This is what im looking at for new comp

[kingloser]

(prices are from Newegg and Tigerdirect)

CPU's ( ive always liked amd and i dont have any extra organs to sell for an i7)

AMD Phenom II quad core 955 Black Edition
$165.99-169.99 ( newegg was the lower)
Amd Phenom II quad core 945
$150.99-159.99 (newegg was lower)

Video Cards
Im looking at the 250gts 1GB versions
price newhere from 109.99-169.99 depending on maufacturer

Power supply
if im gonna run sli they suggest a 700W at least
im looking at modular and the 700 runs from 89.99 and up

Memory -DDR3 4gigs for now
96.99-and up

Motherboards
ASUS - M4A785TD-V 84.99 from Newegg 99.99 TD
MSI- NF750-G55 99.99 both

Operating System
Windows 7 home 64 bit
104.99 NE
109.99 TD

That's similar to what I'm looking at, just a question, why not Intel core 2 Quad, are AMD faster?

I'm really looking into your idea in getting the 2 GTS 250! Together in SLI are faster than the GTX 275 and almost the same as the GTX 285.

[kingloser]

im an amd fan, and u can usually get a better amd processor for the money. but its honestly a matter of preference. now if ur an overclocler its better yet cuz u can overclock the amd's up to the level of the lower i7's for $100 cheaper, however i dont trust myself enough to try and extreme overclock. a one or two fps better is not worth blowing up my comp.

like in this chart

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009 ... ,1401.html

the core i5 -750 is $200
the phenom 955 which is a few spots under it is 150-60 and u can jump to the 965 for another $10. now granted the amd's are a little under the i5's and i7's but at $50 cheaper u can get better components to add.

AMD are great value, but not the best in performance. A $200 X-4 (top line for amd) gets beat by most i7's, but still offers decent performance for casual gamers. (ie for those that o.c. or play games at their max.
Intel i7 920 has dropped $100 to just over $200 now, but requires a $200 motherboard anyway.

[kingloser]

where the heck can i get a i7 920 for 200? the cheapest i found was $275.
and the x4 965 and 955 black editions are only 150-160. But i do agree that intels are better right now. but i just cant beat the amd value wise.

im an amd fan, and u can usually get a better amd processor for the money. but its honestly a matter of preference. now if ur an overclocler its better yet cuz u can overclock the amd's up to the level of the lower i7's for $100 cheaper, however i dont trust myself enough to try and extreme overclock. a one or two fps better is not worth blowing up my comp.

like in this chart

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009 ... ,1401.html

the core i5 -750 is $200
the phenom 955 which is a few spots under it is 150-60 and u can jump to the 965 for another $10. now granted the amd's are a little under the i5's and i7's but at $50 cheaper u can get better components to add.

Good info, i will look into that I used to have AMD and it was good.

For any over-clockers out there that go with AMD, make sure you always get the Black Edition. Any of the other one's the CPU stepping is locked so you can't really do much outside of increasing the FSB, which subsequently OC's your RAM as well, so you'll need higher end RAM for anything to happen there. I'm stuck at 3 Ghz on my AMD 9850 because of that, the Kingston RAM I have isn't really high performance and get unstable anywhere over a 205 Mhz FSB, which is only 5 Mhz over the default. I haven't tried anything more since upgrading my PSU so maybe I'll see if I can get a better OC with the better PSU I have now.

Now to the build, I couldn't find that ASUS board on Newegg for $85, but found one for $99 and one for $119 with the $119 supporting USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s (which is the board I would choose). I did note that the ASUS board SLI'd will run one card at x16 and the other at x4, which the MSI board will run both at x8, so that'll definitely be something to consider for SLI'ing that 250. I personally like ASUS mainly for their great support (had to RMA a board through them once already), good over-clocking, and their BIOS updates abilities are awesome (you can re-flash your BIOS via a thumb drive). That's all I have to say about that.

[kingloser]

yeah i just looked last night and it went up in price, i believe that it was on rebate till 2/3. but i was just showing the most popular boards that had 2 pci e 2/0 slots. alot of people dont realize that ahead of time. these were also the least complained about boards. i know that every board has a bad one along the lines but it seemed like others had a lot of knocks against them and just wanted to show what seemed like the best boards for that price range. u could jump up in price and find more boards but i was trying to stay around the $100 range.

Nevermind, I saw a sale of $100 off a 920 from tiger direct. Only problem, they were selling it regular for 400 on sale for 300. But Canada computers has always sold it for a little over 300, so i thought tiger direct would sell it a $100 discounted price of only 200, but that wasnt the case.

[kingloser]

ok just finished my wish list and im at about $700, ouch.

MSI motherboard with 2 2.0 x16 slots ( in case i wanna sli)
amd phenom II 955 Black Edition 3.2 ghz
BFG 1GB 250 GTS
kingwin 730W power supply (wanted modular but ohwell)
4 gigs ocz 1600 ddr3
seagate barracuda 500 gig 7200rpm hard drive
lite-on cd/dvd burner

ok just finished my wish list and im at about $700, ouch.

MSI motherboard with 2 2.0 x16 slots ( in case i wanna sli)
amd phenom II 955 Black Edition 3.2 ghz
BFG 1GB 250 GTS
kingwin 730W power supply (wanted modular but ohwell)
4 gigs ocz 1600 ddr3
seagate barracuda 500 gig 7200rpm hard drive
lite-on cd/dvd burner

That's pretty good for the price