General J November 30, 2003 Share General J Member November 30, 2003 After about a 3 month span of not having cs, I am back in action! With finals coming up and lots of papers due, I decided to take some time to try to fix cs, and it worked. But now I am going for some upgrades to the pc. Don't laugh... I have been living with an AMD Athlon 800mhz, 128mb ram, and a nvidia tnt2 16mb vid card. I am going for a cheap card, with more power. I am looking at either a 64mb Radeon 9000 for $49.99 (Whats the difference in THESE TWO cards? one is $49 and the other is $64?) Or a Radeon 9200 128mb for $79.99. Or would it be a wiser choice to just wait a week and spend the money on a 9600se for $129 and get a card that uses directx9? After the vid card is updated, I will be looking to drop atleast one stick of 512mb ram in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Mmmm]Homer November 30, 2003 Share [Mmmm]Homer Member November 30, 2003 I would look at the longer term if you can. The 9600 card is what you should aim for, the others are crap basically. Upping your system with more RAM, well I feel unemotional about it. Here's what I'd suggest you save your money for: $36 ECS K7S5A PRO USB 2.0 SiS® 735 SOCKET A MOTHERBOARD - RETAIL $81 AMD Athlon XP 2400+ "Barton", 266 FSB, 256K Cache Processor - Retail This is the max cpu for the motherboard. $41 Crucial 184 Pin 256MB DDR PC-2100 - OEM So for ~$158 you could have new guts in your system that would be behind the "performance/price gouging" curve and not the bleeding edge, but would bump your performance up considerably for not too much outlay of cash. In fact, I'd probably do this before I got a new video card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General J November 30, 2003 Author Share General J Member November 30, 2003 (edited) As of right now my machine is a compaq and is a complete piece of crap. Would I be able to just pull out the motherboard and replace it with few/no problems? Or is it just time to piece together a new machine and just buy a new case for like $30 with a 350w powersupply? I am kinda liking this case. Edited November 30, 2003 by General J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Mmmm]Homer November 30, 2003 Share [Mmmm]Homer Member November 30, 2003 Oh. It might be that you need to start piecing it together. That case looked fine, keep in mind that unless you buy components with a silver bezel you'll have naice beige or black parts in that silver case. Maybe this one? I'm looking at the setup I posted above as an Xmas gift for my parents to replace their P2/233 anchor. Make sure you read the customer comments about the cases, you may find a good one or noisy fan, bad PSU, flakey construction, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General J November 30, 2003 Author Share General J Member November 30, 2003 Homer, can I salvage anything out of the old comp? Such as the sound card - Soundblaster pci 128? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camel_Man November 30, 2003 Share Camel_Man Member November 30, 2003 the compaq harddrive and cdrom drive and the ram will not work with another mb other than compaq, so you would have to figure in the cost of a new hd and cdrom too. as for that ecs motherboard i would not suggest buying from ecs. i've owned and built computers using their products before and had nothing but problems with them. biostar makes a pretty decent motherboard (much better than ecs) you can get a biostar nforce2 motherboard for 49 or the biostar nforce2 ultra 400 board for 62. the nforce2 400 ulta board also has a 15 dollar mail in rebate right now which brings the board down to 47 if you use the rebate. both boards can be found on www.newegg.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camel_Man November 30, 2003 Share Camel_Man Member November 30, 2003 Homer, can I salvage anything out of the old comp? Such as the sound card - Soundblaster pci 128? should also mention that nforce2 boards have onboard sound which is much better than yer sb pci 128. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Mmmm]Homer November 30, 2003 Share [Mmmm]Homer Member November 30, 2003 General J is obviously on a budget, hence the lower end stuff. The CD-ROM and hard drive should work ok with the new system unless they are going way beyond and really shooting themselves in the foot. The nforce2 board would be great, but the cpu is a little more, and the ram a little more. I've done a could of systems with the K7S5A from ECS with no problems, but I agree, a nforce2 board from Biostar would be nicer. If you can swing it it would be a great upgrade, and you'll still need a video card. What's your budget? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General J November 30, 2003 Author Share General J Member November 30, 2003 (edited) Thanks for the info camel. Depending on how big my check is this week, I may start ordering some pieces. Any more suggestions on parts would be greatly appreciated guys. I am going with an athlon, probably that 2400+ that homer posted up for $81, $47 for the mobo camel mentioned, another $50 for a cd-rw/dvd combo (should I just buy a cd-rw for less and a dvd drive seperatly?) and $64 for WD 40GB HD. For the RAM, would it be worth the $4 extra to get the pc-2700 instead of the $41 pc-2100? or would it be even better to get the kingston ddr400 (pc3200) for $46.50 Budget is whatever I decide to spend... This will be a buy one thing this week, buy two things that week kind of a deal. But with Christmas on the way, I could probably just have a few things ordered now and pretend they were under the tree. Edited November 30, 2003 by General J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gOOters November 30, 2003 Share gOOters Member November 30, 2003 J...I used a HD and CD ROM from an old Compaq on a different mobo for awhile...they worked fine. I still have that CD Rom in my new comp too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General J November 30, 2003 Author Share General J Member November 30, 2003 seriously? I will replace them eventually... (Here comes santa clause Here comes santa clause But I just need some stuff to get me going with a better running system. Then I can upgrade from there. That would take me down to $332 total from $446 (hd and cd-rw/dvd combo included in that). