I'm planning on building a new computer when I get back to the states and just wanted some input. I definately wanna keep it in the $2k price range. It will be used primarily for just browsing the internet and playing video games.



So heres the question: Athlon 64 or Pentium 4?



Is anyone running dual Nividia video cards? If so, do the advantages equal the price?

save the money for rx7 parts.



and what games are you playing that youre considering dual nvidias?



i used to not like pentiums, but now i have a nice new pentium 4 in the compute i just built (got it for a bargain price so i had to build a comp around it). it's very nice, i used to be partial to AMD's but now im not too positive anymore. boxrs i think detailed a nice system he just built recently.



kevin.

For $2k you can build a mighty badass PC. Go with the Athelon 64 its cheaper and IMO better performance. Im not to familiar with the dual Nvidia set up, but go Nvidia Regardless.

like kevin said what games are you trying to run, and IMO im partial to the AMD cheap price and solid history of performance although the p4 isnt bd at all its what i run in my laptop

I would have gone AMD but the equivalent Pentium was much cheaper..



From what I've been told, the best AMD is much better than the best Pentium, but is a shitload more money. But in your run of the mill computer parts, your better to go Dual Core or HT Pentium. Don't know how true it is... whatever....



My Computer:



Abit Fatal1ty Motherboard

3.2 Pentium 4 HT

BFG Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT 256mb Vid Card (PCI Express)

Sound Blaster Audigy 2ZS (with front ports)

1 Gig Corsair RAM

2 Pioneer DVD/CD RW drives

Seagate 250gig SATA HD / Western Digital 120 gig HD

Cooler Master Case

Aspire 520 watt power supply

Klipsch 5.1 Digital Surround speakers

LG 19" Flatron Ultraslim Monitor (model # L1981Q) got a killer rebate on it.





It's pretty cool, it has 11 fans, runs super cool, and can run anything at high speed. I would never buy a dell, gateway, or hp. Most of the **** is integrated, and of poorer quality.. When you build it, you know what your getting.



Send me a PM or IM if you want model #'s.. I spent around 2k i think but with rebates it was around 1800 ish.. i don't quite remember.. but you could probably build it at least 200-400 cheaper now. I built mine like 3 months ago.

Yeah boxers, thats basically what I'm also shooting for. I wanna be able to take the most intense games on the market, and max them out without the least bit of lag or chop.



I'm contemplating raising the bar and my price cap a little bit, running duel GeForce 7800 GTXs and that top of the line Athlon 64. The goal is to build it big enough that it will still be a monster in a few years.



Also, how do you guys feel about Alienware and Falcon PCs? None of my buddies are computer savvy, we just like video games so I cant really build it myself (yes i know its not that tough) or have someone else do it. I had an alienware built a couple of years ago, but its at my parents place and its a bit dated now anyways.

you can build a SICK computer for under 1k, unless your trying to use it for like autocad or something. I'm talking just tower though, not a new monitor and so on

Cant be that sick, a top of the line vid card is $600....

which you would never even come close to using the potential of that.

In a few years you would.....



Hence not having to upgrade

lol, few ymonths bro that card will be worthless

Are you on crack? The ATI Raedon 9700 pro that is in my old alienware is almost 3 years old and its still fast enough to handle any of the new games on the market at better than average settings.

i have the BFG Tech 256mb 7800GT card (pci express) and i love it.



the only two games i play on my new cpu are half life 2/counterstrike and battlefield 2.



they both run perfect without any discoloration/choppiness blah blha blah... my friend is on his third raydeon card, similar to mine, but doesn't even come close to the quality mine produces. (he's on his third because they keep burning up)

i run autocad on my comp and it runs fine.... its a dell with 768mb of ram and a pentium 4 2.00GH......

im sorry.

Commodore 64 gets my vote:



http://www.blakespot.com/list/images/c64c_1.jpg



It's so awesome it made guest appearances in hit shows like Fraggle Rock.

did commodore's have multi-color?



all i remember about mine was a black screen and a green cursor

Commodore 64 had color. I could play dig dug in color...:shrug:

get the top of the line alienware...its probably pretty highpriced but they do build nice comps, and can build it to exactly what you want. call them and tell them you want a comp that ill still be able to easily handle games in a few years bla bla bla and theyll email you a quote and product list.



kevin.,

i have built many comps and i don't like amd machines. i always have problems with them.... i would recommend a genuine intel board and pentium d proc and nvidia 7800gt. sli is pretty retarded. we built a rig and its honestly not that much faster for the extra $500 price tag

I've never owned anything but AMD machines, most of which I've built myself. I have never had any trouble with any of them. I see no reason to buy Intel's underachieving, overpriced product, especially now that their technology is playing catch-up to AMD.

i found the opposite to be true when pricing it out. for money at the time, amd couldn't touch the p4HT for the same cost.



the best amd was better, but they cost was way more than i wanted to dish out

the only thing amd does that intel doesnt, is 64bit and nothing uses 64bit right now....

i thought intel had 64 bit out.

