[Vilgent]

After five and a half years, I'm finally escaping my old Pentium 3.

I'm a gamer, and my previous tower had enough with the GF4 Ti 4800 (OC'ed past the 5200; hey, I spent $300 at the time on it -- I was hott **** on the block) to keep me just running what I wanted to play.

Then it fried, and I got shoved back on my IBM Thinkpad R30 (P3 1.0 GHZ).

8MB graphics card. Try playing Unreal Tournament 2007 on that.

Well, shortly after, as previously mentioned in a thread or two ago, the fan broke. And I mean it still operated, but the axis of rotation somehow shifted to a diagonal tilt -- as good as you could imagine it.

So finally, after 5 1/2 years, I'm getting a new PC, one which I'm thanking God I can play games on once more.

New rig:

AMD x2 Dual-Core 4200+
1 GB DDR2 533mhz (up to 800mhz supported; 16GB max)
Integrated nVidia 6100 (will upgrade later on)
200 GB SATA-2 @ 3 gb/s
Two DVD-R/W drives
Media card reader

Throwing in from P3:

Soundblaster Live! 5.1
PCI WiFi card
5.1 Speakers

And for a very nice $520, too. Limited budget (17 year-old with a nice "good luck paying for that" from the parents), but incredibly nice motherboard and a overall good deal, at least to me.

What do you guys think?

P.S -- And no, I didn't want to go AMD; hardcore Intel fan. Just didn't have the money for the Duo 2.

 

[ximkolo]

sounds cool except i honestly feel that there is no real reason to buy any amd cpu other than the X2 3800+ or the X2 4400+, the 3800+ overclocks to about 3.0 ghz, easily, as well as the 4200, 4400, 4600, and 4800, they all overclock to about the same area, once they are on that level, the difference in cpu is unnoticable, except for the 4400+ and 4800+ wich have/had the 1mbx2 L2 cache. which is why i say only get a 3800 or 4400, probably get a 3800 to save money, and since you obviously are not afraid of overclocking from what you said about your grfx card, you can save like 40 bucks and get a better than stock heat sink for your new cpu

 

[Vilgent]

Well, I don't have much choice on that to be honest.

The guy who's building it only has the 4200 around, and honestly without the second DVD-R/W drive and media card reader, that system is only $459.

So by adding those, along with shipping, it comes to around $550, and I looked at a HP rig just for shits at the same specs, without monitor is about $1,000, and I know it's a weaker motherboard.

Besides, a little more juice, and I say that because the 4200 is still higher than the 3800, will help me when Vista comes around.

By the way, here's the motherboard:

ECS C51GM-M Socket AM2/GeForce 6100/DDR2 Motherboard



Specification

o Mfr Part Number: C51GM-M (V1.0)
o CPU: Socket AM2 support AMD Athlon 64 FX/ Athlon 64/ Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core/ Sempron processor; FSB 2000/1600/1200/800/400 MT/s
o Chipset: nVidia GeForce 6100 & nForce 410 MCP
o Memory: 2x 240pin DDR2-800/667/533/400 DIMMs, Dual-channel, Max capacity 16GB
o Slots: 1x PCI Express x16 slot; 1x PCI Express x1 slot; 2x PCI slots
o IDE/SATA: 2x ATA-133 channels; 2x SATA2 ports, support RAID 0, 1
o Audio: Realtek ALC655 6-Channel audio
o Video: nVidia GeForce6100-based 2D/3D graphic engine, Share memory upto 128MB
o LAN: Broadcom AC131 10/100 LAN
o Ports: 8x USB2.0 ports (4 rear, 4 headers); 2x PS/2 ports; 1x Parallel port; 1x Serial port; 1x VGA port; 1x RJ45 LAN port; Audio Jack (Line in/ Front Speaker/ Microphone)

 

[Vilgent]

Ordered it today, pretty stoked.

I can finally game again.

 

[Vilgent]

Second posts are always wonder; too lazy to edit.

I was wondering how capable the 4200+ will be of running the latest games

 

[ximkolo]

i would not worry about the cpu at all for getting games, id get a graphics card to take care of that, you wont be able to run too much of anything with onboard video, just being honest you probably wont see that much of a difference than what you have now with the ti 4800, but you said that you plan on getting one soon