£1500 Gaming rig Spec Please

[watlinguk]

Hello there folks.I have come onto this computer forum for guidance mainly and to get some peice of mind before i order all my parts tommorow.

I have basically £1500 to spend on a gaming tower. I have a monitor,mouse,keyboard,speakers and only need the tower + Operating System(im thinking vista x64)

I want to be able to play alot of the newer games with max settings and on 1650 resolution (CSS,BF2/2142,COD4,UT3) and want mainly brute power from this machine.

My first impressions of spending this money was to put it towards TWO ati 3870x2's. I know the driver is out yet but will be soon so do you think this would be a powerful choice? I was also thinking of raid0ing two 150gb Raptors. Again there are cheaper options but i need to spend ALL this money for certain reasons and dont want to scrimp on parts.

I hope you nice folks here can spec me a great fast compatible system for me as i will be ordering from the UK tommorow x)

Cheers

 

[worshipme]

Firstly, as it is for gaming, then Vista 64 bit is probably the best solution. As for getting two Raptors in RAID 0. Do you understand that buying Raptors will NOT improve gaming performance and frame rates, only loading times. Also there are many issues and problems that come with a RAID setup. TBH I think the money would be better spent elsewhere. I'll start. These parts are from Scan.co.uk and Ebuyer.com as I think they are the cheapest sites:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=736334 - This is one of Intel's new 45nm CPUs. It can overclock up to 4GHz!! I chose a dual over a quad because most games aren't threaded for quads so high end dual cores often outperform them. If you are going to be using the PC for other things such as video editing etc, then I would recommend the Q6600: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=702631
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=669219-Motherboard. This supports Crossfire, DDR3 and PCI-E 2.0. These boards and the P35s are much better for overclocking than any other Nvidia chipset. However if you want SLI support...
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=657363- If you're going to spend £1500 on a gaming rig, then you might as well go with DDR3. Get 4GB if you feel you need it.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=494552- TBH, I really do not recommend you waste £300 pounds on dual raptors. A nice 7200RPM drive is quite sufficient.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=719750- Now I recommend you buy either this card, or like you said the HD 3870X2 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/140437which costs more but offers around 15% higher peformance. The other option would be to SLI two 8800GTshttp://www.ebuyer.com/product/134393 which would give the best performance and would cost around £300 for the two cards. These benchmarks should help you decide: http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html And this one for SLI and Crossfire comparisons: http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_sli2007.html
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=527300- OS. Like I said earlier, 64 bit so that all 4GB can be utilized.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/118268- Perfect gamer's case, but if you're going to go with SLI or Crossfire, you may want something like this: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/108604
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=480705-And lots of people seem to recommend these for the CPU cooler.
And last but most certainly not least, the PSU: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/133812- Modular design so that you can leave out the cables you don't need which improves airflow.
Here is an article with the 3870X2 benchmarks:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/28/ati_r680_the_rage_fury_maxx_2/

 

[GhostGT]

If you look at my signature, I spend apprx. $1500 altogether for the parts to my computer, and its a pretty sweet rig.

For the processor, I'd recommend a Q6600 but some have suggested Dual Core CPUs since most games are designed to work best on dual core CPUs.

For the hard drive, the raptor will be great, but why not just get one raptor and another huge storage drive? Like a 500gb Western Digital or Seagate to store music, pics, files, etc.

As for the video card, the two ATI's will be good IMO, but I'm an NVIDIA guy, so I'd wait for the new 9000 series to come out in a few weeks (I think?) and would spend my money one one great card.

I might be able to do a sample build for you once I get back home.

Cheers,

Chris