Building a new Pc

Kiith

ok, so i'm building a new pc soon, and i picked out the following parts...

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Spire SP-ATX-600W ATX12V 600W Power Supply
eVGA 01G-P2-N592-AX Geforce 7950GX2 1GB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Dual GPU
ECS KN1 SLI Extreme (1.0A) Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3300831A 300GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive
SONY 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE Model DWQ120AB2

i've also got the case, sound card, network card etc... and i was wondering if these will go well together. i wasnt sure what sort of power supply the 7950gx2 needed, so i just picked out the 600w one that i have there. is there anything else that i would need for this? also, would the fact that i'm buying these parts in america create any problems once i'm back in ireland?

the total price comes to about 1100 euro or there abouts.

SickBoy

Try and wait 3 or 4 weeks before you do anything. Intel are just about to release a new CPU called Core2Duo which will redefine the current price range of all Athlon based CPUs and maybe some Opterons too.

Slaanesh

I second the waiting advice. Looking at reviews for the Core 2 Duo it seems to kick the high end athlon in the ass for half the price.

8T8

Your going to see a bit of a price war soon I would imagine as the new Intel Core 2 CPU's are much more competitively priced against AMD's parts of equivalent performance so AMD may slash it's prices.

Wait till at least the Core 2 line goes on sale in another week or so and see if the AMD price drops, if not enough to make it worthwhile to go with the Core 2 instead. Of course the Core 2 boards supporting the 7550GX2 aren't available yet so I'd go with a 7900GTX or X1900XTX if your aiming for the top of the line. Get one of the HIS Excalibur X1900XTX cards as it does away with the main complaint on those cards which was a noisy stock cooler.

Edit: The Core 2 supporting Asus P5W DH Deluxe (975 chipset) I've been told although it isn't on the list is working with the 7950GX2 so that would be a good choice.

If sticking with AMD/nForce I presume you have a monitor capable enough to keep that 7950GX2 busy if not don't bother it will be wasted power at lower resolutions.

K.O.Kiki

Spire? Never heard of that PSU manufacturer -- I'd recommend Seasonic instead.

Kiith

well, it was gonna be aout a month or so before i ordered the parts, since i dont have the cash just yet. so i should wait till the core2duo comes out then? is that just the desktop variant of the CoreDuo for laptops?

so, does the 7900GTX or the X1900XTX compare to the the 7950GX2? and is the HIS Excalibur X1900XTX alot quieter then the rest of the cards?

as for the power supply, i just picked it at random for the sake of having one. what sort of wattage should i get if i went with the X1900XTX, along with 2gig of ram, which i forgot to add to the list...

ps. i have a decent 19inch laptop, which supports up to 2048x1536 (i think)

8T8

Kiith wrote:

well, it was gonna be aout a month or so before i ordered the parts, since i dont have the cash just yet. so i should wait till the core2duo comes out then? is that just the desktop variant of the CoreDuo for laptops?

so, does the 7900GTX or the X1900XTX compare to the the 7950GX2? and is the HIS Excalibur X1900XTX alot quieter then the rest of the cards?

as for the power supply, i just picked it at random for the sake of having one. what sort of wattage should i get if i went with the X1900XTX, along with 2gig of ram, which i forgot to add to the list...

ps. i have a decent 19inch laptop, which supports up to 2048x1536 (i think)

Wait till the Core 2 Duo goes on sale in another week or so. The Core 2 is a new architecture whereas the Core found in laptops was an extension of the Pentium-M line.

The 7950GX2 is basically SLI on a stick it is the same as roughly two 7900GT's in SLI mode but is treated as a single card.

The HIS Excalibur X1900XTX resolves the most annoying thing about the X1900 class GPU's which was the noisy stock cooler if you read some reviews it is a lot quieter. The X1900XTX also has the edge in terms of features & image quality for AA & AF over the GF7 series.

You shouldn't need anything more than a good quality 500W PSU if getting a X1900XTX or 7900GTX/7950GX2 along with everything else in your system, I recommend Tagan PSU's very high quality & quiet units see their 580w model.

I'm not sure what you mean by 19" laptop is that a typo as you cant use your graphics card with that. If you mean you have a monitor capable of 2048x1536 and want to game at that resolution which is very high with AA/AF enabled well then the only single card capable of that is the GeForce 7950GX2. The X1900XTX would be a better choice at "lower" resolutions like 1600x1200 or below as it offers about the same performance with better image quality options. You'd need a fairly powerful CPU as well to keep things going at 2048x1536 if that is your target.

DirkVoodoo

Dont buy the XTX, get the XT instead. An XT can be overcloked to XTX speeds and the price/performance difference is not really justified. You dont really need a cutting edge card with Direct X 10 around the corner, unless you have cash to burn :rolleyes:

EDIT: Get a NEC DVD drive instead of the sony.And why do you want a network card? Are you looking at a standard home broadband setup?