With these specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice Core
XFX 7800gt (Factory Overclock Edition)
7200 RPM 200 GB Western Digital Hard Drive
1 GB of RAM

In general, what kind of performance am I looking at?

It should have quite a decent performance. The 3200+ is a bit low but it shouldn't be so bad. If you haven't bought the computer I'd stress getting at least a 3700+ San Diego core, but if its already bought, it'll do the job for a while.

Screw those specs

ALIENWARE

I haven't bought it yet, but you think it's worth the extra $50 instead of overclocking the 3200+?

I really want opinons, this PC I'm building is going to cost probably a little over $1,000 and I want to get it right. We got the the graphics card issue solved though.

Oh and TE, have fun paying for a PC that isn't even worth half of what you paid.

Are you insane? Alienware is an IMMENSE RIPOFF.

If you want to pay for a case with a computer inside of it, rather than a computer held together by a case. Oh, and a computer that is more or less the same as all the rest, too.

I recall Alienware having several of their own hardware innovations.


However, I cannot say that they're worth it.

Yeah. They make good gaming rigs, but they are really expensive. Far more expensive than doing it yourself.

Only by that if you wish to waste cash. They do have innovations and are powerful, but for WAYYYYYYYYYYYY to much.

Yea I really do think its worth it. The 3700+ San Diego core has 1mb L2 cache, which is an interesting addition.

If I was the one building the computer, I would add an extra gig of ram, they aren't very expensive and if you use programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, or do any video editing, it'll really improve the performance. I for one saw a significant increase when I switch from 1gb to 2gb.

As for video cards, shop around. The sapphire X1900XT is actually somewhat cheap (I bought one recently) and it is simply amazing. If you don't like ATI then Nvidia is coming out with the 7900 GT and GTX soon, and it will supposedly cut down on prices for the 7800 by a lot. You could perhaps save money there to invest in the 3700+ or the extra memory. OR an additional Western Digital HDD to build a raid (I recommend doing so).

System I'd recommend

Asus A8N SLI
AMD 64bit 3700+ (San Diego core)
Sapphire X1900XT (Not worth the extra 60 or 100$ for the XTX. Asus and PowerColor counterparts are more expensive)
2GB Corsair Value (or Kingston) RAM
2x 7200 RPM 200 GB Western Digital Hard Drive (I personally prefer Seagate HDD but Western D. are a trust worthy brand. NO MAXTOR.)

I bought an Alienware once.

Both the hard drive and video card failed within the first month that I bought it, then the replacement video card failed a few weeks later.

From now on, I build my own.