Help me build a $500 gaming PC

[vipejc]

I'm probably going to upgrade my 10 year old rig. I have a budget of $500 or so dollars. I know nothing about current hardware so need some help.

My requirements are that drivers are available for XP. I play UT2004 and have a crappy framerate right now of about 20 FPS. I would hope I can triple or quadruple that. I have a preference for Intel processors but wouldn't balk at AMD if I can get the same or more computing power for the same or cheaper price. I tend to do all my shopping at http://www.newegg.com/ .I guess I would like a quad core but don't know if my budget will allow for that so will settle for a dual core.

This is what I think I will need:

Motherboard

CPU / Heatsink / Fan

Video Card

Power Supply

2 GB of ram at least

Sata Hard drive

I have a case, DVD-ROM and floppy already.

I was looking at this from iBuypower: http://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Intel_H67_Core_i5_i7_Configurator It's only $539

I was also looking at this but most of the items have been deactivated at newegg: Build a Kick-a** $500 Gaming PC, Play Crysis at 40FPS!

Thanks for any input!

The first question you must ask yourself is "What are my needs?" UT2004, word processing, 2D Web browsing, and the like? If so, an AMD dual core CPU and video card with ATI Radeon X1300-1950 GPU will be just fine.

[Zenskas]

Here is a guide on getting UT2K to run how you want it:

http://www.tweakguides.com/UT2004_1.html

I disable many graphical options in multiplayer games, I do not care about loss in graphic quality, as long as the resolution and texture quality are both maxed and AA filters are on too. Everything else is turned off or on low as things like motion blur, sun flares, bloom, vegetation, soft smoke, shadows etc are just distractions and make it a little bit harder to see your enemy, and make the game run slower (not sure if all these are UT2K, just talking about any games really).

In SP, I usually turn a few more settings up, but still hate a lot of them altogether.