Wondering what to buy....

[VinCaiden]

I'm going to be getting a new computer soon. I was wondering if anyone had any tips on what to buy. I currently have a 533 Celeron with 96 megs of RAM that makes me shudder (Its the family computer) I got about a 1000 bucks canadian to get a good solid games platform. I WAS thinking to get an Athlon 1.something GHz with 256 megs of RAM and I didn't care about hard drive, what do you think?

 

[IceBlaZe]

I say wait until P4 Hyperthreading chips get cheaper.
AMD are not looking good now and Intel are leading the market with innovations and a good supply line.

 

[CornMaster]

Whether the company looks good or not, it had no effect on the value of their premade chips.

I'd say get at least 256 MB RAM. A Good Video card...ATI 8500 radeon or better OR GeForce 4 MX or better. At least a 40 GB HDD. They are over 200 now...get a decent CD Burner. Depending on the money left...get a 350W power supply and for the CPU get an Athlon XP or if your running low get a Duron. (But they only go to 1.3 GHz.) If you get an AMD chip, get a good heatsink and fan, they tend to run hot.

DO NOT buy a P4 under 2 GHz. They are the crappy ones. If you want to get Intel and save money get a Celeron. Or if you can get a new P4 with Hyperthreading for cheaper then a AMD, get that.

 

[VinCaiden]

I'm not going to even try to buy a hyperthreading P4 unless I win the lottery. I need a monitor and keyboard and mouse and speakers and stuff, so $1000 doesn't go that far. The lowest priced P4 HT system is around $2000 so I'm staying away from them. For what I want a computer for, (making CivIII run smoother still, getting Mech 4:Mercenaries and Diablo II) I don't need that much power. Thanks for the tips, Guys. I'd rather get a DVD-ROM then a burner at the moment, or a CD drive and save the extra money to buy M4:Merc. I didn't know Duron went that high, CornMaster. The video card is a bit of a mystery to me. (I got a 4 meg integrated AGP) *shudder* I didn't know that about low p4's why are they crappy? The computer that I actually had my eye on, (mostly because It was cheap) was a 1.7 P4. Anyway, thanks for the advice.

 

[Sanaz]

With the latest price cuts, it really pays now to buy a premade system. I've always built my own, because I upgrade component by component, but that may change now. Check out Dell's web page - I'm amazed when I look at the price/performance. One problem I noticed is that the cheaper models have built-in video, with no AGP slots. But they are ATX boards, so they are standard for future upgrading (other than the video). They'll come with KVM, OS, SW, CD-RW, and hit your prices.

I've only dealt with Dell for my folks, and at work, and have been very satisfied. But I have NOT purchased there personally, so welcome any negative feedback and different views.

 

[munzy76]

"With the latest price cuts, it really pays now to buy a premade system.

If I had a nickle for every time I heard or read that....I'd have spent them by now...but the point is that people have been saying that for years. The point they are missing is that new system you are getting is mostly un-upgradable. You get a supersmall case, a cheap lame-ass motherboard (not to be confused with a kick-ass cheap motherboard), built in video most of the time - or an old TNT2 card, a slow 5400 RPM HDD that is on the smalish side - 20GB, an extremely low performing monitor - can barely make it to 1024x768x32bit@60Hz also know as eye strain city. What you do get is a decent system (for the next 6 months to a year) that is prebuilt, has a decent warranty, that works out of the box. The whole point of building your own system is not to be the cheapeast, because you are right, Dell can't be beat for the cheap price to quality ratio, but to get a good system for half the price of the tog gaming rigs that does everything they will do at 75-90% of the speed.

 

[God]

"With the latest price cuts, it really pays now to buy a premade system.

I've been hearing this forever. I can go to Sony.com, HP.com, dell.com and customize my own PC and get it for less. I can customize a Dell, with p4 2.4 ghz, 512 ram, DVD RW, CD RW, 120 GBs, a 64MB Geforce MX card, all for about 1000 bucks. Customize as in they make it for me, I just tell them what I want. If I go and get an already premade system, for 1200 bucks, I'll get something with 2.0 ghz, 256 ram, CDRW, 40-60 GB HD, Intergrated video. I have looked through all the top brand's sites and configured my own system, and a premade one with the same specs will cost 500 bucks more. The only way you can get a cheaper PC with the same specs is buying a refurbished one, or getting it on Ebay. The only problem with both is that there is a very short, if no warranty. But you can save 200-400 bucks that way.

 

[God]

Lets see.

Atlon XP+'s are cheaper the P4s, and work almost as well. I don't know where AMD will be in the next year but I don't there should be any problem even if they are gone.

