new computer?

[Tom]

Roughly what would it cost to upgrade to a better machine? TF2 has shown my computer to be the hopeless case it now is.

Its an Athlon 3000XP CPU on an Asus A7N8X deluxe board, with an Nvidia 6800GT. A good system when HL2 came out (thats the game I bought it for), but now a bit slow.

Bear in mind I haven't got a fucking clue about computers these days. I'm not sure I can afford to change it right now, so whats a good MB/CPU/GFX combination? Bear in mind my display is 1680x1050 native.

 

[Kryten]

Nows the time, without a doubt.

Theres a lot of pick and choosing to be done - but the Core2Duo's are a stonking price (basic 6300 for 65, 6400 for 80, higher end 6750 for 120) - as a result, AMD are well behind but have to keep competitive, so you can find the X2's going for around 50.

DDR2 memory is dirty cheap.

As a VERY rough guide, something you can expect to look at, give or take a little on the prices :

Core2Duo e6300 £65
Gigabyte DS3 P945/965 motherboard £40
Pair of 1gb Crucial PC5300 memory sticks £44
nVidia 7900GS Graphics £70

Thats just a base of the sort of upgrade system you can expect for what's not really a lot of money, compared to when the AMD 3000's were new. Naturally you might need bits more, like a hard drive (still dirty cheap - say 50 for 400gb?) case and power supply etc.

That's obviously a mid-budget system - you can chop around for higher performance kit as you see fit and of course you might have preferred manufacturers - with the competition as it is, they're all priced nicely.

Perhaps:

e6750 Core2Duo : £120
Gigabyte P35 Motherboard : £95
Pair of 2gb PC6400 memory sticks £90
nVidia 8800GTS 320mb £170

Will need a bit more juice from a decent power supply to run the graphics card on the higher system.

Both are perfectly adequate to run the resolution you said. Mine is pretty much based on the first system (I actually turned a profit by selling my old Barton 3200 gear and buying new Core2 based kit!) with slightly more ram and it run's absolutely everything flawlessly so far - but theres some new shiny games coming soon that will no doubt test it
I wouldn't worry too much about TF2 - it's not coded by the likes of Codemasters or EA therefore it's gonna be optimised damned slight better than their titles and will be smooth as a chocolate bar melted over a fake boob.

 

[Ashala]

as a IT geek and....roughly....new owner of my lovely home brewed pc i can safely say that Kryten painted it pretty well with his words there, some side notes though...

CPU : you definitely wonna go for the Core2Duo processer as its pretty much the fasters one out there at its comparing to its cost. what you want is to buy the E6320 Model as thats the upgraded model of the E6300 (obviously duh!) with more L2 Cash, which is always a good thing! and the magnificent thing about the E63XX model is that they can be overclocked into obvilion without almost any problem at all, all the forums and websites (Tom's Hardware: News, Testberichte und Kaufberatung) i have been looking at, has confirmed this, so its safe to say, put it at 2.8-3.0 Ghz even with the bundle Cooler.

Motherboard : if your keen on saving money i would probably go for a less expensive model, guessing that the ones Krysten mentioned will do just fine, but if you wonna spend just abit more money on it, go for a Asus Striker Extreme, its designed for people who wants the best performance together with alot of easy abilities to overclock and tweak your system, if you get this board you will cry yourself to sleep in tears of joy every night, ill promise you that!.

GFX : probably go for the GeForce 8800 GS model as its DX10 compatible for future insurance.

RAM : anyone that suits the max abilities of your motherboard as mentioned , DDR2 ram is cheap

thats pretty much the vital parts of your system, the rest just have to fit in

 

[xane]

I'm in more or less the same boat as Tom, a XP3200+, A7N8X and a GF 6600GT.

However, I'd like a SFF solution, preferably one that can fit 2 drives for RAID, I'm not that concerned on very fast graphics tho, any recommendations ?

 

[Kryten]

I'm fiddling with a Shuttle for that purpose, Xane, however failing a bit - looking to modify it for 4 drives on their side, no opticals, no additional graphics etc. Just missing a suitable motherboard atm. Unfortunatley no other real recommendations for it :|

Will backup Ash on the overclockability of the processors and the e6320's etc - but obviously knowing a sort of price range you're gunning for will help a lot Not a lot of point going for a Striker for over £130 when you;ve got a budget for the lot of £300

 

[Tom]

Blimey, thats a lot cheaper than I was expecting.

