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Building a New Family PC


Zenskas

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And age of empires 3 and ut 2004 would not run on the PC on the pc in my sig or if they did, at very low graphic settings.

ive run both these on a P3 866 with a GF4 MX 420 PCI but your right in that i didnt bother changing the graphic level much. hmm thought cache had more effect then that though i havent done research

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G'day guys, I'm building a new PC for the family to use and just want to verify that I have chosen good quality parts etc. This PC will mainly be used for internet, word, music, movies, DVD burning, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks, and of course basic gaming. When I say basic gaming, I don't mean pinball but at the same time I don't mean Crysis. Halo:combat evolved, age of mythology, unreal tournament 2004, age of empires 3, those sort of games. I am not going with AMD or ATI products either. Just Intel/Nvidia. And dont say I can get a 9800gt for super cheap prices because here in Australia they cost alot. It has to be stable and quiet. So I have put together some specs and prices for you all to comment on before I buy. These are AUSTRALIAN prices including postage costs. No you can't get an Intel c2d e7200 for the retail of something like $130 in america. They cost $179 without postage here but I found them cheaper.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 2.53Ghz $162

Motherboard: Asus P5KPL-CM OR Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L $88 (Which do you recommend?)

RAM: Kingston 2x 1GB DDR2 800 Dual Channel Kit $70

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB $100

GPU: Foxconn Nvidia GeForce 9500GT 512MB DDR3 OC version $127

Optical Drive: Any suggestions on a good cheap DVD-RW?

Case/PSU: Foxconn TSAA 908 + 600W PSU $92

TOTAL including postage and GST: $639

So what do you guys reckon? I don't need a monitor, keyboard, mouse or operating system.

You forgot the PC case ;)

And you could leave this thread open for a year and EVERYONE will have a different view on what you should purchase for a new machine! What you said above looks fine! I cant see how that wont be good for a family machine :thumbup

The only thing i would add to that is 4 GB RAM, but thats because RAM has dropped so much in price now and makes that huge speed difference on Vista.

Edited by Devil_666
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the E5200 is very similar to the E4700 but 45nm. The E7200 beats them both easily.

I have to agree with puntoMX as usual here.

The 3 main differences between the E5200 and the E7200:

-33MHz clock speed (basically nothing)

-slightly higher FSB (very little gained there too)

-2MB vs 3MB cache, which probably won't make much of a difference either (depending on what you do of course). If you look at E7200 vs E8200 comparisons (3MB vs 6MB cache -- doubling the size), you'll see it makes like 5% difference (average) in games, and far less than that in most apps. So a 50% difference in cache size won't even make that much difference. The E7200 is ~50% more expensive, and will give you a whole 5% more speed sometimes. Or to put it another way, the E5200 offers ~95% of the speed for 2/3 of the price. It's a good budget CPU that OC'es nicely (it might even OC better than the E7200)

The 45nm process itself doesn't really make any difference. The E5200 is based on the same Wolfdale core as the E7200 (45nm too).

But it's your hard earned cash... My nearly one year old cheapo $75 E2160 (once OC'ed) runs faster than the E8400 (at stock speed) my brother bought last week for over $200... I'm planning on buying a pair of E5200's after xmas myself.

Sorry but the 3mb cache and 1066mhz fsb helps a bit more than that.

Look at this chart and you will see the E7200 beating the E4700, which is pretty much the same as the E5200 but with a faster clock speed and 65nm, at 37/43 benchmarks!:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/deskt...chmarks,31.html Then click on any benchmark then check the E7200 AND E4700 and click compare.

I read the E7200 can OC up to 3Ghz on stock voltages and cooling, and I wouldn't want or need to take it up any more than that anyway.

Anyway thanks, but I think I will go with an E7200. Here you are telling me to get a cheaper CPU, yet at the same time, people are here telling me a 9500GT would not be as good a choice as a 9600GT even though I only wanna play Halo type graphics games which would run settings maxed on my 19inch 1440x900 resolution monitor!

And age of empires 3 and ut 2004 would not run on the PC on the pc in my sig or if they did, at very low graphic settings.

ive run both these on a P3 866 with a GF4 MX 420 PCI but your right in that i didnt bother changing the graphic level much. hmm thought cache had more effect then that though i havent done research

Yeah, I don't exactly get a huge kick playing games in minimum settings and hate lag too much.