My N64 was 64 Bit...

i know what i have is 32 bit, but like vosko said, it didn't make sense to go 64 bit because nothing uses it yet.

i know the new intels have em64t, i haven't read up on it to see what it actually does though....

I've built hundreds of systems throughout the years, and I've always been an AMD guy myself. I built a new system for myself and 2 friends of mine about 2 months ago all for under 1000 dollars easily. Then again, monitors and towers werent a issue.



Kingston memory is usually found on sale most places (atleast around here)

AMD 2800+ chips can be had for about 90 dollars or so and I've used the 2600 and 2800 in 2 different comps that get a lot of usage with no problems. No overheating issues even with huge loads, etc...



Intel has some nice stuff too, but Ive grown to dislike them based on their marketing tactics and their gay "revolutionary" advances in cpu technology (ex. Hyperthreading... lol). They are also generally higher priced simply because of their name. If you were the average user, you couldnt tell the difference between cpus while using them, I assure you.



Also video cards, you dont need dual nvidias. Infact looking at bench marks from usage dont show any higher gains over the top of the line single cards, like the nvidia 7800, etc.. (also while looking at video cards to buy, make sure you know what chipset your buying by looking on the back of the box)



You can buy referbished harddrives for 50 bucks with 100 gigs of space. I've refurbished many hard drives myself and have used other refurbed drives and had no problems. Ususally the working platters of one are swapped into the workings of another.



Anyways, if all you want to do is play games and browse the internet, there is no need to go super duper. If you were rendering movies, 3d art, cad work, etc... thats another story. You want ultra fast rendering.



With games, most of your rendering comes from the gpu, so a nice video card is going to do all the work.



here is a break down:



AMD 2800+ : $90

Generic motherboard: $70

Kingston 1 gig ram: $120

Reburb 100 gig HD: $50

Nvidia 7800: $400

(since youre doing games a soundblaster card will be fine) Sound blaster: $30

NIC : $10



right there you have a really nice system that will run any game you want at blazing speeds. All for about 750 ... of course this is without a montior (which range from 200 - 1000) a tower (30-100) keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc... but all that stuff can be had for cheap or expensive, whichever you prefer.





And I dont know why I wrote all that, no one will read it... lol

I just did. https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...1047683329.gif



But yea, like he said...

Thanks sidewinder, thats basically what I wanted. I was just basically trying to find someone with 1st hand knowledged of dual Nvidias who could tell me whether they were worth the price or not. I'm not really on a budget, but I dont wanna dish out tons of cash for **** just cause its the best right now.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+

650watt Power supply

Video Cooling

Nforce 4 SL1 Motherboard

512MB PCI-Express x16 NVIDIA Geforce 7800GTX

1GB Low-Latency Dual Channel DDR PC-3200 at 400MHz - 2 x 512MB

80GB Serial ATA 7,200 RPM w/8MB Cache

16x DVD-ROM Drive with Software DVD Decoder

Integrated High-Performance 7.1 Surround Sound with S/PDIF and Coaxial Digital Outputs

Integrated High Performance Gigabit Ethernet





Opinions? Am I missing anything that you guys would suggest?



Yes I know i dont have a mouse, keyboard, or monitor on there.

sounds like a nice setup..



couple suggestions:



650 watt power supply is overkill. when i got my 520watt i considered it overkill. for our GFS simulators at work, we run 420watt... granted there are three.. anything over 500 you should be fine.. better safe than sorry. they aren't that expensive.



if you go 7.1 surround, make sure you get a speaker setup that can handle it, or close to it.. i noticed it said integrated.. and i am absolutely against integrated, but to each his own.. when i worked for dell, it was the integrated sound/video that always gave us hell.. just overall a pain in the ass to fix.



my soundblaster is 7.1, my speakers 5.1... klipsch setup came with a sub, and 5 satellite speakers.. the box probably weighed like 50-75 lbs. the sound is great.. once again.. overkill in my book. but i love it.



video card sounds awesome, i didn't look the motherboard up, but make sure it has a pci express slot on it, if you go pci express (which you should)

Yeah that was just some stuff I mixed and matched on Alienware's website, came to about the $2700 mark. Id just assume go with them I suppose, at least they will give me a warranty. Hey boxers, what do you know about their liquid cooling methods. Their towers already come with multiple fans, is the rest of that **** overkill or what?



