Challenge: Build a computer for under $1000 - Page 6

LordXenophon · #51 05-01-2009, 05:53 AM

They say you need to overclock it to 3ghz, but most games run just fine on 2ghz. That's very easy to come by.

Thund3rball · #52 05-01-2009, 07:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rabb1t

The main thing I disagree with about that Maxium article is that you have to OC the poop outa that E5200. From what I've read on several boards you really have to push that core to be good for games. Great if you are used to doing that, but for someone who's looking for teh cheap and not used to it I'd say spend the little bit more and get an E7400.

True enough, in this case, with that HD4870 a 2.5GHz Core2 will bottleneck that card. However I am not sure the price difference between a E5200 and a E7400 will get you a justifiable performance gain. We're talking 300MHz which really isn't much. You'd be better off going with a cheap AMD Quad imo.

LordXenophon · #53 05-01-2009, 07:53 AM

Maybe so, but even with that bottleneck, you still have 2.5ghz. That's plenty, unless you want to run Age of Conan or participate in 100 character raids.

rabb1t · #54 05-02-2009, 12:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thund3rball

However I am not sure the price difference between a E5200 and a E7400 will get you a justifiable performance gain. We're talking 300MHz which really isn't much.

You are forgetting a few things:

E5200 - 800 MHz buss, 2 meg cache
E7400 - 1066 MHz buss, 3 meg cache

It's more than just raw CPU speed.

LordXenophon · #55 05-02-2009, 04:12 AM

But what games are you planning to play? Do you have any which will run any differently with the better chip?

IceDingo · #56 05-02-2009, 08:05 AM

I think the E5200 would be fine for gaming and at its price it is very good value but the E7400 would do better. Also what brings up the price is probably just the cache. That stuff's not cheap.
But overall it shouldn't matter as the graphics card is the one doing all the rendering.
There shouldn't be that much of a difference in FPS between the two chips. But the faster chip with more cache should probably always get higher FPS. If you wanted to make a budget rig, I don't think you would care if it didn't get very good FPS because you got it for a relatively cheap amount.

Thund3rball · #57 05-02-2009, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rabb1t

You are forgetting a few things:

E5200 - 800 MHz buss, 2 meg cache
E7400 - 1066 MHz buss, 3 meg cache

It's more than just raw CPU speed.

Here in Canada the CPU is double the price of the E5200, still not worth it if you are really stuck on this kind of budget. If I was going to go over budget on this $500 build I'd probably buy 4GB of 1066 Ram instead of an E7400. That will come way more in handy with Vista especially, and boost game performance too.

rabb1t · #58 05-02-2009, 08:39 PM

You'll gain effectively zero benefit by going with 4 gig of 1066 over 800 speed.

Thund3rball · #59 05-03-2009, 06:15 AM

No there won't be much of a noticeable, real world performance gain, going 800 --> 1066, but that wasn't my point. My point was going from 2GB --> 4GB (or more) and since I am upgrading the ram... might as well go 1066. It doesn't really cost much more (if any), it's always on sale somewhere.

x8xid · #60 05-03-2009, 06:59 AM

Wish I would have jumped on this thread earlier... makes me sad. This is my kind of challenge.

Building an ultimate gaming rig for under a grand is actually allot easier than people think. I have a pretty unreal rig myself but the box itself was $1700.00 - If I had cut back on some of the features that I did not need (air cooling over water cooling and 2gb RAM instead of 8, etc.) You could build a rig that performed very well for only $1000.00 maybe even pre-assembled at the right place...

And with the new Core i7 chips being as cheap as they are (Actually comparable to AMD prices on the mid level side of things) I bet you could easily make a budget box.

Now making a $600 rig... That's arguable. I KNOW I could make a syatem to run Crysis, but killing it on $600, that would be cool. Going to go site hopping tonight to see if I can do it.