pc spec, what you think?

[Titan Moist]

high-end AMD athlon 64 based system


*AMD athlon 64x2 3800+ processor
*xp home edition
*1gb duel xhannel DDR ram (pc3200) 400mhz (2x512mb)
*200gb serial ATA hard drive with 8mb buffer
*256mb ATI radion X800GT pci express graphics
*19" viewsonic VX912 pure digital DVI TFT moniter (12MS response)
*DVD rom
*multi format duel layer DVD writer/CD writer drive
*nivada 7.1 chanmnel surround sound audio onboard
*creative inspire p5800 5.1 speakers

what you guys think of this pc spec, purely for gaming.
please critiquewhat would you change and what would you pay? i was quoted £1,400:eek2:

thanks for advice

 

[Cylian]

afaik Windows XP Home Edition doesn't support multiple processors, get the Pro version.
And until M$ decides to release the Service Pack 3, you'll have a "memory leak" of sorts. Think you can get a guide to fix it, but that requires editing the registry. Tools like CleverCache handle that quite good though.

Otherwise looks nice.

 

[Twist]

Best advice I got when I posted my spec was to ask here these guys are really helpful and will give you good advice

You will need xp pro tho

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

what motherboard do you have?

 

[Kami]

Overclockers forums are fantastic for advice like this. they'll spec you a good, solid, stable beast of a machine

 

[Naffets]

Go for an X800 XL or XT

The GT models have 12 pipes and thus you get a fair bit less performance.

Rest seems ok taking into account what others have said ofc..

 

[liloe]

I give you one important....and I mean important....advice.

Sit back and re-think about running XP Homo edition. Sure, it will work perfectly but maybe you can try to get a Windows x64 to work on your machine to squeeze out some extra power for future software, but if you want to try that, check the homepage of every single manufacturer you have on that list and see if they have 64bit drivers (Silicon Image pwned me there). Else I dunno if you need XP Pro, I never used the Homo edition anyways =) Or go for Windows 2003 Server right away ( standard setting: Iexplore has no access to any site.....MS knows their programs )

For the screen, I'm using a Hyundai ImageQuest L90D+ and it works like a charm and it also got great reviews on tomshardware. It's a 19" one and imho it was not too costly ( think you can get one for ~400€ now ).

Overall I get to 1550€ including an ASUS board and Infineon RAM ( ofc Infineon, they're very good ). Caculator says that's ~1050 british pounds without keyboard/mouse/cooling/case, so imho 1400 sounds much.....but well, other country, other prices. Those 1400pounds is what I payed for my dual Xeon system and I'd bet my arse it runs faster =))

 

[Kaun_IA]

my 64 bit amd laptop runs great on home, but i doubt it will run on dual core systems, it can couse instablity. so try to get pro.......dont think costs as much more now as it did!! or em a wrong?

 

[Titan Moist]

what motherboard do you have?

nvidia nforce 4 motherboard

im not to minded when it comes to pc,s bit of a novice at the moment

 

[cHodAX]

£1400 is frigging steep, unless you are getting extras like an SLi motherboard, top quality overclocking memory and a top quality 550watt power supply. For them to quote you that price and offer XP Home is laughable, utterly laughble. If I may ask, who are you buying this from and also can you find out what motherboard, power supply and memory they intend to use because that can make a huge difference to the price. If they are giving you just a basic Nforce4 motherboard, cheapo PC3200 memory and a generic power supply then I am afraid that they are trying to rip you off, please don't commit to buying before you get some good advice.

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

nvidia nforce 4 motherboard

im not to minded when it comes to pc,s bit of a novice at the moment

There are loads of those motherboards. I mean, which motherboard, for instance, if you'd go for the MSI K8N SLI-Platinum you wouldn't need a soundcard with it, cos it's got a Creative Soundblaster Live! 24bit on board...

Often motherboards have nice gizmo's which makes you not needing extra stuff on it.

Also, nForce4 motherboards have a network card onboard, often with built-in hardware firewall. when you got Windows running be sure to turn of hardware checksumming, otherwise you'd go LD every time you do a same-zone teleportation in DAoC.

and yeah, go pro, or better, if you can (hey, you're making the computer still, so...) make it so that it supports Win x64

Also!!! AMD64 is picky about it's memory. Corsair didn't work on the computer I made for a friend of mine (nor on my AMD64, I found out after testing) but GEIL did. read up on the memory, and the do's and don't's of that..

