New PC, tips and suggestions are welcome.

Was just about to order when I looked through and thought I should take those tips I actually asked for, more serious maybe. Since they know more than I do..
So I ended with this P45 DDR2 motherboard instead of the MSI P45 Diamond DDR3 mothercard after all. It is cheaper, and Im now back and within on my budget.

So how is this?


*Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4 iP45 4DDR2-DIMM 1PCI 6PCIe SATA Raid Audio DUAL GB-LAN Firewire Socket775 ATX

*OCZ Flex II 2x2048MB (tot. 4096MB) DDR2 PC2-9200 1150MHz 5-5-5-18

*Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 2.53GHz 3MB FSB1066 Boxed (with cpu-cooler!) Socket 775

*Asus Extreme Radeon HD4850 512MB DDR3 TV-out HDTV DUAL DVI RETAIL PCI Express

*Corsair TX Series PSU 650W 120mm fan ATX 20/24-pin 4/8pin 12V


BTW I'm going to keep editing this post, instead of make a 100 replies, and make this thread huge.

It is decent, but I would go with an AMD board if you are going with an AMD processor and AMD graphics card. The 700 series chipsets are absolutely amazing. I would go that route if I were you.

What's your budget and what parts do you already have? The nvidia motherboard and ATI video card are somewhat contradictory as Rahja pointed out, it would be better to go with a motherboard that supports Crossfire. This would give you the option of throwing in another 4850 down the line.

Something like the Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 and the Gigabyte P45 DS3 may be better, if your budget allows.

I assume you mean 530 so far if you got the items you specified? Not 170 (700-530) for CPU, mobo, video card and RAM?

I would recommend the E7200 over the X2 6000+ for a few reasons:
1) It outperforms it at everything at stock speeds
2) It has great OC potential as it is 45nm Intel chip (3.9Ghz on (high end) air @ 1.344 volts - hell yes). If you are prepared to OC than great performance gains are to be had.
3) It is only 16 USD more on newegg. I'm not sure how this translates to prices in Sweden.

You would therefore need a different motherboard. I would suggest a Gigabyte P35 or P45 based board that supports CrossfireX. This will cost a bit more than the GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H you suggested though.

The 4850 is a great choice for a video card at the moment. The RAM you suggested is a bit slow - 4GB of DDR2 800Mhz is the standard at the moment. Brand doesn't matter that much.

I am confused. Why are we recommending the p35 board and p45 board? The p45 is infintitely better.

Get the Intel P45 board pesi.

The processor is a good choice.

If your budget allows, get an nVidia GTX 260 card instead of the 4850. If not, good choice on the GPU.

Don't go with aData RAM please.... in a few weeks or less after you build it, you will be posting here for help on massive amounts of RAM errors because aDATA is terrible. Stick with: Crucial, GSkill, OCZ, or Mushkin.

Also you might wanna beef up your power supply 400W doesn't seem like enough.

only if it's the exact same brand/model.

Yeah smart idea. Despite everyone saying 4GB is necessary for Vista + gaming, I manage to play Crysis (and any game) on very high (1280 x 1024 - still stuck with 19inch) with only 2GB of RAM. Like moriz said just get a matching kit when you need it/have the money.

Because P35 boards are cheaper. And all reviews I have read compare X48 and X38 and P45 and P35 and ask "What's the difference?" .... doesn't sound like the reviewers think p45 is infinitely better.

The 6750 is worse: its 65nm rather than 45nm and costs about $50 more on newegg. It has only a marginally higher clock speed and has 1MB more L2 cache.

The 4850 is quite a bit better than the 8800GT. It is definitely the video card to get at the moment.

If there is anything to cut back on, it would be the motherboard. The one you specified (the MSI P45 Diamond) appears to cost $275 on newegg. Go for a cheaper P45 motherboard that supports CrossfireX, and perhaps DDR2 RAM, if you need to cut back on costs, definitely don't go for cheaper video card, PSU or CPU. The ASUS P5Q Pro costs $150 and reviews seemed favorable.

if what you really want is the best gaming performance, you should go with a cheaper motherboard like evil genius suggested, drop to DDR2 800 RAM, and go with the E7200 processor.

used the money saved to get a second HD4850 in crossfire. build it, and proceed to enjoy GW at 400+ FPS. i'm not sure why you'll need that much, but do it just because

I would go with an AMD build, a PURE AMD Build if you want to go cheap and high performance. Remember guys, the chipset is just as important as the CPU, and AMD reigns supreme in that area.

This can't be the same Rahja I once (didn't) know. Can't find the quote but you said something like this in regards to AMD X2 6000+ recently: "90nm? 45nm is where it is at". I *gasp* disagree with Rahja: get the E7200 for the reasons I have already outlined. A better chipset doesn't make up for the worse CPU in this case.

i can't find any benchmarks that compares a E7200 + P35 chipset, versus phenom X3 8750 + 780i chipset.

there might be gains to be had with AMD CPU+AMD CHIPSET+AMD GPU, but i'm not sure if that's enough to overtake a E7200+P35, providing other components are identical. all i know is, when i was building my machine, the intel solution happened to be cheaper and overall better.

Perfectly understandable - my system is far, far beyond what GW needs, yet GW is what I'm playing the majority of the time.

It's nice to have good gear, regardless of whether you use it or not

In the case of AMD, a 65nm CPU would be fine.

And their chipsets help make up the performance lost from their CPUs. Phenom processors are more than powerful enough to run any game on the market at max settings. They just aren't as good as Intel's offerings. However, AMD's chipsets are vastly superior. It's a give take situation.


<font color="darkgreen">Pesi, you don't have to keep editing your post. As a matter of fact, considering the revisions we have done with the tech forum, I would encourage you to post new each time as well (you can still edit you post, but post as well) The more posts we have in each section, that means the more traffic we are getting. Inde isn't a fan of subforums, and if you are not posting new responses, it is reducing traffic visually. We need to keep these subforums. Thanks Pesi.</font>

alright, noted. well up again then.

Was just about to order when I looked through and thought I should take those tips I actually asked for, more serious maybe. Since they know more than I do..
So I ended with this P45 DDR2 motherboard instead of the MSI P45 Diamond DDR3 mothercard after all. It is cheaper, and Im now back and within on my budget.

So how is this?


*Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4 iP45 4DDR2-DIMM 1PCI 6PCIe SATA Raid Audio DUAL GB-LAN Firewire Socket775 ATX

*OCZ Flex II 2x2048MB (tot. 4096MB) DDR2 PC2-9200 1150MHz 5-5-5-18

*Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 2.53GHz 3MB FSB1066 Boxed (with cpu-cooler!) Socket 775

*Asus Extreme Radeon HD4850 512MB DDR3 TV-out HDTV DUAL DVI RETAIL PCI Express

*Corsair TX Series PSU 650W 120mm fan ATX 20/24-pin 4/8pin 12V


BTW I'm going to keep editing this post, instead of make a 100 replies, and make this thread huge.

Pretty much perfect in my opinion. You could go with less expensive memory though for a couple of reasons:

As you can see, a 1066 FSB limits the memory bandwidth to 8.53GB/s and dual channel 1150Mhz RAM would offer a bandwidth of something like 18GB/s.

Unless you plan on overclocking the FSB to 575 (quad pumped to 2300, CPU therefore 5462 Mhz) cheaper RAM is a more realistic option.

And don't buy Corsair RAM. Buy Crucial, OCZ, Team, or Gskill. Corsair is TERRIBLE.