My New PC:

[DCK]

Shame really, the Radeon 3850 delivers excellent (near 8800GTS) performance at the price of a 8600GTS. Great machine nonetheless.

 

My parents are buying my brother a Radeon 3850 PC (a long with X2 5200+ and 2 GB RAM and the likes). That'll be some awesome gaming over the weekends ^_^

[RoadKill]

No, he should get a 8800GT.

 

Actually, AshMat you should check how much more the the 8800GT is because if it isn't much then you should definitely go for it.

 

This is the correct answer.

 

Edit: Ah well, of course it'll run HL2 and CSS, they're really undemanding - Just try Crysis

[tapedeck]

Right, for £400 I've seen this. It's on Ebay as new though. It's currently at £350 and he lives near me but wants £400. I'm sure I can get it for £350. Any comments? Just for Pro Evo and anything else "work" related (Pro Evo specs follow)

 

Shuttle SN68SG2 Glamour Series XPC

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800 + CPU AM2, Socket AM2 940 PIN

500GB Maxtor Diamondmax21 SATA 2 7200rpm 16MB cache Hard Disk Drive

Kingston 2GB RAM DDR2 667MHz PC5300 Memory (Upgradable to 4GB)

LG DVD RW 20x Retail 20x +/-R/RW/RAM DL IDE Including Lightscribe Technology black / beige SecurDisk GSA-H55LBRL

NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / nForce 630 a Chipset Graphics

7.1 High Definition Audio

High speed Gigabit Ethernet Connectivity

16 In One Internal Memory Card Reader

7 x USB Ports

1 mini IEEE 1394 and 1 IEEE 1394 Ports

2 eSATA connectors on the back

 

PRO EVO details:

 

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

Windows XP

Intel Pentium IV 1.4GHz or equivalent

512 MB RAM

DirectX 9.0c compatible video card. 64MB Pixel Shader 1.1 (NVIDIA GeForce 3 or ATI Radeon 8500 video card)

DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card

DirectX 9.0c or higher

 

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

Windows XP

Intel Pentium IV 3.0GHz or AMD Athlon 64 or equivalent or higher

1GB RAM

DirectX 9.0c compatible video card. 256MB Pixel Shader 3.0 (ATI x1600 or NVidia 6800 GT/GS or better)

DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card

DirectX 9.0c or higher

 

SUPPORTED CHIPSETS:

NVIDIA - GeForce 8800, 8600, 8500, 7900, 7800, 7600, 7300, 7100, 6800, 6600, GeForce FX (5950, 5900, 5800, 5600, 5200), GeForce4 Ti (GeForce4 MX not supported), GeForce3

ATI - Radeon HD2900, HD2400, x1950, x1900, x1800, x1900, x1600, x1050, x1550, x850, x800, x700, x300, 9800, 9700, 9600, 9500, 9200, 9000, 8500

 

Looks like the GeForce 7025 (in system) isn't on Pro Evo supported chipsets. Does this mean it won't run at all?

[AeroScap]

Other than the obvious little niggle it is more than able to run pro, the only thing i would do it look into that graphics chip. I mean I ran 6 on less than that with an ati 1200.

[tapedeck]

Other than the obvious little niggle it is more than able to run pro, the only thing i would do it look into that graphics chip. I mean I ran 6 on less than that with an ati 1200.

 

 

Can't find anything, anywhere. Unsure about the price point. Does it seem like a good spec for a £400 system?

[tapedeck]

Gonna get this for £375 then..Anyone have any gripes? Still a total NooB

 

Shuttle SN68SG2 Glamour Series XPC

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800 + CPU AM2, Socket AM2 940 PIN

500GB Maxtor Diamondmax21 SATA 2 7200rpm 16MB cache Hard Disk Drive

Kingston 2GB RAM DDR2 667MHz PC5300 Memory (Upgradable to 4GB)

LG DVD RW 20x Retail 20x +/-R/RW/RAM DL IDE Including Lightscribe Technology black / beige SecurDisk GSA-H55LBRL

NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / nForce 630 a Chipset Graphics

7.1 High Definition Audio

High speed Gigabit Ethernet Connectivity

16 In One Internal Memory Card Reader

7 x USB Ports

1 mini IEEE 1394 and 1 IEEE 1394 Ports

2 eSATA connectors on the back

[AshMat]

I'd say for the price, and what you need.. etc.

