Compootah

[Mobius]

What do you think of this as a setup? I've got a budget of £1200 if anyone can come up with something better?

MSI K8N Diamond nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-047-MS)

£129.95

Crucial 1GB (2x512MB) DDR PC3200 Ballistix Dual Channel Kit (MY-033-CR)
£129.95

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 200GB 6B200MO SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-027-MD)

£59.95

Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Case - 380W TruePower Silent PSU (CA-003-AT)

£69.95 £69.95

AMD Athlon FX55 (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-099-AM)

£499.95 £499.95

PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 XL 256MB DDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-038-PC)

£199.95

Subtotal £1,089.70

VAT £190.70

Total £1,280.40

Also, I already have a cd and dvd drive, will they be compatible or do certain stuff only work together? Thanks.

 

[Chilly]

cd/dvd will be fine, have you considered getting DDR2? if your going all futuristic with pci-e perhaps that sa good idea aswell, ddr2 is more expensive tho

 

[Danya]

NForce 4 / A64-FX doesn't support DDR2 though.

 

[Mobius]

cd/dvd will be fine, have you considered getting DDR2? if your going all futuristic with pci-e perhaps that sa good idea aswell, ddr2 is more expensive tho

To be honest I've got no idea mate. I am not blessed with a brain that understands technical hardware so I was hoping you kind fellows might help me. As long as it stays under £1200 and kicks ass, I'll be happy. I want it to be purely a gaming machine. A friend of mine picked that setup for me but if anyone has better or cheaper alternatives I'll be glad to hear them.
And I'm not putting it off anymore, I've been trying to buy a new pc for nearly a year now and everytime I get round to it, someone mentions a new piece of hardware and makes me unsure whether I am making the right choice. I hate buying computers!

 

[Danya]

You might want to consider dropping to a A64 3800+/4000+ rather than the FX-55 and getting a X800 XT. That'll give you a bit more GPU power at the expense of a bit of CPU. The X800 XL is a lot of bang for buck though.

 

[Mobius]

Someone told me the FX55 isn't really good value for money, so I'm not sure. 500 quid is alot for 1 component isn't it?

What about 2gb ram? Is that worth it?

 

[Clown]

You're getting an FX55 and then you go with a graphics card like the X800XL? What's the point? Bump up the GFX card and lower the CPU.

 

[smurkin]

AMD Athlon FX55 (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-099-AM)

£499.95 £499.95

Thanks.

Aye, just a few months...that will be half the price and you could have bought so much more - you could free up about half that cash easily with no major dent on your system perfromance....your getting an sli board...you could go nvidia and get an extra gfx card and have an sli rig - or you could buy a really nice burner, or a nice big flat screen (well, a decent flat screen)- you could get some awesome storage - cheaply buy an extra gig of ram for extra longevity - if it was me, I'd rethink slightly

 

[Mobius]

I don't want to wait I've waited for aaaaaages, and I've worked to gain the money so I want to spend it.
What shall I swap with what do you reckon ?

 

[.Wilier.]

You may want to consider changing the PSU for something a little beefier.......a Tagan or Zalman 480 would give you a tad more oomf.

 

[`mongoose]

What do you think of this as a setup? I've got a budget of £1200 if anyone can come up with something better?

MSI K8N Diamond nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-047-MS)


PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 XL 256MB DDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-038-PC)

Not sure re: Nforce mobo and Ati Chipset gfx. I thought that if you had an nforce mobo - you get more return with Nvidia Chipset gfx. I could be wrong here tho - just remember hearing it somewhere

Personally I would drop the Ati card and the FX processor. Get a box standard 939 Amd 64 3500+ or something higher and use the extra spondola to get a gforce 6800 ultra or GT and possibly another HD - that way you could raid0 your HD and have uber load times (I think that mobo supports Raid0 onboard)

I'd also be tempted to beef the memory up... My next pc upgrade is another 1gb of Crucial XMS 4000 ddr for my pc

M

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Agree with Mongoose, drop the FX55 and get a cheaper chip and an nVidia graphics card 6800GT or Ultra.

