budget, so really high end stuff is out of the question, but I do know I want an AM2 socket processor (3800+, 4000+?) with some DDR2 RAM and a PCI-E gfx card with shader model 3.0. Rest of my machine should cope fine as I've already got the DVD-roms, 500W branded PSU and case so these don't need to be included. Onboard LAN would be helpful, but I've got 3 LAN cards from when I tried to make a server anyway so it's not a requirement.

Spec me bitches!

Processor £117.49 inc VAT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... subcat=640
Mammaries £49.34 inc VAT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... subcat=813
MOBO £23.50 inc VAT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... subcat=689
Graphics Card £82.24 inc VAT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... subcat=404

Comes in under 300 quid.

Sorry, I don't have an AM2 motherboard. Still running on whatever the socket was they relegated sempron to...

mr. green was close, but i'd go for.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000+ 3.00GHz (Socket AM2) (£93.99) (cheaper and a bit faster than an fx62)

OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) (£49.34)

Abit AN52 nForce 520 (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (£46.99)(decent mobo, bgrade is evil)

OcUK ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) (£82.24)


Though, I'd honestly not do that, there's no good reason not to go core2.

MrGreen wrote:Processor £117.49 inc VAT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... subcat=640

Nice, but wouldn't this be better value for money? It's £145 on ebuyer

Hehulk wrote:
Nice, but wouldn't this be better value for money?

If you overclock, fine, but I'd actually recommend you just go C2D, it's not like it'll be any different considering your replacing everything AMD-related and all.

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:mr. green was close, but i'd go for.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000+ 3.00GHz (Socket AM2) (£93.99) (cheaper and a bit faster than an fx62)

OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) (£49.34)

Abit AN52 nForce 520 (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (£46.99)(decent mobo, bgrade is evil)

OcUK ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) (£82.24)


Though, I'd honestly not do that, there's no good reason not to go core2.

How would you say that would stand up next to stuff like BEEF, Soup and some of the newer stuff like Crysis? I don't like Intel. The old pentium adds use to iritate the nuts off me at a time when AMD was doing better chips, and I've never warmed to them. Sooner give my money to AMD really

Hehulk wrote:
How would you say that would stand up next to stuff like BEEF, Soup and some of the newer stuff like Crysis?

BEEF: steady 60-80FPS
Soup: Depends.
Crysis: RAEP!

It'd be fine. can't say more than that. no crystal ball etc.

MrGreen wrote:Crysis: RAEP!

to be fair, crysis RAEPS my machine too

That crysis at max setting though? Knowing you it is

Don't think it's completely max. fairly high though.

Get c2d. I'm no fan of intel, or AMD, I'll go for whats best at the time, when I gather my funds I'll be getting a new rig built around the fastest c2d I can afford. The AMD phenom looks like it'll be nice price, fast and efficient, but who knows if thats true, and how long it is until it actually arrives. And even when it does, it may be no better than c2d.

Crysis runs better for me with everything high than at medium, dunno why, but I decided to drop to medium after suffering, it made it worse. I think it's a build problem, also the problem with compiling shaders has disappeared now, thankfully.

HereComesPete wrote: The AMD phenom looks like it'll be nice price, fast and efficient, but who knows if thats true

It's not.

I do.

*casts thread revieve

So, I'm about to go and <strike>waste</strike> spend alot of cash on my new rig, but looking over the specs in details I found a couple of problems that have me nosing about looking for other options. I need a motherboard with 2 IDE slots, because I've still got old hard drives that use that interface, as well as 2 CD-Roms so Berks original suggestion is out.

Nosing about, this and this have caught my eye, and while the first is out of stock would it be worth be poking about elsewhere to try and find out?

Or, you could do a proper upgrade and buy http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductI ... ctID=17433 to run your crappy old drives.

or just abandon the old optical drives, you can get sata dvd writers for £17.

Werd you bummer

I have a spare C2D E6300 1.8GHz kicking about. Can't give it to you for free but I can swap it for a smallish amount of beer tokens instead. £30 if thats reasonable? It has been overclocked up to 2.3GHz on the stock cooler and performed fine.

Ah ha! Missed that

Thanks Berk

EDIT: Right, what I'm about to order

CPU
Motherboard
Graphics (Specs look better than the X1950 Pro for only a few pennies more)
RAM

Plus Berks find, comes to £291 with P&P, which I'm not too upset about

You need to upgrade to more newness.

It'll just get harder and harder (twss) to find ide on each new iteration of a mobo, without them speccing it as an 'advanced' or 'enthusiast' mobo part, costing you more monies. If you can replace at least one drive, then you'll be more future-proof and I'm guessing you've got 2 hdd's on each ide so if you replace 2, you can go mainstream.

Both those boards look good, but are you still insistent on no intel? The prices have dropped, the die revisions are out and they're even better and cheaper. I'm with what mr green put up core 2 duo is even more win now than when it first came out.

/sidenote - mr green, benchmarks show you were right about the phenom, amd's best quad-core effort is about the same price and is up to 20% slower on benchmarks, they pulled the fastest quad-core just before launch day, apparently it's fucked. In the long term, if amd survive, then their four cores on one die, as opposed to 2x2 on one die will win, but it'll take them a long time to pull ahead of intel again, especially with the q6600 being £132 and the e6850 being £136 at ebuyer.