A question regarding graphics cards/my new PC build.

[Kabutos]

The guide updates every month, it's fine as long as the current version isn't more than 30 days apart from the last update. He should save up for a higher budget because Sandy Bridge is worth it. If not, he should go with a Phenom II 955 BE and a GTX 460.

The prices are based off of Newegg, which isn't very helpful when building outside of the US/Canada. If you look at the price of a 768mb 460 on Scan, it's £115 which is about $186; $50 more than what the guide says. The price of an X4 955 is £89, which is about $140. It's even worse with RAM/PSUs.

whats with 4 and 8 gigs being the only contestants in the great ram debate?

I myself have 6 gigs of triple channel, something to think about.

Unless your set on the MOBO ect.

1366 is pretty much phased out by this point so not many people are going triple channel anymore.

EDIT:

I managed to come up with a build for £420 with a case with 4 or 5 case fans, AMD Phenom II X6 six core 2.8GHz processor, 4 gigs DDR3 RAM, Radeon 5770, motherboard that supports Crossfire, all it doesn't take into account for is the power supply, so just stick that in as well and it'll be under £500. Prices for everything is based on eBuyer.com.

You can save a lot without any performance decrease by going X4 instead of X6.

 

[Xhoyl]

I use an ATI HD Radeon 5850 with 8 Gigs of RAM, and the thing runs like a dream. Granted, most of the computer was already together for a really good deal, I just bought the video card and a better power supply.

 

[StBishop]

Yeah it chokes it so much that this page i barely loading
/sarcasm

In real world situations 9/10 things you do won't require that extra bump. The difference in gaming is beyond minimal, hell even the difference between a ssd and and platter disk drive would be better for most games than the extra ram.

And before you calim im not knowledgeable enough or can't possibly know this, all my local friends bought pc's around the same time as me, simmilar specs between us, and iv used all their machines and the only noticeable difference was when i fucked around in photoshop. Sure to purists who can tell the difference between 59 fps and 60fps it might make a difference, but to the rest of us it really doesn't matter.

I wish I'd understood that when building my PC.

I need to get an SSD as it's really the only way to, cost effectively, improve my PC.

Sure, I could get more RAM or a better GPU but the gains/$ are less.