Use some of the money saved to get another hard drive. Get a Western Digital Raptor 74Gb to put the OS and apps on, keep teh 200Gb one for all the porn. The Raptor will give quicker booting and improved performance.

RB

 

[Danya]

Not had any issues with my old 9800 pro and a NF2 board, my GF6800GTs are very nice though (except the driver issues with SLI).

Raid - yes, NF4 boards have onboard sata raid built into the northbridge, so there's definitely scope for that.

 

[Catsby]

Catsby hates Maxtor hard drives. He has had only 1 of the 4 he purchased survive more than a year....

 

[TdC]

What about 2gb ram? Is that worth it?

no. one gig will suit you just fine tbh. invest your cash in a more worthy cause (like giving it to me ), or beer, or both!

 

[smurkin]

Not had any issues with my old 9800 pro and a NF2 board, my GF6800GTs are very nice though (except the driver issues with SLI).

Aye, how is that working out? - I heard rumours that some of the instability problems aren't due to drivers, but are due to extremely heavy power consumption. Any benchmarks ?

Mobius, as for the truepower psu....that is a quality psu (Antec) - but you could go for more watts.

I found a review of cpus at anandtech:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2249&p=9

Now I expect the FX55 is probably limited by the grpahics cards in these tests so they are a bit misleading, but to drop to an athlon 64 3400 or 3800 doesnt make a huge difference to benchmarks in those games (3400 might be a bit too low). Now look at the prices:

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/productlister.aspx?GroupID=409

That fx55 is a bit cheaper than the one you were looking at (I dont know about p&p) - but look at the savings when you drop to a 3800 or below.

Now for me, I'd be off to the TFT thread and look for a cool screen ( I quite like wireless desktops too...theyr nice )

 

[Mobius]

The bank are being crap and won't sort my debit card out for me, so I'll have to wait a tad longer I think.

Bit of a revamp, an improvement or not?
--

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Winchester 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-101-AM)
£179.95

OCZ 1GB (2 x 512MB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR REVISION 2 CAS2 (MY-048-OC)

£177.50

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-046-MS)

£109.95

PowerColor ATI Radeon X850 XT PE 256MB DDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-036-PC)

£349.95

Enermax Noisetaker 600W EG701AX-VE(W) SFMA ATX2.0 PSU (CA-013-EN)
£84.95

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 300GB 6B300SO SATA 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-040-MD)

£112.50

Subtotal £1,014.80

VAT £177.59

Total £1,192.39

 

[Danya]

Aye, how is that working out? - I heard rumours that some of the instability problems aren't due to drivers, but are due to extremely heavy power consumption. Any benchmarks ?

Sorted my issues - they were driver related. Upgrading my 2k install to XP seems to have sorted it completely. Didn't think power was an issue, my psu is beefy (tagan 480W).

Benchmarks - 3dmark2005 = 8800 ish. Doom 3 is smooth at 1280x1024 ultra quality and 4x FSAA. Basically it goes like shit off a shovel now.

Planning to upgrade cpu and maybe gpu cooling to water and try to break 10k 3d marks.

 

[smurkin]

Benchmarks - 3dmark2005 = 8800 ish. Doom 3 is smooth at 1280x1024 ultra quality and 4x FSAA. Basically it goes like shit off a shovel now.

Now thats what I'm talking about - did you timedemo demo1 (second run)?

 

[mank!]

I'm getting that CPU Mobius, so it must be good

 

[Danya]

Now thats what I'm talking about - did you timedemo demo1 (second run)?

Nope, no idea how to timedemo in doom3.

 

[smurkin]

ahh.its ctrl-alt-tilde > timedemo demo1...run it once to precache then take th fps the second time...my standard 6800 gives 75fps - 1280x1024 on high (no aa, etc) :touch:

 

[Danya]

78.9 fps, 1280x1024, ultra quality, 4xAA.
92.8 fps with your settings.

EDIT: Forgot to turn of vsync. :x

 

[smurkin]

hum...thought it would be in the 100s at least...

 

[Danya]

Probably cpu limited tbh.
Water cooling going back in tomorrow I think. ;>

 

[TdC]

lubbly poota bits

*jealous*