Alright, so I'm trying to build a buddy of mine a decent, though not overly done gaming rig for a decent price. What i'm really not sure of is where to go for a Mobo, processor (looking at AMDs primarily, compatability is a bonus, obviously), and GFX card. For GFX, it'll probably end up being a GeForce, but nothing too over the top A rig I priced out included a GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 . Any suggestions on where to go? The rig I priced out, with everything that I'm sure was overdone in the way of performance was $870.92 without a case, and included an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ with the combo 2GB ram deal/mobo with an ASUS M2R32-MVP Socket AM2 AMD 580X CrossFire ATX . Now i've never gone to buy solo before, usually have assistance from my brother, but I could use some tips, etc. Thanks.

What's his budget? What kind of games does he want to play?

Pretty much anything. Oblivion, FEAR, WoW, shit like that. As for budget, he's not sure. It's more-or-less his entire christmas gift in like, deposits that should add up to close to ~1500 or so, but he doesn't want to spend nearly that much. Pretty much the 7-900 range is what he's hoping.

Does he plan on playing DX10 games? If so I would wait till more DX10 cards come out and will probably cost less too. Also, go with a C2D CPU, since those just piss all over the AMD dual core ones.

linkz plz?

Core 2 Duo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList....mp;name=LGA+775

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115003


this one being one of the best deals around. The CPU can be overclocked to 5GHz.

Hmm.. I'll definitely look into it. Thanks. Any suggestions on mobo/gfx cards?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813131142

that mobo.

ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820231085 <-- cheaper

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820145588 <-- more expensive and probably much better.

GFX card.

While the 7600GT is good, this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814130056 is much better and only costs $60 more. It should allow him to get some great performance on new games.