First, thanks in advance for any advice folks are willing to offer a first time poster (long-time user of TH, and recent lurker of TH forums).

Done some reading here, and on other forums to come up with a cheap gaming-capable rig that a pal of mine plans to build (me too probably!). Nothing cutting edge (that'll be obvious when you see the proposed build). We're both "getting by" with our current systems. He's more of the EA Sports series type, and I'm a WoW/EQ player. Dabbled w/ Oblivion (wouldn't mind playing that with some better settings).

For comparison purposes, I'd be upgrading from a build A7N8X-X/Athlon XP 2800+/1G of RAM w/ an nVidia 6600 256. My pal is using an HP or Dell P3 1.3GHz, 768M of RAM with a GeForce of some sort w/ 128M.

Here's what I've come up with for a gaming-capable rig on the (dirt-)cheap. Building this system in Canada, and I've included readily available prices for reference. Can't wait for NewEgg to start shipping up here!

Antec Sonata III w/ 500w PS $113
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L $89
Intel E2140 1.6GHz $71
XFX Geforce 7900GS XT $120
Corsair 2x1G PC2-6400 RAM ~$25 after rebate
WD SE126 320G SATA2 16MB $78
DVI to VGA adapter ~$10
OS (XP Pro), mouse, keyboard and CRT monitors will be carried forward for now

I can't quite tell if I'm specing a 32bit or 64 bit system. Am I correct it's 32bit so my current XP Pro will load up fine?

Any glaring "errors" with my configuration? Most importantly, is there anything that simply won't play well together? Next, are there any obvious ways to make the configuration cheaper without sacrificing performance? Also, are there any "just another few dollars (say 10-20%) would give you so much more" upgrades? Finally, are we going to see a "night & day" increase in performance? I'm pretty sure he will, and hoping I would too.

If you can get a 3850 for about $50 more, you'd see alot of performance increase over the 7900gs. Not sure what prices you get, but a x1950pro is better than a 7900gs and should be about the same $ as the 7900gs. The rest of the build looks good. You could go with AMD to save some $, but the AMD won't OC as easily or farther than the Intel build, so you can decide. Yes your OS is 32 bit unless it says "64 bit" on the packaging. There isn't too much more you can do to lower the cost and keep performance up. Like I said before, the only upgrades you can get are x1950pro/8600gts or up to the 3850.

That system will work very well for the price, especially if your willing to overclock it. I built a very similar machine except I built it using an AMD 5000+ black edition, with the plan to upgrade to the phenom core after they came down in price to the 125-150$ range. Either way I think you will be happy with your system performance/price ratio for quite some time given the ability to upgrade the processor to quad core without upgrading the motherboard.

It will be fine for XP Pro. The CPU will run both a 32-bit and 64-bit OS. Two recommendations:

1. Send a little more on the CPU. If you want to stick with the E2xxx series Intel, at least get one that is 2.0Ghz+. It will be easier to OC those models because of the higher multiplier.

2. Spend a little more on a video card. Yea the 7900GS was great 2 years ago, but for about $30 more you could get this card that will outperform the 7900GS and get you into DX10 to play some of the newer games. Or like luny said spend $50 buck more and get a HD 3850.

HD 2900 GT
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102712

HD 3850 Outof Stock ATM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814127313

NVIDIA Card are over priced for the perfomance they give, IMO. Yeah the Higher models like the 8800 Series are great, if you want to sepend $250-$300 on a video card, but in the lower the price ranges, generally ATI comes out on top.

I forgot to address the 32bit or 64bit build question. Your hardware will support 32bit or 64bit, so to save money installing your old windows xp Pro 32bit will work fine. There isn't a good reason at this point to spend the money to upgrade your operating system. The main reason for upgrading would be if you needed more then 3.2gb of ram which is the average amount 32bit XP pro recognizes. Almost the only game on the market right now thats needs that is Supreme Commander.

You will see a night and day difference, your friend especially but both of you will no doubt.

Drop the DVI to VGA adapter. Most (and you can check the contents of the card you are getting) video cards come with this adapter.

Your windows XP Pro will load no problems. Your new CPU is 64 bit and you can run a 32 bit OS no problems. Its the other way around that is a problem.

