TFP's ideal computer
 

Someone should make a sticky subject where we have a list of low-end, mid-range, and dream-range:D pc's

Like in PC Gamer where they have the HStrinity where the list of parts are named to create ideal computers for every type of user.. always being able to update as newer, cheaper, better products come out...

I swear this isnt an attempt to get help build a new computer for myself for college :rolleyes:

Well Im pretty new and I dont know anything about sticky things. But for video cards, I bought the evga 5900se on newegg for $181. I have yet to run into a better card for the price, especially under $200. AMD Barton 2500+ is under $90 and can be oc'ed up to the 3200+.

Well, most users enjoy sharing their opinions on choices for computers. All the members gotta do is give a price range. From there, the computer dorks can offer the best price-to-performance computer deals.

The GeForce FX 5900 is a great deal (non-SE) since you can still find it for $200. The Barton 2500+ is easily the best deal on the market right now like ToolBag said.

-Lasereth

What was the big difference between the two 5900se and non se, was it just the memory speed?

Not sure, I'm just going by past experiences with SE videocards. They've always been incredibly horrid. I think the FX 5900SE was about Radeon 9700 non-Pro league, which isn't too bad. I'd spend the extra $20 and get the regular.

-Lasereth

what's the "barton"? Imma noob... what's the diff between "barton" and an athlon xp?..

The Barton has a higher L2 cache, 512 v.s. the 256 L2 cache in the traditional AMD XP series.

All Barton chips are also 333 MHz FSB or higher. Even the Barton 2500+ at 1.8 GHz is 333 MHz FSB while the 2600+ at 2.0 GHz is only 266 MHz FSB.

In small terms, the Bartons have an increased L cache as well as increased FSB.

-Lasereth

whats the word on the AMD64's? I know they're not completely useful yet.. but since im thinking that if i build a pc, i wanna use it for about 5 yrs.. Is it worth the investment?

If so.. i heard nforce 2's are really nice.. how are the nforce 3's?

I just built a pc and I decided to wait on the 64 till prices of mobos and processors come down, the XP series is really starting to fall and its a good time to build a cheap pc with a good AMD chip(under $500 for everything). As far as the nforce goes, I could be wrong, but if you go 64, nforce3 may be your only choice. nforce3 pro is a good one, a lot of them hold up to 8GB of memory, you wan the thing to last 5 years then that is a good option, plus a lot of the mobos come with Gigabit ethernet.

The Athlon 64's are incredibly powerful, especially the Athlon 64 FX-51. They're very, very expensive, so I'm not sure they're a good investment right now unless you have a ton of money to spend. The regular Athlon 64 series is still very nice, but they're still pretty expensive.

-Lasereth

I would offer that unless you are running some *nix varriant, you should save your money for now and stick with a 32 bit system. If you can't compile your programs to use a 64 bit processor, you won't see as much of an increase in speed as you would probably like. I'm in the process of picking up a XP 2500+ Barton with an Abit NF7-s V2 motherboard. Less that $200 shipped from newegg. It's a good bit of power that ought to last for a while.