Right, I know there will have been quite a few thread similar to this one, but, the most of the regulars on here seem to know what they are talking about, so i hope you dont mind taking a look at these parts that i am thinking of buying to build a pc: Prices EXCLUDE Value Added Tax - Galaxy GF 6800GT 256MB DDR 8x AGP TV Out + DVI Retail - £254.95 Antec SX1040BII Case with 400W SP PSU (Front access USB & F/Wire, 10 Drv Bays) - £52.50 http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ProductInfo.aspx?ProductID=5473 AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 64 bit 512K L2 Cache Retail inc.fan Skt 754 - £164.25 Asus K8VSE Deluxe AMD Skt754 (Athlon64) DDR400 +Firewire +SATA +RAID + WiFi +6Ch.audio +USB2 - £68.93 80 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 SATA 7200rpm UDMA150 8MB Cache - £36.95 17" LG Flatron L1710B Silver TFT slim bezel monitor +DVI, 16ms - £213.50 LG 16x DVD-ROM Black IDE OEM - £15.95 Corsair® 1024MB TwinX XMS 3200XL X-Treme Low Latency Memory Kit - £165.95 OR 2x Crucial Ballistix DDR PC3200 CL=2 Non-parity DDR400 2.8V 64Meg x 64 - £151.98 Windows XP Home OEM - £50 Total (With VAT and Del): £1,193.93(Corsair Ram) or £1177.50(Crucial Ram) I am on a budget and i would like to keep it below £1250 (THIS IS ABSOLUTE MAX) however please bear in mind that i will have to buy keyboard, mouse and maybe a headset. Im hoping that this will be decent enough to play doom3/hl2 at a high fps, I might end up doing some overclocking as I gain more experience with pcs. Questions : Is it really worth me saving a £15 on the RAM, is there much performance difference between the two? Will this be good enough to play hl2 at a pretty much max settings and still keep it near 100fps? Ive opted for the nvidea (even though ati seems superior in hl2) as ill prob be playing some other games. The Case. Does anybody know its dimensions? Will the PSU be enough? If anybody has any recommendations for an alternative component I will be grateful. Also are there any compatability issues that need to be addressed? This will be the first full pc that i have built, is it really as easy as they all say ie 'as long as you be careful of static electricity theres nothing difficult about it'. What about the cooling fan on the gfx ive heard some ppl having difficulty installing it? Sorry for lengthy post, ive read alot of hardware reviews etc but i want to hear some opinions from people who actually use this stuff in real life Any help greatly appreciated
make sure to get a ncie mouse n keyboard!!! ram either will do fine looks like a pretty nice setup, im sure it will be damn fast...
How do you expect us to know if it'll run HL2 at max settings fine? We don't have the game you know... But it looks like a decent rig for sure.
An XP2500+ @XP3200+ with 9700/9800 runs Doom III well and it should also run HL2 very well. I don't blame you for wanting more, A64 with 6800GT is certainly going to run these games VERY well, and surely all games that come out in 2005 too! I would question the Maxtor. Any reason you're buying only 80GB? 160GB adds little to the cost. 8MB adds only a little to the speed but then the price diff is now very small. SATA adds nothing to the speed but may be better if you plan to keep the HD for a long time (or add lots of regular PATA IDE devices). Maxtor are very fine HDs but they usually come with the industry std 1 year warranty, Seagate come with 5 years and are native SATA too! For the RAM I'd go for Crucial Ballistix, Corsair is great but over-priced. TBH I'd question whether it's worth paying much more for this 'enhanced' RAM, in fact regular PC3500-4000 is likely to be better IF you plan to o/c at any point.
That's a sarcastic joke right? If ANYTHING plays hl2 at 100fps i would complain that a) the engine isnt complex enough or b) you need to turn more uber lovely visuals on (AA/AF/resolution uppage).
Avoid that motherboard. Look for something with the K8T800 pro chipset as it can lock the AGP and PCI buses which is great news for overclockers. If you are going to be playing games I hear that a CPU with a 1MB cache would benefit you. I'm no expert on this but you might want to look into it. 80GB isnt very big for a hard drive. Not when games are taking up 5GB+ each. Maybe get a small raptor to boot windows + some apps and get another SATA drive for storage. DVD-RW are very cheap these days. If you find yourself going over budget you could always have a look on the for sale forum to pick up some bargains. eg: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=67319 good job on choosing to build
I found a 1MB cache version here: http://www.savastore.com/products/product.asp?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=10275343&pid=1 But its only £7 more expensive than the 512kb :/, is there much of a performance difference in games?
Well there's only a small boost by having 1MB cache but this may change when dealing with 64bit stuff. The cache is reflected in the perf rating, this is why there are TWO 64_3200+ one with 512k @2.2ghz and another with 1MB @2.0ghz. The same goes for 64_3400+ as one is 512k at a higher clock speed (2.4ghz vs 2.2ghz). The 64_3200+ are very close but the 512k one tends to win out over all as clock speed holds a bigger advantage, so this should translate to the 64_3400+ too. Recent CPU tests in Doom III have also favoured clock speed over cache on Athlon64, thanks to the integrated memory controller no doubt. So just remember you're sacrificing clock speed for cache, but then you will o/c, right?
