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okay, i'm a little out of the PC hardware loop HELP ME (NOW WITH PARTS LIST PG 7)
Orikaeshigitae
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
What's the haps regarding the BESTEST new hardware for the PC? Mine's going on around 4 years old, and I'm about to upgrade.. but what's up with graphics cards? What do I need to look for regarding this arcane PCI-E stuff?
Basically, what do I need to know to make informed hardware purchases?
Basically, what do I need to know to make informed hardware purchases?
Orikaeshigitae on
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2 grand, in Canada land. Would prefer to spend less (and pick parts myself, otherwise I'd have posted a 'think for me' thread) but I believe that's my limit.
my graphics card cannot run the newer ones
e: plus i really want to play the latest hitman and vampire : the masquerade games
Does it render fonts in real time?
edit: It is supposed to come out next month (April 17th). The 8600GT will retail at $150 and the 8600 Ultra will go for $180. DX9 card prices will probably go into free fall.
most of all, most of all
someone said true love was dead
but i'm bound to fall
bound to fall for you
oh what can i do
This setup is functional, but if you are willing to sping for the extra, go with an 8800GTX. I have one and I'm loving it. Also, someone mentioned to get an E6600, I agree with them, the 6600 bumps up the L2 Cache to 4mb which is extra niiice.
I suggest browsing cases on newegg and then goggling reviews of them to find one you like.
Also Corsair has just started making new power supplies, I have one and I love it. I think it's the 520W version, which is more than enough.
And lastly, when buying your mobo, make sure you get a 680i chipset. It's the newest, the best, and the most future proof.
edit: also, the E6600 is the sweet spot currently in price vs performance. It's a hell of a deal.
Such as? I'd honestly like to know, I dismissed boards with that chipset due to the SLI factor.
Benchmarks don't tell the whole story, not nearly. Double the L2 cache makes a huge difference in real world situations. It may not matter much for gaming or compressing MPEGs or whatever else they do at Tomshardware, but it's (imo, naturally) well worth the minor price premium.
A buddy of mine has that eVGA video card that capable heart recommended and he swears by it, has nothing but good things to say about the card and the company. Also,
I live in the UK and need an upgrade kinda badly.
Currently have an asus 1800 with 756 megs of memory, and a geforce 2 mx. my sound card and hard drives and whatnot are fine, but those two really need to be upgraded.
Can you give me ideas for three different price limits? £100, £150, £200, cos I haven't decided how much I want to spend yet, but I do know I can't spend a lot.
Thanks guys, I didn't know this forum did this kind of thing or I would have asked AGES ago.
I think you can buy an xbox360 for £200?
Seriously you might be able to do a g-card upgrade or a processor upgrade, but it really won't help you playing any new games really.
Yeah, well, currently I'd settle for games that are 4 years old. I mean this thing won't even play doom3. at all. it just laughs. "HA!" it says "HA!"
WOW runs, but looks like ass.
And in general I think the whole thing is dying on me, its been behaving really weird.
Anyway, if £200 isnt enough, what can I get for £300, or £400? c'mon, convince me!
Ahahaha, callling that setup "functional" is funny.
I have a Asus KN8-E with a Venice 3000+ and a 7800GS, plus 1GB ram, and I can run mostly any current game with options on high or max at 1024 (1280 gives me bad flicker on my monitor).
Even though you suggestions are awesome, the system he speced is awesome
Just about any core 2 duo would be fine, I would stick to a 6300.
RAM:
2GB of RAM is important, especially if you want to use Vista.
HDD :
If you want all around great responsiveness, installing your OS on a modern 150GB 10 000 RPM drive makes loading everything a little bit faster. RAID is not worth it as far as speed improvements go. You can use a standard 7200 RPM drive for general data storage. Don't buy too many drives. Instead, buy extra drives as you need them.
Video card:
I tend to avoid top of the range cards. Older high-end models are pretty good, and should be less expensive. Try to find a good GeForce 7xxx card or Radeon X1xxx, and upgrade it when it no longer suits your needs. If your monitor can only handle up to 1280x1024, you don't need anything better.
There's one exception: huge screens. If you have a huge monitor, with a huge resolution, go ahead and get a high-end video card.
Basically what I'm saying is, a middle-range computer with a 3-year upgrade cycle is better than a high-end computer with a 5-year upgrade cycle.
Step 2) Continue on upgrading after that.
I KISS YOU!
see if you can order from memoryexpress... their prices are almost always better than ncix, not sure on their shipping though, i pick up locally. neither place might have ALL the parts below, might have to order from both.
Core 2 Duo E6300 if you're finding yourself pressed for money after everything else, E6600 if you aren't
If you're getting the E6300, and you want to mess with overclocking at all (HIGHLY WORTH IT) than either now or later replaces stock heatsink with a thermalright ultra 120 (extreme version when its out) w/ a Scythe S-Flex SFF21F fan.
get the most expensive Arctic Silver paste you afford (few dollars difference), replace the stock stuff and keep around for when you replace heatsink
ASUS P5N-E Sli - if you need more features then a P5W-DH or P5N32-SLI
2 GB of 1 GB ram in a Dual channel kit. cheapo stuff if you're not gonna overclock or push it at all, or not-much-more-expensive middle of the road stuff PC6400, something like OCZ platinum REVISION 2
The Corsair 520 or 620 PSU
Antec P180 (best), 900(cheaper) for a case
Seagate 320 GB 7200.10 SATA, AND I STRONGLY RECOMMEND A 2nd or some other HDD whether on another computer or external or a 2nd internal for regular backup. Just a single HDD is bad bad bad.
