My current PC upgrade recommendation

[Seth R.]

Hi everyone,

I'm a tech-head and a cheap one at that, Lately I've been looking to upgrade my PC hardware at home. I tend to do allot of

intense applications like video compression and virtual PC work, I play the occasional action game like Battle Field 2 and

Lord of the Rings Return of the King, and sometimes Doom 3.

Multi cores are the buzzword, and I've done some research, first I'm not an Intel guy, so if you are and won't change don't

bother reading the rest. I like AMD because 1) they innovate for their customers rather then just to innovate 2) they are a

better value 3) My family owns some of their stock.

Now here's the scoop, I've always had a price point of $300 for the motherboard and CPU since I started upgrading my

own PC's back in 1995. What I do is I look at the current cpu and mother boards out and when the price and performance

is around $300 that's when I buy it. Since there are fluctuations in the market and bleeding edge tech is to costly in terms

of price and volatility I chose to wait for the hardware to reach that price point and it has always seemed to work.

My latest research indicates that the new AMD Phenom triple core is the best value for a couple reasons:

1) The quad core Phenoms on the market are an older stepping called B2 which has a bug, the triple core use a fixed core stepping called B3

2) In benchmarks the triple core was on average only 6% slower then the quad core of the same gigahertz

3) The triple core runs 25% cooler then it's 4 core brother.

The latest chipset to have is the AMD 780G it matters little what brand motherboard as long as you try to stick with MSI, ASUS or Gigabyte if you choose ASRock or ECS or PCChips beware.

The reason I choose the 780G chipset is for several reasons:

1) It's the only chipset out that has what's called hybrid SLI support, it has a Video chip built-in so you don't need a video card. What makes it unique is that in most built-in video motherboards you cannot use a second video card in tandem to double your video processing power. With the 780G you can add certain ATI video cards and harness the extra GPU to increase your video frame rates in games like Far Cry and Crysis.

2) Full feature support for the Phenom processors

3) It's an AMD chipset, duh, I like AMD.

Most of my friends are running 1 - 2 gigahertz single core CPU's with 512 meg of ram and Windows XP the hardware I am suggesting will knock the socks off of any one including me. What I'm suggesting is I'd estimate 20 to 30 times faster then a single core non-hyperthreading P4 running at 2 Ghz.

So what are we looking at for price? Well before we get to that, I assume you have experience putting these things together if not get someone to help you, most tech guys like pizza and beer as fair compensation I however usually do it for free especially if it's sweet hardware like this.

Since I think most of you will need more then just a CPU and motherboard to make this a successful upgrade I included my picks for Ram and a nice new case all for under $400!!

Here's the run down for the PC upgrade I call:

Project: Triple-Thread

Total: $375.96

Prices and part #'s from Newegg.com

Qty. Product Description Unit Price Savings Total Price

1 APEVIA X-QBOII X-QBOII-BL/500 Black / Blue SECC Steel MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply - Retail

Model #: X-QBOII-BL/500

Item #: N82E16811144227

Return Policy: Standard Return Policy

In Stock

Mail-in Rebate

$74.99 $74.99

1 GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

Model #: GA-MA78GM-S2H

Item #: N82E16813128090

Return Policy: Limited 30-Day Return Policy

In Stock

$99.99 -$10.00 Instant $89.99

1 AMD Phenom 8650 Toliman 2.3GHz Socket AM2+ 95W Triple-Core Processor Model HD8650WCGHBOX - Retail

Model #: HD8650WCGHBOX

Item #: N82E16819103253

Return Policy: Processors (CPUs) Return Policy

In Stock

$165.99 $165.99

1 mushkin 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model 996527 - Retail

Model #: 996527

Item #: N82E16820146118

Return Policy: Memory (Modules, USB) Return Policy

In Stock

Mail-in Rebate

$44.99 $44.99

Subtotal: $375.96

[bfh]

Seth:

Thanks for the info. This sounds great. While I'm not looking to upgrade,

I know someone who is and have passed this info. along to him.