DCEmulation

Hi.

After my main pre-built gaming rig failed a couple years back, I had pretty much dropped out of playing current PC games. I ended up busting out an older tower from storage, with a *don't laugh* Pentium 4 CPU. As I was pretty much been sticking to emulation of older systems and indy games, this worked alright for a while.

I'll be reusing my Thermaltake 500 watt PSU, and my nVidia GT250 1TB GPU. Assuming I have a very limited budget, could anyone comment on these following components I've lined up? If anyone knows of better alternatives, or better deals, please let me know.

Motherboard
- Best deal I've found

CPU
- Best deal I've found

RAM
- Best deal I've found

_________________

From what I remember, back at their debut, triple-core processors aren't worth shit, and were quickly skipped over.

As for that GT250, I'd look into replacing that as soon as you got the chance (in the near future, at least). The best deal remains the Radeon 6950, as it can be flashed and unlocked to a 6970... all for only around $250. You'll survive on the 250 with low resolutions, and bottomed out settings just fine, but if you're gonna want to turn anything up, thats your best option .


Hadn't really the chance to look at mobos and CPUs for ya, but that RAM is a fair deal. While heatsinks on ram are nice, you aren't really gonna push them much with the surrounded components. Wish you the best of luck, and always keep an eye out for Newegg's daily deals.

_________________

"He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living hand-to-mouth." -Goethe

Moved to Off-Topic.

_________________

"He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living hand-to-mouth." -Goethe

After doing some reading, I was under the impression that there weren't many games that utilized over 2-3 cores. Would it be worth the gamble IF the fourth core could be unlockable through the linked motherboard? (Phenom II X4 B55?)

I had considering moving one class up to the Phenom II x4 line CPUs. But... they were $20-40 more expensive, and I was confused by all the different variations.


Unfortunately, $250(>) is the range I have to spend right now.

[EDIT] In hind sight, I really need to stick with Nvidia for my Linux usage. I imagine I could get a decent gaming card in the 150-200 dollar range. [/EDIT]


So it might be worth the extra $8 for the T1 line?

_________________

My original modest gaming had a core2duo, the nvidia gt250 (originally 8600gt), and only 3 gigs of ram. I bought it about 4 1/2 years ago, and the cpu + mobo crispified a little under 2 years ago.

Having said that, I've completely changed my lineup here, and decided on the following.

Motherboard: P8Z68-V
CPU: Intel Pentium Processor G860
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8 GB DDR3 1866 MHz ( 2 x 4 GB )

Hopefully, this will hold me over until I can purchase a new graphics card in about 3-4 months. From there, the linked motherboard could then be upgraded to a i5, or i7, CPU around the 2013 tax season. If nobody sees any glaring error here, I'll be putting my order in about a week.

Total Price: $232 US
- Items all new with one being an open box under warranty.

The Athlon x3 455 being schooled by the G860 on the games I'm immediately interested in.

- Skyrim (I need my mods!)
- Starcraft 2

_________________

The only thing I would say is to get an i3 instead of the Pentium. The cheapest one is only $20 more, but would give you a considerable speed increase. If you really can't swing the extra $20, take the RAM down to 1600 speed to save money.

I'd rather not decrease the RAM quality as I had planned on increasing it to 16GB eventually. That would put me a $100+ upgrade situation later down the road.

But... I will wait a couple weeks longer to see if I can snag a i3-2100, or i3-2120, for under $100 w/heatsink+fan. If only I didn't have so many family issues to deal with, I would have had a decent PC already.

Thanks for the input guys.

_________________

But running a system on a Pentium with 16gb of RAM is just silly.

_________________
It's thinking...

_________________

"He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living hand-to-mouth." -Goethe

Also, if you're trying to stay nVidia, the 560ti is a good card for the price. Hasney had one and it worked really well for him, plus I have its mobile cousin in one of my laptops and it performs really well. It's a good mid-range card.

I'm guessing all of their fermi cards should go down in price increasingly soon with Kepler out.

_________________

"He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living hand-to-mouth." -Goethe