gamer11200

I'm upgrading my rig. Replacing the following parts:
ASUS P4P800 SE Motherboard
Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHZ w/ht prescott processor
2GB (2x1GB) Kingston ValueRAM 400mhz DDR
EVGA Geforce 7600GT 512MB AGP

I've been considering both AMD and Intel varieties. I have already set the processor to be either a E7300, Q8200 or Phenom 9500. Ram will be 4GB OCZ 800mhz DDR2, video card will be Sapphire Radeon 4670 512MB.

My budget is $500. So far, this upgrade at tigerdirect.ca costs $446.29 after taxes. With the shipping, I'd be close to $500. So if you decide to consider parts, please make sure that they don't cost more than $10 of the part that I currently have.

AMD Phenom 9500 Processor 2.20GHz 4MB L2 Cache processor
Asus M3A78-EM 780G Chipset+ATI SB700 Radeon HD 3200 Graphics
Cooler Master X Dream 4 CPU Cooling Fan
OCZ Vista Performance Gold XTC Edition 4GB (2v2GB) 800mhz DDR2
Sapphire RADEON HD 4670 512MB GDDR3 PCI-e 2.0 Graphics Card

__________________
My BOINC stats

Canadian OCN Club

Drakan290

What do you plan on doing with the computer?

__________________

wheth4400

yes pelase answer that as it will be a huge help to know, but without knowing that I can tell you to forget about the idea of the Phenom 9500 the orignal phenoms suck as I have owned the 9600BE the 9850BE and the 9950BE.

If you buy into the "future proof" thing the Q8200 would be the way to go, but personally if on a budget you are better off saving that money sticking with a dual core proc and put that savings towards other componets.

__________________

We Are Gr33n Machine

noobdown

cross check priceses at http://www.directcanada.com/ and www.ncix.com (ncix does price matching).
i would also suggest a 9x50. with the tlb error fixed.

__________________

ATi 4830 Club

gamer11200

I plan on doing the following:
-Gaming: Play games like Left 4 Dead, Unreal 3, Call Of Duty and more
-Video conversion: Converting divx files into DVD
-HD playback: Playing 720p and possibly 1080p through .mkv files and maybe a future blu ray player
-Folding@Home/boinc: For sure I'm folding on the GPU, but I still have to decide if to jump back onto the Folding train for the CPU
-Programming: As I am going into Computer Science, i'm assuming stuff like GPGPU programming and multicore programming are going to be taught

__________________
My BOINC stats

Canadian OCN Club

Penicilyn

Try and go for a slightly better Phenom and make sure it's a 9X50


That means it's a B3 stepping so it doesn't have the bug.

__________________
GRID Drift Club
OCN Headphones Club - Because Perfect Hair is Overrated
ATI - We Are the Red Tide
Canadian OCN Club
http://www.overclock.net/view.php?pg=rulestos The TOS

gamer11200

I just checked and found one of those 9550s (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...865&CatId=3637)

I'm not too into the whole AMD world, what is this "bug"

__________________
My BOINC stats

Canadian OCN Club

Drakan290

The TLB bug is a bunch of intel fanboy nonsense, it's only been found in TARGETED VIRTUALIZATION TESTING.
http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/13724

Seriously, if the 9500 is cheaper, get it.

Also, i'd spring for the 4830 over the 4670, it's a much quicker GPU.

__________________

Tjingsted

A bug which causes the system to hang in really rare virtualization episodes.

__________________

BinaryDemon

Yes but many motherboards don't allow the toggling of the TLB fix on/off.
The BIOS fix incurs a ~10% performance hit. This is the real impact of the TLB bug.

__________________
In a quad core world, dual core is the new celeron...