need help with advise on new pc to buy

[pievien]

At moment i'm looking at a HP PC, was looking at apple imac seen as i get 14% off them but might have problems playing G3 on it

specs for the HP i'm lookin at are as followed only costs £440 with 2 years warranty

ATI Radeon HD 3650
graphic card video ram 512MB
AMD Phenom 9650
2.3GHz
4GB Ram

[chris22]

First off, i wouldn`t advise you to buy pre-built systems, they are just not recommended. Best option is to buy components one by one, a total of 7. Also, AMD based computers are not as fast as Intel ones, especially in games, although there is a slight difference in prices.
Now
- how much are you willing to spend ?
- will you OC[overclock] or not ?
- for what are you going to use your computer mainly ?

[pievien]

hi chris22,

pc will be used to play gothic 3 maybe some other games, wife is getting a laptop so she can use the net etc,

at moment we've a 6300 Geforce graphic
1gb ram (most our system can get due to being sdram
1.6gh intel 4 processor

overclocking i'm not totally sure how to do that propperly,

the only way i can get the current pc to work, is close everything down in task manager that the pc don't need (leaves around 10 things running), right click on g3 when i'm loading it up in the task manager and set the prioraty to high, game works but have to set the game grafix's to min on everything, game still freezes, but its playable, not great but it works,

were looking to spent around 400 ish on the pc.

[firefly1981]

That HP configuration is quite good for playing g3, but branded computer often more expensive than purchasing the same hardware specs separately, my advice is to use the HP configuration as a guidance for both specs and price, then just buy the hardware separately and built your own, so you can have a computer with a branded specs but with a lower price, i did so with my computer.

[pievien]

cheers for the advise

i did think about upgrading the pc i've got, but thought not too seen as i've no idea about changing motherboards, would of got more ram if pc would allow it, but SDRAM i've got is at the max

my full sys spec are

intel pentium 4 1.8ghz,
1gb ram
NVIDIA GeForge 6200

would it be worth it upgrading my pc i've got at moment, or is tat a waste of time realy?

[Kostaz]

Waste of time
From what I see you motherboard must be:
AGP(best GPU is 7900)
DDR1
No support for core 2 or i7.

If you decide to buy a new pc do yourself a favor and look for one that supports
PCI-Express
DDR3
i7
If you have a decent motherboard you can later replace some stuff.

[firefly1981]

I agree with Kostaz, buy yourself the best motherboard you can buy, buy an ATX size with pci-e slot more than one in case 1 VGA is not enough, make sure it also has at least 4 memory slot for maximum memory expansion, and all the latest support for cutting edge technology, even if you add a low end peripheral into it, one day if you can buy a good peripheral then the motherboard still can handle it, and you can save yourself the worries.

[pievien]

been looking around for a new motherboard, found these two both cheap for now, i'm wondering if its cheap because ithere rubbish, can you tell me what you all think of this

1st one is

ASUS P5LD2(MICRO ATX)ONBOARD GRAPHICS

Chipsets

North Bridge Intel 945G
South Bridge Intel ICH7

Memory
Number of Memory Slots 4×240pin
Memory Standard DDR2 667
Maximum Memory Supported 4GB
Onboard Video
Onboard Video Chipset Intel GMA 950
Onboard Audio
Audio Chipset Realtek ALC 882
Audio Channels 8 Channels
Onboard LAN
LAN Chipset Intel Gb LAN
Max LAN Speed 10/100/1000Mbps
Rear Panel Ports
PS/2 2
COM 1
LPT 1
Video Ports D-Sub
USB 4 x USB 2.0
Audio Ports 6 Ports
Onboard USB
Onboard USB 2 x USB 2.0 connectors support 4 ports
Physical Spec
Form Factor Micro ATX
Windows Vista Certified for Windows Vista

