CS001

Greetings all.

Until lately, I've been making do with older parts and performing slow upgrades to several computers within the family. My own current computer was one I found dumped in a carpark - it was in excellent shape and all I had to buy for it was a hardrive, RAM, and a motherboard battery. I've got enough money now to put together something new and better - but as a result of the gradual upgrades and screwing around with older parts, I've not much experience creating an entire system from scratch at once. I can put it together easily enough, but I'm not exactly confident in selecting the components. This is why I need advice.

Now, at the moment I have two alternative setups in mind. The first is what I recently put together for the shared family computer - I want mine to be better than or at least equal to it, hence why I'm considering getting the exact same parts. The second is a list I put together - and so I'm not 100% sure if it'll all be compatible and make the most of each part's capabilities.

Alternative 1:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16Ghz

MOTHERBOARD: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R

RAM: G.Skill F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ 2GB Kit (2x1GB)

GPU: Asus Nvidia GeForce 8600GT 512MB

PSU: 500W (20+4 pins, 2*SATA, 1*6 pins PCI)

Alternative 2:

CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual-Core 6000+ 3.0GHz

MOTHERBOARD: Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 (rev. 1.0)

RAM: Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5D 2GB KIT (2x 1GB Modules)

GPU: Palit ATI Radeon™ HD 4850 512MB PCIe

PSU: Undecided

The PSU for Alternative 1 came with the case and the guy at the computer store assured us it would be suitable for the system. For my own PSU though, I want something more than suitable.

The second alternative is obviously AMD. I can't decide whether to go with AMD or Intel. A slight cost difference isn't a concern because I have a decent budget to work on. But everywhere and everyone seems to have varying opinions on which is better in different cases and overall. Plus my current CPU is an AMD Athlon XP3200+ 2.19GHz, and I've found it to be very pleasing compared to a lot of Intel CPUs of greater frequency. Obviously it varies from PC to PC, but any suggestions on which to go with would be nice.

I already have a hardrive and DVD drive I can reuse - since both are still new and I'd rather not have to reinstall XP AGAIN...

Though I am considering getting a SATA hardrive, but I've had issues with SATA hardrives in the past that make me uneasy. The old family computer couldn't boot off of a SATA hardrive, likely because the system didn't recognise the drive until the appropriate motherboard drivers were installed on an IDE hardrive used to boot.
Plus my current computer won't boot at all if I have a SATA DVD drive connected for some reason.

Will a newer motherboard be able to use SATA drives to boot without requiring a driver disk first? And with the Alternative systems, would a SATA hardrive make a very noticeable performance difference?

Also, I've been using CRT monitors until now, and I want an LCD for my new system. Though since I haven't any experience with them, I've no clue what to look at in choosing a good quality and good value one. Any suggestions for this would be great.

I'm also considering using two GPUs rather than a single, but I don't know much about how that works either. Would it be better to have an excellent single GPU, or two decent GPUs working together? What are the advantages/disadvantages of doing this?

I'd be using this system for gaming mostly, but I'd also be multi-tasking a lot as well. I also do a lot of video converting, but I'm not as concerned with that factor as with the others.

Alternative 1 (excluding hardrive, disk drives, monitor, and speakers - which were carried over from the old family computer) cost about $750 all up. Alternative 2 (excluding the same things as well as case and power supply) is at about $550 so far. I can comfortably spend $1000 all up, but I'd push it as high as $1500 max though.

Anyway, I hope this long and rambling post didn't bore anyone too much. It's just that I don't want to make an ill decisions here, I don't want to regret any choices after they've been made.

If anyone has advice or input on these alternatives, or suggestions for different components entirely, I'd be most grateful.

Thanks in advance.

bruiser

Stay with the Intel build.

wrench97

Intel build with the 4850 video card.

linderman

Intel build with a Gigabyte motherboard and P35 chipset ....... they are stable as hell and very easy to set-up ........ the P45 is no where near as easy !

The AMD 6000 is no where near as fast as the E8500