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Any suggestions? Falls into my price range:



Includes shipping and all that; any thoughts on things to do different? I can go a few hundred cheaper with a GTS instead of a GTX, but I don't want to flipping have to compromise on the graphics...

you should get a bigger power supply. a 600 should be good.

I was thinking the same thing...max out far as your budget will allow. When I read thru your list thats what jumped out at me. With that 8800 specs say that you are maxing out the current PSU and do you plan doubling up your cards (as I like to call it) then you will need to purchase a PSU that will support that technology (I forget what NVIDIA calls it).

DA

I just read the post I made and I realized that I was trying to teach the master, all I needed to say was look at a larger watt PSU! Sorry Steele I hope I didn't insult you.

DA

I don't think anything less than a 600w will even let an 8800GTX do 3d!

Other than that, I know nothing about that monitor you chose. It seems awfully cheap for 19", which means your desktop will be fine but gaming may not be.
I'd trade down to an 8800GTS (although I'd take the 640MB not the 320MB version) and use the left over money to upgrade the PSU and possibly LCD.

you could get away with about 500Watts from what I saw but thats relay scraping the bottom of the barrel. Go for at least 600Watt and don't look back. Also if you did not know AMD chips just did a 40% drop in price. there top end chips are just over 200$ now and yes intel whoops them but you need to spend 500$ or more to get the intel chip that whoops the amd 3 ghz chip, so its a steal.

"I don't think anything less than a 600w will even let an 8800GTX do 3d!"

sure you can. it is not the overall wattage of the power supply. it is how much 12v that can be supplied to the video card. this could probably run just fine with a 450watt supplay that has a balance to supply enough 12v amps to the rail/line connecting to the video card - considering that the same rail/line might supply other 12v needs.

the intel chips whoop the amd's in more than one area... even boot speed is much faster with the new core 2 architecture cpu's. if you can not afford the top bin, get a few steps down and then you can upgrade it later when the prices drop as they do... at least that is one approach. you could still go amd - nothing wrong there either, but they will be more difficult to cool for the same/similar clock speed (solved if you go watercooling).

Most of the 600 Watt Power supplies from reputable makers are in the $200 range. Ouch. Might as well get hte 750W one for the same price...

The Display is not the greatest in the world, but what do you expect for the price. At the same time the picture is supposed to be good and it has a reasonable resolution of 1400x900 and some other good specs and has been reviewed as being pretty good.

The whole thing is that I am trying to figure best for my budget. In my old job I'd just go crazy and build the $2,500 desktop from Heaven. May even toss in a 30" Apple Cinema Display or something. The Marine Corps doesn't pay as well though, so I have to cut some corners somewhere, and being blind and mostly unable to truly appreciate a beautiful display it's one of hte places I can cut...

Like I said, it's just something I've been kicking around. I've been kicking around a MacBook or MBPro as well, but not a chance in hell before they update their GPU to something better. Theiir whole line of computers save the top of the line desktops are long in the tooth right now, and huge updates are expected for them as well come the next couple months.

I might just keep saving until after Christmas or something. Win a few more poker games, some other miscellaneous income, and I might be able to afford something truly nice.

Why in the hell did I think Steele put this post up!

What da hell was I thinking???

DA

Dunno. He made the first comment about the PSU :-P

Obviously Steel makes good money though, since you're all wondering why he's not putting together a God machine. When I was doing network engineering I'd have the money for all the top of the line, no corner cutting greatness. Not to mention I wasn't married so I could be completely irresponsible and waste it all on something wonderful. Not anymore, hehe.

I tend to know my stuff pretty well when it comes to building PC's, but I had no idea the PSU's were so freaking big now. That was an eye opener for me, so I'm glad I asked. Just proves my theory that you can always learn something new.

i am using an antec neo he 500, i have an 880gtx (christmas present from wife) and a e6700 (won at company christmas party raffle)... no power problems here.

i would never actually spend the money to buy the video card and cpu... i am too cheap.

when you are ready, i probably have a power supply for you cheap.

Look in the posts, I did a big thing on what is neaded for a gtx 8800 a month or 2 ago. Talked in detail about power supplies, lots of details.

I'm considering this card for my wife's computer. The Specs are faster than my 7900 GTX!!

XFX PVT84GUDE3 GeForce 8600GTS 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail ($209.00)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814150227

Model
Brand XFX
Model PVT84GUDE3

Interface
Interface PCI Express x16

Chipset
Chipset Manufacturer NVIDIA
GPU GeForce 8600GTS
Core clock 720 MHz

Memory
Memory Clock 2180 MHz
Memory Size 256MB
Memory Interface 128-bit
Memory Type GDDR3

While the specs are faster, benches I've seen indicate it's on a par with it. It's slower in a few things, faster in some others, but in most cases you're talking about a few percent different.

Seeing as I spent $500+ for my 7900GTX a year ago, $200 aint too bad for about the same card. She probably won't know the difference anyway, she's using my ATI 9800 Pro atm.

I broke the bank. It's only an X1600 graphics card, which doesn't psych me out, but it's better than what I have now (the 7600 desktop whoops the x1600 desktop, but the mobiles are on par with each other, go figure...)

Otherwise the specs please me. Add Parallels and Boot Camp, so I can dual boot WIndows and/or Run it in a VM from Mac OS, and it's all around not a bad computer. Cost me less than $2,000 too.



I'm going to sell the Alienware laptop I have now and I will have money left over to get a larger external monitor for the regularly scheduled gaming madness.

I can't wait to see this thing in action. I saw a post with a guy complaining Armed Assault running on a slower Core Duo 2.0 GHz with the same X1600 256MB card was 'only' getting 35fps. My P4 3.6 Ghz with a 256MB GeForce 6800 Go gets low 20's at best. I don't know where the bottleneck, but with the 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, I should get at least similar performance to him.

I still can't explain the video card though. It looks like it should be inferior from all the specs, but it stomps 6600 Go's in all the reviews. Granted that's not a 6800 like I have, but it seems like it is a truly decent card. Not top of the line, but considering it's a laptop, not geared towards gaming, I think I can live. I do have other interests to satiate afterall...