Is this an adequate gaming rig base?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...C-pr1c3grabb3r

<font color=skyblue>I will not know nearly enough to give a fair yay or nay...but I see that this has both AGP and PCIe. My personal opinion is that AGP is becoming old news in the gaming world and that the PCIe slot is the only valid slot for today's top of the market vid cards...based on what I think I have learned on IW and read elsewhere...I could be wrong...but I do not think you'll need that AGP slot, so why buy a card with it, unless you intend on using an older card.

Hope I am not too far off track with that one...</font>

[ 03-24-2006, 10:27 AM: Message edited by: Larry_OHF ]

Aye it's not bad, there is quite a fan base using that board, depends on your budget really - good budget board. As Larry said, the inclusion of an AGP slot is only worthwhile if you are planning to use your existing AGP card; it's really not worth buying an AGP card these days, you'd be better off just going with a straight PCI-E board, and buying a PCI-E card.

What's the budget?

Cheap. I got this from a build a gaming rig for 500.00 thing, but the reviews are so mixed, I figured I'd better check on it. I can knock about 1/2 the 500.00 off with hardware I already have, but the board, processor, and psu are going to have to be bought. It's really going to be one piece at a time, too, I have a tower that I can disassemble with some of the hardware, cd rom, etc, that I can install to the new machine, but I'd like to spend as little as possible, and still have it be worthwhile.

Spend as much on the motherboard as you can afford. Although you may not use some features today, you might find that down the road you will.

For example, SLI might not interest you right now, but it could in 6 months or a year when the price of video cards start to drop.

I've heard that AGP and PCI-X on the same board degrades performance of both, but I don't have any real world experience.

I just built a new PC with an ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe and X2 3800. I had intended to go X2 4400, but decided to scrimp on the CPU and get a good, future-proof motherboard. Best decision I made.

Yeah, I'd say that's a nice mobo, just a little out of my budgeted price range, unless I sell a lot of cd's this month.

I have a question for you all:

what sources online (American ones are fine, as I'll look for Canadian prices later) would be wise for looking into building a new machine? I was thinking of building myself a proper gaming machine and then giving the stuff from this computer to a friend of my sister's. I would move it into a new case to be sure, but I am thinking I should move on up (yet again) to something bigger and better than what I have already.


Statistics of current machine:
AMD Athlon MP (Thoroughbred) - Sempron 2600+
Core Speed 1752 MHz
Gigabyte GA-7VT600 1394
2 x 512MB DDR PC3200
Gigabyte NVidia GeForce 6600 GT

Personally, I'm starting here:

http://www.newegg.com/home/Computer.asp

There are many local computer parts places, but if I can get the best deal here, then hey, why should I risk the sunlight?

That is the same mobo as I use (in my own build comp). And it works nice for the price and have good forward compatibility as far as I can see. It does the job atleast.
Internet stores tend to be cheaper what i know.

...There are mixed thoughts about having AGP and PCIx16...which includes the fact that most of the time, the mobo company skimps on driver support for AGP cards...

It's a decent board but I'd seriously go for PCIx rather than AGP if you don't mind spending a bit more money.
I went for the Asus A8N-SLI Premium myself and I have to say it's pretty damn good. Not sure if you wish to overclock the board but if you do, it's overclock capabilities are pretty good also. Not the best I've come across but then again I'm not a huge overclocking fan.

Considering you're going for the 939 chipset, I went for the x2 4400. The 4800 is also available (and the fastest) but it's nearly twice the price for very little difference, therefore I let it slip.

Not sure how much you want to spend on the video cards but I'm running dual Asus 7900gt's and they really pack a punch. One of those would also be sufficient but that will depend on how high your res will be and how far you want to push your in-game graphics. I ordered a Dell 24" LCD which will run native 1920x1200 so even though the cards are 2 weeks old, I've ordered two asus 7900gtx's which should run it fine (hopefully). These kinda hurt the pocket though so think long and hard as to whether you really need to spend that much and if you really need them.

I've never really pushed one of the 7900gt's but two of them running at 1600x1200 on Oblivion, all options set to full and HDR on, the graphics fly. Still I'm not sure on your budget so...........okay just scrolled back up and saw you want to keep it relatively cheap. The only thing I can say is don't go cheap on mobo, cpu or ram. Although you can go for a smaller CPU, you'll thank yourself in the long run if you spend a bit more for a quality mobo and ram!

If you really want to go AGP a 6800GT or 7800GS would be a great card. Sorry for the ATI fans but I've stayed with nvidia and although the latest ATI card is faster, I've decided to stick with Nvidia.

If you need any help building the rig be sure to ask! We all had to start somewhere and there's nothing better than doing it all yourself and firing it up for the first time! (considering all goes good. I've smelled PCB burning before and believe me it's not something you forget in a hurry...hehe)

And in case you're wondering, here's my rig. Pics are a couple of weeks old and I'm still adding before I clean up the mess in there but I can't be bothered taking any more pictures until it's all finished.

