I have an iMac core duo, and its a great machine, runs like a charm, but the performance in gaming isnt really very good so im planning to build upon a budget base unit from ebay, and by budget I mean very, very low budget.

I have searched and have come up with two systems:

450 WATT SILVER X-BLADE CASE
INTEL DUAL CORE E2180 5.6 GHZ DUAL CORE CPU
2048 MB DDR2 MEMORY
250GB SATA 8MB CACHE HDD
20X DUAL LAYER DVDRW DRIVE
ONBOARD SOUND / NETWORK
ATI 2400HD PCI EXPRESS CARD WITH HYPER MEMORY TO 1GB GFX MEM
6X USB 2 PORTS

I would probably plan to swap the ATI card with a cheap 8800GS from micro direct which is £80

Intel unit total: £298

My second system would be AMD:

Athlon 64 4200+X2
2GB ram
250GB Hard drive
20X DVDRW drive

Again im going to get the 8800 to put in it.

AMD unit total: £285

What computer would give me the best performance?

Thanks for any help.

EDIT: Just to clarify, this rig is purely going to be windows as I already have my iMac for OSX

If I were you, I would go for the Intel build.
But I really hope that you meant 1.6GHz, not 5.6GHz. To overclock the Intel Dual Core E2180 to 5.6GHz would be either impossible, or would need such expensive cooling systems that it would cost way in excess of $5000.

If indeed the processor is 1.6GHz, I should think that you need a slightly faster CPU to run the more modern games.

The 8800GS is a good idea, although some of the older Geforce 79xx cards run faster and are just as cheap. I don't think you will be needing Direct X 10 any time soon... However, the older graphics cards tend to be hard to find, and some people are still selling them at their original price .

Yeah the intel rig is just probably some idiot on ebay trying to convince people who dont know much that its really good, but yeah I agree with the GFX issue, 79xx cards are reallly rare to find now and they often go for like £100 upwards, I guess I could check ebay.

EDIT: Looked on eBay, and saw a Core 2 Duo upgrade kit, so I could build a rig of this spec for around the same price as the other rigs:

Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 2.2GHz
2GB PC5300 RAM
40GB HD
20X DVD Burner
420W Trust Power supply
Either a 7950GT or an 8800GS

That rig comes to around £270/280

Would that rig be ok to run games such as WoW, CnC3 and RA3 when it comes out?

If you're building a gaming rig, go for the fastest GPU first and foremost. The AMD rig with the 8800 is way better than the Intel with a Radeon 2400.

The ebay offer doesn't look bad, but really, an 8800 Geforce will still smoke any 7-series.

Check out these sites for some info:
Tom's VGA charts
The Best Cards for the Money: May 2008

And yes, a rig like that will EASILY be able to play all those games.

Well, thanks syna, I was going to upgrade the intel rig and put an 8800 in it aswell, the only reason I was leaning toward that is generally for upradability, as with the intel one I could upgrade to a C2D once I have the money, so, overall if I were to buy one pre built, I should go for the AMD rig?

EDIT: Ive just read that Toms hardware guide, and its basically saying that the 8800GS is simply a bottlenecked 8600GT, would it be better to just save money and get an 8600GT for half the price? Im only going to play WoW and RTS games, so would that be a better option?

But, I could also get a ATI radeon x1950Pro, so again would that be better for my price range, as the ATI card can be had for like £50.

It actually says the 8800GS is a crippled 8800GT, not an 8600GT. So the 8800GS will still be way more powerful than any of the 8600 series, AFAIK. However, Geforce models ending with "GS" are usually the least powerful of its class, for example, the 7900GS is the least powerful of the 79xx. Therefore, I still think that the top end 79xx cards as well as the better Radeon x1950 cards would probably deliver the same, if not better, performance than the 8800GS. But if you can afford it, as Synaesthesia said, get the fastest GPU, like the Geforce 8800 GT or GTS.

But anyway for RTS games, I play lots of them too (including Age of Empires III at highest graphics settings, Battle for Middle-Earth II at highest graphics settings, etc), and even on my weaker 7900GS (which has around the same performance as a 8600 GTS) graphics card, there is little or no lag. So I don't think there will be any problem with your build.


As for Intel vs AMD, I generally prefer Intel (for no reason in particular), but you can choose whichever one that you prefer. Try looking at benchmarks and whatever to figure out which one has more performance for the value. But as the NVidia website says, the graphics card is far more important in many things than the CPU.

Like he said, the 8800GS is closer to an 8800GT than an 8600...It has the same architecture but with a 192-bit bus.

The 8600 has a 128-bit bus like most mid-range cards, and the 8800GT and x1950 Pro both have a 256-bit bus. Both the X1950 and 8800GS are considerably faster than the 8600GT/GTS series, but they need more power, they both have 6-pin pci-x power inputs, the 8600 doesn't.

Another good place for review is Newegg.

Thanks for all your help, After looking on ebay ive basically seen that I can make a core 2 duo rig with a x1950 for about £250, do im gonna go with that, because im on a tight budget and basically want a cheap rig that performs well, I dont think WoW will tax the x1950 much at all, so im gonna get that because theyre like £42 on eBay.

Geforce 7 series as well as the X1 series are starting to show their age. Look for a 9600 from Nvidia, or an HD3850 from ATI. Both are relatively cheap now.

Once I get enough money, I would look towards either a 9600GT, 9800GTX, or 9800GX2. 9600GTs are really cheap, I found an eVGA 9600GT for $130 after rebate. 9800GTX cards are pretty expensive, around $320, and 9800GX2's are insane, best you can buy, costing over $550.