[antiant]

cool, i'll just stick with what i have then, thanks to everyone who has helped me out, thus far

 

[K2Grey]

Don't see anything obviously wrong with your selections.

Actually at the moment I'm trying to make a new one too

Edit: At the moment, I've got everything figured out mostly. Just trying to decide on:

1) Athlon x2 3800+ vs. Athlon 3200+. I'm considering whether I would actually benefit from the dual core CPU since I have the feeling that the 3200 is fast enough to deal with multitasking of most things pretty well. The only time, I think, that the 2nd core would really come into play is if I made a habit of decoding/encoding things in the background constantly and the like. Since even music playback + firewall + IRC + a whole slew of other "minor" stuff shouldn't add up to enough.

On the other hand, the x2 is shiny and neat and might be helpful in unexpected situations. On the other hand it also costs 2x the amount

2) Do I really need a $90 case? No. But it's shiny and hard to resist and also half the weight

 

[pheonix991]

You will like the extra power of the x2. Trust me. Plus, the a64 series is terrible at multi-tasking. The X2 is def. worth the extra cash.

 

[ellover009]

With the price drops I would pony up a little more and get
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...ctCode=80726-R
amd x-2 4400
or overclock this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115004
core 2 duo 6400, hands down some ownage to the amd series.

 

[pheonix991]

He wouldn't even need to overclock the conroe, it is powerful enough. But, he would have to do a lot of searching to get one.

 

[K2Grey]

I have no desire to venture out the world of Socket 939

In what kinds of situations might I benefit from the dual-core? I don't think I'd have that many background processes going on...

 

[ellover009]

Well heres the thing a high end single core can give a dual core a whooping unless you invest serious coin. Dual core's advantage is that it can do several things at the same time, exp record a dvd and play a game without a hitch, with single core you get more with less but your limited on how many things you do at the same time. If your building new look into the new socket 2 amd x-2 line because they use ddr2 memory, what does this mean for me, well if it's a new build I would ge ddr 2 because when you make another build you can tranfer the ram to your new pc and it doesen't get wasted. Good luck, and wichever way you go your gonna be a happy man or woman. As for me I'm gonna wait for the newer directX 10 video cards come out, and I noticed a trend of video card including hdmi so im waiting for the big changes to come.

 

[Guild]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duggeh If you are buyign new optical drive(s). Nothing is better than plextor. Nothing.

 

[ellover009]

Plextor makes some nasty dvd burners, I can testify. The person that did the computer network at my job uses plextor for dvd media. It's gonna be messy buying an ATI card in the future since AMD announced officially with theyr partnership that theyr gonna dispose of the ATI name and rebadge it AMD. Personally ATI has a nice ring to it, they messing with what is working fine. Don't try to fix whats not broken, its odd that AMD decided to go with ATI since NVIDIA usually worked best with AMD specially in SLI.

 

[HiGHFLYiN9]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ellover009 core 2 duo 6400, hands down some ownage to the amd series.

I'd like to get my hands on one of those. The Core 2 Duos look very promising from all the benchmarks I've seen.

 

[ellover009]

I usually lean towards AMD, but the low energy requirements of the Duo 2 looks promising.

 

[pheonix991]

last I checked(yesterday) newegg.com had some conroes.

 

[milkpowder]

If you're friend isn't in a hurry, then I suggest he hang on to his dosh a bit longer. The new Intel generation of processors are extremely fast, significantly quicker than anything any company has to offer right now. By then, the next gen. graphics cards will be out and so will the next gen Windows.

 

[eyeresist]

I don't know much about tech stuff, but PC Powerplay magazine has a regular backpages section on parts for a dream PC (The Beast) and a <$2000 PC (The Beastie). They actually build and use these machines from the samples they get sent.

Anyway, thinking of getting a new optical drive, I checked this section and noticed that both the Beast and the Beastie have ASUS drives. Therefore that's what I'm getting.

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by milkpowder If you're friend isn't in a hurry, then I suggest he hang on to his dosh a bit longer. The new Intel generation of processors are extremely fast, significantly quicker than anything any company has to offer right now. By then, the next gen. graphics cards will be out and so will the next gen Windows.

Are you aware that you can take *any* point in time, and your statement above applies equally to it? Just wondering. It's always been like that in the PC world. "Wait a little longer" is generally always nonsense advice, no offense intended. If you do wait, the "next big thing" will then be on the horizon to drool over. I believe product cycles are actually planned that way to continue driving upgrades.

Personally, rather than waiting for the latest/greatest I'd buy just behind the curve. Maybe even considerably behind it. Save a bundle, get something that's still damn fast and will probably do everything that even hardcore gamers want (minus the video card). For those who aren't gamers at all, you can probably go with technology that's just about to be outdated, save enormous bucks and still have a blazing fast machine that'll do everything but win benchmarks.

I'm currently still running an ancient AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz machine, Win2k SP4, 512 megs RAM... I can multitask rather heavily with average programs and not slow down that much. In fact if this thing weren't falling apart I'd just stay with it, as it meets my needs just fine. I'm gonna be upgrading soon myself (at the bottom of the technology curve, but I'm cheap and a non-gamer).