[glebe digital]

Just specking this, looks like a good bang for little bucks.

AMD Phenom 9500 Quad Core 95watts AM2+ 4MB Cache 2200MHz
£133.30
ASUS M3A AMD 770 Socket AM2+ 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
£56.45
Antec TruePower Trio 550W PSU
£69.13
Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ 500GB SATAII Hard Drive
£59.50
Pny Quadro Fx 550/16xpci-express
£130.00
PCICASE Hyperline II Black/Silver ATX Tower Case
£21.98
Corsair 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory C5(5-5-5-18)
£79.99
Vista Ultimate x64Bit
£106.87

Total £657.22 inc vat


btw, the Quadro fx550 is a really nice card, got one here already and 'feels' better on work tasks than the gforce7800gt that I also have......good price too, and it's quiet.

Any thoughts on improvements?

[-Adrian]

So are Phenoms available in stores now?

[polynurb]

hi glebe,

speaking of phenom.. i think the time is not right to buy it. unfortuneatly.
You know of it`s "errata 298" in the L3 cache? it`s about 5-30% slower with the bugfix applied to it than what it should be. ouch. you can google " Phenom errata"

so i would recommend to wait for their next stepping, which will correct the bug.

In the meantime performance/price/overclockability champ is still the q6600
with G0/slacr stepping (the 95w version), imho. and they almost cost the same! ( as low as 200€ in some stores!)

If you want a small machine (maybe justa rendernode) check this board:

ASUS P5E-VM HDMI

it`s micro-Atx with onboard graphics (G35) and overcklocks like a atx one. (I just built 3 machines on it, and they run very well )

So i would get a q6600 and clock it to ~3ghz (easily possible), something that you certainly can`t do with the phenom

And if you can .. get the fx1700, it`s a series 8000 (dx10 , pxsh 4.0 etc...) chip with decent ram at an acceptable price.

compare here:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_11761.html

cheers,
Daniel

[glebe digital]

Cheers Daniel, that MB looks really good.

hmm...maybe the q6600 is better then, but I'll wait and see pricing on the 'fixed' phenomes.

[Becco_UK]

Intel look as though they have performance chips sewn up. Their Q6600 is nice but soon the new Q9300, Q9450 & Q9550 processors will be out - increased performance with less heat. When prices settle the Q9450 should be about the same price as the present Q6600.

[martgreg]

Intel look as though they have performance chips sewn up. Their Q6600 is nice but soon the new Q9300, Q9450 & Q9550 processors will be out - increased performance with less heat. When prices settle the Q9450 should be about the same price as the present Q6600.

Isnt there some issues with overclocking these newwer chips ? something about the fsb speeds??

[polynurb]

well, their fsb is 333x8 so the multiplier is lower than on the eg. q6600. (fsb 266x9)
_which can be a limiting factor in overclocking as you start to cook the mobo
a lot when the fsb goes towards 400.