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Clueless on build, need some advice.

Post Date: 2007-12-24
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Chinook View Drop Down
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  Quote Chinook Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Topic: Clueless on build, need some advice.
    Posted: 24 Dec 2007 at 1:59am
First off, I gotta say it's great that Digital Storm has this forum for current or potential customers to seek help for their ideal build. I'm 99.99999% certain I will be doing my business here because of the great reviews I've read about both the product and service DS provides.

I'm pretty tech-dummy, so please be gentle.LOL

Looking to make a nice upgrade in about March from my current HP m7470n Media Center pc, especially I use NONE of the media center capabilities it has. So it's kind of useless to me. This is my current machine:

Mainboard :    MSI AMETHYST-M
Chipset :    ATI Radeon RS482
Processor :    AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ @ 2200 MHz
Physical Memory :    2048 MB (2 x 1024 DDR-SDRAM )
Video Card :    ATI Technologies Inc Radeon XPRESS 200
Hard Disk :    ST3300831AS (300 GB)
Hard Disk :    WD (320 GB)





I generally use the pc for general surfing of the net, a small amount of music listening, a small amount of p2p sharing for current sporting events, and some converting of avi's to dvd format using Nero, etc. Pretty basic stuff.

Gaming-wise, I am interested only in World of Warcraft and possibly the new Warhammer MMORPG. I'm not really a hardcore gamer and have ZERO interest in FPS games. So I won't be playing system-killers like Crysis, Far Cry, COD, etc.

I think the Twister Pro Intel is a bit too much for what I need yet I find the Twister Lite well, a little "lite" (pun intended). I will be getting a 24-inch monitor with this new system and am totally unsure if I will be needing dual 8800 SLI to run WoW smoothly on the big screen. Is dual-sli overkill in this case?

My ideal budget for this system (depending on whether dual-sli is a must) would be around $1,700, $1,800 at the absolute most (not including the price of the monitor). Could anyone steer me in the right direction as I tend to get glossy-eyed when trying to figure these things out.

Any help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated and thanks again to Digital Storm for providing this forum for clueless folk like me.LOL
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skyR View Drop Down
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Posts: 2220 		  Quote skyR Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 24 Dec 2007 at 2:31am
You don't need SLI to have playable framerates in WoW. A single 8800GT would definitely be able to handle a 1900x1200 resolution for MMORPGs.

March is definitely a long way and a lot of new things will be released by than... such as intel yorkfields and geforce 9.

http://www.digitalstormonline.com/comploadsaved.asp?id=104960
The only thing that keeps me wishing on a wishing star.
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Tyler Lowe View Drop Down
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Posts: 0 		  Quote Tyler Lowe Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 24 Dec 2007 at 2:32am

Hi Chinook.

At 1920 x 1200 which should be the native resolution for a 24" monitor, your ideal solution might be SLI, but your budget suggests perhaps a single 8800GTS 512MB would be a better selection.

I set up a configuration for you to to consider $1560 Config  
 
There's some room left in the budget you listed if you would like some extras like a larger HDD, or maybe a dual boot OS setup. It's also not a half bad idea to ask about install of an extra case fan. I also left out a soundcard, which can eat up $100 pretty easily.
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Mythius101 View Drop Down
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Posts: 134 		  Quote Mythius101 Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 24 Dec 2007 at 2:56am
From my experience, unless you are using very high quality speakers and listening to a lot of HD audio, or are doing professional recording work, onboard sound is just fine. 


Edited by Mythius101 - 24 Dec 2007 at 2:57am
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Chinook View Drop Down
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  Quote Chinook Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 24 Dec 2007 at 3:14am
Wow, super fast response. Thanks a bunch!!

I guess things will indeed change quite a bit by the time I am ready to buy in March, but this sure as heck has given me some great ideas as to the direction I want to go in.

Who knows, by then I may be able to splurge and get the dual-sli...heh heh.

Thanks again, your help is very much appreciated.
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sundowner View Drop Down
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Posts: 501 		  Quote sundowner Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 24 Dec 2007 at 4:14am

If your budget is $1800 now but won't be purcashing till March I'd do my best to get it up to around $2500 just because of the high resolution you'll be running with the 24inch monitor.

And you can't really decide anything now because alot of the prices for the parts that are out now will be lower due to the  new products coming out in the next month or two.
Pro case with extra fan
Quad Q6600 2.4 OC'd 3.1!
Nvidia 8800GT
Asus Maximus Formula Mobo
2xgb 800mhz corsair

xfire - xuntiltheendx
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Tyler Lowe View Drop Down
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Posts: 0 		  Quote Tyler Lowe Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 24 Dec 2007 at 4:36am
No problem Smile. You might also consider in thinking about running SLI, that you may want to upgrade other things at the same time:
 
Motherboard- No brainer here, you need a board that can handle more than one GPU
 
PSU: It's better not to push a power supply too hard, so going to a ~700W PSU isn't a bad idea for two higher end graphics cards.
 
Case: You might want to look at bigger cases/better cooling if you opt for SLI since you'll have twice the heat.
 
IMO, don't look upon SLI as a neccesity, look on it as a luxury item. That single GTS will run WoW just fine at 1920x1200. This is why I suggested it. In upgrading the one thing, you end up spending more to support that choice properly.
 
You may also want to keep ATI in mind. For the money, the HD38xx's are very good cards, and are a bit less power hungry than their Nvidia counterparts. A pair of 3870's compares favorably with a pair of 8800GT's.
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