Advice on new system...

The Mooche

Hello,

I'm going to piece together a new system from Komplett today or tomorrow, and would appreciate any advice on potential problems or advantages of the following components:

AMD Athlon XP2600+ 1.917 GHz Socket A 333MHz, 512KB Barton, OEM

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe Mainboard Socket A nForce2 Ultra400/MCP-T,GbLAN,Firewire

Corsair Value S. PC3200 DDR-DIMM 1024MB Kit w/two matched Value Select 512MB

Asus Radeon 9600XT 128MB DDR AGP, ATI 9600XT, DVI-I, VIVO, Retail

Will use the drives, etc from my old system. Need the machine to be able
to play recent games at highest settings and play DVDs (Got an LG-JT31
projector on sale recently, so want the machine to play DVDs with as few
problems (fuzziness, artifacts) as possible - even DiVXs seem to play
better than DVDs on the current system). Cost of the above is about E650...

I look forward to hearing your thoughts...

Current system:

Athlon TBird 1.4GhZ CPU
IWILL KA266R
512MB DDR
IBM Deskstar 120GB (had a Seagate 160 GB but it died on me - hence the DVDRW)
Radeon 7000 64MB
Yamaha CDRW
LG DVDRW
Samsung DVD-Rom
Chieftec Dragon Tower
Viewsonic 17" GT775 (had this for about 7 years and still works great, even if it is a bit small for games)
Logitech Z680 5.1 speakers

L5

Why not go for a 9800pro from komplett. Theres one for 199 euro. Will destroy that 9600XT in all games.

The Mooche

Looked at that, but wonder whether it's better sticking to a brand like ASUS (is there any advantage to keeping the mboard and gfx card ASUS? I ask because I've had random lock-ups with my current system ever since I put it together and have never been able to track down the problem. I just really want this one to work without needing me to come home from spending a day at work - in front of a computer, well, a Mac - and having to fix things. My Mini-ITX caused me so much trouble I haven't even got it set up anymore - that's what killed the 160GB drive, although I suppose I shld have expected that given the heat inside the Cubid case).

Any experience with the Sapphire cards? What does the LITE at the end of the description mean...?

Thanks for the quick reply. Really looking forward to getting the system, but want to get it right.

Slutmonkey57b

The 9600XT will be fine for the current crop of games, provided you don't want to press it to high res and antialiasing. HL2 and Doom3 you certainly won't get framerates out of if you're going to switch on the full whack of graphics. 9800Pro is your best bet, and there's no reason not to go with the Sapphire on that.

whosurpaddy

is that definitely a full 9800pro card for 199 on komplett. its not sapphire getting up to gainwards old tricks of naming it something misleading "Sapphire Radeon 9800 Atlantis PRO" the word atlantis in that place in the name makes me a bit nervous about it.

The Mooche

Hmmm... Maybe I should go with cheaper components altogether. The MSI K7N2 DELTA-ILSR is a bit less, and maybe a gig of ram is excessive. Or should I stick with the other components (what about MSI or Abit mboards?) and go for the Sapphire... Would like newer games to run better. I get about 25 fps on Call of Duty at 800x600, which isn't much use. I want to make sure the DVD and other movie format playback is at its best for the projector, as I can't even use it with the picture I'm getting now.

:dunno:

The Mooche

Can't tell whether the Sapphire comes with a remote... The 9800 Pro looks worth it from reading the specs on ATI's site, but even though Sapphire have close ties with ATI, I'm wary of them for the same reason I'm suspicious of Gainward or PowerColor.

What about the motherboard? How good are the cheaper (around 70 Euro) boards from MSI? I regretted getting the IWILL back in 2001 as it's so badly supported with monitoring tools, etc. I assumed that ASUS would be good with stuff like that.

I'm selling bits of my old system on to a friend who doesn't play games or use anything too intensive (about 200-300 depending on what he needs: fair?; considering I put it together and provide support - forever...). He wants it immediately, so need to decide today or tomorrow...

The Mooche

After looking at all the advantages, I've convinced myself that I need a 9800 Pro AIW. I was going to get a PVR card at some stage, but this seems up to the job. Anybody have one? Worth the expense...?