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Hobo Build Tweaks Please
This is for my wife, she doesn't need anything massive and special. The only game she plays is WoW and she does her homework on her machine. So, power isn't much of an issue. She's been using a Sony Viao Laptop for about a year and a half now, but she wants something more powerful.
I did some research, the 9800 GT 1GB seems to be the best price/power card out there right now for the $100-150 range. The processor should be too.
Am I wrong? Is there anything that could be tweaked? Please list Tom's Hardware or something equivalent when posting tweaks. I honestly don't care about off the top speculation. 
The board is really my main concern, but from Newegg's customer ratings it's pretty good. An AVG of 4/5 with 442 ratings. I usually don't go by their customer ratings, unless there are alot of them like that.But, I don't really like the DDR2 and would rather get a little bit faster DDR3, but I can't really find one in my price range.
Limit for the build is under $540
Comments
There's a couple AM3 mobos for DDR3 at the same price range.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157176
770 chipset is fine for an average PC.
For the video card the Radeon 4850 for $100 still can't be beat..
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3650&p=7
Go down to the 1920x1200 and 1680x1050 benches on there, the 8800GT is the same exact card as the 9800GT.
I would never use a Rosewill.
Ooo... I missed that. I actually did a little more searching around and it seems that the 4850 actually performs REALLY well at lower resolutions. She runs WoW in windowed mode on a 19" Monitor. I'm not sure what res she would run at, but I'm guessing just above 1024x768.
Thanks for the help.
Went with that board, DDR3 1333, and the GB 4850 1GB. Bumped up the total to $539.93, and $571.56 after shipping.
I think I actually saw that board, but I haven't had good experience with ASRock in the past. Meh, we'll see this time. Hopefully it's a better experience then the almost DOA board I got before. I think that was from Tigerdirect anyway, I hate that company.
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Yea I haven't used ASRock myself either but some of their boards are reviewed really well, and it is a subsidary of ASUS so hopefully some quality rubs off.
Ok, here's what I got tonight:
OCZ 4gb DDR3 1066
PSU Rosewill 400w
AsRock Mobo (linked above)
ASUS N Wireless Adapter PCI-E Card (I dont' want to run an ethernet cable to her PC)
AMD Athlon II x3 2.7ghz (yeah I downgraded her CPU... sue me, lol)
Sigma Case (linked above)
ASUS DVD Burner SATA (this is actually for me, I actually bought an IDE drive on my machine and it won't fit as a second drive... cable wise)
Gigabyte ATI HD 4850 1gb
WD Hard Drive 7200rpm 250gb
AverMedia TV Tuner (another thing for me
)
ASUS N Wireless Router with torrent and remote storage support (we just need a new router)
Subtotal: $696.03
Total Amount: $731.18
Little more than I wanted to spend total, but we really needed that Router and it only added $90 or so. I forgot about her wireless card too, that was only $40. The TV tuner was figured into the budget. I also forgot to buy a 26" LCD TV for our bedroom (for wall mount) we wanted on that order...... I'll do that later. lol
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Should've spent a little more money on a higher quality motherboard : /
Also unless you're tripple channeling DDR3 (which you're not), it's not worth the extra cost over DDR2 there's literally next to no difference, probably could've saved some money there.
DDR3 and DDR2 is the same price RAM wise. That's a Dual Channel board though. Most AMD boards with DDR3 are Dual Channel, the TriChannel is mainly for the i7 series.
So, you get a little more speed for the same price. Why not get DDR3? If you get anything over 800 on the DDR2, you're going to be paying extra for it. Where the 1066 DDR3 is minimum and runs you the same as the 667 or 800 DDR2. It's not much better, but it's better and it's free.... if you want to look at it like that.... lol I do.
I do agree I should have got a little better board, but that has the specs I need and I have heard good things about AsRock.... I really didn't want to buy one, but meh.
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Heh Ive been using this one for over a year now and its still running fine. www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx
What makes Rosewill so bad?
That's a Dual Channel board though. Most AMD boards with DDR3 are Dual Channel, the TriChannel is mainly for the i7 series.
Yes, I know it's a dual channel board hence the"Which you're not".
ASrock is asus's budget board "side company" that competes with other lowend manufacturers, so basically it's lower quality. Sure they could sell them directly from ASUS, but they don't want to make their name to look bad. That board in particular and why it's so cheap is because it doesn't have onboard graphics, which is both good and bad. I say it's bad because if your GPU ever craps out on ya, you're going to have to wait for another to use the computer again. Just my 2cents anyways, hopefully you wont have any problems with it.
Heh Ive been using this one for over a year now and its still running fine. www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx
What makes Rosewill so bad?
I've used a couple of their parts in the past. They impressed me with better driver support than some of the bigger brands.
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The biggest difference between mainstream ASRock type boards and more expensive boards is how well they overclock, if you aren't gonna overclock it's not that big a deal, usually the cheaper ones work fine. DDR3 is to the point where it's the same price as DDR2 now, and the price difference on DDR2 vs DDR3 motherboards is now insignificant too, so no reason not to go DDR3.
Widescreen 19" are usually 1440x900.
Edit: Missed that Windowed part. /coffee
Now with 57.3% more flames!
WoW Ultra Settings 1280 x 768 windowed mode = 70fps in Dal on a Med/High server and over 120 in a 25man.
She loves it. Alot better than her Dual Core Celeron and Intel 965 Integrated GPU.
It's OP for WoW of course, but it should survive another 'graphic upgrade' and w/e Cat throws at her. I can't see them adding in a worse city than the screw up Dal was, but it is Blizzard after all.
"Hey! Lets make the most populated city in the game have no straight lines!!!!!!!!!!! You know that place where all the top levels go that have all the flashy intricate gear and like to run around for no reason! THAT ONE! YEAH!" lol
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