Looking to buy new computer, need help with the tech details

Riot · Post by **Riot** » Mon May 30, 2005 7:48 pm

Hey, I'm interested in buying a new (and good for gaming) computer as I head off to IU. The one I have my eye on is this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6883102620

I'm not the most computer-literate person, so I'm not sure what everything means exactly, but I do know that 3.2 ghz is very good, the 1gb memory is pretty much the best out there, and I think that graphics card is one of the better ones. However, since I'm paying for this all myself (Got a nice bonus from the $360 I got for selling my World of Warcraft account), I'd like to reduce the price a little more.

Does anybody know any other places that I could kind of customize my own system and get the price down a little while still maintaining the good parts of the this system? Or is this price pretty much the lowest I can find for those specs?

Potter · Post by **Potter** » Mon May 30, 2005 8:08 pm

uhh, Youcould build one yourself for hella cheaper or get some else tro buuild you one since you said you arent computer literate. IMO you dont rwally need a 3.2 pentium for gaming, I would go for the much cheaper and newer 64 bit athlons. Just say what youll be using it for exactly and that will help.

Riot · Post by **Riot** » Mon May 30, 2005 8:34 pm

Well I'll definitely be playing Dark and Light (http://www.darkandlight.net/) when it comes out later in November. MMORPG, graphics look simplistic at surface value, but the fact that the world is so huge and you can see so far in the distance makes me think I'll lag and have slowdown problems.

Also, I'll probably play a little Counterstrike, but my computer runs that already pretty well (except for odd textures sometimes on map and characters). Can always do better though!

Mainly, I just don't want a system that lags. And I'd like for it to be able to handle the latest stuff well on high settings, visually and speed-wise with no lag.

Riot · Post by **Riot** » Mon May 30, 2005 8:39 pm

Is this more along the lines of what you were talking about?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6883102621

Is a GeForce 5200 good? I thought they went up to 6600.

Potter · Post by **Potter** » Mon May 30, 2005 9:10 pm

yea, they go up to 6800 ultras prolly the best card out there right now. If you want to spend less cash for a better comp, look into building one. I built minefor about 1300 and its really nice. and trust me, 64 bit isdef. the way to go. i have a 64 3200+ with an ati x800 pro and i can run hl2 with everything all the way up.

Riot · Post by **Riot** » Mon May 30, 2005 9:13 pm

Obviously, I can't build it myself, so who is able to build one around here for a reasonable price? And do I just say "I want this and this and this" and they get each part and give me an estimate? Or do I gotta gather crap on my own?

Ryan Dognaux · Post by **Ryan Dognaux** » Mon May 30, 2005 9:19 pm

Really, if you know where to look, you're only going to save about 100 bucks by building your own computer.

I have been looking into a few sites myself, http://www.cyberpowersystem.com caught my eye. You can build a reasonably priced starting computer, and then upgrade your Ram and such from there. I'm going to go with an AMD 3200 I think, starting with a gig of ram and an ATI Radeon 256MB video card. You don't need the crazy ATI X800's or anything like that. Plus, they're ungodly expensive.

A way I would save money is buy your computer with only 512 MB of Ram. Make sure it has 4 slots for ram and then buy as much more as you need from ebay. Ebay is a great way to save money when upgrading a computer. Just make sure you know what you're buying, as buying ram and such can be tricky.

Anyone know of a place to get a decent monitor for cheap?

Riot · Post by **Riot** » Mon May 30, 2005 9:27 pm

Videocard.... what's better GeForce 5500 256mb or a ATI RADEON 9600 128mb?

This is what I have built so far:

CPU : (754-pin) AMD ATHLON64 3200+ CPU w/ Hyper Transport Technology
MOTHERBOARD : (754-pin Socket) eVGA nForce3 250 Chipset SATA RAID AGP8X w/GbLAN,USB2,&5.1Audio
MEMORY : 512 MB PC3200 400MHz DDR MEMORY (Corsair Value RAM)
HARD DRIVE : 80GB 7200 RPM ATA 100 HARD DRIVE
Hard Drive 2 : NONE
VIDEO CARD : Special ATI Radeon 9600 SE 128MB DDR AGP 8X w/ TV-Out & DVI
Optical Drive : NONE
Optical Drive 2 : CD-RW 52X32X52 (BEIGE COLOR)
MONITOR & LCD : NONE
SOUND : 3D WAVE ON-BOARD 5.1 SOUND CARD

What's important to upgrade? Currently, the price is like 575 which isn't bad at all.

Potter · Post by **Potter** » Mon May 30, 2005 9:51 pm

yea, see, building your own does save alot. as for a video card goes, the 9600'es and even the 9800'es arentgoing to be very good with the next generation of gamemes. I would definetly look into the new 800xl'es. there very nivce and cheap. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102521

What site are you using to build it? i could build it for you if you ever get the parts, its a fairly easy process.

seveneleven · Post by **seveneleven** » Mon May 30, 2005 10:09 pm

I have the GF 5200 and i can run HL2 just fine but you need at least a Gig of RAM if you wanna run it really well.....IMO Try DELL's new laptop its cheap but not real cheap but its the fastest laptop Computer Gaming World Magizines

ever had

AtomX · Post by **AtomX** » Mon May 30, 2005 11:31 pm

Riot wrote:Videocard.... what's better GeForce 5500 256mb or a ATI RADEON 9600 128mb?

