In the market

[Zap]

Have been sizing up new computers. I will be giving one of my less powerful ones to a grandchild and mine to the wife.

AMD Athlon Chip
Dual core chip
other chips/ Which way do I go?

Money expendeture will be around $1800.00

What else might I want to have on my system?

[wodin]

I have an AMD san deigo 3700. Its one hell of a chip for the money. One of the best for overclocking aswell.

[USSAmerica]

Stuff as much RAM into that baby as you can!

I love new computer shopping! [8D]

[ravinhood]

I'd stay away from dual core atm. I keep reading problematic issues with new games from people that have dual core systems. They end up having to do something to their systems to get the games to work outside of a regular patch. Dual core gaming full blown is still about 5 years away. Just get a very top end AMD 4000+ a 550+ power supply, 300mb hard-drive (the low storage 10000rpm hard drives are great for speed, but, a lot less storage). 2 gigs of ram should be sufficient. PCI-E mobo and near top end graphics card (wouldn't spend $500 on top end they will be 1/2 price within 6 months to a year). Stay away from ATI cards, they are still problematic with Direct X always have been probably always will be. Nvidia "The way games were ment to be seen and played".

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

I'd stay away from dual core atm. I keep reading problematic issues with new games from people that have dual core systems. They end up having to do something to their systems to get the games to work outside of a regular patch. Dual core gaming full blown is still about 5 years away. Just get a very top end AMD 4000+ a 550+ power supply, 300mb hard-drive (the low storage 10000rpm hard drives are great for speed, but, a lot less storage). 2 gigs of ram should be sufficient. PCI-E mobo and near top end graphics card (wouldn't spend $500 on top end they will be 1/2 price within 6 months to a year). Stay away from ATI cards, they are still problematic with Direct X always have been probably always will be. Nvidia "The way games were ment to be seen and played".

All true, make sure the Mobo supports dual channel RAM setup, I think all the new ones do that. Then buy two identical 1gig RAM sticks and plugin them in according to the Mobo manual for dual channel support.

Get a powerfull and silent power supply (ENERMAX for example), make sure it also has a fan at the bottom so i sucks the hot air directly away from the CPU. Weak power supplies will only make your system crash with all the power guzzling high end stuff [;)]

Oh, and get a lot of silents fans. Two for the front and two for the back.

[Marc von Martial]

I would also suggest to get a MSI mobo and graphics card. I'm very satiesfied with that brand.

[RIRed2005]

I love the system I put together:
Asus P4C800E motherboard
Pentium 3.2c Northwood CPU
1 gig of OCZ Platinum 3200 rev2 memory
nVidia BFG 6800GT video card(256ram)
PC Power & Cooling 510 Watt power supply
SATA Western Digital "Raptor" hard drive
Sound: Creative Labs X-Fi Music Extreme card
Monitor: Dell/Phillips 2001FP 20" LCD
DVD-RW: BenQ DW 1640

[ravinhood]

Nothing like building your own is there?

[RIRed2005]

You're right....

Just the other day, all of a sudden, my external Maxtor hard drive "disappears"...checked connections...seems ok there...GEEZ
I hate it when that happens!

[rhondabrwn]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

Nothing like building your own is there?

I wouldn't even consider buying a stock machine from Dell (or anyone else). Having had to use such machines in University labs(and now Tsaile school), there is just no comparison with a hot box that I build myself. They may be cheaper, but I'll take performance anyday. I also hate the way they preinstall the OS and then do not even give you a full copy of XP... just an "emergency disk" etc. I guess that is fine if you perceive your computer to be an expensive toaster and just want to plug it in and watch it heat up bread.

I like picking my own components... and knowing exactly what is in the box if something screws up.