So the Core2duo - thats a processor right? Who makes it?

If I bought Kryten's or Ashala's list, would that be all I'd need?

The rest of my system:

Zalman PSU - Zalman ATX Ultra-Quiet PSU 300W ZM300A-APF
120GB Sata HD
Cheap shitty big-ish case (but I don't care about that)
HDMI widescreen monitor
Usual USB stuff, external dvd, printers, mouse, etc


So I could rip the MB out, put the new MB in (do they still use the same power connectors as 3-4 years ago?), plug the ram in, then the graphics, and away I go?

Obviously Vista needs re-installing - will Vista just reinstall from a CDROM, over my existing installation, to update the drivers for the new MB? Or is it cleverer and can it figure out what it needs without reinstallation? I know that XP had to be reinstalled the last time I upgraded.

I have a Zalman fan on the 6800GT - will that fit on the new graphics card, or is it likely to be bespoke for that card only?

Oh and what would I get on Ebay for the old kit? £50?


One more thing - OMFG Xane is back

 

[dysfunction]

Intel make the Core2Duo processors

I doubt your cooling fan will work on a new graphics card...

 

[Kryten]

Certainly need to upgrade the power supply - 300 watts won't quite cut it with the bigger graphics cards - 400w is absolute minimum.
If you're not gaming too much it would be fine but you need a little headroom to be on the safe side.

Yeah the lists given would be all you need and you can add to it as you see fit. Obviously we weren't sure what sort of money you wanted to spend and to what purpose, how fast you want to go etc.

For a full system you need:

Case
Power Supply (min 400w-600w)
Motherboard (socket 775)
Processor & Heatsink/Fan (core2duo stock ones are suprisingly good & quiet)
Memory (DDR2 normal standard however there is newer stuff for more money)
Graphics Card (pci-express)
Storage/HDD (sata)
Optical drives (dvdrw etc)
Input (keyboard, mouse)
Output (monitor)

Extras:
Sound card (onboard ones are not as bad as they used to be but you might like some extra features from the price Creative X-Fi's etc)
Floppy drive (not many folks need them but still useful from time to time - best bet get a couple of USB sticks )

You can use your existing hard drive, although you'd probably want a little more room than you've got currently - pricewise they're nice and cheap so another 500gb drive wont cost more than 75) and yeah, Vista will need re-installing and reactivating (new set of hardware)

If you're using an sATA hard drive you've probably already got the power connectors you need however you might want to check that - but even so, I've suggested a new power supply.


The old stuff:

Sell it separately - you'll probably fetch 50 for the motherboard and processor together. if you've a gig of DDR400 memory that might fetch up to 20 quid. The 6800GT will still fetch 40-50.

So you'll be able to offset quite a good amount of the cost by selling the old kit You'll get a fair bit less selling it as a whole and would cost a bit more on postage too.

(On a side note : I sold my AMD XP3200, Abit AN7, 1.5gb DDR400, 6800GT) for just under £200. C2D 6400, Gigabyte P945-S3, 3gb DDR2, 7900GS bought for £190!)

 

[Tom]

400W. Bloody hell. Thats 3 pence an hour. I'm not made of money you know!



I'll have a think. I probably will upgrade, but I've just spent money on work equipment so its a balancing act.

 

[Kryten]

Heh, I know it's a costly game, but it's not necessarily gonna run at 400w constantly - it'll only take what it needs, which isn't all that much. It's still cheaper to run most PCs idle than to leave a 100w lightbulb on - but probably not so much if theres a monster graphics card in there
If you're going for a lower end card like a 7950 to tide you over and ensure TF2 plays alright you might even find 300w suffices - there's a lot to do with quality of the supply as well.

 

[Ch3tan]

I have never had PSU issues. I really do not undertsnad all these people who think they need more wattage. I had a shuttle running fine off a 250w psu and now have a 350w running a c2d and a x1950xtx, I overclock both and have never had an issue. Just do not buy el cheapo brand and you will be fine.

Tom, the core2duo route will only prove expensive in that you will need to buy ddr2 ram, although prices have dropped a lot since I got my system last year, and a psi express gfx card -but you want this system for tf2 anyway so you cannot skrimp on the gfx.

 

[Tom]

So bearing in mind the 6800GT was a pretty good card when I bought it, whats the modern 'evolved' equivalent? I think I paid about £150 for that card when it was new.

By that I mean something that works on all games, no silly issues, regular driver updates etc.