G'day guys, I'm building a new PC for the family to use and just want to verify that I have chosen good quality parts etc. This PC will mainly be used for internet, word, music, movies, DVD burning, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks, and of course basic gaming. When I say basic gaming, I don't mean pinball but at the same time I don't mean Crysis. Halo:combat evolved, age of mythology, unreal tournament 2004, age of empires 3, those sort of games. I am not going with AMD or ATI products either. Just Intel/Nvidia. And dont say I can get a 9800gt for super cheap prices because here in Australia they cost alot. It has to be stable and quiet. So I have put together some specs and prices for you all to comment on before I buy. These are AUSTRALIAN prices including postage costs. No you can't get an Intel c2d e7200 for the retail of something like $130 in america. They cost $179 without postage here but I found them cheaper.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 2.53Ghz $162

Motherboard: Asus P5KPL-CM OR Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L $88 (Which do you recommend?)

RAM: Kingston 2x 1GB DDR2 800 Dual Channel Kit $70

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB $100

GPU: Foxconn Nvidia GeForce 9500GT 512MB DDR3 OC version $127

Optical Drive: Any suggestions on a good cheap DVD-RW?

Case/PSU: Foxconn TSAA 908 + 600W PSU $92

TOTAL including postage and GST: $639

So what do you guys reckon? I don't need a monitor, keyboard, mouse or operating system.

You forgot the PC case ;)

And you could leave this thread open for a year and EVERYONE will have a different view on what you should purchase for a new machine! What you said above looks fine! I cant see how that wont be good for a family machine :thumbup

The only thing i would add to that is 4 GB RAM, but thats because RAM has dropped so much in price now and makes that huge speed difference on Vista.

Or did I? Look at the bottom of the list. It says "Case/PSU: Foxconn TSAA 908 + 600W PSU $92".

Yeah thanks I reckon it will run alot smoother than our current family 'beast'. Celeron 2.4ghz, 512mb ddr 266 ram, 40gb ide hdd and an nvidia geforce 2 mx 400 to pump out the graphics...yeah.

I will look into ram but considering there was one person here that recommended 1gb ram, 2gig should suffice.

Edited by RiderZen
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the E5200 is very similar to the E4700 but 45nm. The E7200 beats them both easily.

I have to agree with puntoMX as usual here.

The 3 main differences between the E5200 and the E7200:

-33MHz clock speed (basically nothing)

-slightly higher FSB (very little gained there too)

-2MB vs 3MB cache, which probably won't make much of a difference either (depending on what you do of course). If you look at E7200 vs E8200 comparisons (3MB vs 6MB cache -- doubling the size), you'll see it makes like 5% difference (average) in games, and far less than that in most apps. So a 50% difference in cache size won't even make that much difference. The E7200 is ~50% more expensive, and will give you a whole 5% more speed sometimes. Or to put it another way, the E5200 offers ~95% of the speed for 2/3 of the price. It's a good budget CPU that OC'es nicely (it might even OC better than the E7200)

The 45nm process itself doesn't really make any difference. The E5200 is based on the same Wolfdale core as the E7200 (45nm too).

But it's your hard earned cash... My nearly one year old cheapo $75 E2160 (once OC'ed) runs faster than the E8400 (at stock speed) my brother bought last week for over $200... I'm planning on buying a pair of E5200's after xmas myself.

Sorry but the 3mb cache and 1066mhz fsb helps a bit more than that.

Look at this chart and you will see the E7200 beating the E4700, which is pretty much the same as the E5200 but with a faster clock speed and 65nm, at 37/43 benchmarks!:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/deskt...chmarks,31.html Then click on any benchmark then check the E7200 AND E4700 and click compare.

I read the E7200 can OC up to 3Ghz on stock voltages and cooling, and I wouldn't want or need to take it up any more than that anyway.

Anyway thanks, but I think I will go with an E7200. Here you are telling me to get a cheaper CPU, yet at the same time, people are here telling me a 9500GT would not be as good a choice as a 9600GT even though I only wanna play Halo type graphics games which would run settings maxed on my 19inch 1440x900 resolution monitor!

And age of empires 3 and ut 2004 would not run on the PC on the pc in my sig or if they did, at very low graphic settings.

ive run both these on a P3 866 with a GF4 MX 420 PCI but your right in that i didnt bother changing the graphic level much. hmm thought cache had more effect then that though i havent done research

Yeah, I don't exactly get a huge kick playing games in minimum settings and hate lag too much.