Great prices on most everything you are getting. You could go with this case and buy a separate power supply:

Cost is 24.99 after 40.00 MIR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811119129

Cost 49.99 after 30.00 MIR
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] =C283-2032

Cost 49.99 no MIR
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] No=1482411



Power Supply:

Cost 34.99 after 25.00 MIR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817153052


Actually I ran across this deal that is hard to beat if you like the style of the case. This would be my pick for a budget build system.

Cost 59.99 no MIR
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] CatId=1845


You would now have 60-70 dollars extra to put into a better video card and/or maybe a dual layer dvd drive with lightscribe.

Cost 29.99
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] =S203-8508

As far as as the video card, you will want to consider if you want to eventually go to direct x10 games. Your OS doesnt support it but if you get a direct x10 card you can play direct x9 on your current system and if you want to upgrade to vista later you will already be set to use direct x10 with the video card you already have. Just a suggestion.

After you choose the direct x9 or 10 option then you will need to consider which video card.

Just to give you an idea of what i have recently built...
I built 2 slightly diff systems for friends and here is what they used and my results....

Comp 1

Asus P5GC-MX ($65)
Cooler Master Extreme Power 550W ($55)
Intel® Core™2 Duo E4500, 2.20GHz ($129)
Asus EAX1950PRO/HTDP/256M ($162)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro for Intel Socket 775 ($27)

Comp 2

same PS and video card and cpu cooler, but i used an abit ab9 mobo i got cheep on ebay and a C2D E4400 instead since the 4500 wasn't out yet.


I think you have a good motherboard, ram and HDD picked out but i would say maybe saving some money on the PS and going with something like the coolermaster or even an OCZ PS would let you put money into the video card or CPU would help alot. the extra cash memory on the E4XXX series helps alot, and if you can get either a E4400 or even E4300 for close to $100 they are overclocking dreams. I got my E4400 to run stable @ 3.5Ghz with that artic cooler. so if you are even ok with a small OC to 3Ghz it would be very very easy and give huge improvemnts.
you said your n canada, so am i. I got most of my parts off canadacomputers.com, but don't know if they are near you.


hope this helps.

Didn't think about the OS DX issue. Well, if you buy the DX10 card, at least you have the ability to upgrade to Vista in the future and be able to play DX10 with out having to buy a new card later.

Those aren't bad suggestions but if you spend $5 more after S/H you could get this card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102717
The 2900Pro has more shaders and higher clock speed, and this one with the 256 bit interface is fine. But If you must have the 512 bit, it's only $10 more than the 256: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102706

guys, i don't wana knock all your help for this guy, but newegg.com and tigerdirect.com prices arn't goina help when he's buying the parts in and from canada....can newegg even ship here?

tigerdirect.ca

That should give him some canadian choices and prices

Avenger I was going to suggest those, but for those prices he may as well go for the HD3850 then. But those cards are sweet. 512-bit bus, 256MB or 512Mb RAM!

Just popping in between errands - thanks for the feedback thus far. At a glance, it looks like the ATI cards are less widely available, and more expensive north of the border. I'll be back later tonight and will post the prices of some of the suggested cards, and see where that leads the discussion.

NewEgg won't ship here yet, though there's a thread on their forums talking about it. TD.ca can be competitive on prices, but when they are they like to kill the deal with shipping. NewEgg is still a good reference, even for me to just sanity check prices. I built two of the aforementioned Athlon systems, back when I lived in the US.

In my book, NCIX.com and DirectCanada.com seem to be the closest thing to "NewEgg" we've got here. ca.buy.com can also be competitive, but it varies depending on what you're shopping for. To come up with the original list, I was checking most of my prices against pricecanada.com (we have pricegrabber.ca here, but pricecanada seems to have an edge).

Side question: TigerDirect.ca is practically giving away ($50) a Pentium D 925 processor (OEM). Comparing it to the E2140, it seems to be better? Higher clock speed, same socket (LGA 775), more cache. If the price w/ heatsink, thermal paste and shipping ends up about the same, is the 925 a better choice?

925D isn't a good choice. It's built on the old "net burst" crap design. You would be better off with the e2160/80 than any pentium "D" processor. You won't need thermal paste, because it comes with it already applied. Now if you going to OC some than getting some aftermarket paste would be good.