What motherboard and GFX?

Dr Bolouswki

I've got a budget of €750 - I'm happy if I can come in under it

I need PSU, MBD, Memory, CPU and GFX - I play mostly World of warcraft, and my current AMD4000 with 7800GTX seems to be struggling with the new shadow details avaialbe in teh upcoming expanison. I could also benefit from the CPU upgrade for Football Manager and sto prepare for some of the "prettier" games that are on their way....

For GFX I'm pretty tempted by a GTX280 - but I'm also very excited about a Quad CPU like the 9550...

Essentially, I don't know a whole lot about Motherboards, memory and best PSU (well, don't know much about CPU's and GFX cards either!)

I know I'm gonna be stretching the budget and for sure the Budget Gaming PC is really excellent

Essentially - given that I don't plan on overclocking unless it's really easy (I jsut want rocksolid stability) what Motherboard and Ram and PSU should I go for and still stay under €750?

If I can't stay under - what's the best closest spec to go for? Could I even piotentially keep the 7800GTX or is the upgrade just to bg to ignore?

Thanks for any help

Dr Bolouswki

This is coming up at just over €700

ABIT IN9 32X-MAX WiFi, nForce-680i SLI, Socket-775,ATX,DDR2,2xPCI-Ex16 -
Club3D Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express, DVI/VGA, HDCP, HDMI
Corsair Powersupply 750W Black, ATX/EPS, 140mm Fan, 8xSATA, SLI
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz Socket LGA775, 8MB, BOXED w/fan
2x OCZ DDR2 PC6400 2048MB KIT, Reaper HPC, 2x1024MB, (CL4-4-4-15), E.P.P

WIll the PSU handle it? Or do I need to go higher?

Also, would this have much over a 2x 8800GT SLI setup? I can get a 2nd hand Dell XPS620 with the same CPU and RAM but obviously full built and with the SLI 8800's for about €850... worth it??

qtpLOL

No, nice build I'd go with it. (bar mobo, see below) Do not go with the duel 8800's ****e.
Hd4870 will BLOW WotLK out of the water, and you can add another one in 6-7 months when the needs be in order to go xfire.

750watt is MORE than enough for running one hd4870 card and is MORE than enough for 2 cards.
You'll be running wotlk at max settings and res with no lag whatsoever on that machine.

I'd be changing the mobo to this.
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=18466&agid=659
rest of your pc is top notch. Also where are you buying from and whats you current gaming case?

Dr Bolouswki

Thanks for the reply

I'll buy from Komplett - I know some of the german sites are slightly cheaper, but I've had 21 mostly hassle free puchases form Komplett over the years (bar some crappy speakers) so I'm happy enough to stick with them

The board you linked doesn't have SLI - which I suppose I'm largely ambigious about but happy enough to keep the option as you mention, but is there anything bad about the ABIT board? I just chose it cos it had alot of features and was cheap... does the ASUS (which i really like as a brand - used them quite often) have anything in particular that makes it stand above the ABIT?

My current setup is coming up to 3 years old - it's

AMD 3700 2.21ghz
2x 1GB RAM OCZ500 PC4000 DDR
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
Nvidia 7800GTX 256MB

and then the usual bits and bobs...

Sqaull20

WoW doesnt need sli or a fancy quad core.Hardly any games support quads and sli/crossfire is a waste of time imho.

Go for this and keep your money.



Cpu can be overclocked to over 3.50ghz, graphics is more than enough for WoW on very high.Mobo, psu and ram are solid.

