E6600
P5B Deluxe
MSI 1900XT
2 x 320GB Seagate SATAII
2 GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 P6400
NEC-3550a
Antec TP-II 550w
Cooler Master Centurion

I plan on using this computer for around three years. Bueno?

 

Cool setup except for the intel piece. True gamers use AMD.

 

I'd prefer AMD + nVidia.

nVidia SLI > ATI crossdresser

 

I originally was set on something with a socket 939, but I've been hearing good things about the Core Duo...

 

X6800 > E6600

Im an AMD guy but from what i hear these duo processors are pretty bad ass

 

The X6800 rocks the socks off AMD. But the other ones are on par with AMD's upper echelon.

939 boards and chips will be coming down even more now that AMD has the new AM2 socket out. Within 6months we'll start hearing more about quadcore doritios which will have much more cheesy goodness than todays cool ranch chips.


ps. it's Core2 Duo. h: details

 

X6800 is badass, but I'm not too into gaming to spend $1200 for that piece.....should i reconsider and just stick with something 939.....around the area of a 4400+ since you guys are telling me all this crazy AMD shit is coming out?

 

I just built a similar new system:

AMD X2 3800+
MSI K9N nForce 550
X1900XT
2gb G. Skill DDR2 800
22" 1680x1050 LCD - awesome
Cooler Master Centurion 5 from my previous rig

Processor speed doesn't seem to be the limiting factor in modern games, so I just went with the cheapest dual-core processor out. I'm still running a WD IDE 7200rpm 250gig drive - this is my biggest bottleneck. I probably need to get a new SATA drive soon, but my old 250gig works just fine so I didn't want to fork out the extra cash.

Runs FEAR and HL2: Episode 1 at 1680x1050 with all the eye-candy turned on without any hiccups so far. I lub it.

 

Ahhhh wow. For now, my main concern is that I want to run BF2 flawlessly and with minimum map loading times. If I were to run something along the the lines of an AMD Dual-Core, I would replace it alot probably less than two years.

 

The Core 2's are great processors, but on the low end they still don't have the price/performance ratio of the X2. Intel kicks AMD's FX series' butt right now on the high-end, but the recent AMD price drops have kept them VERY competetive on the low end.

The E6600 normally runs about $370, vs. the $150 I payed for the x2 3800+. With the $220 I saved, I can upgrade to another $150 processor in 2 years and have much better performance than the e6600 provides today. Since I don't need the extra performance today (and probably not for a while), I'd rather save the cash and wait for something better to come along. I went with the AM2 socket, so I should have a clean upgrade path for at least a couple of years.