It doesn't make much sense to do any major upgrades at the moment. As Chris said, the M2 is coming soon, which could mean another upgrade. The thing to remember with current AMDs is that lower latencies are more important than memory bandwidth, so as things stand, the M2 running on DDR2 memory isn't very mouth-watering. A slight twist is that the M2 processors can apparently run DDR1, DDR2 and potentially DDR3 when it's available on a stick. So while the socket for M2 (a new version of the 940-pin array by the sound of it) is new, it should hang around for a while. When M2 comes around is another matter - probably before the summer.
There's also apparently new graphics cards coming out in Q1 of 2006. ATi are supposed to have a new one out in January/Feb, and nVidia are rumoured to have the G71 core out around the same time, though neither have given any solid statements as such.
With this in mind, I'll spec a PC as things stand - it's up to you whether it's worth it or not.
All parts are in stock, and all prices are from
[www.overclockers.co.uk], and are inclusive of VAT.
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ - £360.67
Motherboard: DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR EXPERT - £152.69
RAM: OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2 - £205.57
Graphics card: Sapphire ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB - £387.69
Note, I would have opted for an nVidia 7800GTX 512, as they're easily the best at the moment, however there's been no stock in the UK that I'm aware of since the launch week. ATi Crossfire is still little more than a pipe-dream, despite motherboard availablity, however the X1800XT should cope fine with all games for a little whileMonitor: Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW 24" Widescreen - £681.44
Hard drive 1: Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM 2x Bundle - £234.88
Note, for use in a RAID 0 array, as the boot and program driveHard drive 2: Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 400GB - £165.97
DVD-RW: NEC ND4550 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer (Black)- £31.14
Floppy & Media drive: Mitsumi FA 404M 7in1 USB 2.0 Floppy & Media Drive (Black) - £16.39
CPU cooler: Zalman CNPS9500-LED Aero Flower - £41.07
Sound card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music - £91.06
Case: Antec P180 SPCR Advanced Super Midi Tower (Black) - £111.57
Power supply unit: Seasonic S12 500W Silent ATX2.0 - £89.24
Extras (parts you may already have, but I'll stick some choices down anyway):
Keyboard & mouse combination: Logitech diNovo Laser Media Desktop - £123.32
Mouse mat: Icemat - Black 2nd Edition - £23.98
Speakers: Logitech Z-5500 THX Certified 5.1 - £210.56
All in all, at £2,910.85 we're over budget, by quite a bit, but I'm sure you'll not want to upgrade everything - hard drives for instance you might be happy with, as with your speakers. This lets you choose. In my honest opinion, that is the best stock system reasonable money can buy.
Instead of the 4400 X2 CPU, you could go for a single core Opteron 146, which overclock to FX-57 speeds with ease. They cost around £150. It all depends on what you want to do with your PC.
//Edit: after Ian Woollam's post ([
]), I've swapped out the Crucial RAM for some nice OCZ.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2005 11:46PM by gav.