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rackish December 1, 2003 Share rackish Member December 1, 2003 So have you decided what video card you're gonna get? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nut December 1, 2003 Share nut Member December 1, 2003 i have that crucile ram! the same exsact one... heh 256DDR 2100 cool But whats im getting is the 2800+ Barton 333FSB Donno need new Mobo More Ram another stick of 256DDR or 512? NuT- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General J December 1, 2003 Author Share General J Member December 1, 2003 I will probably just go with that 9600 for $129. Not real expensive and runs on directx9. Will do everything I want it to and shouldn't have any problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camel_Man December 1, 2003 Share Camel_Man Member December 1, 2003 (edited) i have that crucile ram! the same exsact one... heh 256DDR 2100 cool But whats im getting is the 2800+ Barton 333FSB Donno need new Mobo More Ram another stick of 256DDR or 512? NuT- if you want to take advantage of the 333fsb then you need to get ddr 400 ram. if your motherboard doesnt support it then i wouldnt bother. 512 total ram will do nicely Edited December 1, 2003 by Camel_Man Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camel_Man December 1, 2003 Share Camel_Man Member December 1, 2003 J...I used a HD and CD ROM from an old Compaq on a different mobo for awhile...they worked fine. I still have that CD Rom in my new comp too. how old was the compaq? ive tried using cdroms and hds from name brand computers and it didnt work at all. the compaq cdroms wouldnt be detected correctly in windows and wouldnt work. and the dell harddrives would post errors after the bios post and would not load. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camel_Man December 1, 2003 Share Camel_Man Member December 1, 2003 Thanks for the info camel. Depending on how big my check is this week, I may start ordering some pieces. Any more suggestions on parts would be greatly appreciated guys. I am going with an athlon, probably that 2400+ that homer posted up for $81, $47 for the mobo camel mentioned, another $50 for a cd-rw/dvd combo (should I just buy a cd-rw for less and a dvd drive seperatly?) and $64 for WD 40GB HD. For the RAM, would it be worth the $4 extra to get the pc-2700 instead of the $41 pc-2100? or would it be even better to get the kingston ddr400 (pc3200) for $46.50 Budget is whatever I decide to spend... This will be a buy one thing this week, buy two things that week kind of a deal. But with Christmas on the way, I could probably just have a few things ordered now and pretend they were under the tree. i would suggest staying with whatever fastest ram that cpu uses. ddr400 is pretty old now and by the next time you upgrade dd400 will be dinosaur and you would prolly want to buy something faster than that anyways. i would suggest sticking with crucial ram. its a little bit pricer than some of the other stuff but ive never had a problem with crucial ram. with kingston i have had some compatablility issues. figure out how much everything is gonna cost and just wait until you have enough money to buy everything. the prices on parts are always dropping and buying it piece by piece is silly since you cant use it until you have everything. getting the video card now however would be a good choice since you can use it and take advantage of it now. get that and then just save up until you have enough to buy the rest and you will be good to go Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General J December 1, 2003 Author Share General J Member December 1, 2003 (edited) I guess my only question would be would I see a pretty good performance increase with that 9600 even with my current setup? I remember asking about video cards before, and someone said that my processor and ram would bottle neck the performance of the card. With my athlon 800mhz and 128mb ram, and the 9600, would I be able to run games like BF1942 and CoD? Or would it still run very poorly? I am not so much worried about cs(current setup will run up to 99 fps with vsync off and in 640x480 in 16 bit, but its not very graphically pretty), unless I decide I want to boost the resolution and put on AA. But I would like to have better performance for things such as winamp visualizations too. guess at this point we should move to the hardware forum...Would this be a good deal? Edited December 1, 2003 by General J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General J December 1, 2003 Author Share General J Member December 1, 2003 Just noticed something... Will these cards work with windows 98se still? They listed only 2000, xp, and me as supported operating systems... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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