Ok, its about time I upgrade and have been looking now for a couple weeks for ideas. I'm looking for a mobo/cpu/ram/video card in the 500ish range, if you are bored throw up some ideas so I'm not just endlessly going in circles with myself and have something different to look at. Going a bit over the 500 isn't an issue for a good deal, but I have to keep the $$ side of it down as much as possible. Thanks!

I have heard nothing but praise over the new GeForce 460's. Supposed to be the best price vs. performance of any $200 card.

What Teeter said. All the reviews of the 460's say they are amazing. I personally have a MSI 5770HD Hawk that I got for about $170 3 months ago that I love. Punishur has the same one. CPU, I always suggest AMD, simply due to the price difference. I have a quad core AMD in my gaming rig and an i7 in my laptop and can not really see a whole lot of performance differences. As far as mobos go, I have been using Asus mobos for the last few years, and they have been treating me good, but Gigabyte, MSI, and Foxconn have some tempting boards (I think xTeeter uses a Foxconn).

Im not a fan of Asus, Haven't owned one since 939. From what I have seen and heard from others, it seems there is not a great upside or downside to them. BTW their site is ass...

Gigabyte on the otherhand has been great, big heatsinks on most of their offerings, great reviews. Outstanding tweeking options.

I just put some peices together for Defect. It's not really cut and dry what to get, but If you go AMD check out this board!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128443

Its a good start anyway. It has USB3 works with the X6 out of the box

A couple of things to think about, it seems the newer mobos have 8pin power connectors. If you haven't updated the PSU in a while you may want to evaluate it and decide if its time for a new one or get an 8pin adapter.

Also think about weather you want a fast chip out of the box or are you willing to OC? Then you have to think about a cooling upgrade.

To sum it up look for motherboards that tout lots of options for OCing i.e. voltage and FSB tweeking (assuming you hang on to this for a few years and decide to eek every last bit of power you can out of it.

Keep your eye out on memory, Certainly not gonna be your bottleneck at stock speeds anyway, but the tighter timings can be a clue as to the quality of the chips themselves.

Processor, Highest clocked dual cores are the kings of gaming(for now) with the hex-cores and a market FULL of quad cores It's only a matter of time before games take advantage of all that power.

Video card...I am not the guy to ask, I have a gts250...It plays everything on high or better. But apperently it's junk.

There are tons of options. I would say choose the MOBO that suits you and your upgrade path.

AMD Phenom quad for CPU. I would go with the best ATI card you can afford, more bang for the buck than Nvidia in most cases. Newegg combos = win. You may have to wait a few weeks to catch a good one but it's worth it. Ram doesn't matter much, Gskill rocks for the cheap factor. 3 gigs at least for Windows 7, 4 to be solid.

Boxx,

I'm @ a 250 as well. I fucking love it, no need for me to upgrade yet. I probably will in a month or two when the 460's bugs are out. I never buy first run cards.

I would go with the x6 from amd, why, its 200 bucks, and your pretty much set for the future in regards to it.

Video card, bang for buck, nothing really beats ati.

Mobo's, you have your primes, asus, gigabyte, and dfi. Really, it doesnt matter which you go with, find a reasonable board that has some features that hold you off for the next 3-5 years, having am3 and usb 3.0 is a start.

I would probably go with asus, ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3 DDR3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard

Then go with the Amd X6 AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 2.8GHz Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor HDT55TFBGRBOX

Pair that with CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMX8GX3M4A1600C

and

XFX HD-577X-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Thats what I would build.

My memory, doesnt really matter, who the vendor is, as long as you go with a higher class distributor. Each has a lifetime warranty on them.

In terms for how much to get, Gaming system, just hit the fucking 8 gig and be happy with it, you will be better off with it, and shit just runs smoother for it.

now, the real question is, will my 500 watt power supply handle half of the shit I'm looking at. its an antec neopower

it should be ok. i have a 550 watt thats been running great for 3+ yrs. as long as your psu has the connectors you need, you should be good with 500 watt.

As long as you have an 8pin...if not get an adapter 550 should hold you over.

Weird Butane... This is starting to sound like the machine I just put together.
Can't be 1up'd by Be3fcake can you? It hurts inside doesn't it... <3








Not a 7 'cuz I'm not running a SSD

^ Thanks for your input Boxx
I am a True Believer in GIGABYTE MoBo's now.

It must be the season for building rigs I just picked up an i7 930 at microcenter, couldn't pass up the deal since they were selling them for $199.

IMO, unless you are set on ATI, I'd take a 460 over a 5770 in the ~$200 pricepoint. If you are willing to shell out over $300, then go 5850/5870. 8GB sounds nice, but at $200 it would be hard to fit that much memory in your $500-600 budget. Maybe start with 2-4GB, then upgrade the memory again in a month or two.

I just realized why your taskbar was so big...you get that fixed?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131655

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103851

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231303


decided that while it would be nice to upgrade my video card I need to upgrade the crap that works with the video card more..

not bad, but I wouldn't have gone for the overpriced Asus mobo, but I've been partial to eVGA since I got mine.

Turbo Unlocker - On Demand Real Time CPU Boost

Core Unlocker - Unleash True Core Performance Intelligently

Turbo Key II - Switch on the Potential, Turn up the Performance!

TurboV EVO - The Ultimate O.C. Processor


Jesus, pretty fancy talk for voltage, bus speed increases, and multiplier tweaking.

Look up motherboards with the 890FX north bridge and see what the prices are, this is a middle priced example.

plus evga only does intel

The x58 EVGA does Crossfire + SLI. (or any x58 chipset board I believe)

which means intel