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

and ohw, I cannot stress this enough!!! important enough to make a seperate post for it...

GET A GOOD PSU!!!!!!

you haven't posted it there which one you'd take, but like the processor is the brains of the computer, the memory the (dôh) memory.. the power supply is the heart of it all, and is extremely important.
Loads of problems come from the quality of the power supply, and people shuff it off on other parts, while it in essence is just the psu.
A louzy powersupply can literally destroy your entire computer...

I'd go for the TAGAN TG580-U15 Easycon which is a damn nice powersupply, and has disconnectable cables on the back, so you only use the cables which you actually need, which makes the cluttering in your pc-case a lot less.

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

Little list:

• PSU: TAGAN TG580-U15 Easycon
• MOBO: MSI K8N SLI-Platinum
• CPU: AMD 64 x2 3800+
• cooler: Zalman CNPS9500
• MEM: GEIL Ultra PC3200 1024MB Dual Channel
• GFX: MSI NX7800GT(X?) VT2D256E
• cooler: Zalman VF700-CU
• HD: Seagate 250GB NCQ S-ATA

Didn't list the peripherals, cos well, not my department

 

[Titan Moist]

like i previously stated i a bit of a novice when it comes to the 'innards' of a PC, i just want a decent set up so i can play daoc dual logged.

the pc spec i posted is a secial offer from a company that deals pc's to employers not available to the general public as im aware, the company is Evesham if anybody knows of it

i havent comitted myself to the computer yet, i am trying to do a little homework, hence why i am here.

i basically want a 64 based system thats powerfull enough to handle 2 accouts. on that note i read someplace about duel core? is that the equivilant of HT on pentiums? i also heard that dual core cpu's can run 2 daoc clients and u can assign (not sure about terminology here) each client to a seperate process on the cpu, so it doesn't LT or lag

my budget is around £1,000-£1,400 i will also enquire with the guys on overclockers, atm im requesting a technical specification pack so i can see exactly whats in the deal, brand wize and can then translate it across to you guys for advice/criticism

thanks for your time

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

well, if it's a company offering the whole deal, I'm sure it's a good setup, because otherwise they'd lose a LOT of money with everyone bringing their PC's back if it ain't working

and yes, the AMD 64 x2 is a dual core processor, the x2 means just that
if you run a program, you can assign a certain process to a certain core, making them both run perfectly without going LD or without lagging

 

[Titan Moist]

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processor

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

NVIDIA nForce 4 motherboard

1GB dual channel DDR RAM (PC3200) 400MHz (2x512MB)

200GB Serial ATA hard drive with 8MB buffer

256Mb ATI Radeon X800GT PCI Express graphics

19" Viewsonic VX912 pure digital DVI TFT monitor (12ms response)

DVD-ROM (16x) drive

Multi Format Dual Layer DVD Writer (16x) / CD Writer drive

NVIDIA 7.1 channel surround sound audio (on-board)

Creative Inspire P5800 5.1 speakers

Microsoft cordless keyboard and cordless optical tilt mouse

v92 56k modem

Xpider tool free case (453x222x495mm)

HCI 5 star Bundle Desktop

thats exactly what the offer included, its not really in depth enough

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

ohw, a few more explanations:

to your question if it is thesame as hyperthreading.. no it isn't

Hyperthreading emulates two cores, by moving differrent calculations, that use different area's of the processor thru it simultaneous. This doesn't work at all if you for instance, simultaneously start two thesame processes (quite impossible to start them simultaneous, but theoretically) because they would then have to do the same calculations in the processor at thesame time. Also, when using hyperthreading, the performance per emulated core is lower then the performance of the one core if not using hyperthreading. This is a pentium-only feature.

dual-core actually has two physical cores in the processor, meaning it's like having two processors on your motherboard, so you can actually do two things simultaneously, at equal speed as if you would run one thing. Both AMD and Pentium have dual-core processors now.

now, AMD has HyperTransport. Conveniently thesame abbreviation (HT) as Pentium, but a very different feature. Who was first, I don't know, don't care Anyway, this is a speedboost between the CPU and the chipset. Difficult technical stuff which I don't get fully either, but in short, it's reducing the latency, and increasing the speed for point-to-point data.

