XS Official Rig Building Guide 2009

[Bobsama]

Bobsama, your budget rig is much appreciated. However, this is the XS Rig Building Guide, not the Poor-Man's Rig Building Guide.

It represents the no-compromise hardware for every price range. I would prefer if people would recommend different options for items in the same price range.

Also, the Sub $1,100 rig has been added for both AMD and Intel, do let me know if they are ok.

Perkam

An HD4670 is hardly a crippled card. It'll do fine for most gamers. And what are the compromises of an E5200 instead of an E7400? Overclocking solves them all. The only difference between Wolfdale-2M and Wolfdale-3M is 1MB cache--there's not a single compelling feature, outside of raw clockspeed. 300MHz and 1MB cache (let's be generous and call that a 2% boost in performance, the cache that is). At most a 14% boost in performance for 64% increase in price. Again, able to be mended by overclocking. Besides, there's plenty of people here who are "poor". Do realize that a good portion of enthusiasts are high school or college students who can't afford a $1100 "mid-budget" rig.