 

[throdgrain]

Something like -

This and this , plug it all together, get a good ol pc that will play anything for a few years, with no problems, for bugger all money.



(Oh, you will need a new psu as well, if only cos the motherboard connector on yours is probably too small. There Kryt, just for you )

 

[Tom]

I just looked on the Scan website at motherboards.

It might as well be in Chinese. Not a fucking word understood

Back in my day it was so simple. You bought your 486 processor. You bought a motherboard that was intel compatible. You plugged a graphics card in, and away it went. That was it.

 

[Kryten]

aye, good old days, and these were all fields
Have to bear in mind speeds of the memory, interconnects, how many SATA/HDD connectors you need, what FSB you want and what future CPU's you need to support....

back in those days you bought an Intel motherboard of choice (any one, even pc chips!) decided whether you could make do with an SX or if you needed the co-processing juice of a DX processor, installed, stuck in a Cirrus Logi 5446 graphics card with 1mb of ram and everyone was happy.

Its funny, because being that simple, in those days it was rare for people to build their own systems - but these days with all these different bits of kit available, even more are doing it.

 

[Ch3tan]

Tom have a quick read of the overclockers forum and see what they recommend as the fastest compatible kit for the least moolah. The sheer amount of threads there about c2d systems means there is gaurenteed to be someone who has put together something in the price bracket you want.

 

[DaGaffer]

Tom, with your current spec computer TF2 shouldn't run badly at all (I've got a similar spec machine except with an X850 and it runs and looks fine). Maybe all you need is a RAM upgrade? I'm running 2GB and its perfectly OK. TF2 is certainly far less punishing than BF2142.

 

[MegaMaejter]

I'm also hoplessly lost in this swamp of choices and shady dealers trying to fuck you over on sight.

I got a few questions aswell:

1) Is DDR3 worth it? They cost insane amounts of money atm, so is it better to go with high Hz DDR2 atm, and is there any huge performance diffrence between them?

2) Quadro and n45 procsessors, how much better/faster are they compared to 2 core processors? Are they worth the extra money so to speak, and will they be needed or even be better at running the future dx10 games? ( Like AoC for exampel )

3) Graphics cards for SLI systems, wich ones give u the most bang for the buck? BFG's 8600 OC2 card runs at 720 core mhz and 400 mhz ramdac and comes as 512 or 256 MB memory is that alot of bang for your buck ? ( 180 euros ).
What other graphic cards would be compareable in price for the same or better performance?

Is the 8800 GTS/GTX series alot better? Would a 8800 be better then a cheaper/slightly lower spec card in SLI mode?

When you use all this new tech., as in sli, quadro core processors and ddr3 memory do you need a really quick HD to match it aswell? The one I have in mind is the Raptor Xgamer that runs at 10000 with 16 mb cache ( this was the fastest one I could find )

QQ I'm so confused, almost feel like not upgrading b/c I don't wanna get fucked over

 

[Kryten]

Well there's so much to look at - quad core processors aren't really worth the extra money mostly as software still doesn't *properly* support all the cores and as a result performance isn't as good as you might like considering the cost.
Currently DDR3 also isn't worth the extra - we're in that difficult interim period being stuck between standards.

I'd also suggest getting an 8800 over lower spec SLI cards - performance wise, again you'll not be losing much - it would also be generally cheaper, and of course with an SLI motherboard you've always got the option to add another identical card if you need to in the future. If you get the lower option SLI already you're gonna be buggering yourself up further down the line.

It's also worth bearing in mind that speeds of memory and cores are not the only factors in how fast a card will run your games - my geforce6 had higher core clocks than that Geforce8 - yet I know which I'd rather have

Although faster hard drives will help with loading times, they're under no circumstances going to help with the speed of the actual game. I firmly believe it's an entire waste of time spending silly money on those higher end raptors, especially as normal SATA drives are speeding up constantly, and we've got SSD (solid state) drives on the horizon that should be even quicker.

Avoid things with silly names "Fatal1ty" is a guarantee of quality you would expect from the local 99p store. Motherboardwise, the Asus P5k series are considered good for the money (a lot of it though!) and processor wise it's a bit of a gamble - theres plenty of choices but a good comprimise between price, current and future performance would probably be the energy efficient quad core q6600.

