Pete,Aug 10 2005, 06:51 PM Wrote:The total comes to $1126.44US. That leaves me about $100US to play with, and I might just use it to increase the memory to 2GB.You're going to get a much more noticeable difference in performance by spending that $100 on a better video card, rather than more RAM. The reliance on the videocard in modern games, including WoW, has skyrocketed; IMHO, I would have no qualms about spending more on a video card than a processor.
Any comments, suggestions, etc., more than welcome. Keep in mind the two constraints: this is strictly a game machine and I've only budgeted $2500US for the whole deal (i.e., 1250 per machine).
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That being said, (and assuming you have no problems with an ATI video card, I didn't see you say otherwise) I would reccomend this Video card/processor combination:
ATI (Sapphire) Radeon X800 XL 256 MB
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/m..._Code=ATI-PCI-E
$268 with free shipping
Athlon 64 3500+ S939
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/m...gory_Code=AMD64
$235 shipped
(Note: I looked exclusively at Monarch, it is very likely that there are better deals around for these two pieces of hardware)
That comes out to $50 more than the 3800+ and the 6600GT.
One thing I find very useful when comparing video cards is Tom's Hardware's VGA and CPU charts, which show, in general terms, how a better videocard is more beneficial than a better CPU:
VGA charts: http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/2..._charts-02.html
CPU Charts: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041221...ts-13.html
Edit: I noticed that the CPU charts are quite dated, compared to the VGA ones, but they still give you a general idea.
Hope I could be of help :)
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