LG super multi 18x18x10
vid card is hard at a time like this... I would either suggest a high end card from last gen nvidia like a 7950GT - get it from evga and use their 90 day step up program to upgrade to a mid level 8000 series card, which will be similiar in performance, but support newer features.
or just be done with it and get a 8800GTS 640, or similiar card from ATI (wont be out for a ways though)
squeak by with onboard audio for now... consider add-on card down the road when things are worked out with vista and drivers; speaking of which
I suggest you go with an XP build for now, experiment with vista on another driver or partition, move to it when its ready for gamers
Hold off on better peripheals till you scrounge up more money
then logitech everything basically, G5 or 7, G15 keyboard, webcam if you need one, Z5500 speakers.
monitor - GET A FUCKING WIDESCREEN OR DONT BOTHER. Dell 20, 22 (lacks other inputs and card reader/usb hub, but cheap!), 24, 27, etc some other good brands at the small end of the spectrum.
xbox 360 controller for PC, wireless (or just buy reciever if you already have 360 controllers)
A GOOD surge protector if you dont have one already
I'll be using Vista and am only really interested in running Diablo-type games such as Titan Quest and Hellgate when it comes out. I have no need for higher than 1280x1024.
I picked out parts similar to the list capable heart posted, but have a couple questions:
- my current monitor is widescreen with native res 1400x900. Do most recent games support this oddball resolution, or would I be much better served with a non-widescreen 1280x1024 monitor?
- I'd rather spend $200 on a graphics card now and $200 in 3 years than buy one of the 8800 cards. Is the ATI x1950 a good choice for vista?
I'll be buying the machine by the end of the month, if that makes any difference.
I prefer Dual 4:3 (in this case 5:4) monitors over one huge Widescreen for this reason.
You can set drivers to do the pixel mapping for you. Otherwise a lot of widescreen monitors have 1:1, 1:aspect and 1:stretch scaling options.
My specs
Money to spend: $1300 (before taxes)
CPU:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Dual Core $243 ( didn't go with 6600 as it's $400)
Motherboard:
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 $180 (I'm a big gigabyte fan, got good reviews and I have no SLI intentions whatsoever)
Ram:
OCZ Platinum XTC REV.2 PC2-6400 2GB 2X1GB DDR2-800 $236
Video:
XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 500MHZ 320MB 1.6GHZ $380 (also got good reviews, I'd love 640MB but again, poor)
Optical:
LG GSA-H22L DVD+RW 18X8X16 DVD-RW $45
Hard Drive:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2 $102 (loves me some seagate)
After all that I have to add probably $50 for shipping so I really only have $50 of room to spare. Any glaring screwups in this setup?
P.S. Have case and PSU already.
I say yes, especially this time. You could always use the line of "If you wait you'll never get anything" but we're only a month away from the new stuff hitting the market and the current stuff dropping a whole lot in price. It's not like we are a year out from new stuff going down, we're weeks away at this point. You'll be able to get a chip with a 4MB cache with the same price as one now with 2. Not much uses it at the moment but it's still at least a better way to get that extra performance down the road.
I KISS YOU!
MSI K8N Neo4-F
Athlon 64 3200+
7900GT
2 gigs of ram
And I get stutter on fucking Oblivion when it's not even at max. Hell, I get stutter on City of Heroes when it's not at max and I run all of my games at 1024, since my monitor can't handle more with a decent refresh rate. What the fuck is wrong with my computer? I run virus scans, Adaware, Spy-bot and all that crap.
Anyway on the subject of upgrading, I'm looking to toss pretty much everything except my video card and power supply (480W Xclio, with more than 15 amps on the 12v rails). I'm going to get a new lcd monitor to replace my 4 year old crt. A 7900GT should be able to handle mostly high settings at 1440 x 900, right?
Also, I'm looking to get a Core Duo 2 6600 when the price drops, but looking at its FSB, it's 1066, and the ram I was hoping to buy has a speed of 800. Would this bottleneck the system at all? I really can't justify spending $300+ on ram at 1066.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?DEPA=0&type=&Description=EVGA+nForce+680i+SLI&Submit=ENE&N=0&Ntk=all&Go.x=22&Go.y=29
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 - $183
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115005
RAM: 2GB Corsair TwinX DDR2/800 - $214
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?DEPA=0&type=&Description=Corsair+TwinX+DDR2%2F800&Submit=ENE&N=0&Ntk=all&Go.x=23&Go.y=29
Video: BFG GeForce 8800 GTS - $405
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?DEPA=0&type=&Description=BFG+GeForce+8800+GTS&Submit=ENE&N=0&Ntk=all&Go.x=15&Go.y=31
Hard drive: 150GB Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD - $230
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136011
If needed:
Case: Antec Nine Hundred - $120
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129021
PS: Antec TruePower Trio 650 - $105
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817371001
With case & PSU: $1,487.00 (does not include shipping)
Getting a high-end geforce 8800 card is overkill if you don't have a huge monitor.
Think about it: for the same price, you could have
1) $500 22-inches monitor and a $200 video card, and play your games at 1680x1050 without AA, or
2) $300 19-inches monitor and a $400 video card, and play your games at 1280x1024 with like 8xAA and still have a ton of video card power going to waste.
For games, both situations have their ups and downs. Situation 1 will get you a computer that rocks for general productivity with drawing and modelling applications, whereas situation 2 won't require another video card upgrade for a while.
I say, get a huge monitor for around $500-800 and save a little everywhere else to make it fit in your budget. That includes not getting a top of the line video card.
Don't be suprised if this gets pushed back. Its been rumored both developers and Intel are scrambling to make vista drivers. Theres also political shannaigans going on as well. ( Who ever lauches first..ect ect.)
Btw, ATi/AMD is might get their ass handed to them if the R600 doesn't pan out. (given that ATi is a revision behind nVidia, its very possible)