The time is close... (suggested spec on p2)

Im now gonna replace my well lived amd 3200 agp graphics pc. So i need some help from the people who know more than me

My main questions are:

Single or Dual Core CPU
ATi or nVidia
What power supply.

Please explain all your suggestions too

My budget is £2500.

Thanks
Iain



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2005 10:11PM by madotter.

2500? You can get a great system for that :D

Head over to mesh computers and see what they have, then do some excellent deals on high end systems, both AMD, and intel

Basically, if you get a dual core (4800+ I would reccomend with your price range) then you are future proofed, as well as getting a superb performance on games while running other software in the background. A 4800+ has 2mb cache (1mb per core) and each runs at 2.4ghz, which you can overclock to about 2.6 I think.

If you get an Sli (scalar linked interface) motherboard as well, then you can run two nVidia graphics card simultaneously, which will give you immense processing power.

Of course, AMD have also released the fx-57 of late which runs at 2.8 (only single core though atm) and overclocks to 3ghz. It actually outperformed all of the intel dual cores if I remember rightly, so that's also a great buy

If you look at ATi gfx, they're sittig level with nVidia (more or less, the X18000XL is better than the 7800gtx) but nVidia did release a KO version of the gtx, however, I'm not sure how much better this was than the gtx itself. I would reccomend an nVidia card because if you have an Sli computer, you can have two of them, which isn't possible with ATi cards currently

I hope this helps you a little



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2005 11:51PM by zeppelin101.

id prefer to build the pc myself like the one im using, i do know alot about pcs but i know people like gav know more about the future products etc...

tbh, im always gonna go SLI or crossfire mobo for future. Its gonna be used for Games mostly rather than dvd encoding or anything like that, although that will still be done.

Do all games support multi core cpu? and has the problems with SLi been sorted now with newer drivers.

I just dont wanna make the mistakes i did before (like buy a 754 mobo with agp when 939 and pci xpress came out a few weeks later)

Thanks
Iain

Zeppelin is *mostly* correct. However:-


I'd go dual core. The new FX60 is out soonish, which is 2.6ghz with 2 cores. But don't buy that, awful waste of money. The dual core opterons are great value and run in 939 a64 boards fine. A 4800 x2 is a safe bet though.

Graphics - the fastest money can buy is the Nvidia 7800 GTX 512 - seriously, seriously fast. Its actually an "Ultra" but they didnt call it that - the core and ram on the card are massively faster than the 256mb version. Oh, its also a lot quicker than the x1800xt 512. But you're talking silly money for those. Personally, I'd look at dual 7800 GTX 256s for ultimate performance short of the 512. IMO, forget ATI, though the XT has come down in price a lot.

Of couse, you can get a Crossfire board for dual ATI cards, but its still rather new and immature a platform, though the chipset seems solid enough. I'd still have an NF4 SLI based AMD motherboard though.

For 2500, do you need a monitor? Or is that just the tower?

-----------------

She says brief things, her love’s a pony
My love’s subliminal

You can build your own system over at mesh, and a decent system comes in (without a monitor) at about £1900. Although not all games support multi-core, they can utilise it to a certain extent, but one of the main benefits is multi-tasking power that it gives you, which is great in my opinion

It probably won't be until the middle of next year (perhaps earlier) that developers start making games to be fully compliant with multi-core, but rest assured that the 4800+ is a good place to start. I believe an fx-57 dc was on the way at some point, but I haven't heard anything about this for a while.

-EDIT- thanks -qwerty- I hadn't heard anything on the "fx-60" since they mentioned it a few months ago



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2005 11:59PM by zeppelin101.

Gav and Qwerty gave me a hand to put my current system together and it came to £1300 give or take a few quid, that included the creative labs 7.1 speaker system too


Thats the spec more or less, i changed the ram for the crucial ballistix though


Antec SLK1650B Beige Quiet Mini Tower Case - 350W SmartPower PSU (CA-023-AN)

Akasa Ultra Quiet 460W Paxpower Active PFC ATX2.0 PSU - Black Nickel with Blue LED Fan (CA-004-AK)

DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF)

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX) (CP-134-AM)

AOpen DUW1608 Chameleon 16x DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter inc. Ivory/Black/Silver Bezels - Retail (CD-007-AO)

Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB WD360GD 10,000RPM SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-007-WD)

Samsung SpinPoint P HD120IJ 120GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-022-SA)

Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-079-CS)

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS 7.1 THX Sound Card - OEM (SC-023-CL)

OcUK GeForce 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-033-OK)





LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat

that motherboard of LS' is a great place to start. I'd have a dell widescreen monitor too, 2 x 256 7800 gtxs, a 4800 x2 and the rest. Should clock in under budget i would think.

