[Oscar The Grouch]

NOS2Go4Me,Jul 27 2005, 12:01 PM Wrote:Processor - 3200+ or 3500+ Venice core.

Motherboard - Either the Asus A8N-E http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku...anufacture=ASUS or the DFI LanParty nF4-D http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku...manufacture=DFI

STAY AWAY FROM THE K8T800PRO chipset. The last few BIOS revisions for most motherboard manufacturers have enabled support for the new dual-core and single-core processors at the expense of memory timings, lowering memory bandwidth. The nForce 4 chipsets are not plagued by these developments.

Heatsink - stock will do you fine. The revision E core S939 processors (Venice, Toledo, Manchester, etc) are all more energy-efficient than their Rev. D (Winchester) counterparts. They also include SSE3 instruction support.

Memory - http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku...CZ%20Technology - I have this same RAM in my system. Bulletproof.

Video card - really depends on budget. The 6600GT is a great performer, but loses when image quality is cranked up due to the 128MB frame buffer. I'm getting a Asus X800XL 256MB card in a few weeks. http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku...anufacture=ASUS

Actually, the X700 Pro 256MB can be had for around $270 CDN and is a much better gaming card than the X300, especially the SE models.

Hard Drive - Anything Maxtor. 8MB or 16MB cache. Seagate has some nice 16MB cache SATA-II stuff. I've got two Maxtor 80GB SATA-I HDs in RAID-0. Stupid fast.

DVD-burner - what you said. I have the earlier LG 4160B and love it over the NEC 3520A I had before.

I also wanna note that the Intel boxes use DDR2 memory at 533MHz speeds at best for most systems. That gives you a 1GB/sec memory bandwidth deficiency to overcome, on top of the Pentium 4's existing gaming defecit compared to the S939 AMD64 processors. This is because standard DDR2-533 has latencies in the range of CAS 4 4-4-9 or so, and yields MAYBE 4.7-5GB/sec of memory bandwidth. AMD's memory access is twice as fast on average when comparing latencies.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/athlo...57/index.x?pg=1 - a general overview of the latest tech from both processing houses.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/athlo...57/index.x?pg=3 - memory latencies shown

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/athlo...7/index.x?pg=13 - power consumption, always a big-ticket item. Note the extreme power-saving of the new Rev. E AMD64s.
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Pretty much all Adam just said, but go with a Seagate Barracuda SATA w/NCQ. I've had both but I like the Seagate cause it can handle the heat in my sealed enclosure