That looks fine.

 

Someone with more knowledge will be able to offer a better opinion though.

[Caris]

Gonna get this for £375 then..Anyone have any gripes? Still a total NooB

 

Shuttle SN68SG2 Glamour Series XPC

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800 + CPU AM2, Socket AM2 940 PIN

500GB Maxtor Diamondmax21 SATA 2 7200rpm 16MB cache Hard Disk Drive

Kingston 2GB RAM DDR2 667MHz PC5300 Memory (Upgradable to 4GB)

LG DVD RW 20x Retail 20x +/-R/RW/RAM DL IDE Including Lightscribe Technology black / beige SecurDisk GSA-H55LBRL

NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / nForce 630 a Chipset Graphics

7.1 High Definition Audio

High speed Gigabit Ethernet Connectivity

16 In One Internal Memory Card Reader

7 x USB Ports

1 mini IEEE 1394 and 1 IEEE 1394 Ports

2 eSATA connectors on the back

 

If you can go Intel instead of AMD. And Maxtor HDD's are abit crap really...

[McPhee]

If you can go Intel instead of AMD. And Maxtor HDD's are abit crap really...

 

Not on that money, C2D chips are good but the rest are on par with they're AMD equivalents. Better to try to get a decent graphics card in there.

[Caris]

C2D is cheap as chips now...

[McPhee]

Yeah, the chips are. A decent C2D motherboard costs £70+ though, good AMD boards can be had for £40. £30 ain't a lot of money, but spending an extra £30 on a graphics card will yield better results than having a C2D in the system

[Caris]

Not really i mean the Asus P5B is only about £50 now if you look hard enough.

[McPhee]

Bloomin heck! When did that happen?

 

C2D Wins...

[tapedeck]

Right, I didn't bother with any of that as I felt the dude was being a rip merchant. It's dificult to sell a PC I guess as it's al moving so fast. Indeed.

[Guest Stefkov]

I just want to ask, looking at this pc what does the 2 x 2.2GHz mean?

Like it adds up to 4.4GHz or something else?

This is for my brother and I'd like to know aswell really.

 

Also is that a good pc? I might get one.

[Caris]

It's a Duel Core 2.2GHz CPU.

[Guest Stefkov]

I know it's a dual core but does that mean it adds up to 4GHz?

A bit more detail plx.

[Caris]

2.2Ghz a core aye.

[McPhee]

I know it's a dual core but does that mean it adds up to 4GHz?

A bit more detail plx.

 

No, it doesn't. Dual Core processors aren't as good as 2 stand alone processors. I don't know the figures but performance is completely different

[Guest Stefkov]

So effectively you have 2, 2.2GHz processors which calculates, etc, quicker but don't really work in correlation with each other?

Hence why you can open Media player and use Photoshop at the same time...(omg that's so cool).

If that's true then awesome I learnt something.

[DCK]

That's the deal, the beauty of multicore. Mind that counting GHz is a bad way of determining processor speed, it nearly always doesn't apply.

[McPhee]

Yeah, basically you have 2 "cores" that run at 2.2GHz each. They share the same resources (cache for example) and each core can take on a completely separate process. They can also swap info, so they can split something in half, one core takes each half, processes it and puts it back together.

 

It's not as good as 2 x 2.2GHz because the process isn't flawless and they both share the same resources. It's far better than one though, and more economical than buying 2 processors.

[Guest Stefkov]

Cheers Phee. Now I know something.

 

Now onto graphics cards trying to understand GT and GTS...

[McPhee]

Nvidia = GS - GT - GTS - GTX - Ultra

 

Old ATi = GT - Pro - XT - XTX

 

New ATi = ? - **50 - **70 - ? (only 2 cards released so far so i don't know what numbers they will use, presumably **30 and **90 with **20 being an integrated chip)

[Guest Stefkov]

Ah Cheers again Phee.

After a bit of hard work we got TF2 working on my brothers computer with no black scenery etc.

I was wondering if anyone could find a budget graphics card up to £45 that would run TF2. He says he wants an alright one, like people say they want new things but lower but I doubt for that price.

Anyway the thing is, it needs to be AGP and 512MB RAM and an NVidia.

If anyone could find one better than a GeForce FX 5200 then I won't do much but my brother will love you.