Can you help me with this gaming rig build?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I wasn’t sure if this should go in The Game Room or here, so apologies in advance if a mod has to move it.

I’m about two weeks from building a new machine. I need it to be capable of serious gaming, but I’m not planning to overclock. The only things I’m keeping from my existing machine are my hard drive, floppy drive, and maybe my DVD-ROM drive, and I’ll be putting Windows XP Pro back on (I may do Vista later, but not now). I’m even getting a new case.

Here’s what I’ve picked out at newegg.com:

ePOWER EP-523BC-750 Black / Silver Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 750W Power Supply

AMD Phenom 9550 Agena 2.2GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 95W 65nm Quad-Core Processor

MSI K9A2 Platinum AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard

(two) G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

(two) ASUS EAH4850/HTDI/512M Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card

LITE-ON Black 20X DVD+R (…) DVD Burner with LightScribe

This comes to just shy of $1000. Is there a real benefit to having two crossfire-enabled video cards? Do you see something I’m overlooking regarding the CPU/mobo? Know of something better (and preferably cheaper?)

2

I’m also looking into buying something to serve as a TV/DVR as well as a gaming rig. I can basically get the fastest dual core, or the bottom line quad core, and I’m not sure which one to get. I figure that it’s tough to split up a game into quads, so the dual would be better. However, if I’m recording/encoding, watching tv, and running another program I’m thinking the 4 cores would be nice. Any ideas?

3

Ars Technicas latest game machine guide:

Brian

4

Thanks for that link, N9IWP. I made some changes. Decided to go with an Intel and the Core 2 Duo based on their opinions on quad vs. duo.

5

Well, got a really nice setup ordered. Husband is getting an identical rig, plus he’s finally springing for an LCD monitor (I already had a 22" widescreen). He’ll have to grab some arctic silver from Fry’s on his way home soon (Newegg wanted as much to ship it as it costs to buy). Went with

Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz Processor and relevant motherboard
Only one Nvidia card (9800 GTX) instead of 2 Radeon cards

We spent hours finding the right motherboard (which will need a BIOS flash before we even do anything with it), so the damn things better work.

Thanks for your help, N9IWP.

(I don’t actually know the answer to treis’s question, so maybe this bump will help someone else find it.)