How's this looking so far?

[Thuggles]

The ol' 1.3 Celeron is showing it's age so I figure it's time for a new rig. I'm getting this from iBUYPOWER.com, if anyone's dealt with these people I'd like to hear how your experience was. I've heard they're reliable but a little lacking in customer support. This is going to be primarily for gaming. I'm unsure about the motherboard, power supply and processor mainly.

420W Power Supply
Intel E6850 (2x 3.0GHz)
Asus P5N-E SLI nForce® 650i SLI
2048MB [1024MB X2] DDR2-800 "Corsair-value"
GeForce 8600GTS 256mb
XP Professional

Would I get better game performance with an Intel E6750 (2x 2.66GHz) and an Nvidia 8800GT? I think I'd have to up the power supply for that also but it shouldn't cost too much more. Also, keep in mind I'm not trying to run the latest and greatest games at some ridiculous resolution. Mainly MMO's and Team Fortress 2.

[Ajmukon]

The ol' 1.3 Celeron is showing it's age so I figure it's time for a new rig. I'm getting this from iBUYPOWER.com, if anyone's dealt with these people I'd like to hear how your experience was. I've heard they're reliable but a little lacking in customer support. This is going to be primarily for gaming. I'm unsure about the motherboard, power supply and processor mainly.

420W Power Supply
Intel E6850 (2x 3.0GHz)
Asus P5N-E SLI nForce® 650i SLI
2048MB [1024MB X2] DDR2-800 "Corsair-value"
GeForce 8600GTS 256mb
XP Professional

Would I get better game performance with an Intel E6750 (2x 2.66GHz) and an Nvidia 8800GT? I think I'd have to up the power supply for that also but it shouldn't cost too much more. Also, keep in mind I'm not trying to run the latest and greatest games at some ridiculous resolution. Mainly MMO's and Team Fortress 2.
get an 8800 GT 512MB (80% the performance. 1/2 the price of the 8800 Ultra)
and, if it is going to be gaming, get VISTA 64-bit.

other than that- looks good

[saphalline]

Vista 64-bit may be over-kill for a non-gamer. Well... for a non-intense-gamer. ;) The OS is dependent upon your future needs. If you have no plans to use DX10 within the next year, the WinXP Pro (regular 32-bit) is good enough. There's a huge disparity between WinXP & Vista for gaming purposes, so it's best to be clear about your intentions. Or you can read up on what Vista can and cannot do yourself.

To answer your original question, YES! The E6750 + 8800 GT combo would definitely be better! The 8800 GT is about 3.5 to 4 times as powerful as the 8600 GTS when it comes to gaming! :eek: Losing out on a bit of CPU power is certainly worth that!

iBuyPower has proven to be rather unhelpful for more than a few of our members, but you are correct in that most of those issues were related to customer support. Buy from them at your own risk! (And make sure you know for certain what to order the first time!)

[Thuggles]

Thanks for your replies,

I'd been considering the plunge into Vista but I assumed XP would be a little faster overall since Vista is such a resource hog and I hear it's just a pain to work with overall. I hadn't even considered 64-bit, I heard there's not a ton of support for it but I don't know much about it. I'll check it out. In the mean time, is anyone aware of any sites with prices comparable to iBUYPOWER that are more reliable?

[Ajmukon]

www.newegg.com (great customer service)
www.tigerdirect.com (never used)
www.overclockers.co.uk (Europe only)

[George Hallam]

also
www.scan.co.uk (uk only)

[artp209]

I havn't had any dealings with them myself, but I have observed others recommending http://www.vigorgaming.com/. What I have seen on their internet site looks good, and they claim to have a high customer satisfaction rating.

[Thuggles]

Vigor Gaming looks much more reliable than iBUYPOWER, I was a little nervous before but these guys seem to have a great track record. Unfortunately with the rig I want from Vigor I have to get an AMD, but I can live with that.

[artp209]

Unfortunately with the rig I want from Vigor I have to get an AMD, but I can live with that.

Yeah. I forgot that they only use AMD processors. Of course I wouldn't notice since every computer I've owned has been AMD. The money I save on the motherboard and CPU is spent on a better video card.

Art

[saphalline]

I'd been considering the plunge into Vista but I assumed XP would be a little faster overall since Vista is such a resource hog and I hear it's just a pain to work with overall.Haha! :D Yes, compared to WinXP, Vista is a resource hog! Then again, compared to Win98, WinXP is a resource hog! :p It's all relative to our current hardware. Win98, for instance, is limited to 512MB of RAM and 1 CPU, thus it is totally incompatible with modern dual-core systems with 2GB of RAM! Eventually, we'll reach the point where WinXP can't handle the latest hardware but Vista can! It's all relative...

I hadn't even considered 64-bit, I heard there's not a ton of support for it but I don't know much about it.That did used to be true when Vista 64-bit came out, but then again that was also true of Vista 32-bit! :p It was Vista in general that had problems, and most of us here on the forums tend to think (now that Vista's support is much better) that Vista 32-bit is a waste of time. If you're going to leap into Vista, you might as well get the 64-bit bonus!!

The most glaring example of this is RAM capacity. WinXP and Vista 32-bit are both limited to 4GB of RAM total, with only 3GB usable by programs. Vista 64-bit, however, supports much more!

Vista Home Basic 64-bit = 8GB of RAM
Vista Home Premium 64-bit = 16GB of RAM
Vista Business 64-bit = 128GB+ of RAM
Vista Ultimate 64-bit = 128GB+ of RAM

As you can see, moving forward into the realms of future hardware advancements, only 64-bit operating systems can keep up! Even the "lowly" Vista Home Basic 64-bit supports more RAM than Vista Ultimate 32-bit! :eek: Not that you should necessarily use Home Basic :p but it's still nice to know these things. Especially since modern chipsets support 8GB of RAM already! And especially since a 2GB kit of DDR2 is less than $100 these days!

The age of 512MB of RAM being adequate for a modern Windows system is over. It's 1GB now, if not 2GB.