Getting a new pc....help.

[heilel]

Originally posted by old.Normengast
Don't know if the link has been mentioned yet, cba to run through this whole thread, but if you're not sure about what hardware piece to buy, you can always check this site, it's very good.

Tom's hardware tends to be biased somewhat depending on the Flavor of the month.
Which is why I mentioned it along with some other sites earlier in the thread, but mentioned it's reliability was somewhat questionable.

Less biased and more generally recognised as more professional sites are:

www.anandtech.com and www.arstechnica.com

 

[old.Trine Aquavit]

I'm guessing that you actually want recommendations for complete systems and that you won't be building it yourself? In which case I would suggest looking at reviews and picking up a machine that has done well in a comparative review.

My last two PCs have been from Mesh, and I've been pretty happy with them. All the systems that they submit for review to the magazines can be picked up with the exact same specs as the submitted versions.

Example:

Matrix 2400+ TFT - PC Pro Labs Winner and A-List Aug 03 - £938 (inc VAT)

There are others that might suit better - check out the reviews menu.

The only hardware advice I have is to get 1Gb RAM. All MMOGs seems to benefit from RAM more than anything else. You can get the above machine with 1Gb RAM for almost exactly £1000.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Originally posted by mobiusmid

EDIT : Forgot to add I've got about £1000 budget.

:eek2: Give that to me and i'll give you my old PC. It's great! Games..err..work on it!

 

[heilel]

Originally posted by old.Trine Aquavit

Matrix 2400+ TFT - PC Pro Labs Winner and A-List Aug 03 - £938 (inc VAT)

That's a nice spec, apart from the TFT screen, which are crap for gaming.

 

[old.Trine Aquavit]

Originally posted by heilel
That's a nice spec, apart from the TFT screen, which are crap for gaming.

Aye, that's the only thing that put me off. I expect that if you got in touch with them they'd do you a deal with a decent CRT monitor, though.

 

[heilel]

Originally posted by old.Trine Aquavit
I expect that if you got in touch with them they'd do you a deal with a decent CRT monitor, though.

Yeah, they'd probably change it to a 19 inch CRT monitor at no extra cost.

I'd imagine the 2400xp AMD processor is a Thoroughbred and not a Barton, but whaddya want for £938?
Seems decent enough to me.

 

[Solid]

this is a nice place i stumbled across.

http://www.alienware.co.uk

drool

 

[SilverHood]

heh, heh, my AMD Atlon (Barton ) runs at 1800 mhz, but says 2500XP on the packet... well it did....

Its very overclockable... hola, zoom zoom va va voooom and its running at 2.2 gigahertz, whatever that is in AMD terms, I don't know

but you'll want a phat fan, and aluminium case, and lots and lots of fans. Well, I have it its gone gone up by 5 degrees (50 now)
Since you have those fans anyway, the extra noise a GeForce makes is neglible when choosing cards.

And a gig of DDR ram is a must too, can't run any of the latest games without it...

I paid 800 quid for just a case + contents... that was 3 or 4 months ago now, so I'm sure you can get the latest stuff now for the same price

or you could go slightly sub spec and save a bit of money

 

[heilel]

Originally posted by SilverHood
Its very overclockable... hola, zoom zoom va va voooom and its running at 2.2 gigahertz, whatever that is in AMD terms, I don't know

You're now running at the same clock speed as a 3200 Barton or a 2800 Thoroughbred.

 

[agreiloth]

Originally posted by heilel
To make my point clearer price wise I have to quote in Danish Kroner (as I live in Denmark), but the relative price differences are the same anyway.

Pentium4 Northwood-C 2.4GHz Socket 478 / 512KB / FSB 800MHz 1.569 kr.

Athlon Barton XP 2500+ (1833MHz) Socket A / FSB 333MHz 680 kr.

The Barton 2500 is less than ½ the price and as I said, since you can overclock it easily with an aircooling solution (for an extra cost of about 300 dkr) to 2200mhz (and higher with water cooling (more expensive probably around 600-700 dkr)), I've seen the 2500 Oc'ed to around 2500 mhz this way) you're paying a big difference in price for what I have read to be very little diffrence in performance with these two specific specs.