It all depends on final budgets, how much you want to spend and what you want to do with it in the near and far future. Of course if you've got money pouring into your bank account with little abandon then this probably won't be a worry

 

[Tom]

e6750 Core2Duo : £120
Gigabyte P35 Motherboard : £95
Pair of 2gb PC6400 memory sticks £90
nVidia 8800GTS 320mb £170

So one of these:

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

with one of these plugged in:

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

memory, 2 of these: (will it be possible to buy a third in future and just whack it in, or does it need to be even numbers only)?

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

and gfx:

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK



Will that all work together? I'm not bothered about branded/unbranded RAM, I don't overclock things or muck around because things will end up not working if I do that Feel free to recommend similarly priced products if the above examples are crap, or blow up, or don't work well. I've just posted those based on prices and my limited understanding of what works together (from Kryt's list), not from any extensive research on my part.

BTW I don't pay VAT so thats not an issue for me. Will my PSU power all that up? If it can't provide enough current, I'm presuming that the computer will probably just crash a lot, or not boot up?

 

[Kryten]

yeah that'll all work well together.
The motherboard however is a bit of a bodge - it has both DDR2 and DDR3 slots on - one on hand this is a good thing as you can replace your DDR2 with DDR3 when the price/performance is worth it - however on the downside it's leaving you with only 3 ports for upgrade. Perhaps sticking with the entirely DDR2 version might be better for the long run :

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

And yeah , you can just lob more in as and when you feel you need or want it. You don't have to worry about pairs - they'll work on their own or in odd numbers fine.

I really can't say if the 300w supply you've got currently will give it enough juice , especially with the 8600GT in there. But if it's of a decent quality and throws out enough current on the 12v side of things it might well tide you over until you decide to upgrade. I certainly still recommend you upgrade that as well though, just to be on the safe side. Of course if you're patient, get the list you posted (or whatever you fancy) and put it together - if it doesn't work with the PSU, no loss, it won't harm anything - just put the old kit back together and get a better PSU.

 

[Tom]

Right I'll probably buy that lot this weekend (or very similar).

3 memory slots is fine I think, if I run out I can just flog the old ones on Ebay and replace with bigger chips.

I'd rather not buy a PSU right now as the Zalman one was IIRC pricey, and its very quiet

 

[Ch3tan]

here you go Tom, this week only though

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC)

Faster memory with lower latency for less money.

Oh and check the prices at microdirect and overclockers, I find that they are much cheaper than scan and dabs, especially when you take their weekly specials into account.

Hell I may upgrade to 4gig looking at that memory

 

[Kryten]

Bonus

Just a bit of a nagging if, buyign 4gb of ram when XP and Vista 32bit will only see 3.2 of it max - and still won't even use any more than 2gb for any one process. Not a major problem when you're getting it that cheap though - that's the one positive side of DDR2 - dirty cheap!

 

[Tom]

But doesn't Chet's ram run at 800MHz, whereas the processor I'm looking at is 1333MHz?

 

[Tom]

Holy shit I just noticed that a 500GB HD can be had for £55.

My first HD on my first PC was 80MB, and it cost over £100.

 

[Ch3tan]

Ahh you want pc8500 ram, my bad. Well that will cost ya more

 

[Kryten]

The ram doesnt have to be the same speed as the cpu - for instance on my motherboard I can quite happily run 667mhz ram on a 1333mhz cpu

 

[Tom]

I've narrowed it down to these - before I click the big red button, they'll all work together ok, right?

This MB:

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

Its cheaper than the other one I listed (about £20 cheaper), I don't need any fancy stuff on it really, just as long as its reliable and fast.

This gfx card:

OcUK GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail

or this gfx card:

Asus GeForce 8800 GTS HTDP 320MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail

Now on the OC site it says "Note: These cards require PCI-E x16 slots, they will not function in a x8 slot so for SLi you need dual x16 mainboard. Finally 500W minimum for PSU and 600W+ is recommended." on the page for that graphics card. Does ^that^ motherboard do ^that^ stuff?


These memories again:

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

And the same brains:

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK


And probably a quiet PSU like these:

Zalman ZM500-HP Heatpipe Cooled 500W Modular PSU
OCZ StealthXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply


*finger hovers over buy button, awaits approval from experts*

 

[Ch3tan]

Get the asus card- 3 year warrenty on it.

mobo is fine, I dislike cheap memory with loose timings - the c2d overclocks with ease, and even though you may think you will not, having memory that will let you is nice for the future.

Yes the mobo has a pci-e (16x) slot. SLI is a waste of money and the board does not support it anyway. Get the zalman psu.