Finally found a MB I like for the price I want.

[daddog]

Been looking them over for several months and as the prices drop this one I really like. Read the reviews and it gets very high marks.

Gigbyte GA-EP45T-UD3P

Found it on Mwave with free shipping for $139.
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewproduct.asp?PID=MOBO-GIGABYTE&updepts=MOTHERBOARD&DNAME=Motherboards

3 gigs of memory for $51.

My question is about the CPU.
http://www.332nd.org/dogs/daddog/cpu.jpg
What would be the most bang for the buck? Q8200 for $173?
Prices really get steep. I am looking for a middle of the road CPU I would be happy with.

[Ghosth]

Yes your going to pay a smidge more for top shelf Intell CPU daddog.

But they make smoking systems!

Go with what you can afford. Its still going to rock.

[LuckyI3]

I run a ASUS Extreme Striker II with a Intelcore Due E8500 3.16
8gig DDR3
Works well 

[daddog]

For games like Project Reality can you crank up the graphics all the way? Antialasing 8x or better?

[LuckyI3]

i have on my ATI card yes but the board will work alot better with  a nvida cards

[Nifty]

Daddog, pretty much anytime you crank the graphics up (good resolutions and high anti-aliasing) the bottleneck is going to be the graphics card. Most any recent Intel Core 2 Duo or quad core should be able to handle the CPU side of things, and it'll depend on your graphics card if you can push the graphics settings on a game to the max.

I have an older E6600 Core 2 Duo that I have overclocked to 3.2 ghz, which is more than enough on the processor side of things (of course, to OC it that much, I have a very nice, and huge, heatsink/fan.) I have a Nvidia GTX 260 that pushes the graphics side of things, and it can max out just about every game I play to 1600x1200 resolution (max for my older LCD) with high AA and filtering. Some newer games might get below 30 FPS if I crank everything up at 1600x1200 on it, but I don't have those games.

Point is, you probably won't need to get an expensive CPU, you can get a solid Intel chip at a good price. Where you want to look for the power and to spend a little extra $$$ is in the graphics card.

[daddog]

Thanks for the advice guys.
Rgr Nifty, I will look to putting the $ into the graphics card more than the CPU. Right now my rig has an AGP card, so I will have to buy a PCI express card to go with my new MB. I can spend about $200 on that.

Suggestions anyone?

[Nifty]

See if you can find an Nvidia GTX 260 for that price range. Other options are the GTX 275 if you can go up to $250 (though not sure if the 275s are out yet) or go with AMD's 4890, though again, that might be closer to $250 than $200.

I have a factory overclocked GTX 260 from BFG and it does just fine for me. Most sites say the AMD 4890 and GTX 275 are about even on performance. I personally prefer nvidia, but that's just what I've been buying ever since the GeForce2 days.

[daddog]

Does it matter if it is:
EVGA
BFG
PNY

Those just different brands???

[Nifty]

Those are just different brands. I personally have a BFG vid card, but EVGA makes my motherboard. pleased with both.

[Malap]

I have used a PNY card before and i have dual BFG cards now, i liked both, no problems with either. However i did have an ATI x1950 pro and it was poor, in some games i got graphic anomolies. I searched the boards and i was not the only one. However that is now an older card that i don't suppose you are looking at buying.

[daddog]

I posted in the HTC forums about this also and received lots of feed back. One fellow said...

getting 4 gigs will give the system resources more room to put things. giving you like 3.25 gigs on average of memory, a 1 gig video card will leave you less. but if you decide to go with 3 then make sure you keep the dual channel, running single channel memory will give you perfermance hits.

What does he mean by keeping the 'Duel Channel'? I don't understand.

[Malap]

This explains dual channel ram. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-channel_architecture

I'm not sure what he's talking about regarding the video card, on motherboard video uses RAM, but if you have a separate video card in it's own slot it will take care of the video memory and free up RAM.

[Nifty]

the really short and simple answer is when you buy RAM you buy matching pairs. let's say you want 2 gb of RAM, then you buy two sticks of 1 gb. Your motherboard manual will tell you which slots to put them in to run in Dual Channel mode.

If you want 4 gb of ram, then you buy 2 sticks of 2 GB ram, and place them according to the manual. Or you can buy 4 sticks of 1 GB memory, and put them in all 4 slots.

As for the video card, that's more of a function of the game vs the amount of RAM on your PCIe video card. Some games will require more video resources than your card has RAM on it. At that point, the system RAM will be used for the overflow. Example, let's say you have a 640MB video card, and the game you need to play requires 1 GB of video resources. After the 640MB vid RAM gets filled, the excess 384MB will go into your system RAM. Accessing that system RAM for the video resources is slightly slower than accessing it directly off the video card, resulting in a small performance hit.

AH has a page that talks about it somewhat when discussing using 1024 size textures. http://www2.hitechcreations.com/ahgs/techmts.html

Edit: their page actually talks more about thrashing that will occur when you run out of both vid RAM -and- system RAM space. The accessing of video resources in System RAM is a bit slower than Video RAM, but we're talking a very small performance hit (you'll lose some frames per second, but it won't be noticeable really). The stutters come from when the system has to swap out textures from RAM to the hard drive swap space.

[daddog]

Thanks guys! I appreciate the feed back.

[Ghosth]

You know if your building your own systems it really pays to spend 5 minutes a day surfing though AH's Hardware and software forum.
Some days you won't find a lot, but others will be pure gold.

Last, when in doubt, google it.!

"6" Y cable Neon blue" into google and I knew EXACTLY what it was they were listing as accessorys.

[daddog]

Ok I took the plunge and made the order on mwave.

MB - Gigabyte GA-EP45T
CPU - Intel Core 2 DUO E8500 socket 775
Memory - 6 gigs
Vidcard - GeForce GTX 260
Case - HEC Black midtower with 585w power supply

Sending them a check tomorrow.

[Malap]

Cool. 

[daddog]

Well it all arrived yesterday.

I started looking everything over last night and noted that my power supply does not have the connectors I need.
The GTX 260 card needs 2 6 pin connectors, and the MB need 1 8 pin connector. I have two 4 pin connectors that I 'think' would work for the 8 pin, but I don't have any 6 pin on my power supply for the Vid Card. Also need a fan for a case.

Other than the fan and the power supply issue it looks good. Mwave delivered it fast with the CPU and memory installed and tested.

Looks like I will have to drive to the valley today to see what I can dig up.

[Malap]

I have never dealt with Mwave, getting the MB with cpu and ram installed and tested is a nice touch. 

I myself usually buy from Tiger Direct and i have allways been pleased with the prompt service from them.

[daddog]

 
The Chinese case will not allow me to put in the 80mm fans I bought. The inner panels of the case would have to be cut away for me to put in the fans. I am so PO'ed. Drove all the way to Sacramento for that. 2 1/2 hours on way.

The side panel will only take 90mm, but the directions stated it would take 80 or 90.

I did get power supply taken care of, but I wanted a couple more fans. The case only came with one 120mm. I was going to add two more.

[Ghosth]

So get out the metal cutting gear and MOD that bad girl!

Just think carefully, plan it out. Measure twice, cut once.

[daddog]

Twisty wire.

Worked great!