I'm wondering if an 8800 GTS is overkill for my new system?

Intel Core 2 Duo E2140
EVGA nForce 650i Ultra
Corsair 1GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5
Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... duct.php?prodid=GX-054-OK

With the 8800, £375.88 delivered

It says it needs 500W minimum, so I need a new PSU too. Is it worth splashing out on? Or would it just be a waste?

IF you overclock, it's not overkill, but at stock it's overkill.

What PSU do you have? a Tagan high quality 480 (even 430w) unit will do that 8800, but a cheap generic "Ultra 550w" is REALLY dodgy

Quote from Jakg :

IF you overclock, it's not overkill, but at stock it's overkill.

What PSU do you have? a Tagan high quality 480 (even 430w) unit will do that 8800, but a cheap generic "Ultra 550w" is REALLY dodgy

Why would overclocking it make it not overkill? I'm not really planning on overclocking. Maybe my CPU, If its not as quick as I'd like. But not my Graphics

Also, a Tagan 480W is £58.74, that's over budget. I've got a total max of £400, but I don't want to spend it all.

Probably would be with the rest of the system - I'd say it just depends on A) whatever else you use the system for and B) what resolution you intend to run at. From what I've seen so far the GFX in my system isn't getting overly taxed on LFS (it's an 8800GTX) but in games like FPS's it does, especially at 1680x1050 which is my monitors native.
The new ATI's offer a much more competitive price-point for performance IMO - but I have a dislike for ATI personally.

Quote from Monkeymike :

Probably would be with the rest of the system - I'd say it just depends on A) whatever else you use the system for and B) what resolution you intend to run at. From what I've seen so far the GFX in my system isn't getting overly taxed on LFS (it's an 8800GTX) but in games like FPS's it does, especially at 1680x1050 which is my monitors native.
The new ATI's offer a much more competitive price-point for performance IMO - but I have a dislike for ATI personally.

I've always used Nvidia, ATI seem to have better card spec's, for lower prices (up until the HD 2900), but no one seems to buy them. Is there a reason for that?

For me ATI always seem to run into driver issues with key bits of software (I think they used to cut corners when they developed drivers/hardware). Nvidia and ATI were both caught out with Vista, but ATI have a legacy of this. I've run Nvidia since they made the GeForce 2 and I've been very satisified with performance and reliability. I do know people who swear by ATI though.

The 2900 was touted as a 8800GTX killer, and due to crappy drivers when it was released it was slower than the 320 - every day newer drivers make it faster and faster, though.

Quote from mcintyrej :

Why would overclocking it make it not overkill? I'm not really planning on overclocking. Maybe my CPU, If its not as quick as I'd like. But not my Graphics

Also, a Tagan 480W is £58.74, that's over budget. I've got a total max of £400, but I don't want to spend it all.

Overclocking that CPU is so easy to do, you can run it at 3 GHz, stock voltage and cooling. So that's almost twice the performance.

I would like to point out that to get a 3 GHz overclock you might need another motherboard (As you'd need a mobo capable of 375 FSB, which rules out all £30 super uber cheap mobo's - but i think that could do it), but you could take it to 3 GHz, the sane speed as the £186 E6850, netting you more RAM bandwidth, a better motherboard AND spare cash in your pocket.

3Ghz overclock! Wow, I was only thinking 2.6Ghz max!

E2140/E2160 = GREAT Budget CPU's - They lack cache, however at the same clockspeed as something with 4x the cache (ie an E6600, E6420, E6850 etc) is only about 5% faster at the same clock speed.

I REALLY think the E2140's rock - i was gonna be picking up an E2160 (tend to hit .2 GHz higher - the E2140's dont go much over 3.2 on air, E2160 can hit up to 3.4 GHz), but i kinda blew that plan...