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Tiger Direct Deal


Crikrunner

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Since its tax season and US residents with income might be getting 600$ back in addition in the spring I know I'm thinking of rebuilding my rig. Basically I'll be needing an os, mb, cpu, ram, ps. I'll be reusing my hd, case, drives, monitor, video card, mouse, keyboard, etc...

Any suggestions?

Came across this deal at tiger direct.

Been doing my research using mostly techspot.com compairsons of hardware side by side in a similar rig. Any one else have sites they trust the research off of?

Basically I'm looking for the best bang for my buck.

Leaning towards a 45nm chip set instead of the 60 listed above i know the newer E8200 = the older E6850 (275$) in actual frame rates on most games I play. Yet even faster the E8400 is only (250$)

Dabu

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That's a really good deal for the hardware...just be aware to take advantage of 4 CPU cores you will need to run something OTHER than XP as it can handle 2 cpus at the most. Vista, Linux, etc are your options if you want to put that CPU to good use.

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1st what video card do you have? This can mae a HUGE differance. 2nd no point in 4 gigs of ram unless your getting a 64bit OS, and maybe Vista Ultimate, can detect anything above 3, which slows your system if you have more ram than it can see. 4 cores is the way to go hands down, it overclocks well.

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XP 64bit can do 4 GB of RAM, but it will only use 2 cores.

If you are doing this for WoW, it's really not going to make too much of a difference - Shat is still going to lag like crazy just by virtue of most players being there now.

Other games and software will show more of an increase however - still a kick ass build out for the price. :devil:

I may go this route if I can't convince the wife to let me get one of the newer iMacs.

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www.ubuntu.com if you are adventurous and want to try a good quality Linux build. For gaming you can get WINE and mess around with it, but it can be a royal PITA to get Windows games running sometimes.

There is plenty of information on the web to help, but be prepared to do a lot of research if you go that route.

Otherwise places like Newegg (www.newegg.com) will sell "OEM" versions of Windows for a reduced price over the retail box. It's still not what I would call cheap (depends on the version of Vista you get - MS made way too many variations), but much better than full retail IMHO.

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Heads up on that offer - it is bundled with an OEM processor, which typically means no heatsink/fan combo, and I did not see it listed in the package. You'd have to add that to your list, but it won't set you back much.

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I typically buy a separate cooling system as most included ones are sub-par kind of like the power supplies that come with most cases. OS wise I'll be going legit and probably buying a copy of xp. I used to have access to XP pro but I think the disks/serial number are lost and technically belonged to Ohio University. Pretty much what I was reading on quad-cores, didn't realize the extra ram would be a waste though. I've always wanted to try linux but my understanding was dx9 and greater games you can't play at all? Or am I mistaken? My question was really go with a quad-core assuming some os down the road would use it better, or dual core 45nm chip like the Wolfdale currently out preform them? I currently have a pci-e 7600gt not the best but runs well enough for mmo's and fps on low settings. Need to get a sata hd down the road too as ide is slowly becoming extinct. Thanks all for the advise keep it coming!

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Ok, if you use XP, you can forget about quad core altogether - don't forget that. You have to have a version of Linux or Vista to use all 4 cores, and a 64bit version of either to use all 4 GB of RAM.

WINE takes care of the DX translations in the background in Linux. It can be a pain to get running, but it does work once you do. I've used Ubuntu, but not for gaming yet - there's a ton of documentation out there if you think you want to go that route...I'd recommend reading up as much on it before you decide to go down that route. :devil:

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Not a bad deal at all, from the looks of it. All of the above info is definitely worth noting, especially about WoW not getting as much of a benefit lag-wise (Shattrath isn't a slideshow for me on my system, but it still is obviously worse than other areas...I *really* wish they'd implement hidden surface removal for at least that area).

Also, something to note is that nVidia SLI boards don't support ATi's Crossfire implementation, so if you're thinking of getting two ATi cards and running them in that configuration, forget it. If Vista's on the table and you choose nVidia cards for SLI, it's worth noting that their current Vista driver support for SLI isn't quite up to par. In short, get one good video card from either manufacturer and you should be fine *if* you're going the Vista route with this particular bundle. WoW doesn't benefit from SLI much anyway, so if this is your major game, it's not really worth the extra cost.

