Hi All, I am building a new system which will be for general purposes, and also a modest gaming machine. I was wondering if the ASUS M2n68 board paired with a AMD Athlon x2 7750+ Black Edition and a 9800GTX would do a decent job? I'm not an expert at O/C but I believe its faily simple using the said CPU. I was also wondering about going down the 64bit Vista route, I have resisted Vista so far, and will have a spare XP PC anyway. But for Directx 10 gaming theres no other way. Is 64 bit Vista ok for gaming? Thanks in anticipation of any help
Vista is no worse for gaming than XP is, if anything, it's better. However, there are other reasons why some still prefer XP over Vista (me included), usually the problems with windows-related programs not functioning correctly. Overclocking the X2 7750 will be impossible with that board as it doesn't have the right chipset. Ultimately, if you are intending to overclock, the Core 2 Duo E5200 will be a much better idea as when overclocked, it obliterates the X2 7750.
Hi, thanks for your input, I know you need Vista to play the latest games in DirectX 10, my question was is 64bit Vista ok for games? I'm not a serious overclocker, but I had read a little about the 7750+ Black Edition having an unlocked Multiplyer so it was easy to O/C, plus it only costs £65 as opposed to £130 for the Intel cpu.
Er, the E5200 is £60, it's actually less than the X2 7750. Additionally the unlocked multiplier for AMDs is a bit of a con, as the actual CPUs are bound to a very low clock speed anyway. Vista 64 is fine for gaming, it has compatibility with some older games, but not too many these days.
Thanks for your advice, I've decided not to bother with Vista atall, I have just downloaded the Beta of Windows 7 and I'm gonna have a play with that instead. I may wait a while before I build my new pc.
Quite impressed so far with Windows 7 64bit beta, far more responsive than Vista, installed in less than 20 mins. Still mooching around, AVG worked straight off, IE seems fine, needed a flash player update but only took a min. Not sure if I'm running in SLI though. Still playing. AMD FX-55 MSI K8Nsli 2.5 Gig Kingston PC3200 dual channel 74 Gb Raptor 2x7900gt
Been checking out what you said about the e5200, its not actually a Core 2 duo, its a dual core Pentium, I believe they are different?
The E5200 is labelled a Pentium, but it's a Core 2 Duo underneath, not a Pentium D. They label the cheap Core 2s Pentiums, the ones with less cache. It's still 50% faster than a 3.4Ghz Pentium D and as fast as a 3Ghz Athlon X2 on the older AM2 architectures.