Anti

i play nothing but wow on the pc in my sig. Full AA full AF at 1650*1080, runs smooth as !

rejkin

Hi,sorry about butting in on this thread but im getting a motherboard myself and want to get the nvidia 8800gts https://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=344083

but I am not sure if this will run on my motherboard i got since the motherboard is only crossfire and the graphics card is sli, will it run? Im not intending on running two graphics cards anyway

This is the motherboard: https://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=336470&view=detailed#ProductTabs

Dr Bolouswki

Thanks for the replies

Although I predominantly play wow, I've had some problems with Assasins Creed and Football Manager 2008 (which uses large databases etc) is pretty slow - all of these probs seem to be CPU related. Although theres not many quadcore compatible games out here - I'm guessing more will appear - so I'm trying to cover myself from having to upgrade again before say, another 30 months at least. The 8MB cache woudl also be helpful. I also read the 6600 overclocks extremely easily to 3.00ghz

The GFX rational - I know all the potential solutions are more than wow needs, but again I'm keeping an eye on the future - I've never bought top-end before - the 4870x2 is the only one higher by ATI and benches seem to pitch the ATI close and sometimes better than the Nvidia GX280 and GX260 -the 4870 seems to represent great value as it seems to beat cards priced more than €100 higher than it

Money wise I set the budget a £750 or so - the setup listed above by Squal certainly seems great value and if money was very tight I would jump at it, I'm relaxed enough to spend the extra that covers me for some of the newer games that will come along...

From doing a bit of reserach, I've changed the setup slightly - the motherboard is now

Asus Striker Extreme, nForce-680i SLI, Socket-775, 2xGbLAN, DDR2, 2xPCI-Ex16

The whole thing comes in at €799

Thanks for all the help and advice

Dr Bolouswki

rejkin wrote: »

Hi,sorry about butting in on this thread but im getting a motherboard myself and want to get the nvidia 8800gts https://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=344083

but I am not sure if this will run on my motherboard i got since the motherboard is only crossfire and the graphics card is sli, will it run? Im not intending on running two graphics cards anyway

This is the motherboard: https://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=336470&view=detailed#ProductTabs

The card will work on any PCI-16 slot as a single card - I too would be interested in finding out if Xfire and SLI modes are cross compatible (I'm pretty sure most chipsets cna handle either)

Regarding your video card THIS runs at 738mhz instead of the 650mhz on your card - and it's only €3 (three!) euro dearer - would be cool if someone else could confirm there is nothing else missing from the spec, but at first comparison it seemed to have everything your original choice had, except for a HDMI output

**edit - AHH, I might be talking crazy - we're looking at a GTS vs a GTX - I should allow bigger brains than mine comment!!

rejkin

Interesting,still will go with the graphics card I linked but thanks,gave me something to compare with. Gonna go buy it now

Ubaroo

A nice Gaming PC

Case =Antec 900 Case - (Brilliant air cooling (3x 12cm;1x 20cm fans) - 85e
Cpu = Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 - 150e
Gpu = MSI N9800GTX+ - 170e
Ram = 2X OCZ DDR2 2048MB KIT PC2 8000 - 37e x 2 = 74e
Mobo = ASUS P5Q Pro - 105e
PSU = OCZ StealthXStream 600W - 61e
HDD = Samsung HD502IJ - 50e
CPU Fan = Xigmatek HDT-S1283 - 28e
Drives 2X Samsung SH-223F - 24e x 2 = 48e

Total = 771e

A bit over budget but its worth it (you could allways only take 2gb or ram or throw out a dvdrw)

Got everything from here: http://www.hardwareversand.de/

Hope you like it

Ubaroo

****e I only just saw you where only looking for PSU, Mobo, Memory, CPU and GFX. Ohh well.. just get em out of the post i posted and save some money

Dr Bolouswki

thanks for all the replies

I ordered today - what I listed but i changed the 4870 to a GX260 - total cost 798 eurons

qtpLOL

Why would you order an inferior card for a dearer price
Should have took the hd4870 and spent the money on another 2gig of ram instead of just getting 2gigs

Dr Bolouswki

Seems to be some debate on which card is "better" but the final swing for me was the average framerates test run by toms hardware across alot of different benchmarks, found HERE

esentially they rated the GX260 a bit higher (extra memory palatte doesn't seem to factor bewteen a 512mb card and a 1024mb)




Alsothe chipset on the mobo only supports SLI, not X-fire - so it gives me an upgrade path - albeit one I might not go down, the option is there at least

I ordered 4GB ram - quantity above lists 2x 2GB kits - 64bit OS here i come!