I agree here, PC Power & Cooling Silencer is the best, can't mistake that. 610 EPS12V with 49A on the 12v Single Rail for $155 is a great choice, and the warranty is real, they fix it. They test and brand their supplies @ 50°C too.
DFI Infinity II M2 SLI is only $90 right now, free shipping too, if the urge for AM2 overclocking or budget builds comes to mind. Just makes a budget build better. The 4600+ is the best price/performance out there right now, not to mention the 12x multiplier lets you hit 3Ghz @ 250 on the FSB and maintain the RAM at full-speed. I had a 3Ghz San Diego 939 Single Core for the last 6 months until I sold it recently, I was really left out of all the goings-on in the benchmarked world, especially with concern to the 8800 series cards and any overclocking discussion. The sad thing is that I did this on the bundled cooler and the PSU that came with my $35 case, and it was rock-freaking-solid at that clock, for $80 it was a lot of processor, now it is only $62.
I realize WoW can be run on really low end systems, and I concede there COULD be a bottleneck elsewhere. I recently increased from 1gb to 2gb of DDR RAM without a noticeable improvement besides load screens, so the last likely culprit is my A643200+ 939 processor. I know it's not much of a processor, but I'd be surprised if WoW was significantly impacted by it (rather than the video card). I even upgraded my power supply to a 550w modular unit to ensure that was'nt the issue in power delivery to the video card. Video drivers are the latest catalyst.
1680x1050 is a lot of resolution. I would love to hear from someone with a similar PC to mine, but a recent tom's article (sorry I don't recall the title) seemed to suggest to me that my A643200 would be a minimal bottleneck for this video card. Most benchmarks are based on a solo player with only CPU enemies running around, multiplayer is a lot more demanding (also with Ventrilo running in the background).
I'll investigate "windowed mode". I'm just running whatever mode is default currently AFAIK. I thought windowed mode referred to running the game in a smaller window than full screen? I would think that would make it run a lot faster if anything...Modular PSU isn't a good thing, neither is split rails, especially at 550w, but it should work anyway, despite being a bad idea in theory.
Your CPU is definitely limiting you. Get a $62 San Diego 1MB lvl2 Cache 4000+ and a Zalman 7000B Cu/Alu for $30, I had this setup running @3Ghz for the last 6 months and it was fast. Vista even gave me a 4.5 for the processor
. Gaming was insanely good. The Dual-Core s939 are on sell-out at Newegg, I was really debating whether to pick one up. On eBay there is a dual core 3800+ 939 out for $77 and $8 shipping: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280111081537&ru=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ebay.com%3A80%2Fsearch%2Fsearch.dll%3Ffrom%3DR40%26satitle%3D280111081537%26fvi%3D1Windowed mode is worse because the video card is forced to keep a large chunk of memory dedicated to the desktop, instead of allowing it to be cached away. I wouldn't do less than an overclocked 7900/7950 (NOT dual card, just the single 7950), 550-600mhz for the core OC seems good 512MB of ram is best, these are available for ~$150 if you watch ebay, ~$130 for the 256MB versions.
In fact, nevermind, you are running AGP still, switch to something different, sell your card and you should have enough scratch to get a dual-core AM2 2.4Ghz 4600+ and that DFI Infinity II Ultra/SLI I mention above, AGP cards/systems cost a lot more than a solid PCI-E setup, especially now that there is a lot of nice DDR2-800 for $100-150 in 2x 1GB kits.
That AM2 is the 65w version btw.
@ Cleeve:
So, you will take a minimum system and chuck a GTX at it?
Logic behind this (besides the "cpu-limited" argument)?
Maybe $40 is better spent on the processor and then use a 8800GTS 320MB to make it a mid-range system for $XXX less than your "mid-range" system?? AKA a $715 system?? I know you are just trying a little experiment with what you have around, but I can't understand how comparing a bottom-rung system with a graphics card of almost equal cost to the entire remainder of the system will help anyone but those silly enough to buy/build such a system. And then you will hand down your usual "this doesn't work" conclusion, prompting all the Intel Fanboys to continue with renewed zeal in the forums spouting that the AMD budget solutions are indeed worthless. (I am planning a 4600+ overclock on my DFI board when it comes Friday, so we will see how crap it really is for clocking, maybe my 3Ghz San Diego is a better clocker than the standard AMD)
(Edit: WTF: http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/29/geforce_8800_needs_the_fastest_cpu/page3.html, I recall reading this, an FX-60 was used. My $62 3Ghz San Diego could have easily helped out there, why do only the Intel setups get overclocked? Not to mention that nobody, NOBODY in their right mind would force a GTX into an older system, yet a lot of us would like to know what we would get from an 8800GTS 320MB on our slightly aged 3Ghz (or otherwise) K8 systems. We really, really need a best price/performance series and most depreciated Hardware at-the-moment update, like we have going for the Video cards, I like that series, provides useful information.)
Maybe 3 installments is OK, but perhaps a tighter range could be produced for everyone's respective wallets if you grabbed the actual best value/most depreciated parts and threw them on for each step, instead of a cursory dismissal of them for your own personal reasons. Perhaps I just can't relate to your way of thinking, as I seem to be taken aback daily by your articles.
For example a jump to a low-end $150 7900 series and $20-40 jump to the 4200+ or 4600+ (Making the total system cost 575 with the 4200+ and 595 with the 4600+) would make a real budget system, for $70 the system will perform much better for only 13% more money the performance is much higher than 13% (totally specious reasoning here, but you haven't provided the facts to disprove me, so we will never know 😛). Also the system would have a longer useful life without buying parts too far depreciated in value for the long term, always buy the best price/performance, or regret it later. You can't unload the 3800+ to upgrade, but you can use the 4600+ for only $40 more. If it was a real budget system, use a single-core. Put the difference into $80-100 for 2GB of Dual Channel DDR2-800, only $10-30 more than your 1GB, that is really going to help the overall performance of the system.
I know you are just doing your business, perhaps my questions/comments/suggestions are more geared toward a best price/performance analysis.
On rechecking I see that you chose a pretty good budget build, the only thing I did better was to find a $120 7900GS, luck out on a $5 Zalman NIB at the second-hand store and clock it to 650mhz core with a voltmod, thoroughly trouncing all the 8600 series and putting myself out of range for an upgrade until I can afford the 8800 320, there is really nothing from the $150-$270 price range that is worth buying unless you run super high-res.
I also traded on the power-supply and case, the PSU is a 470 PC Power Silencer ($100) and the case is a super-cheapo($20), I plan to handle it with kid gloves and maybe upgrade to Cooler-Master or Lian-Li as budget permits (this is the only area where you can skimp to the bottom and retain all your performance
).The DFI SLI I only chose because it was actually $4 more than the Ultra because of free shipping. They are the same board if you want to solder or conductive pen the "SLI functionality" back onto the Northbridge by closing 2 contacts, but I figured it was smarter to just buy the real SLI for $4.
I am still not convinced of Dual-Core viability or necessity just yet for the gamer, I would have gone Core2 Solo if such a product had existed, just for the pure overclockability of the system and the pure gaming (and single threaded application) performance it would have afforded me. But Intel is too smart for me, they knew that the gaming benchmarks would show the Dual-Core to be unneeded by 95% of the games/gamers out there, and thus would be losing the price difference to all the gamers who knew better. Besides the thermal envelope of one core would have allowed even better clocks and price/performance and would seriously put the dual-core market at risk.
Well, same old Intel story, pushing tech we don't really need onto the market, at least dual-core is useful outside of gaming, unlike HT and Netburst and Rambus.
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