G'day guys, I'm building a new PC for the family to use and just want to verify that I have chosen good quality parts etc. This PC will mainly be used for internet, word, music, movies, DVD burning, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks, and of course basic gaming. When I say basic gaming, I don't mean pinball but at the same time I don't mean Crysis. Halo:combat evolved, age of mythology, unreal tournament 2004, age of empires 3, those sort of games. I am not going with AMD or ATI products either. Just Intel/Nvidia. And dont say I can get a 9800gt for super cheap prices because here in Australia they cost alot. It has to be stable and quiet. So I have put together some specs and prices for you all to comment on before I buy. These are AUSTRALIAN prices including postage costs. No you can't get an Intel c2d e7200 for the retail of something like $130 in america. They cost $179 without postage here but I found them cheaper.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 2.53Ghz $162

Motherboard: Asus P5KPL-CM OR Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L $88 (Which do you recommend?)

RAM: Kingston 2x 1GB DDR2 800 Dual Channel Kit $70

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB $100

GPU: Foxconn Nvidia GeForce 9500GT 512MB DDR3 OC version $127

Optical Drive: Any suggestions on a good cheap DVD-RW?

Case/PSU: Foxconn TSAA 908 + 600W PSU $92

TOTAL including postage and GST: $639

So what do you guys reckon? I don't need a monitor, keyboard, mouse or operating system.

You forgot the PC case ;)

And you could leave this thread open for a year and EVERYONE will have a different view on what you should purchase for a new machine! What you said above looks fine! I cant see how that wont be good for a family machine :thumbup

The only thing i would add to that is 4 GB RAM, but thats because RAM has dropped so much in price now and makes that huge speed difference on Vista.

Or did I? Look at the bottom of the list. It says "Case/PSU: Foxconn TSAA 908 + 600W PSU $92".

Yeah thanks I reckon it will run alot smoother than our current family 'beast'. Celeron 2.4ghz, 512mb ddr 266 ram, 40gb ide hdd and an nvidia geforce 2 mx 400 to pump out the graphics...yeah.

I will look into ram but considering there was one person here that recommended 1gb ram, 2gig should suffice.

Think i must be going blind ;)

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Sorry but the 3mb cache and 1066mhz fsb helps a bit more than that.

Look at this chart and you will see the E7200 beating the E4700, which is pretty much the same as the E5200 but with a faster clock speed and 65nm, at 37/43 benchmarks!:

The E7200 is a Wolfdale core, and the E4700 is an older Allendale core, and the test seemingly uses some different parts (e.g. not the same RAM in both cases), so it's a bit of an apples to oranges comparison. There's a lot more to it than the 1MB cache difference in that test.

Here, both are Wolfdale cores. For a real comparison (in the same box), using identical CPUs besides the cache amount (and specifically using Wolfdale cores) that shows precisely how cache affects speed, see this (again, those percentages are for doubling the cache, and here it's only 50% more, so half those gains). And depending on the resolution you play at and such (most benches are run @ low enough of a resolution so the GPU isn't a bottleneck a all), the numbers could be significantly lower in the first place (i.e. at some point it's more GPU bound than anything), especially if you go for a basic-ish video card.

FSB doesn't really affect things much either. Just look at a E6700 vs E6750 comparison (same exact CPU, except 1066 vs 1333 FSB). For that 25% increase in FSB, you hardly gain anything (about 1% overall). In some benches (like 3D Mark 06), the E6750 actually scores lower... Those higher FSBs are more important for quad cores, where it could be a serious bottleneck otherwise.

Just saying. There actually isn't that much of a difference in performance between both, nowhere near the 50% extra it costs (more like 5%, if that).

Of course you can push them to 3GHz, that's pretty freaking low of an OC, even @ stock vcore, with stock cooler. My lowly one year old E2160 does 3.4, @ stock vcore, on the stock HSF... Some people manage to push these to 4GHz and beyond...

Anyways. Looks like you're dead set on a certain CPU. It's your $.

Edited by crahak
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What's your budget in USD?

Also, overclocking?

Something Solid:

I'd go for something like a Q9450 E0 if no/little OCing. Q9550 E0 for OCing.

P45 chipset

4GB+ DDR2

640GB Western Digital SE16, RAID reccomended

HD4670 for general use. or HD4870 for gaming. HD4350/HD4550 for at minimum great AERO performance and some basic 3D. All HD4000 series offer video acceleration for e.g. 1080p playback.

Something Cheap:

E8400 E0 or E7400, E7300

P35 chipset.

2GB DDR2

320GB Western Digital SE16

Same GPU reccomendations. More powerful GPU for better gaming.

Edited by brucevangeorge
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