Specs:
A8N-SLI Premium
AMD Athlon64X2 4400
4GB Kingston DDR400 Running at Dual Channel (ran out of OCZ which I originally wanted)
2x Asus 7900GT
2x Seagate 8MB 300GB SATA HDD
1x Seagate 8MB 200GB SATA HDD
1x Seagate 8MB 160GB SATA HDD
On board sound while waiting for my Creative XFI Fatality
Thermaltake 480W PSU (waiting for the release of the Thermaltake 750W PSU coming out next month)
Pioneer A08 DVD-+RW
Old Liteon CD-RW (gone)
Aerogate II (replaced with Aerocool Gatewatch)
Thermaltake Tai Chi Case (I added an additional raidator on the back)

Running it on my Dell 21" Trinitron CRT til the LCD gets here and at 1600x1200 with heavy gaming the temps reach about 32" on a good 30c day so the overclocking capabilities should be quite good considering the hardware accepts it. I haven't found a need for it so I haven't tried it yet. Idle is at about 25c.

My point for all this? I actually started out just like you a few years ago. I knew nothing about building a desktop but wished to try it all the same. I purchesed a cheap $500aus box system and started experimenting with it. One key item is that we have the internet so we have limitless source to any information. If you can be bothered reading, you'll be amazed at how much you will learn. A lot of things you may not know exist but when you hear or read about them, do some research or ask around for opinion, read reviews etc. No one taught me but the net *LOL*. I like to do things myself with no outside help which can be bad at times but by all means don't be afraid to ask any question no matter how stupid it may sound.

Have fun building your own rig mate and by all means post up progress shots and/or the final product once you're done! I don't post much but I always enjoy lurking around reading the threads. I'll keep a look out for any future posts.

Til then good luck with it all!

PS. Ilander I like your chook! Any chance I can pat it later on? hehe

Damn Bokken, that's an awesome system you got there ;)

I went for the 4800 when I saw the difference it made over the 4400, whilst its not huge, I needed the best :D

Though I am dissapointed you spent so much money and went for the lesser GPU brand :( [img]tongue.gif[/img] I guess I will just have to learn you good when my 1900xtx master card comes in the next couple of weeks :D

That is a nice rig. I'm not going to be able to go for the super rig for a while yet. Gotta get some other projects off the ground first. However, getting one piece at a time, here and there, I can try to wrangle better stuff to start with. Of course, at the rate my money is not coming in, my new machine will be obsolete before I ever get it done...

Sorry to go off topic!

Hivetyrant seems like you've also gone far since the Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro(2). If I recall correctly we were discussing the board just prior to your upgrading quite some time ago!

I don't really dislike ATI and your card certainly has the fastest GPU on the market. I just couldn't justify running two rigs any more as it was getting ridiculously expensive! I really wanted to try out SLI but to be honest I'd love to see what Crossfire has to offer. Unfortunately I don't know anyone with a nice High end ATI system I can use so we'll see what happens in the long run I suppose.

As for the cards, I sure hope the GTX's make a big difference with the LCD otherwise I'll really be banging my head on the wall. I'm only going by reviews and I really can't afford to sell any more organs to buy this stuff...heh

The only thing I was concerned with was running the 4 1GB sticks of Ram. Apparently more than 2 may cause problems on a lot of systems and a full memory dump is not possible. I chanced this and I've personally haven't had any issues as of yet. If I do, 2GB will be coming off but I'm certain that issues would have come up by now!

My only issue is that Dell is slow to deliver! I'm past the second week waiting for the LCD and they saw that it should arrive on the 24th or 26th but waiting is agony! I'm sure you know what I mean waiting for your Video card. Lots of caffeine, sleepless nights and lack of productivity at work waiting for the damn courier to arrive until I found out I won't have it til next week!

Be sure to let me know how the card runs (like you really have to *L*)

That's quite alright! You don't need to have the best stuff and outdated doesn't make it bad. I was running a 1.2Ghz AMD Duron on an M810 motherboard and 32mb on board graphics when my mates were running high end P4 or AMD systems with the good old Geforce Ti4600 which was a beast back then. You should have seen me try and play Unreal Tournament 2003 back then! The main thing is that you are happy with your rig and get some good knowledge out of building it yourself. I could sit here and tell you how easy it all really is but you'll soon figure that out yourself.

Edit: Damn double post! I never really post and now I'm spamming. Doesn't get much better than that...heh

[ 04-19-2006, 06:30 AM: Message edited by: Bokken ]

I don't think you will have any trouble witht he monitor as I have one myself and can run Oblivion maxed (with the Oblivion ATI drivers so that HDR and AA is possible) though it sometimes does drop around the 25fps level durin heavy combat ;)

And boy, I know what you mean about expensive!