2nd one is

Asus Rampage Extreme Intel X48 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
Pentium 4/Pentium D/PentiumEE/Core™2 Duo/Core™2 Quad/Core™2 EE/45nm CPU LGA775
- Intel X48 with ICH9R
- 1600/1333/1066/800 FSB
- 4 x DDR3 2000(O.C.)1800/1600/1333/1066/800/667
- 2 x PCIe 2.0 x16
- CrossFire X16+X16
- SATA 3Gb/s*6(RAID 0, 1, 5, 10)
- 2 x 1394a
- SupremeFX II Audio Card
- 2 x Gb Marvell PCIe
- Heatpipe Design
- Voltiminder LED,
- COP EX,
- CPU Level Up,
- Loadline Calibration,
- Extreme Tweaker,
- ASUS EPU,
- LCD Pster,
- Onboard Switch,
- Q-Connector,
- Green ASUS

[firefly1981]

what kind of processor does that motherboard support dual core or more or not, and up to how many giga hertz it support? how many pci-e slot it has?

[pievien]

http://www.btecanada.com/images/RampageExtreme.jpg

this is the second motherboard i mentioned,



think i'm gonna forget the first motherboard i mentinoed, as can't find a decent write up about it, the Asus Rampage Extreme Intel X48 retails around £250 ish,

Pentium 4/Pentium D/PentiumEE/Core™2 Duo/Core™2 Quad/Core™2 EE/45nm CPU LGA775

[firefly1981]

I'd say go for it, from the picture above i can see two pci-e x16 slot so you can mount two vga for your gaming leisure, 4 memory slot enough to go around, and the processor support does cutting edge.

[pievien]

cheers firefly1981, all i've got to do now is figure out to put it in my baseunit lol, should be fun

[Old Nick]

I wouldn't buy a Crossfire or SLI motherboard if I needed performance at low cost.You can use very well a 9600 GT 512MB,DDR3 very cheap and good enugh to play even Crysis.

[Ast3r]

I wouldn't buy a Crossfire or SLI motherboard if I needed performance at low cost.You can use very well a 9600 GT 512MB,DDR3 very cheap and good enugh to play even Crysis.

Yeah but think that in 1 or 2 years there are going to be games that have twice the graphics of Crysis.What would you do then?Put a second graphics card but you realise that you only have on PCI-E slot and now you have to buy a new motherboard because 2 years ago you refused to buy a 3 or 2 PCI-E slot motherboard :p

[bigsnappy]

my advice would be to go and have a look on Ebay.

To play Gothic 3 my advice would be to look for the following components:

Dual core CPU: Athlon 6000x2 or Intel core2duo 6600 or higher
Graphic card: Nvidia GTX 8800 or 8800 GTS 512 Mb
Mainbord: Asus PN5-E (for Intel) or M2N-E (for AMD)
Ram: DDR2-667 or DDR2-800, both are cheap now even when you buy them new.

That is the cheapest way to get your G3-platform.

I played G3 at 1600x1200 with a dual core 6000+, 8800GTX, M2N-E and 2Gb DDR2-667. All bought on Ebay! You get approx 40 FPS that way.

[Ast3r]

my advice would be to go and have a look on Ebay.

My advice is not to buy a second-hand PC because you never know...it can work a time and then just broke.

[Old Nick]

Yeah but think that in 1 or 2 years there are going to be games that have twice the graphics of Crysis.What would you do then?Put a second graphics card but you realise that you only have on PCI-E slot and now you have to buy a new motherboard because 2 years ago you refused to buy a 3 or 2 PCI-E slot motherboard :p

You're right.But in 2 years you must find the same model of video card to connect with Crossfire or SLI.Are you sure you'll find the same vga in 2 years from now?And are you sure they will be good enough for the games to come?I bet you'll have to buy 2 another cards .Well,I guess you can't build a pc for the future.It's a matter of the moment.Today,you own the best.Tomorrow,it's a piece of junk.

[bigsnappy]

Yes, I admit that there is some risk when buying something on Ebay. But I only had positive experiences (everything workes fine).