i put together a a computer setup on newegg for a friend. he needs a computer for himself that he can game with. extreme performance is definately not necessary. just something that can even play the games. the family computers cant even play black and white 2. now it also needs to be small enough to transport from house to house. now, before i show you this stuff, you need to know. he wont really be upgrading this for a while. his budget is under $650 for the comp itself.. but he needs something to use, bad. now, i know socket 754 is a little dated, but its more affordable than 939 and can harbor the same performace in certain cases. now, on to the hardware: CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3400+ Newcastle (socket 754) $150.00 Video Card: MSI GeForce 6600GT PCI-E (OEM Refurb.) $109.00 RAM: OCZ Value Series 512MB DDR400 (1 or two sticks, depending on budget) $38.77 ea. Hard Disk: WD Caviar SE 80gb sata150 $53.00 Optical Drive: LITE-ON Black combo drive $28.99 Barebones Cube System: AOpen XCube EX761 $189.00 so remember, it needs to be small, cheap, and reliable but able to play most games. its just gotta play em, not run them even past 1/2 settings... so, what do you poeple think?
Looks OK, although - as you said - Socket 754 is a dead end. I would strongly advise going 939, even if it means buying slightly worse components; this way, you have a strong upgrade path all the way up to the FX-60. However, if he is absolutely never going to want to upgrade his processor, then there isn't much point in taking 939 aside from the dual-channel advantage. With the exception of the above, I can't see anything wrong with it
yeah hte problem is, if we go 939, it completely shatters his budget. like adding another 180$ to the price weve got now. so right now weve got a decently powerful system with a processor thatll last a few years (3 years is when he plans on being able to afford a more blow-your-mind system) but until then. i think this will suit just fine. not to mention, add a handle to the case and youve got a nifty little lunchbox! ermmm..... i mean easy to transport computer... by numbers, this setup is actually more powerful than the 939 setup im saving for, but im going to be using faster bus speeds for the proc and faster ram. not to mention overclocking
I really highly recommend 1 gig of ram or more. 512MB won't cut it with any newer games. I currently run 1 gig myself, and could still use more.
realized, yes. but once again, budget. he also doesnt really care how the games look, as long as theyre playable (yes this means even running on low everything and 800x600 resolution). anything is an upgrade, really, from what he's usng now...
Even though that may be true, the looks of a game won't have quite so much to do with the amount of ram. When I first started playing battlefield 2 on my old setup (athlon xp 1700+ with 512MB RAM, and an ATI 9600 XT) with everything on low and the resolution at its lowest, i still couldn't play the game because it used up all of the RAM, and started to tax the hard drive's pagefile. Trust me, if you want to be able to play any newer games, you WILL want 1 gig of RAM. After I switched to my newer rig, using the same graphics card and 1 gig of RAM, I could run battlefield 2 on 1024x768 with medium details and still get decent framerate.
