AMD v P4

Im fed up with my system so am going to pretend I can afford the best out there.

What is the processor to go for these days?

What is the vid card " " " ?

Memory

etc

I know im being lazy but all opinions welcomed.

OH must be quiet!!!

I have water cooling and its ok but really dont like noise so maybe a peltier or a wireless system with the loud parts in the garage or loft or in the wifes bedroom

 

Well since I'm and AMD and NVIDIA fan i would say a Athlon 64 FX-53 Socket 939 on the nForce 250 pro chipset with the soon to be released pci-express version of the chipset. 2x1024MB PC3200 Crucial Ballistix ram (why crucial you ask, because their memory sticks have the lowest timings available on a ram module. and their high quality from a reputable company). And 2 Geforce PCX 6800 Ultra's in SLI. All this stuff is only months away so you know that's what i would buy.



OR!

Pentium 4 LGA 775 3.4 GHZ Extreme Edition on the Intel 925X + ICH6R chipsets. Again at least a gig of the ballistix ddr2 533 modules.. ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition.

Both machines the Audigy 2 ZS, WD Raptors for quick storage and the maxtor maxline III 300 GB drives for mass storage and also because they have native command queueing. Plextor Opticals, i hear abit makes a good intel motherboard. at least a 480 watt PS to power the ballsy hardware. The samsung712N flat panel LCD is a great gaming screen and is great quality and a great price for a 17".

 

AMD Athlon 64 is the way to go right now. they have the performance over intel at the moment, and are on a stable socket (939) which should be around for a while.... good for upgrades in the future. once thing you might wait for are the PCI-Express versions of the AMD64 motherboards, should be out wihtin the next month or two, that way you're guarenteed upgradeability for a year or so at least.

current video card champ is certainly the GeForce 6800GT or Ultra, considering it bests the ATi X800 cards in OpenGL by far, and matches them in DirectX.

for RAM, OCZ is looking good currently, if you take a look at their pc3700 Enhanced Latency Gold Edition Revision 2 or 3, but you still wont go wrong with most of the main brand manufacturers (Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, Samsung, and new to the front--Ultra, i've seen many good reviews)

as has been said, the nForce3 250gb or Ultra are the current winners in the chipset department, however the VIA K8T800 is close behind, still definetly a worthy oponent.

I'm about to build a new system with about $2000 US (thank you student loans ) haha I'll post how it turns out, (though i already have a PSU, and Soundcard for my Klipsch speakers)

 

Thanks for the replies im putting together a shopping list.

Once I hear back from Hercules re. my 9800 thats tempremental I will have a good idea which way to go.

How do the two types compete in noise level?

Can they be watercooled?

And what is the best case ?

 

I seen this sweet waterblock for the 6800 series graphics card. As for noise the nvidia cards are a little louder but not as loud as most people say they are. My friend had a 5950 Ultra and it's not as loud as people said it was even tho it's one of the loudest cards. Here's the link for that waterblock. GPU 6800 Series Waterblock Also the 6800 Ultras still take up 2 slots but if you know anythign about computers you know you don't want another pci card directly under your graphics card anyways. As for a case i still use the Antec Soho fileserver (aka the old alienware case). I like it but i've seen newer and better like the Coolermaster Wavemaster case. It's all aluminum construction and has a removable motherboard tray so you can work on your stuff easier. Wavemaster. Also silverstone and lian li cases get high ratings in my book.