my friend chris is biulding himslef a gaming comp with a budget and has already purchased many parts for it:

3.0ghz/1mb L2/800mhz FSB Pentium 4 CPU
1gb PC3200 stick RAM x2 (for 2gb total)
160gb 7200rpm SATA hard drive
Nvidia 6800GT 256mb (AGP)
POS (in my opinion) sckt. 468 mobo w/ AGP slot and only 2 mem. slots

these are parts he has already purchased and received. how does that system check out so far for a gamer on a budget, he asked me to ask you guys?

My friend got a new cat today it has:

1 Tail
2 Eyes
4 legs
2 ears

All the parts are OEM too! plus it runs really fast what! What do you guys think.

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'rp$D

LOL! @ pr3d

Josh C,

In my book, that's not a budget system

R.I.P. Eddie Guerrero
"Viva La Raza"

budget compared to what he COULD biuld...thanks for no help

I drive an awesome 1972 Trans Am 455 Super Duty that gets about 8-10mpg, but thats a small price to pay for such awesomeness.

Sorry, but a 3.0GHz P4, 2GB RAM, & 6800GT 256MB is not a budget gaming system.

A Sempron64, 512MB RAM & Radeon 9600XT is a budget gaming system.

R.I.P. Eddie Guerrero
"Viva La Raza"

pr3d - could your friend have spent a little more and bought the 6 or 8 legged model??

Seems it would run faster and more efficiently.

How's it's memory??

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well as i said, it is relative budget. like spending 1 grand instead of 2 grand. nice sarcasm zenith.

I drive an awesome 1972 Trans Am 455 Super Duty that gets about 8-10mpg, but thats a small price to pay for such awesomeness.

As I see it that's quite a nice system but I think if he took an Athlon64 socket 939 instead he might have built a PCIe system using a much better board like for example an Asus A8N-E with otherwise the same components.

The Athlon64 3000+ Venice is a very nice CPU and a quite nice OCer. He might have been able to get that from 1800 to 2700MHz with some luck too.

I'm not totally sure about the prices but you may check that out easily I guess.

Building that system and using that socket and low cost board is a little bit like buying a ferrari with an old beatle engine inside.
I wish him luck because using a cheap board may cause a lot of problems because with using quite good components otherwise the main part that connects them all is a cheap one.
It doesn't have to cause problems but don't be too surprised if it does!

Why did he go with the socket 478 32bit and a 32bit pentium 4 3ghz motherboard and not the LGA-775 64bit motherboard with pci express and a 64bit pentium 4 3gz processor?

Now he is stuck and can't make the jump to 64bit when everything else will by the end of next year?

Not to mention the price diff between what he built and the LGA-775 motherboard and 64bit pentium 4 isn't that much diff in price at all.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 6800GT
SATA II 250gig 7200rpm 8mb cache
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI