SuperJo July 18, 2003 Share SuperJo Member July 18, 2003 My Dad's offered to finace me building a computer, he hasnt decided the budget yet but im guessing itll be between 1500-2000+. Just wanted to kno your guys's opinions on different parts. Im familiar with Video Cards and Sound Cards, but a little more shaky on the other aspects. Any suggestions and wutnut would be helpful. Thanks Jo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer July 18, 2003 Share Killer Member July 18, 2003 GeForce Ti4200 128mb-8X if u dont have 250+ GeForce4 Ti4800 if ur lookin for awesome performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NOFX July 18, 2003 Share NOFX Member July 18, 2003 (edited) 1500 will easily buy an extremely beast machine. I wouldnt go with a Ti series they are one step back. Go with a ATI 9500 Pro, or a Fx series vid card for about 200. You can get a AMD barton 2600+ for under 250 with a good mobo(which comes with sound and LAN). Then just add 80 bucks worth of ram and there is a nice machine for 600.(Assuming you upgrade your old comp though) Edited July 18, 2003 by NOFX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperJo July 18, 2003 Author Share SuperJo Member July 18, 2003 Not an upgrade, a whole new deal. Im pretty sure i want an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro or somethin like that an a Sound Blaster Audigy, but what about motherboards and harddrives? and what else, like a heatsink and stuff like that? a case? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer July 18, 2003 Share Killer Member July 18, 2003 (edited) NOFX it's mostly what ur lookin for. Ti4600 or higher kill the 9500, just take a look man. Even in some cases over the 9700pro. http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/2002...acharts-02.html http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/2002...acharts-03.html http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/2002...acharts-04.html http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/2002...acharts-06.html The Ti series of cards is very good, and you get alot of bang for your buck. 1 of my friends has a 9500pro and another has a Ti4800. The 4800 crushes it in bench marks.....odviously, and its a bueatiful card. Its pretty much all your lookin for. Edited July 18, 2003 by Killer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwEEziL July 18, 2003 Share dwEEziL Member July 18, 2003 Also, there is no 2600+ Barton. The only 2600+'s out is the Thoroughbread, a 266MHz frequency version and a 333MHz one). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lunk July 18, 2003 Share Lunk Member July 18, 2003 If you're going with AMD CPU here are a couple of Mobo's for it. ASUS A7N8X Biostar M7NCD Pro MSI K7N2 Delta-L They are all built on the Nvidia Chipset. As far as HSF. I just ordered this one: Speeze CPU Fan Model 5F263B1M3 for AMD/Intel Socket A/370. Should get it today. But, I won't be using it until I get the rest of the parts I need to upgrade my old pc. Here is one I bought the other day for the pc I just built. HSF It works pretty good and it's all copper. It's a bit noisy. But for me it's not a problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Mmmm]Homer July 18, 2003 Share [Mmmm]Homer Member July 18, 2003 First, let's assume most bang for the buck here, which pretty much says AMD. I'll offer a "moderate" spec and you can upgrade/downgrade from there. -Abit NF7-S Rev. 2.0 (includes sound) -XP2800/333 -Western Digital 80gb SE drive, 8mb cache -512mb Corsair CAS2 TwinX RAM -Radeon 9700 Pro -Thermalright SLK-900-U heastsink + a YS TECH Adjustable 8CM cooling fan. Manual adjustable fan speed, VERIABLE SPEED FROM 800rpm to 3700rpm -Chieftec Aluminum case -Enermax or Antec 400 + watt PSU -Lite-On 52x CD-RW You can also look here and here and mix and match to get the right price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Playaa July 18, 2003 Share Playaa Member July 18, 2003 if you're going AMD I'd definatly recommend getting the 9700 Pro over a GeForce because I've had 3 computers now that had GeForces and AMD processors and had problems, they all worked gorgeously as soon as I plugged an ATI card into them instead of the GeForce. Now granted that may have been because they were cheap motherboards but I have still seen problems with GeForce and AMD together. as to the reviews at Toms Hardware, TH has been accused in the past of being an nVidia flunky so I don't pay alot of attention to them on video cards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperJo July 18, 2003 Author Share SuperJo Member July 18, 2003 I would like to keep the harddrive from my old pc, so should i just move it along and have 2 harddrives or is there a way to transfer my settings and stuff that is easy. Also im assuming i should read the guides at www.tweak3d.net and tom's before I start building. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NOFX July 18, 2003 Share NOFX Member July 18, 2003 NOFX it's mostly what ur lookin for. Ti4600 or higher kill the 9500, just take a look man. Even in some cases over the 9700pro. it gets a few frames per second more, but where is the direct x 9 support? well, its not like i use alot Dx9 though, but if somethign comes along, im prepared heh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gond July 18, 2003 Share Gond Member July 18, 2003 Western Digital hard drives come with a nice utility to copy the contents of one drive to the other. Watch out though...last time I did this I think it removed my boot information from the copy drive. I'd also suggest WD HD's...I've always had good luck with them. I've never built an AMD system...I only use Pentiums. