DescentBB

I'm buiding a new tower for a good friend of mine as a favour and I'm in need of some impartial feedback. His budget is circa-$600 (Australian) and he needs it in a hurry, so I'm stuck with local suppliers.

The system I'm looking at is as follows:


AMD Althon 64 X2 6000+ AM2 D/Core CPU - $115
Gigabyte GA-MA790X-DS4 AM2+ Motherboard - $139
2 x Corsair 2GB DDR2 667 MHZ RAM - $49 each
WD 750GB 7200RPM/16MB/SATA2 HDD - $145
MasterMesh 908 580W Case - $69
Pioneer DVD-RW 20x (SATA) - $45


He has his own copy of both XP Pro & Vista Ultimate - and is in two minds which to install. The most laborious thing this rig will probably do is compile, edit, convert & burn MPEG2 videos (DVD quality). I'm sure this machine would handle this in XP okay, but I'm not so sure on Vista. Can I stick with the onboard graphics & 4 GIG RAM or does he need a video card too? I really want him to get a good machine for his money.

All feedback welcome. Thanks guys.

Link to my suppliers if you're curious (this is about as cheap as it gets where I live):

http://www.ple.com.au
http://www.dny.com.au

No GF/X card ?

Not sure Grendel... It's not going to be a gaming tower, it's for work use only. I know GF/X cards start pretty cheap, but I haven't built a tower in over 2 years and I don't know how good the onboard stuff has gotten.

My instinct says ditch one of the RAM Chips & trim elsewhere to affort a decent GF/X card as well, but with little to no 3D gaming to be done on the machine, I'm wondering if 4GB of shared ram + the onboard graphics might be sufficient for whatever graphix- intensive stuff the machine may do.

That mainboard doesn't have an onboard graphics controller tho..

You're quite right Gren, my bad! I'll switch to a GA-MA78GM-S2H. It's a slightly cheaper card too which doesn't hurt.