Hardrive: You say you don't need much space. 30-40 GB should be more than enough to to put your games in and your "images". . I have one PC in my house (P3, 900mhz, 40GB HD) and there is still is 10 GB on it. There are tons of games and programs on it. 30-40 GB should be enough for you.

I assume you want a new pc to play games on. Need a decent video card. The way I see it is that (I read this somewhere) that PC software (games) requirements double about every 2 years maybe more. Lets just take FPSs since the are the most demanding games. The most demanding games out these days are Battlifield 1942 and Unreal Tournament 2003. These are the semi-next generation games. There not quite there but they will entertain us until the next gen. games come out late next year. (Doom 3, Quake 4, Half-Life 2, Unreal 2 etc.). A bit older than the semi-gens are the games like Medal of Honor and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Not nearly as demanding. Going back a bit further to games released around '98,'99,'00 we have the really popular games like Counter Strike, Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. Any PC in this world can run these older, really popular games. MOH needs a machine with about 550 mhz, 128 ram, and 16mb video card as the bare mininum. Unreal 2k3 needs something like 800mhz, 128-180 mb, 16mb video card to run it. The next gen games will probably need something like 1ghz, 256 ram, and 32 mb video as the requirements. Games coming out in later in 2004, 2005 will probably need something like 1.6-1.8 ghz, 512 ram, 64-128 mb video card requirements.

Note those are the bare requirements. If you want to have the game at a higher video qualtiy and it to go faster you need something a bit faster. For the semi. gen games like Ureal 2k3 something like 1 ghz, 64 mb video card and 256 ram will run it well. If you want it at its best then its going to cost tons more.

If you want a PC that will hold through for a while get something with 1.8-2.0 ghz, 40 GB HD, 256 ram (you can easily upgrade later) and a Geforce 4 MX 64mb video card (its the same as Geforce 2 but both can run any current game well and should be able to handle the next gen. games ok). You can always upgrade that later.

Athlon XP+ 1800 (which is like 1.6ghz, I think) and over
256 SDRAM/ DDRAM (DD is a bit better)
40 GB HD, try to get one with 7200 RPM. Just faster. Not needed
32-64 mb video card. With a 32 mb you can run all current game, some will be at lower quality. Still ok. Don't get intergrated video!!! You can GeForce 2 or ATI Ultra Rage 32 MB video card pretty cheap.

 

[God]

Why do I know this all? I'm going to get a new PC sometime soon to run these next gen. games.

I went to Sony.com and dell and HP. Customized some. You can get P4 2.4 ghz, 512 ram, 64 mb Geforce video card and 60 GB HD for under USD$ 900. The video card can always be upgraded later.

 

[VinCaiden]

Sounds great but $900 is like 1400 for us canadians, plus shipping. I don't have that much money. The Hard Drive is no priority, we got a 8 gig and its only half full. I'm a strat game player, so FPSs don't interest me, besides, you need a God-machine to run them. The video card sounds good though. I hate integrated video. Isn't the GeForce 4 MX a stripped version of GF4 or something like that. I thought it was pretty cheap cause its like the celeron of video cards. Anyway, thanks for the suggestions so far.

 

[Cedric Greene]

If you're going for a pre-built system I suggest checking out http://www.buyabs.com/ . If you want to go piece by piece always check prices at www.pricewatch.com

 

[Franklyn]

Vin:

Get yourself a bigger hard drive. You don't need 80, but 40 GB is pretty cheap these days. Win XP will suck up 2 GB (iirc) right off the bat, and hard drives are never quite as big as advertised.

Besides, if you ever get yourself a digital camera or someone in your family discovers KaZaa, you'll regret not getting more HD space.

My $.02 (in US currency - does that mean it's worth more in canada?)

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

I'd suggest 20GB if you aren't going to really be using lots of memory. Get yourself a nice western digital hard drive

Despite what anyone may tell you....256MB at least with windows XP

 

[Hygro]

If you have to buy a new moniter, keyboard, speakers, and all, with only 1000 bucks Canadian, along with the computer, you might want to save up some more... but if you really only care about Mechwarrior 4, Diablo 2, and Civ3, then I'd say get 256-512 RAM (ram's cheap), a geforce 2 and around over 1 GHz and you'll run them all quite well. I found that with my new Dell, my 40 Gig HD came with 33 free gigs, so a 20 gig HD might be around 14 or so...

 

[Rheinmetall]

And stay away from those horrible GeForce MX cards. They're based on ancient GF2 chips (DX 7). They don't support even DirectX 8.1 features. Go for Radeon 9000 or 8500 LE instead.


I'd read this if I were you.