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwEEziL July 18, 2003 Share dwEEziL Member July 18, 2003 WD 160GB/8MB cache for $99.99 after rebated from CompUSA. Hurry, you have to buy it by 7/19/03 to be eligible for the rebate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hendryx July 18, 2003 Share Hendryx Member July 18, 2003 My Ti 4200 SUCKED. do NOT buy one of those. If you wanna pump some cash into other things like the mobo or processor, the 9600 Pro is a pretty sick card (its been awesome for me so far), although a 9500 pro is the same card with 8 pipelines opposed to 4 (if you know what you're doing, that is). I'm definitely sticking with ATI from now on. I've had bad luck with nVidia cards. The whole reason I bought the 9600 pro was due to my geforce 4 getting fried after 8 months of use (never overclocked it). I agree with Gond, I have two WD hard drives - never had any problems. I'd say go with an AMD processor. My 1 ghz athlon xp went faster than my 2 ghz pentium 4. Although, that might just be windows; I had Redhat 7.3 on my AMD box. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hitman July 18, 2003 Share Hitman Member July 18, 2003 WD = some high quality hard drives, I always use em. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Mmmm]Homer July 18, 2003 Share [Mmmm]Homer Member July 18, 2003 What type of hard drive do you currently have? Don't bottleneck your new system with an old drive. You need (some may say want here, but I use need) a 7200 RPM, 8mb cache, ATA133 drive here as a minimum. I personally prefer RAID 0 for performance and cringe at work when I use a 5400rpm/2mb/ATA100. You'll be doing a clean install of Windows, no ifs/ands/buts about it. Root around in the \Documents and Settings\YourNameHere\ folder for what to save and transfer such as My Documents, Favorites, Outlook .dbx files, Address book .wab file. I'm going to upgrade my system soon to a NF7-S/TwinX RAM/XP2800-333 and use 2 Serillel (one is included) adapters to have my RAID 0. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer July 18, 2003 Share Killer Member July 18, 2003 ^ | | Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NOFX July 19, 2003 Share NOFX Member July 19, 2003 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest zerodamage July 19, 2003 Share Guest zerodamage Guests July 19, 2003 NOFX it's mostly what ur lookin for. Ti4600 or higher kill the 9500, just take a look man. Even in some cases over the 9700pro. http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/2002...acharts-02.html http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/2002...acharts-03.html http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/2002...acharts-04.html http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/2002...acharts-06.html The Ti series of cards is very good, and you get alot of bang for your buck. 1 of my friends has a 9500pro and another has a Ti4800. The 4800 crushes it in bench marks.....odviously, and its a bueatiful card. Its pretty much all your lookin for. Ok, lets clear up a few things right away. Benchmarks like 3dmark and others mean nothing compared to real world performance. The TI cards were great, over a year ago. They perform great when running a game at it's default settings, as in no AA and AF. Now days, to buy a brand new vid card without the ability to use FSAA and AF efficiently is stupid. The TI cards are not good with AA and AF. The new Geforce FX (5600 and above) run AA and AF very good as do the 9500 pro's and above. But to buy a new 4600 or 4800 now with new games like HL2 and Doom3 coming out is silly. The benchmarks you posted Killa are over 7 months old. 2 of the games are CPU dependant. A TI4200 beating out a 9700pro in those tests should show that. Going by just those benchmarks alone thinking a 4200 is better would be silly. Saying that the 4600 kills the 9500 pro is just silly. It may score higher on 3dmark2001, but on 3dmark2003 where DX9 is concerned, it gets wasted (not that it matters). This does point out that those benchmarks are useless. It is the future and performance/price ratio that matters. I just picked up the last 9500 pro at Best Buy for 150 bucks, it is almost 200 online still. (good deal). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest zerodamage July 19, 2003 Share Guest zerodamage Guests July 19, 2003 Just a few quick examples. I really do not find Tom's to be the most reliable unbias source for video card information anymore, but these numbers here speak for themselves. Here is UT 2003 without AA and AF turned on. They are both turned off. http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/2003...d_guide-12.html Now here are the results with 4x FSAA and 8X AF turned on http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/2003...d_guide-13.html Notice the HUGE hit in fps that the 4600 takes with these basic settings on. This is a huge reason to NOT buy one of those cards today for future gaming. You would be wasing your money. What gets me about THG is that they recommend an nvidia card dispite the cheating in the drivers for games that lowers AF and AA quality to boost performance disptite what the settings are at. They have a bias for nvidia which a review site like that shouldn't have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[VI]ROosTEr July 19, 2003 Share [VI]ROosTEr Member July 19, 2003 wow, they didn't seem to nVidia biased at the ATI Q&A at MML2. And btw, I hope no one believes all that crap about the media blackout. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkp July 19, 2003 Share rkp Member July 19, 2003 I would just say go with a AMD class computer and get a ATI graphics card. They are becoming better and better. To shop for the best deals get to www.pricegrabber.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[VI]ROosTEr July 19, 2003 Share [VI]ROosTEr Member July 19, 2003 I still stick by waiting a couple months (at least until the end of September). I am almost positive that AMD will have released the Athlon64 by then and the prices on the high end 32-bit processors should drop with a quickness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RiZad July 19, 2003 Share RiZad Member July 19, 2003 The relase date for the Athlon 64 is Sept. 22. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwEEziL July 19, 2003 Share dwEEziL Member July 19, 2003 See, he was right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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