AMD64 also has it's memory controller in the CPU itself. Therefor the AMD64 doesn't work with a north- and southbridge anymore, but with a chipset.
The data going from the CPU to the memory (and back) has one less chip to pass thru, and a few mileage to cover less, making it's latency a lot less. Memory speed doesn't raise, but memory performance does. AMD 64's performance with DDR is better than Intel Pentium's performance with DDR2. not because of the speed, but because of the latency.

Used latency quite often here, which just means the delay.
There are actually four factors which define the performance of data traffic from point to point.
Latency, like the time needed to get from your house into your car..
Bandwidth, like the number of lanes between your car and your enddestination
Speed, frequency, like the maximum allowable speed on these lanes.
Pathlength, like the distance you need to travel to get to your enddestination.

 

[cHodAX]

well, if it's a company offering the whole deal, I'm sure it's a good setup, because otherwise they'd lose a LOT of money with everyone bringing their PC's back if it ain't working

Frankly thats bull, major PC companies are big for one reason and that is profit, they make good profits by selling pre-built systems using cheap parts that they can sell for a much larger markup in a pre-built machine. That is why they also sting you for a nice warranty as well, so thier arses are covered if there is any comeback.

If they havent stated the model of motherboard in the specs it is because the motherboard is more likely than not a cheap Chinese brand using cheap capacitors and resistors. To give you an example, you can purchase a cheap generic Nforce4 motherboard for under £50 or you can pay upwards of £120 for a premium overclockers board with lots of added features. The difference isn't just the features though, it is the quality of the components used to make the board. Cheapo Chinese sourced capacitors blow all the time and do not give good power stability, that is why all the premium brands used Japanese sourced capacitors, they even advertise the fact because they know how important it is to people with technical knowledge.

Now for the memory, if it isn't branded and listed in the specs then it is generic CAS latency 3 rubbish, at £1400 you are buying a premium machine and it should have at least good mid-range memory if not top quality.

All I can say is please reconsider before you buy that machine, you will not be getting your moneys worth. You could have a custom built machine with much better quality parts for that price and the performance will be much better than the other as well.

 

[cHodAX]

Oh and I meant to add, Evesham have been around a long time and they do sell retail to consumers although their main buisness is government and local government contracts.

One more thing, Evesham have a history of using pretty crappy power supplies that don't work at anywhere near the stated wattage. One would hope that for a premium machine such as this they would be using something much more hefty but as they don't even list it in the specs I am pretty worried that they may stick you with a generic 400watt PSU which is of no use to you at all in the long run. For a machine of that spec they should be using a PSU with a minimum of 430watt from a brand such as Antec, Enermax, Sparkle or Tagan.

A quality PSU rated at over 500watt is only required for machines running 2 high-end 3d videocards, a dual core AMD64 only uses 10-15% more power under full load than the single core variety and I can personally verify that. Don't be misled by other comments in this thread that push you towards a 550watt+ PSU, it is complete overkill unless you plan to go down the dual 3d videocard setup (SLi) which of course you won't be without an SLi enabled motherboard anyway.

 

[cHodAX]

Just found this and it may be a bit over your budget after you buy an LCD but it uses top quality parts from top to bottom.

http://www.overclock.co.uk/customer/product.php?productid=18821

Now it might be a bit pricey but it has a better case, PSU, memory, motherboard and graphics card than the Evesham machine. Everything in that machine is premium and it doesn't work out way too much more than Evesham even after you include a 19inch LCD. It also has an SLI motheboard for future expansion and a 600watt Enermax PSU for total overkill. You could find something that suits what you need a little better for £100 less and still get a much better system than the Evesham.

 

[Titan Moist]

cHodAX i must thank you for your sound advice.

infact i thank you all for your input.

Ive decided not to go for the evesham syste, but rather build a pc from scratch. cHodAX the syste, you showed me looks really nice, and its under the £1,400 mark, bonus.
if i was to build one from scratch what would you recomend? and what does SLi do?

