building a new system and need help

[willcgi]

Im a graphic designer that uses, photoshop to Maya

I want to invest in ddr2 667mhz 2 gb ram but dont know what type to get seeing that there are like 50 types that vary inprice from 250-600$

also as for a CPU i dont know wether I should invest in a Prescott 660 or an athlon 64 X2 4400 or a DUAL core CPU intel or amd.....


can anyone help... As for the rest of the components I have a good idea on which mother board and which graphics card..

my budget is 2000-2500$ CDN



please advise

 

[Zach_the_Evil]

I want to invest in ddr2 667mhz 2 gb ram but dont know what type to get seeing that there are like 50 types that vary inprice from 250-600$

Don't really know much about RAM, but I hear OCZ and Corsair are pretty good RAM makers, good OC, etc. I personally would go with value RAM to save money, but you could, if you are looking to get all the performance you can, go for some high end Corsair or OCZ RAM.

I also think that DDR2 RAM will NOT work with AMD systems.

also as for a CPU i dont know wether I should invest in a Prescott 660 or an athlon 64 X2 4400 or a DUAL core CPU intel or amd.....

An Athlon 64 X2 4400 is dual core. I think I'd opt for the AMD dual core system.

can anyone help... As for the rest of the components I have a good idea on which mother board and which graphics card..

Which motherboards and which graphics card?

my budget is 2000-2500$ CDN

Which is $1,700 to $2,100 American, based upon some currency convertor website. This is my personal note....

 

[pickxx]

Photoshop will use a dual core.....but Maya will use it A LOT!!!

Get an X2....4200+
2GB of DDR400 RAM....
A Chaintech VNF4 board....
Video card...get somehing with dual outs...like a 6600.
HDD......I dont know what you want. i woudl say get two SATA drives and RAID them and a single dirve for a boot drive.
Case....who cares?
PSU....a 350W enermax or Fortron Source(FSP) would be fine...the cheapest 350W one will work for these brands.

 

[SidVicious]

Definetly go for a Dual Core Athlon 64 on this one, Intel CPUs are no match for AMD CPUs. Don't believe the hype about DDR2 as it can't match the lower latency of DDR at comparable bandwidth, beside, AMD CPUs won't use DDR2 until Socket M2 is launched next year, leaving enough time for DDR to mature.

Here are some benchmarks that include photo editing softwares where Dual Core CPUs from both manufacturers face off :
Digit Life
X-bit Labs

 

[Rugger]

M2 is supposed to hit the streets in Jun/Jul - not really a full year...