New gaming system for around 1500?

[SocceRich20]

I need to piece together a system for roughly $1500. I will be recycling my Silverstone TJ03 case, as well as my hard drives. Everything else is going to be new. I use my system to run dual 2005fpw LCD's, and I do a lot of multitasking with school work, I like to play games, and have all around high performance. At the moment I'm running an X2 3800+ on an Asus A8N SLi Premium motherboard, with 2GB of Kingston HyperX PC4000 RAM and an eVGA 7800GTX video card. A friend wants to buy the system off me, so I plan on keeping my case and hard drives, and using the cash and a little money I've had kicking around to put together a new system for around 1500. What would be your reccomendation as far as what parts to go with? I haven't kept up to date on Intel vs. AMD, ATI vs nVidia, Asus vs. Abit, RAM types and such, so I could definately use some input. I know a lot of new stuff has come out since I put this last system together, so I need the help of my old friends to tell me what the best parts to go with in my situation is these days.

Thanks in advance.

 

[MarcVenice]

For 1500$ a q6600, 8800gtx, p5k/ds3r, 4gb of ram and a aftermarket HSF should be doable, hell it should cost about 1000$. Going to overclock it or not ? How much of a gamer are you? 8800gtx is a lot of money, 8800gts 320mb is also a pretty good choice if you ask me and could save a lot of money. You probably need a new PSU as well, right? 520hx for 80$ at clubit.com. New OS too ? Vista 64x OEM for 100$ or so? And perhaps throw in a soundcard or something.

Do realize that your current OS is probably not going to work on a new mobo. Data storage drives will work just fine.

 

[SocceRich20]

I know ill need to reinstall my OS, i have multiple drives and will move my data to them and wipe one drive clean.

 

[MarcVenice]

Well what more do you need to know. Intel is top dog right now in the performance department, people in general seem to prefer the 8800's over the 2900xt, and both asus, gigabyte and abit have similar priced motherboards that perform nearly the same. All of them overclock pretty good if that's important to ya. It seems the p5k overclocks best though, but the gigabyte ds3 consumes less power.

 

[teclis1023]

I absolutely agree with MarcVenice. Unless you're a hardcore gamer, you can get by with a great system for a great price and still have the muscle to play next-generation games for a few years to come:

Q6600 Quad-Core Intel Processor ($260)
4GB DDR2-800 RAM ($180)
eVGA 680i Motherboard ($199)
8800GTS 320MB nVidia Display Adapter ($279)
1 320GB SATA-II Hard Drive ($80)
SATA DVD-RW Drive ($30)
Vista x64 Home Premium ($130)

This system here puts you under $1200, and you'll have a fantastic system for just about anything you can think of. Think of that system like a BMW or an Acura...it's not quite a Ferrari, but it's got enough power to get you around in style.

 

[SocceRich20]

Thanks, Ill look into that.