 

[Titan Moist]

edit. i read previously that home edition doesn't support duel core. but the system you showed me had just that

 

[cHodAX]

cHodAX i must thank you for your sound advice.

infact i thank you all for your input.

Ive decided not to go for the evesham syste, but rather build a pc from scratch. cHodAX the syste, you showed me looks really nice, and its under the £1,400 mark, bonus.
if i was to build one from scratch what would you recomend? and what does SLi do?

No problem, glad to be able to help.

Now as for building your own PC, unless you feel confident to do then I would advise against it, the last thing you need is a lack of confidence when you have £1000+ of gear in your hands. That said if you do feel confident or you know someone with a reasonable amount of technical knowledge then go for it, if not then a custom build from someone like www.overclock.co.uk is best.

As for XP Home and Dual Core well after a little reading it does seem that XP Home will work in dual processor mode, that suprises me as Microsoft originally said that XP Home was for the Uniprocessor enviroment. That said XP Pro is a much better option if you can afford it, or you could always *cough* look around for a copy of XP Pro SP2 Corp Edition

SLi is a technology that allows you to run 2 high end 3d cards together, basically the cards share the load and thus give a huge performance increase in framerate when playing games. You need a motherboard that supports SLi and also 2 graphics cards as well. SLi is as high end as it gets when it comes to gaming and graphics but you can spend well over £2000 building a system like that.

Spec's wise the Evesham machine was fine, the problem was the un-named components and thier reputation for using budget power supplies. For £1400 they really should be using decent parts and have no problem naming them. Of couse they do include a very nice screen but for the price the graphics card they include is a bit too mid-range for my liking. Personally I would go for a Nvidia 7800GT, the new ATi range really isn't up to par at the moment sadly.

I can come up with something more detailed if you like but I think you should spend a few days considering your options, if have never built a PC before then you really need to think about it before jumping in with both feet.

Using the online Evsham configurator I was able to come up with something similair to what you listed but with the 7800GT which is miles better than the ATi card you listed and the price came to £1310 inc VAT and Windows XP Pro which isn't a bad deal at all. One thing I will say in favour of Evesham is that they have been around a long time and so your warranty will be honoured. It might be wise to try get Evesham to specify which motherboard and PSU they are using, if they do that then I would be alot happier to be honest and would probably recommend the custom build I was able to do on thier site for £1300.

Go here and see what you can come up with

http://www.evesham.com/PCs/List.asp?e=D37E7ECA-3616-45FF-B6C2-70E05D102098

either way don't decide in a hurry, remember the old saying 'act in haste and repent at leisure'. I really does pay to consider all your options carefully

 

[DocWolfe]

cHo's a bum, but he knows his shit, listen to him I always ask him for advice and he always comes up trumps, except for last time when I asked him for sex advice he was definately wrong with the 80+ rent boy.

 

[cHodAX]

cHo's a bum, but he knows his shit, listen to him I always ask him for advice and he always comes up trumps, except for last time when I asked him for sex advice he was definately wrong with the 80+ rent boy.

Docwolfe will do anything for a rep point, even bum sex. Oh that reminds me...

<gives Doc a rep point>

Thats for last night bigboy.

 

[Coolan]

bit late to reply to this thread but yeah cho seems to know what hes on about, working for a pc shop i can confirm they use cheap crap and sell it for lots, and inga the little list u posted is sooo close to the spec of my pc its scary only difference is im using the asus k8n sli-premium board, stock cooler and 2 xfx 7800gt's

The only downfall is as previously mentioned i have noticed alot of problems with memory leaks and daoc using my 3800 x2, dosnt happen in any other games and yes clevercache fixes the problem.

 

[Sycho]

Just found this and it may be a bit over your budget after you buy an LCD but it uses top quality parts from top to bottom.

http://www.overclock.co.uk/customer/product.php?productid=18821

Now it might be a bit pricey but it has a better case, PSU, memory, motherboard and graphics card than the Evesham machine. Everything in that machine is premium and it doesn't work out way too much more than Evesham even after you include a 19inch LCD. It also has an SLI motheboard for future expansion and a 600watt Enermax PSU for total overkill. You could find something that suits what you need a little better for £100 less and still get a much better system than the Evesham.

