This was posted on another forum I frequent and I was wondering how it compared and peoples opionions.







With the drop in amd prices

I just made An Ultimate Budget Machine for CS.

I Have 100 Frames Constant in CS, 100 Frames Normal in Source(cl_smooth 0,mat_dxlevel Cool 39 at lowest (Smokes) I found it still really playable.

AMD Athlon 64 3000 939 $77
Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 $75 (Can get Cheaper Motherboard IF wanted saves about 15 bucks)
CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 $90 (Can get generic ram and save 15-20 bucks)
3D Fuzion 7300LE 128MB $49 (Optimized Driver, also sharing 256 MB system RAM)
Western Digital Caviar SE 80GB Harddrive $43
Lite-On DVD ROM Drive $17

You can choose the Case and PSU, I paid about 50 bucks for a combo.

So depending On The Case and If you Cheap Out On mobo/ram
You can get a CS and Source Gaming Rig For $320-400 Respectively

wow cheap...

It looks fine for what it is. For sure the amd chip's are going to be a bargain once the conroe gets fully rolling.

If you already have and amd setup then upgrading to a nice chip will be very doable. The only equipment on that list I'm not familiar with is the gfx card, the rest is good quality.

would that setup work right if you replaced the AMD with a intel core 2 duo T7400 or 2600

you would also have to replace the mobo since the core 2 duo has a different pin out than the amd(not the same socket).

I'm guessing you are using the AGP Aperture Size as the said Shared system ram? AAS only helps with holding textures and provides a write combineing area, other than that its useless, well it was good to use when gfx cards had 16-32-64 megs of ram and may increase your performance on a 128 meg card by 2-3 fps. but on a 256-512 card the AAS almost never gets touched by textures.