Looking to build a new PC some help please

Q

qwik3r

New Member
Ok, i have built a few pc's they were all AMD's but never one for myself. I am on a limited budget and have been out of the game for a while, i don't know whats hot, and whats powerful. I am not partial to amd or intel, just w/e is worth the money.

I use alot of high end applications and will be needing alot of power. I like to have alot of stuff open at once aswell. I use photoshop, illustrator, 3D studio max and a few others, i also do video encoding and editing which is very memory/processor intensive. The photoshop files will be of very large aswell.

I know i want atleast 1gig of memory, the problem here however lies in which motherboard and processor. I'd like to limit myself to about $500.00 max for the build, including case and memory. I would not be including things such as burner or dvdrom, i will just switch them.

Right now i have an intel p4 (gateway) 1.7ghz with 512mb its quite old and time to upgrade.

Could anyone offer some suggestions ? Thanks.
 
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if you are not going to be a hardcore gamer, and you are a hardcore multitasker, then i would go with the AMD Athlon FX, i am not sure how the models work (4600,4700??) but i would go with a mid-high range AMD dual core for sure
 
nope, don't do any gaming, but my encoding, video and photoshop files are quite large and require mucho power, my poor lil crap gateway rig can barely handle it now.
 
well i'm not necessarily looking for cheap shit here, i am afterall going to be doing some pretty labor intensive tasks, i don't want some celeron or equivilant peice of junk, the key word here is high end, i really only need to buy memory, processor and mother board, aswell as case and power supply, that should render me a quality system for 500, just looking for more indepth suggestions here for combos, intel vs amd for what i want to do etc.
 
Well you won't get a quality system for $500. The AMD set-up I put up is probably the best you will find, as CPUs are the most expensive thing second to a GPU perhaps, and not always.
 
LITHIUM said:
if you are not going to be a hardcore gamer, and you are a hardcore multitasker, then i would go with the AMD Athlon FX, i am not sure how the models work (4600,4700??) but i would go with a mid-high range AMD dual core for sure
Click to expand...


wait.... WHAT?!?!?!!??!?!?!? i think you got that mixed up.... if he's a multitasker and not a big gamer, get an X2, and even if he was a gamer, get an X2, but a $350 processor, $80 1GB RAM, $120 mobo.... thats expensive...
 
Is my goal of 500 alittle out of proportion? I am hoping to reach it, i did some research and there are alot of great views for the 3800 X2 (link posted above) for it being able to handle multiple applications etc.

Can someone clarify x2 vs FX? Also any opinions on the below processor? I was also wondering about crossfire, isn't that more or less technology that helps improve video? I haven't done much research on it, just a quick google, i guess i would benefit from that in a way doing some of my 3D work, however i would like to keep the video card out and just use video on the board for now to save money since video cards can be quite pricey, i am a college student and just trying to build a rig that will support that work i will be doing.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103535
 
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No, it's not unattainable, but compromises must be made:

Crossfire is not the thing for you. It's only useful for gaming. If you're seriously looking for high-end rendering a workstation class card would be a better idea, but not with this budget!

An Intel processor is better suited to your tasks, as an X2 is out of your price range. The one I have specified here is vastly superior for your purposes. The X2 3800+ would be nice, but not at that budget.

An FX chip is quite different to an X2 chip, they are designed for enthusiasts and feature an unlocked multiplier for great overclocking. From the FX lineup, only the FX60 is dual core. In any case, all the FX series are outside your budget, and not really worth the money, IMO.
 
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Thanks for taking the time to put together a PC for me. I have done some research and i don't know if i quite like the intel's because of the heat issues, i was looking more towards the AMD's. I am trying to determine whether is it worth spending 87 more dollars to buy the X2 3800 vs the Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego. As i said i am a bit rusty and out of the game. I see great reviews on both processors, i know the X2 got a great rating for multitaskers which is what i do.
 
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