My answers:

1: Alienware - they look good and are supposedly good. They are american though, and i'm in the UK.

2: (800FSB)Intel® P4 EXTREME EDITION CPU 2MB CACHE @ 3.4GHZ w/ HT (+$600.00) Thats got a huge cache on it, I think a difference would be obvious. Have you cosiderded an AMD64?

3: You can't overdo RAM. Get DDR or (I think its better, not sure) DDR 400.

4: If you have enough RAM and cache, it shouldn't be noticable. They're cheap now, I would buy around 40Gb at least! 

5: Not sure, probably the ATI.

6: 'Cos the other one does DVD's (Films) as well. If you like them, get one, but in 5 years I've never used mine. Get the 52X.

I think all of that stuff is correct,s earch the net for reviews etc......... Good Luck!
Dan G

P.s. Why not build your own? lol...... 

1. Consider ordering from a local supplier who will custom build and maintain your machine close by home.

The advantage here is that if something goes wrong, you pop it into his shop for a quick fix and pick it up as soon as its ready, no sending the system away for lengthy repairs.

You need to explain to him EXACTLY what you want and don't except substitutes, if you don't feel right about the dealer... go somewhere else. You need a sympathetic supplier, preferably an enthusiast who knows how to build and set up a performance machine.
Look for an established small supplier who offers personalised service.

2. Seriously consider an AMD 64 bit machine.

3. 1 gig of RAM is sufficient, it's the quality of the RAM that is really important, you'll want RAM that can be set to very fast timings for best performance.

4. A faster hard drive will load information slightly faster, it has very little if anything, to do with FPS.

5. Either of those video cards will offer good performance, however, certain manufacturers make special editions which have faster RAM installed on the card and the GPU and RAM timings are set higher by default. Selection of one of these "special" cards requires research.

6. DVD drives and burn capable drives are slower in general than the simple old CD ROM drive. the speed was limited to 52x when discs began shattering as faster drives were developed.

Ideally, the latest high quality DVD-CD multi-format burner should be purchased along with a fast DVD - CD ROM read only drive. Less painful burning operations are then able to be made Disc to Disc, using the pair of drives.

If you need a specification, just ask. Your main concern should be which chipset you intend on basing your system on. The chipset (mainboard) will determine the potential of the machine.

Good Luck.

The fast HDD are really only good if your running databases or websites. Using it as a server in other words.

Now that I think about it, you may even want to concider a motherboard with a PCI-Express slot instead of AGP. In a few years AGP will be out and PCX will be in.  The Geforce 6800 and 6600 as well as the Radeon X800 all have PCX versions.

The FX-53 is equivilant to an Intel P4 3.8ghz.

You've got a very nice set up there. Wish I had that kind of money to burn. 

Quote:

What's it my Mom keeps saying. "If you get a decent job and work hard, then you can get all that stuff."    I'm pretty lazy so hopefully that decent job entails something in the civil service. 

I'm a little surprised on such a high spec proposed machine, your going for the "Mid Range" 6800GT - An Ultra would be better and will certainly overclock to even greater speeds.....



HUH...........Plz explain?

Depends on which Ultra you go for, some don't O/Clock well, I have a friend who's 6800Ultra is overclocked and it certainly betters the overclocked 6800GT based machine I built for another friend a few weeks back....

Sry ,cbrown6775, I'd missed the Ultra in your updated specs......

Ultimately, forget about overclocking it for a good while yet, Doom3 running @ MAX settings on my friends 6800GT tells me theres little point in overclocking these beasties yet, nothing current I've seen seems to demand the extra performance. (And that includes running with 8xAnti alaising & 16 x Anisotropic filtering!)

Either way you look at it though, AMD will always be the enthusiasts first choice simply because of price.
AMD's are the current performers no doubt... But overclocking? I dont think you can clock much better than P4's still.

2.4's doing 3.6Ghz, 3.4's doing 5Ghz+ (ok thats excessive, but some people have done that).

Clocking P4's up to 275mhz FSB is pretty easy to do, and the performance gains on the cheaper chips is still awesome.  8)
But the top intels Vs AMD's arnt exactly bad in a match-up. Of the benchmarks I've come across, theres very frequently only about 10-15Fps between the two brands and even less than that in real world applications, I'd say that i am an enthusiast but if i can use a cpu that performs above average in games and out performs in terms of use for applications I would have to go with Intel.
Suffice to say, I'm not too keen on the prices !!!

As for a business side of view though you can do more work per cpu at once than an AMD and over the last 5-6 years they have been very stable where as AMD were finding there feet, give it another 5 years or so and I'd be very interested to see where AMD are.


Simply put my needs at the moment require me to listen to music have several applications running at once, be connected to my other machines and be able to burn a CD whilst having something spare rather than being able to play UT 03 at 100Fps.