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All right the budget is app. $700 tax included. Primary purpose: Gaming.

Parts needed are a Mobo, CPU, 1 GB Ram, Vid Card, Case.

Being used we have the keyboard, mouse, monitor, and Hard drives (HDs will be updated later.)

Requirements: SATA, Onboard LAN, Sound, AMD 64, PCI-E, SLI/"Crossfire" compatible (for later possible upgrade).

Current thoughts:

CPU - AMD 64 3400 looks likely to be the bang for the buck per benchmarks and pricewatch. However, is the 754 or the 939 on it's way out? The 3400 is a 754 supporting DDR400, correct?

Mobo - DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI? Looks to have all the requirments and sits for around $100 on Newegg last time I looked.

Mem - What performance difference is there between 1 and 2 sticks? Outside that, I've personally always bought off brand memory and have never had a problem in 6 different system builds.

Case - Going for teh cheap here... may even just upgrade power supply in current case. Waiting to here if it's regular ATX. Either way power supply and Case options on the low for a system like this?

Video - Was looking at the vanilla 6800... is this SLI capable? Better suggestions in the ~$200 range?

EDIT: Need a copy of Windows XP Pro as well.

Thanks!!!

HardOCP did a comparison between SLI'd vanilla 6800's and a single 6800GT and found the single card to be faster in most if not all cases. I'll dig up the link, but I don't think you want to go that route.

edit: here it is: http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzkz

So my recommendation is that for the same money (less, even) you can get a single 6800GT for the performance of the SLI, and add another 6800GT later.

Hmm agreed, but SLI was merely a thought as an upgrade path. Given the budget, is the price jump from $219 to $274 worth it?

I think so, because down the road you'll have a video card worth doing SLI with, and not all 6800 vanillas are SLI-equipped, IIRC

With the board and cpu and card you have picked out..and xppro..your budget is going to get a bit strained Unless youre planning on updating to the dual core chip with that board then xphome will do the trick for 70 bucks less. Dont skimp on the psu as well..all that nice hardware will thank you. Especially the power hungry new gen card

$700 is too tight for the things you want, I would especially caution against trying to use the bottom tier of powersupplies.

I am in the camp of thinking SLI is a gimmick, but its your choice.

a 939 3000+, winxp pro, and a gig of ram will run about $400 leaving $300 for motherboard, video card, and case-powersupply.

What's the tax rate? It really looks like a tight budget.

Things are always "on their way out"...
Socket 754 is on its way out. Even 939 is going to be Sempr0n only next year when M2 arrives. But the action is on 939 now.

On socket 939 systems, you need 2 sticks to enable dual channel operation for more bandwidth.

How does this build grab you. Ditch the optical and flopppy and you're at $700. Probably going to have to downgrade a little to fit XP in there somewhere though.

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