Good choice for PC rebuild?

Hello all

I am going to be rebuilding my PC and was after some advice or feedback about my proposal. Its main use is for gaming and I don’t intend to over clock it:

Budget is about $500.00.

New items:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 $150 – Replacing ASUS A8N-VM CSM

Processor: 3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 $270 – Replacing AMD 64 Processor 3500+

RAM: 2 Gb generic DDR2-800 $170 – Replacing 2 x 1Gb generic DDR-400

Items I’ll be keeping from current setup (for now):

Hard Disk: 300 Gb Western Digital WD3200JD-22KLB0 (maybe I’ll get another and set it up for RAID?)

Graphics Card: GeForce 8600 GTS 256Mb (can I get another and run two of these cards on the GA-P35-DS3 (and is it worth it?))

If anyone has any suggested alternatives I could look into or consider I’d love to hear them.

Thanks for any replies.

David

 

No. That motherboard does not support SLI as it has only one PCIe video slot. Personally, I'd try to add another $150 to your budget and grab a GeForce 9600GT (or add $200+ and get an 8800GT). While the 8600 is a decent card for it's price, and has a good price-to-performance ratio, it is still just a 128bit and yours has only 256mb on board. This video card is the weak link in your gaming chain.

No (see above). Even if the motherboard did support a 2nd card, IMO the money would be better spent on a more powerful video card (again, see above).

Good luck with your new build! And game on, my friend!

:major
[dlb]