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I need a new machine and your recommendations.

post #1 of 7
4/14/04 at 6:54pm
Thread Starter 
So with that Far Cry demo and some interesting stuff coming up, I realize that I really need to upgrade my machine.

Look, I got

- a 10 years old olschool Belinea monitor which is more dark than clear
- an AMD 1600 XP with 1,4 GHz
- 256 MB RAM
- 130 GB HDD
- Soundblaster Live Value
- Geforce 2 Ti

I could use...

- one of those cool TFT monitors (I heard they're great for office work btw)
- a DVD drive
- at least additional 512 MB RAM
- a new Graphics card
- new CPU

Now what do you recommend ? DVD drive is no problem, but I'm unsure about the rest as I can't afford to buy everything new.
There's a new NVIDIA card coming out in May, named 6800 Ultra which seems to be actually a great improvement for every game. But is my CPU still enough ? And with new CPU, there's nearly always a new mainboard to buy.

Right now, I'm not really aware of what's hot and what's not in the hardware section, but I'm sure some of you are. So, what would you recommend to someone with a budget of let's say 600 - 1000$ ?

I'm not that kind of geek who needs EVERY hardcore feature, but I want to play things like HL2, Deus Ex 2 (which my gpu just won't even start), Doom3, Thief 3, GTA 4 etc. in smooth 1024*32 with not excellent but very good detail.

Help would be appreciated.
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post #2 of 7
4/14/04 at 6:59pm
Order of importance:

1. Ram
2. Graphics
3. CPU

If you get a CPU I'd suggest getting a new motherboard and the latest Ram. I'm sure you could get a nice setup for less than 600 bucks. And a decent graphics card with 64 megs or more of memory will set you back about a 100 bucks.

What kind of hard drives do you have? Getting a faster hard drive such as the new SATA kind will help your game load times.
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post #3 of 7
4/14/04 at 7:35pm
Thread Starter 
Is AMD still better in that perfomance/price rate ? Way back when I chose my now-system Pentium was quite more expensive for less additional speed.

Looked around a bit and found two interesting cpu's -

Pentium IV 3 GHz (230 $) - needs a 478 board (120$)
> 350 $

AMD 64 3 GHz (230 $)- needs a so called 754 board (120$)
> 350 $

Hell, that's not only close, but exactly the same price - didn't expect that. With 512 MB DDR RAM CL2 (170$) we're at 520$ in total.

Now which one to take ? INTEL or AMD ? Or any better recommendation ?


- I have a HDD from Hitachi, 120 GB from 2003, should be fine
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post #4 of 7
4/14/04 at 7:43pm
-Black Antec Sonata case
-Antec 120mm Smartcool Case fan
-Abit IC7-Max 3 Mobo
-Intel Pentium 4 3.2 gig Processor (Northwood)
-Arctic Silver 5 Processor Thermal Compound
-Coolermaster Jet 4 CPU Fan
1 Gig Corsair XMS Series RAM (PC 3200)
- Two 36 Gig Western Digital raptors in RAID 0
-Western Digital 250 Gig hard drive with 8meg buffer
-Plextor PX-708 DVD Burner
-Audigy 2 ZS Platinum soundcard
-ATI Radeon 9800XT

now, having read your post (and not lustfully daydreaming here).

TFT, you mean LCD right? Find one that has a quick response time. Nothing over 25ms or you'll see "ghosting" when playing games or movies. Viewsonic's got those response times down to 16ms which should be great. Me, I've been happy with sony's 17" widescreen monitor/hdtv hybrid. Pretty much have everything hooked up to it; gamecube, x-box, pc.

Barebones wise, something I'd consider doing to my wifes computer (and harvesting stuff from the older one to put into the newer one):

-Antec Sonata Case
-Abit IC7-Max 3 mobo
-Retail Pentium 4 3.2 Processor
-1 Gig Corsair XMS Ram (PC3200)
-ATI Radeon 9600 XT

Everything else, you could rip off from your dated computer until you find the funds to update them.

The cost of my barebones choices: $1062 if you order through newegg.com
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post #5 of 7
4/14/04 at 8:32pm
You wanna build a gaming machine? I would use one of the new 64-bit chips. It has zero support at the moment (except for a couple Linux builds)... HOWEVER, Windows XP 64-bit edition is just around the corner, and the games will follow. This time next year you'll be kicking yourself for buying a 32-bit chip.

RAM is more immediately important, but you should hold off on that IF you plan on upgrading the motherboard anyway. The new AMD 64's require specific (and expensive) memory.

As far as graphics goes, as usual, you get more bang for your buck. I won't get into the whole ATI vs. nVidia argument- make up your own mind on that. Just make certain you get something with plenty of on-board memory and that's 100% DirectX 9 compatible.
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post #6 of 7
4/14/04 at 8:41pm
If you can still find a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz Northwood with Hyperthreading, I'd go that route. They're quite cheap, and you get dual channel RAM, so effectively DDDR. The GeForce 6800 Ultra reviews have been stellar - it's blown things out of the water, and the Radeon X800XT will probably do the same, but if you don't want bleeding edge, you could probably get a 9800XT for a deal in a month or so.
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post #7 of 7
4/14/04 at 9:39pm
Depending on how much you want to spend, get the Radeon 9600 XT or 9800XT (go with the 98 since you seem to want to make this machine last a while).

512 RAM is fine, and you won't see that much improvement with a gig of it, but you may want to go with a gig for posterity.

AMD seems to have better price/performance ratio than Intel in my opinion.
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