EDIT: AMD are about to change socket to "M2" - supporting DDR2 instead of standard 3200 (DDR400). Might be owrth waiting - to stop the 754 / PCI E thing happening again.

Otherwise, this is fairly uber:-

Lian-Li PC V1000 PLUS Silver Aluminium Midi-Tower (No PSU) (CA-024-LL)
£119.95 £119.95
DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-013-DF)
£99.95 £99.95
Leadtek GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-065-LT)
£289.95 £579.90
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4800CDBOX) (CP-129-AM)
£494.95 £494.95
Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3500LL Pro TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-093-CS)
£189.95 £189.95
Western Digital Raptor 74GB WD740GD 10,000RPM SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-015-WD)
£99.95 £199.90
AOpen DUW1616 Chameleon 16x DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter inc. Ivory/Black/Silver Bezels - Retail (CD-008-AO)
£26.50 £26.50
Sony DDU1613 DVD-ROM - OEM (CD-003-SO)
£12.50 £12.50
Akasa Ultra Quiet 650W PowerPlus Active PFC ATX2.0 PSU - Black Nickel (CA-015-AK)
£77.95 £77.95
DELL Ultrasharp 2001FP 20.1" Performance LCD Monitor - Midnight Grey (359) (MO-002-DE)
£349.95 £349.95
Subtotal £2,151.50
VAT £376.52
Total £2,528.02

I mean you can find slightly cheaper PSUs of the same quality on that site, or could have 1 raptor, 1 normal SATA drive ot save money. I'd wait it out a month or two personally.

-----------------

She says brief things, her love’s a pony
My love’s subliminal



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2005 12:28AM by -qwerty-.

To save me finding the graphics card thread I'll post it here :p

I will be buying the 6600gt soon but I noticed theres a 128mb version and a 256mb version is it worth the extra money on getting the 256mb version ?

Keiran


vMax.Keiran
Velocity Maximum Simulation Racing
www.vMaxSR.com
www.liveforspeed.net LFS Status:

is 650W really needed

Id love to have 2,500 to build a system though

Is it PCI-E of AGP Keiran? I think I read somewhere (possibly Gav) that 256mb isnt worth the money on most AGP cards because of the bandwith or something.

---

With LCD monitors which is better 550:1 Contrast Ratio or 650:1 Contrast Ratio? and is XP x64 worth having yet?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2005 01:45AM by madotter.

Hi Iain,

Are you 100% sure you want to upgrade that machine? Its still really high spec.

I'm not 100% sure whether the money spent will yield a big enough performance increase.

Mark

Why do you want a better machine than your current one? Provide bullet point answers.

ssshhh.

I'll give him 25 quid for his old, OBSOLETE system, then his budget's even more nuts!

Dude, you seem to have one of these "assistance with upgrades plz" threads every 5 minutes, why do you have to upgrade so quickly and waste so much money?

---

@kieran - I've got the 128Mb one, and that's fine. When I upgraded, I was told by someone round here that there wasn't much point in the 256Mb one.

While I agree an upgrade isn't worth doing, its his money. If he wants to spend it on this then so be it.

For the 6600GT I wouldn't worry about 256mb memory really. But it won't be any slower either, so its up to you. Basically you need more gfx memory when you have very large textures to cachre before putting them on the screen - but only high resolutions have textures that size, and the 6600gt isnt powerful enough to run those res anyway.

-----------------

She says brief things, her love’s a pony
My love’s subliminal

@Keiran: As I know the 6600GT has a 128bit interface so 256MB is totally useless.
It cannot do anything with more than 128MB RAM so don't buy it.
As in 6800GT and 7800 cards have 256 bit interface they are able to use 256MB.

it doesnt really work like that. It can addres the extra memory, its just not powerful enough to fully utilise it.

-----------------

She says brief things, her love’s a pony
My love’s subliminal

Once again, this isnt a 'give me a financial advice' help thread. If i wanna buy a £10,000,000 pc EVERYDAY then its up to me, not YOU

I just wanted to know if dual core cpu worked better than a single core such as AMD 64 4000+ and if all games work with it, same with dual cpu.

Thankyou for the info about M2, i wont be buying until the end of jan begining of feb so ill keep a close eye on m2.

I just need need some help with what to buy not what money im spending. Im not happy with my pc as some games like doom 3 hl2 cs:source battlefront 2 are begining to lag, ive had this pc for over a year, not spend a penny on it and most games are aimed to dual graphics and faster cpu, and even if some games arnt, like i said ITS MY MONEY!!

Thankyou.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2005 08:20PM by madotter.

Can you give me your old computer ??

Will stick with the 128mb then and yes it is AGP

Keiran


vMax.Keiran
Velocity Maximum Simulation Racing
www.vMaxSR.com
www.liveforspeed.net LFS Status:



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2005 08:38PM by keiran.