Aside from all of that, 4GB is probably overkill if you're just playing WoW. I'm quite happy with 2GB on 32-bit XP and only really notice a need for more when I'm working on programming stuff or doing heavy multitasking. I will say, though, that if you go with a 64-bit OS, go for the 4GB anyway. Memory operations on 64-bit OSes are all done in (surprise) 64-bit chunks, so even storing a '1' in RAM takes all 64 bits to represent...long story short, 2GB just doesn't go as far in 64-bit land compared to 32-bit.

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Looking over what I've read ubuntu + wine is about a 30% drop in frame rates on fps , due to decreased video card efficiency , how ever ubuntu does use cpu more efficiently. I'm going to add a 2nd hd to my computer and put unbuntu wine and wow on it and compair frame rates under similar conditions. Only difference will be the new hd with linux on it will be faster(sata 3g/s @7200rpm vs. my old ide 7200 rmp?) but that should only effect load times unless I'm paging alot. I'll let everyone know how it turns out.

The more I read the more I'm leaning towards the wolfdale 45nm dual core chip, (250$) everything I've read says the more expensive motherboards really offer no advantages for gaming only 1-2% upgrade for a cost upgrade of 100-200%. Assuming both boards are evenly overclockable which most are anymore, the more expensive ones just give you more sata ports / ram slots from what i've seen. Which past 2 ports and room for 2-4gigs of ram I dont need.

Edited by Crikrunner
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Ok, if you use XP, you can forget about quad core altogether - don't forget that. You have to have a version of Linux or Vista to use all 4 cores, and a 64bit version of either to use all 4 GB of RAM.

WINE takes care of the DX translations in the background in Linux. It can be a pain to get running, but it does work once you do. I've used Ubuntu, but not for gaming yet - there's a ton of documentation out there if you think you want to go that route...I'd recommend reading up as much on it before you decide to go down that route. :)

I heard there's a version of XP that actually allows the utilization of quad core... is this just a fevered dream conjured up by the banana slug gnomes, or is this random bit of ramblage true?

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Ok, a little research and XP Pro (not Home) can support the quad core, so long as all 4 cores are on the same CPU.

My confusion came from the days when dual CPU or quad CPU meant a server board in a desktop shell - XP could do 2 distinct CPU's, but no more. Apparently as long as the multiple cores are on the same CPU Die, you are fine.

Edit: It looks like Home will do multi-cpu's as well, so long as they are on the same CPU Die...so home or pro will handle it, but I'd upgrade to Pro if you are able too. Home cannot do any more than one CPU socket, while Pro can do two (not to mention the networking components stripped from home that Pro has).

Edit2: If you're building this for WoW framerates, go cheap. MMO's are notorious for poor performance no matter how much money you throw at them - see Verissi's post above - I couldn't have said it better. If you are looking for over-all gaming performance, then by all means go as big as you can go, but don't expect miracles in frame rate from WoW.

Edited by Huato
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Vista and XP both have means of running 32 bit applications fine (remember Windows 95? It broke into 32bit from 16bit). The problem with XP 64bit is there isn't as much 64bit driver support for some hardware as there is in Vista 64bit. Software shouldn't be the issue there, just drivers for the most part.

Here's a good article on XP 64bit if you are interested in reading it:

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/window...64_preview2.asp

Here's an even better link that describes things better than that one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_Pr...nal_x64_Edition

Another cool find:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/facts/trial.mspx

Trial version of XP 64bit from MS...not sure how much longer that site will continue to exist, but if you want to try it (you have to have a CPU that does 64bit) there you go - no risk other than time to futz with it.

Edited by Huato
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Curious since yall are on the subject, I got an HP quad core a lil while back with a 8300GS Nvidia card, what would be a nice all around upgrade for all games and programs without breaking the bank?

Edited by Oriahtundra
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Really that's not too bad of a system. If video is your bottle neck you may want to look into a Nvidia 8600 or 8800 video card. They are generally clocked faster and have a better feature set for 3d games.

I ended up going the Apple route and picked up an iMac. :yahoo:

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