Tight Budget to Build a PC Desktop configuration...?

Question

I am once again trying to put together a pc I will use for playing games like sacred, half life, medal of honor, etc...RPG 3D games. Right now I'm using my wifes computer, mine fried. So she has a gateway Intel Pentiun(R) 1.6cpu 512 DDR 2100 and a radeon 9200LE 128 Mg.Ram AGP 4x. However I am doing tons of shopping around for the cheapest motherboard & cpu combo available without killing the performance. I tried MSI, ECS, ASUS, AOPEN, Gigabyte, ABIT, etc, etc...Newegg.com didn't impress me with prices really, neither did TigerDirect. I found this combination and would like others opinions on this system configuration...

ECS P4M800PRO-MV2.0 & 2.66 Pentium D CPU
2 gig's total of DDR 400
Copper HS/FAN
ATI Radeon X1600 Pro AGP 4x8x 512DDR Video Out
420Watt PS with new cooling case ATX
I DVD Burner 56x
1 CDROM 52x
1 Floppy 1.44
1 80g HDD IDE 7200rpm

Motherboard&CPU, Case, DDR, Fans, Graphics
all priced totaling = $280.00

Answer 1

$280.00 is not a horrible price for that system - especially if it includes an operating system. But, with the types of games you plan to play, I have a feeling that you won't be very happy with the performance.

Answer 2

That's a nice price, but like the previous poster said, the performance may not thrill you. Do you really need the 1.44 floppy? That kinda jumped out at me.

You *might* be ok with the Radeon X1600 pro, but for gaming rigs the GPU is the most important component in your build. Regardless of whether you're going with Nvidia or ATI, never drop into a lower cateogry of performance to save $50 or so. I think the X1650XT is the bare minimum you'd want to consider, and there's a huge jump in performance at the X1950. If you're undecided between a couple of cards that are close in price, compare their benchmarks head-to-head at http://www.gpureview.com (click on compare cards)

Performance most often bottlenecks at the graphics card, because there's such a significant difference between $100 and $220 cards. So if you can get a better GPU with a slightly slower CPU, you'll get better performance that way. extra CPU power is sitting wasted if your GPU can't keep up!

3) For new builds, you want PCI-Express video on your motherboard, not AGP. It's no bargain because while entry-level gaming AGP video cards are out there, they are more expensive than their PCI-E counterparts. There are no $120 options like the GeForce 7600GT on the AGP side- you wind up spending 70% more for the same performance, with fewer upgrade options available later.

Finally, the Pentium-D is the weakest dual core processor on the market, both AMD's X2 and Intel's Core 2 Duo are faster and run in the same price range.

I've linked a couple of articles which might be useful to you- happy hunting!