On a completely unrelated note, I went to Falcon PCs site, and I was just ******* around and build a system for rougly $17,300! Thats nuts.

one more thing. make sure the vid card and monitor are both dvi capable. im sure your vid card is, just make sure the monitor is too.



here's the monitor i bought. it's awesome.. 8ms response time, dvi, 19", and it looks awesome



http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggIma...005-048-09.JPG



they are running a rebate on it now.. which knocks it down to about 430. i got a good deal on it several months ago for i think around 350 after rebate. so i couldn't pass it up. if you want to do gaming, i suggest 19" as well, i wanted 17", but a friend convinced me that 19" is that much better, and with a nice vid card you still will not run into choppiness, or pixelation problems.



search newegg and amazon. you can usually turn up good items.



edit: i was advised not to get a monitor with a response time of anything greater than 12ms

Yeah the video card is dvi capable. Supposedly the only thing better than it is running two of them https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...IR#>/smile.png



I found a monitor that has a 4ms response time, 19", but its expensive. Would I even see a difference between 4ms and 8ms?

lol. i really don't think so, but the lower the response time, the better..



the monitor i bought looks great, has great reviews and i wouldn't settle for any other one.



it's kinda like a hot chick in your bed... call her Stacey.. she is absolutely hot, performs incredible and suits my needs.. Then you have Sally... Sally is supposed to be better in bed, just by a margin, but doesn't look as nice and you are so thrilled with Stacey, you say **** it, wait a couple years and see if you ever get tired of Stacey..



so maybe in a couple years if Stacey isn't up to par, or is lagging behind the competition, it might be time to get a lower response time.. but 8ms is great.



wow. lusting over computer parts.. hahahahhaha..

Hahha yeah, I've been using a peice of **** ad hoc laptop for years, I miss my old Alienware. Its gonna be nice to have a real system again.

that seems extremely high. especially without a monitor and integrated sound.



i built my entire system: monitor, speakers, case.. EVERYTHING for no more than 2200 before rebates.. after i got my cash back i think it ran about 1800 and it's the equivalent of that system.. granted my vid card is 256 7800 GT instead of the 512 7800GTX.



i still have more hd space, and faster memory.



take your time. SHOP AROUND... you can find killer rebates that will save you hundreds.. my sound card was between 180-200, i got it with rebate for 93... you might want to try your hand at building.. it's easy... everything has instructions, and mother boards don't have shitloads of jumpers on them like they used to.



im me:boxrs4sale if you want any input or have questions.

Yeah I suppose its just that vid card, processor, and then alienware building it that is jacking the price up.

I read through real quick and saw some of your questions. One reguarding liquid cooling... while this has a WOW factor... I guarantee it is not at all needed for anything. I mean, if you want to run a water tower with a refrigeration unit next to your hundreds of dollars worth of sensetive electrical equipment, with tubes running inside... go for it.. but I wouldnt recommend it. Its not going to help with much.



The other question was about the power supply. While anything over 500 watts is going to be compatable with your stuff, the 650 will be better simply because the nvidia cards use up so much power. They will kill anything smaller than a 500... making your cpu and gpu overheat. I mean, you can technically do it, just not for too long.

Go with what you want, the higher the safer. But a 500 will work like what was said previously.



And onto alienware... They make neat looking setups and all, but you pay double for it. You can build equal setups for half the price, everytime. They do offer warranties on their systems ... but honestly, what goes wrong, and when/if it does, replacement parts are never more than 110 dollars. So whats the point of paying 1000 dollars more to help replace a 50 dollar part. Not to mention the shipping time.



Build it yourself, its not hard. Most people get scared when they see circuitboards but all you do is plug the **** in and do some simple diagnostics if anything doesnt work. With todays technology though, just about everything is compatable, so not much to worry about. Its not like back in the day when you had 5 different types of ram to choose from and if it wasnt a particular type nothing would run. etc...



Anyways, good luck.