BTW, I do like to hear what you have to say though, as technology changes so fast, so it's not like my opinion can't be changed, actually, my previous pc had an Intel Pentium 3 750E processor, which I was very happy with..

I don't mind danish kroner, I live in DK too

Well thanks for the investigation I hadn't checked the price on the lower frequency barton's just the 2800+, and you're right then the 2500+ is cheaper.. weird there's so large price difference.. they must have problems producing highclock bartons.

Just one note, when I compare CPU's I never look at overclocking.. its an added bonus but most people don't overclock and only use stock cooling. So I'll still compare the 2500+ to the 2.4 GHz and the P4 is faster (but more expensive too ) midtdata.dk sells the 2.4 P4 for 1.475,00 so it's twice the price of the barton (+ a few kroners).

As for more expensive mobo, well if you buy ASUS or other quality brands the difference is not that great but yes if you buy cheap barton mobo's you can save alot there too.

And then there's HT, I'll admit that people that use the comp. for fullscreen gaming only, wont get alot of benefit there. But since I use it for development (and gaming ofc.) and have generally alot of threads running HT gives a boost, that would normally require a duel processer system, but is way cheaper (and ofc. not as fast as true duel processor systems). So I'm biased towards the P4 since it gives me more performance (non overclocked) than a similar Barton AND HT which for me is sweeet music

 

[SilverHood]

Originally posted by heilel
You're now running at the same clock speed as a 3200 Barton or a 2800 Thoroughbred.

wonder how far they can go....

 

[svartmetall]

Originally posted by Damon Doombring
Nvidia >>>> ATI , both card and drivers

Well...I work in tech support, so speaking from experience...ATI's cards are very good, but their drivers STILL aren't up to nVidia's standards.

 

[heilel]

Originally posted by SilverHood
wonder how far they can go....

I've heard of a guy using a watercooled system, that claimed he got it up to 2500mhz (with pics as evidence).
That's pretty impressive, but I wouldn't advise most people to do that.

 

[heilel]

Originally posted by agreiloth
I don't mind danish kroner, I live in DK too

Ah ok

Well thanks for the investigation I hadn't checked the price on the lower frequency barton's just the 2800+, and you're right then the 2500+ is cheaper.. weird there's so large price difference.. they must have problems producing highclock bartons.

I've heard all the bartons come off the same production line, but they're tolerance tested and then categorised from there.

Just one note, when I compare CPU's I never look at overclocking.. its an added bonus but most people don't overclock and only use stock cooling. So I'll still compare the 2500+ to the 2.4 GHz and the P4 is faster (but more expensive too ) midtdata.dk sells the 2.4 P4 for 1.475,00 so it's twice the price of the barton (+ a few kroners).

I used an Overclocked 2500 as an example, because most people who buy AMD chips will overclock, it's sorta sacrilege to NOT do it really .
Looking at the comparison charts of a barton 2500 (1833mhz) vs a p4 2.4 , yes the p4 is faster , but not by much, so even if you just get a decent cooler and overclock the Barton 2500 a bit, it will then beat the p4 2.4.
And even if you DON'T overclock, the difference is minimal and in some cases the Barton 2500 beats the p4 2.4.
So you have to ask yourself, is the few extra FPs in a game going to be even noticeable in gameplay, especially when the Barton 2500 is so much cheaper?

As for more expensive mobo, well if you buy ASUS or other quality brands the difference is not that great but yes if you buy cheap barton mobo's you can save alot there too.

I use an Epox ep-8rda mobo, which is only 779dkr, which is considerably cheaper than a p4 mobo equivalent and it has great reviews and from my personal experience of it, it runs fine.

And then there's HT, I'll admit that people that use the comp. for fullscreen gaming only, wont get alot of benefit there. But since I use it for development (and gaming ofc.) and have generally alot of threads running HT gives a boost, that would normally require a duel processer system, but is way cheaper (and ofc. not as fast as true duel processor systems). So I'm biased towards the P4 since it gives me more performance (non overclocked) than a similar Barton AND HT which for me is sweeet music

OK, well for your uses, I appreciate what you're saying, but most people won't be doing that.