$3000 dollar computer!?

[beavereater]

It's time for a new PC...my business partner has allowed for $3000 american dollars worth of PC parts to be bought. We both love games, but being out of the loop living in Japan, we're not 100 percent sure what would be a good 3000 dollar system. Anybody give me some ideas...remember, it's for gaming mostly, need good speakers and everything!!??

[Cobra]

$3000 could get you nice everything, you lucky.....

Spend more on motherboard and CPU, give yourself a rock-solid base. I always use Asus motherboards, and AMD CPUs. A gig of RAM sounds good, too!

Next up, graphics. I don't know how Radeons perform, but the GeForce FX5900 or 5950 cards are very nice.

As far as speakers go, you could get a set of computer speakers or actually buy a hifi to connect up to your PC. I hear the Creative T7700 speakers are damn good.

Basically, spend on base components to get a fast, stable machine and then work on other things.

Cobra

[mujahid7ia]

A gig of RAM? We got $3000! Make it 3 Gigs

The AMD ATHLON FX-53 coming out very soon...

The longer you wait, the better.

[rallynavvie]

This is the PC I'm building currently:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=212741
Just waiting on the release of the motherboard here and the 64-bit Xeons this summer. My budget was $2000, for that extra grand I'd probably spend it on a Canopus DVStorm2 MPEG card, or get bigger displays. You could look into getting one of the faster dual Opteron rigs, but for workstation use the upcoming Xeons are going to be a lot faster.

If you do want to go dual Xeon wait until the 64-bit chips come out. Even if you don't end up buying those the prices of the current chips will plummet.

[Cobra]

The longer you wait, the better.

You could be waiting forever!

You could wait for the FX-55 Hammer to come out. That processor is going to blow Intel out of the water unless they come up with a fast, cost-effective 64-bit CPU, sharpish!

You know what they used to say about Macs - if you buy a new Mac, take it upstairs, throw it out the window and by the time it hits the deck, it's obsolete!

3GB of RAM is a bit of overkill (unless RAM is a lot cheaper over in the US of A) - you'd gain a greater performance boost by investing that money elsewhere.

Having said that, 3GB of RAM gives unique bragging privelages!

Cobra

EDIT: mujahid7ia, I was following the links in your signature - what does your avatar say (if anything)?

[Gritz]

Buy a copy of MaximumPC and locate the components on their "Best of the Best" page and select from there. These are all tested and reviewed ... and rated components.

[mujahid7ia]

The longer you wait, the better.

You could be waiting forever!

Yeah, but you can decide how long you're willling to wait... and this is going to be an gaming PC, so FX53 would be very nice I guess...

EDIT: mujahid7ia, I was following the links in your signature - what does your avatar say (if anything)?

The avatar is just the 'motto' of Islam in Arabic - translation: There is no god but Allah [means God in Arabic], and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.

However, probably should not talk about this here, religion...
you can contact me on AIM, MATRIKZ786 or mujahid7ia

[Capmaster]

Sign on my office wall:

[Piccoro]

Few tips.
If you want more than 1gb of ram I would strongly suggest it being Registered Ram and an Athlon 64 FX system uses registered ram (as does Opteron/Xeon). - Read

Athlon 64's are awesome for gaming as are Radeon 9800's.
If you plan to play the current/new games then get a Radeon 9800 of some sort (PRO/XT).
- Reasons
Radeon's also use PS2.0 in all games while FX uses 1.1 in some games because it needs to catch up in performance more than gfx. The game developers make a "special" path for the FX so they don't perform too terrible when using DX9 features.

If you won't be gaming with DX9 then it's a toss-up.

Asus all the way as well as Radeon/AMD for a solid gaming rig.
BTW get a WD Raptor or 2.

[Cobra]

If you have a lot of money, wait until the FX-55 Hammer comes out. That's going to be such a chip!

Cobra

[rallynavvie]

Few tips.
If you want more than 1gb of ram I would strongly suggest it being Registered Ram and an Athlon 64 FX system uses registered ram (as does Opteron/Xeon)

Registers slow things down. Unbuffered is slightly faster than the lot. And many Xeon boards shipping now are 4 DIMM, both being dual-channel so memory access isn't slowed at all. There is also something with the way 64-bit procs address memory that should slow down if using unbuffered memory. As far as SMP products go:
http://www.2cpu.com/articles/44_1.html

Speaking of which there is a guy selling a water cooled Xeon rig running two 3.06s at something like 3.4 on an Iwill DP533 for $1800USD and shipping. That might be a good start on a pretty good system. Single procs are usually going to win out when it comes to gaming unless games start going SMP-aware. However since I use my PC for a lot more than gaming the FX-53 and 55 interest me very little. I can't wait to see what the Nocona core Xeons are going to be capable of.

[mujahid7ia]

Sign on my office wall:

i'll get back to you on that.. I'm not that great in Arabic though i want to be....

Why is that on your office wall? You can ask whoever put it ther about what it means.