This is what I have built so far:

CPU : (754-pin) AMD ATHLON64 3200+ CPU w/ Hyper Transport Technology
MOTHERBOARD : (754-pin Socket) eVGA nForce3 250 Chipset SATA RAID AGP8X w/GbLAN,USB2,&5.1Audio
MEMORY : 512 MB PC3200 400MHz DDR MEMORY (Corsair Value RAM)
HARD DRIVE : 80GB 7200 RPM ATA 100 HARD DRIVE
Hard Drive 2 : NONE
VIDEO CARD : Special ATI Radeon 9600 SE 128MB DDR AGP 8X w/ TV-Out & DVI
Optical Drive : NONE
Optical Drive 2 : CD-RW 52X32X52 (BEIGE COLOR)
MONITOR & LCD : NONE
SOUND : 3D WAVE ON-BOARD 5.1 SOUND CARD

What's important to upgrade? Currently, the price is like 575 which isn't bad at all.

What about a case?

Green Tea · Post by **Green Tea** » Mon May 30, 2005 11:39 pm

Riot wrote:Videocard.... what's better GeForce 5500 256mb or a ATI RADEON 9600 128mb?

This is what I have built so far:

CPU : (754-pin) AMD ATHLON64 3200+ CPU w/ Hyper Transport Technology
MOTHERBOARD : (754-pin Socket) eVGA nForce3 250 Chipset SATA RAID AGP8X w/GbLAN,USB2,&5.1Audio
MEMORY : 512 MB PC3200 400MHz DDR MEMORY (Corsair Value RAM)
HARD DRIVE : 80GB 7200 RPM ATA 100 HARD DRIVE
Hard Drive 2 : NONE
VIDEO CARD : Special ATI Radeon 9600 SE 128MB DDR AGP 8X w/ TV-Out & DVI
Optical Drive : NONE
Optical Drive 2 : CD-RW 52X32X52 (BEIGE COLOR)
MONITOR & LCD : NONE
SOUND : 3D WAVE ON-BOARD 5.1 SOUND CARD

What's important to upgrade? Currently, the price is like 575 which isn't bad at all.

The battle between nvidia and ati has been going on for a while now and I agree with Potter except maybe not a 800xl

a radeon x700 is extremely powerful and uses advanced piplining which is unparalled... true HL2 will run on older cards (I also use a geForce FX 5200

) but we're talking about next gen, which is crazy good... but then again, if you don't feel like dropping the $200 for a x700, I say go with the 9600.

uh upgrades... i suggest you upgrade your monitor from none to something. (I got a cheap LCD display when I went off to purdue (hail purdue) and it REALLY saves valuble desk space) I almost want to tell you to upgrade to 1 gig of memory, 400 MHz is great, but even 333 will do... keep it DDR because DDR rocks. Hard drive space might be ok.... I started off the year with 160 gigs and now have 10 though :tear: then again only about 15 gigs of that is legal... but that's not the point... oh yeah SATA hard drives are the way to go now... way to be! Sound card is fine... AMD Athlon64 :drool: and I think you should get a second CD rom drive as DVD (doesn't have to be a DVDR drive) it seems like alot of games are starting to release both CD versions and DVD versions... DVD games might be taking over... so just as a precaution. oh... and upgrade your CD-RW drive to blue (uh I guess it's not necessary, but it'd be cool)

one thing about building computers though... if you buy low quality parts, it can be a pain in the butt to get it working. I helped Krause build one last summer and he had a bad stick of ram and a malfunctioning CPU. If you decide to build and you ever have any problems, just send the signal.

seveneleven · Post by **seveneleven** » Mon May 30, 2005 11:48 pm

Ok first explain how much $$$ you wnat to put out for this suxor cuz depending on when you want it you could wait till the FW computer show comes around, but still how much are you willin to pay

Spazz · Post by **Spazz** » Tue May 31, 2005 12:25 am

Go with geForce. I've got a 4600ti that I'm still running with and it can keep up with all but the most cutting edge dumb shit :p

Also, here within the next year or so, they're gonna be changing around quite a bit of how your PC is going to look, feel, and be put together. I wouldn't buy absolute top-o-the-line stuff, especially video cards. Mostly because you can get something that will get the job done pretty much just as well for alot cheaper if you go a few models down from the top.

ShammerS · Post by **ShammerS** » Tue May 31, 2005 12:55 am

Spazz wrote: Also, here within the next year or so, they're gonna be changing around quite a bit of how your PC is going to look, feel, and be put together.

Dual PCI-Express vid cards, anyone? Make sure you've got the ability for them in your mobo.