buying new system, how does it rate?

[halo4342]

Currently i have a :

socket A mobo
sempron 3000+ (barton core)
1gb pc3200 ram
6800Le
400w psu

im thinking of buying a new system and was wondering if this would be a good choice:
Socket 939 mobo ... jetway 939GT4-sli or asus a8n duluxe
amd 3700+ san diego
2gb p3200 ram
7800gt 256 or 2xsli 6600gt pci-E
480W psu

im going to be using it for mostly gaming, bf2..etc

thx for any replys!

[dcc]

It ain't gonna werk vary guud witout ah hdd :eek:

[halo4342]

its gonna have sata 160gb...and a dvd rw but that isnt important..would that new system be a good choice (how future proof is it?)

?

[dcc]

What ever is the current hot item will be old in six months, for instance, I was looking at purchasing a NEC 3520a last year at this time for about $65.00, now you can buy its newer version 3540a for $39.00. You ask your self why, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DV are on their way. I would go with what you are familiar with and can afford to replace every three to four years like most people now days.
The build that you have listed is a good machine. I'm not into gaming, but as I understand it you would be better served with a 200GB or larger HDD.

[goldeagle2005]

Specs look drool worthy

[chrisbliss18]

I agree with dcc. Nothing is "future-proof". With each year, manufacturers are able to push technology to limits that were never considered possible in the previous years.

I'm a utilitarian computer user. I love video games, but I mostly play old ones. I'll probably start playing HL2 in a year or two (when it's below $20). Heck, I still play my original HL that I've owned for over five years now. My rule is that I should never buy anything that will go down in price 50%+ in a year's time. Making a purchase that breaks that rule literally flushes money down the toilet. I believe that there needs to be people that purchase products at price levels that break my rule since it drives the market and future development, but I don't believe that the average gamer or computer user should fit in that category.

My advice is to invest in harddrive capacity, good RAM, and a nice socket 939 board with a nice, but relatively inexpensive, 939 AMD 64 chip. All of these items are at record low prices (RAM prices were inflated for nearly two years). The money you save on purchasing smarter can be used to build a whole other machine (with similar products to those that you listed) in a year's time. Maybe I'm just not geeky enough since I would consider a 3000+ AMD 64 chip to be screaming.

[halo4342]

So would you choose the asus or jetway mobo.,
and would you choose the 7800gt over the sli-pci-e 6600gt's?

[chrisbliss18]

Asus definately has a bigger following of fans than Jetway, but that doesn't mean one is better than the other. If you have one Jetway board and one Asus board selected and can't decide between the two, start reading reviews about the boards and base your decision on reviewers' opinions on the actual boards, not general bias on company names.

From all that I've read, a higher-grade graphics card will always beat lower-grade cards in SLI. The recommendations that I constantly see is to buy the best card you can and add another in SLI at a later date if you want a bit of a boost. Keep in mind that SLI doesn't mean 200% the performance of one card, even in the best performing scenarios. You will see the biggest performance gains only if the program you are using fully takes advantage of SLI.