Agree with chod here, that's a friggin marvellous pc for the money spent.You forgot to mention chod that the hardrive there is damn great too.The motherboard is one of the best you can get aswell as the casing.I wouldn't say there's any bad components in that pc.

 

[Wild]

dam chod i didnt know u waz a PC wizz i would of been buging u for advice ! !

toooo late now just bought a new PC from pcspecialist.co.uk

tbh i couldnt be arsed to try and build one from overclockers and was scared about hardware compatablity.

i went for this spec and it arrived today . but reading above i noticed that my RAM etc wasnt named so im guessing i got sent shite ?

would open it up and check but tbh i dont know what im looking for.

as for the PC it cost £1650 or so but as my company is VAT reg i can claim back all that making it cost me about £1380
havent tryed it on ay games yet but hoping it will rock

AMD® ATHLON® 64BIT X2 4400 1MB L2 Cache
2048 MB DDR400 PC3200 WITH LIFETIME WARRANTY! (2x1GB)
ASUS® A8N-SLI: DUAL DDR, S-ATA, 2 x x16 VGA, 3 PCI
SIX USB 2.0 PORTS (4 REAR + 2 FRONT)
SATA 160 GB HARD DISK @ 7200rpm 8mb cache
SATA 160 GB HARD DISK @ 7200rpm 8mb cache
Raid: NONE
16X DVD ROM WITH 48X CD ROM
4x +R DUAL LYR DVD WRITER (16x +/-R) (& RW) + 40x CD-RW
256MB GEFORCE 7800GT PCI Express
256MB GEFORCE 7800GT PCI Express
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS 7.1 Player: £39
NONE, I WILL BE USING BROADBAND
2 x 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORTS ONBOARD
1.44MB FLOPPY DISK DRIVE
Stylish Silver X-Plode Case + 2 Front USB
550W DUAL RAIL PSU, 120mm fan & 19.2 dBA CPU Cooler - for SLI
MICROSOFT® WINDOWS® XP PRO (inc. original CD & licence)
1 x FIREWIRE PORT ONBOARD

 

[Equador]

I'm quite certain your system would rock everything

 

[Crookshanks]

I've give my tuppence too on this. The pc you have there originally from Evesham seems very expensive imo for what you are getting. To put it into perspective, lets look at say a current machine from mesh computers (yes yes its all generic component crap but if you just want a cheap and fast machine the bigger manufacturers are hard to beat on price):

http://www.meshcomputers.com/Default.aspx?PAGE=PRODUCTVIEWPAGE&USG=PRODUCT&ENT=PRODUCT&KEY=53811

First pc I see on their site: AMD64 x2 4200, 250 gig HD, 1 gig ram, dvd writer and reader, 19" DVI tft panel, ATI X800 + soundy bits and XP home for £1049, which includes VAT.

If we look at their "Deal of the Week" (url valid for one week only maybe?)
http://www.meshcomputers.com/Default.aspx?PAGE=PRODUCTVIEWPAGE&USG=PRODUCT&ENT=PRODUCT&KEY=52932

AMD64 4200+, 200 gig HD, SLI mobo, 1 gig ram, Geforce 7800GT, 19" flat panel, dvd writer, sound rhubarb, all for £1173.83 (it even comes in mesh's nice new swanky ally case). Which seems pretty reasonable to me really.

I'm sure if you dig about on their webby a bit more you could find something better, although you should be able to find a comparable deal on the Evesham webby. The Dell XPS systems might also be worth a look if you can find one which is sanely priced.

I hadn't heard that XP Home won't make use of 2 cpus (or two cores), but I guess I wouldn't be overly surprised although it would suggest all the manufacturers who are currently shipping XP Home on AMD64 x2 don't really know what they are doing which I'd be surprised about. If you can - try and avoid the 3800+ AMD64x2. Its a good price chip, and its performance certainly isn't terrible, but the lower numbered single core chips are actually considerably faster (say the AMD64 3500+) in single threaded apps, which I'll guess you'll be running most of the time for the next 12 months. Instead, if you can push the boat up to a 4200+ at least. I'd be surprised if you couldn't find a 4400 or 4600+ in your price bracket.

Incidendtally, that Mesh deal of the week can be upgraded from a 4200+ to a 4400+ for £75, a 4600+ for £180, or a 4800+ for £265.