Some of you may remember this thread from awhile back. Well it is time to upgrade my friends and once again I turn to the Dope for technical advice. Here are the components I have picked thus far:
[ul][li] Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe Processor 2.4GHz[/li][li]DFI INFINITY 975X/G Motherboard[/li][li] OCZ OCZ2P8002GK 2GB Kit DDR2-800 PC2-6400 Enhanced Latency Platinum XTC Edition Dual Channel Memory[/ul][/li]
I am going to be re-using the aluminum case, the DVD-ROM and DVD±RW, Antec 430 watt power supply and will be picking up a SATA hard drive, 250GB or higher.
But once again I have no idea what kind of video card to get. I got great performance out of my GeForce 4600Ti so that made me a bit of an nVidia fan boy but will go for whoever has the greatest bang for the buck.
So what do you guys think so far? I really can’t wait to get the chip and motherboard ordered, they are both on back order, and start building this puppy. The Core 2 Duo’s are getting great reviews. Basically matching or outperforming similar AMD chips at half the cost. And 2 gigs of memory is going to let this baby scream. As far as the video card, well, let me know what you guys think. I am leaning towards a GeForce 7900GTX. Not really interested in SLI so I’m not even considering it. Shoot away geeks and geekettes.
I recently purchased an EVGA 7900GT Signature Series card; it’s basically a standard 7900GT overclocked to 600MHz core / 1600MHz memory. It approaches the performance of a 7900GTX for about $150 less. With 2GB of RAM and an Athlon 64 3700+, I get about a 10,000 score in 3DMark05. It’s run every game I’ve tried on it so far at full settings with no complaints, including Oblivion and Half-Life 2: Episode One with all the HDR goodies and whatnot. Definitely a great value; I went with it because I was trying to put together a serious gaming machine for under $1200, and so far, I couldn’t be happier with the results.
If you’ve got the cash, though, the 7900GTX is definitely a good card.
My video card knowledge is woefully out of date ever since 3dfx went under (I worked tech support there oh so long ago). The guys on my website have been talking about this one though:
BFG 7950GX2 OC. It is essentially two 7900GTX cards in one double-height PCI-E card, but because it is a one-card SLI design, it eats less power and runs cooler (hence the smaller fan design). It’s not cheap by itself, but it’s a lot cheaper than two 7900s. (No, it cannot currently be run SLI with another 7950 for a quad-SLI setup – though nVidia’s working on it) I’m going to have to get one in the next few weeks because one of the 7900GTXs in my SLI setup died and BFG don’t make it anymore, so if they can’t RMA it my friend/store owner is going to have to credit me, which I’ll use to upgrade to the 7950.
