Core 2 Duo on Dell outlet - good price ?

zod

Bought this on Dell outlet for €470 ( includes VAT AND Shipping - no monitor)

Base: Dimension E520 Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86Ghz,DVD Drive: DVD+/-RW (Read/Write) 16x (1 Drive)Hard Disk Drive: 320GB 7200rpm SATA Hard DriveMISC: Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI - 60 day trial MISC: Mouse Dell Wheel USB 2 Button Scroll Black MISC: Corel Snapfire Starter Edition MISC: Dell Quietkey Black Keyboard Memory: 2048MB DDR2 533 [2*1024] Modem: V.92 Modem Data/Fax/Voice PCI UK Software: Image Restore UtilitySoftware: NO RESOURCE CD Video: Nvidia Geforce 7300 Turbocache 256MB DVI/VGA Operating System: English - Win XP SP2 Pro


Includes a one year warranty - was it a good deal ?

Irishpimpdude

EH NO... ( dont mind me im just jelous ) change the gfx and u have a top of the range pc lol

Anti

The ram and cpu alone would cost 400notes, so you got yaself a good deal there.

zod

Is the gfx : Nvidia Geforce 7300 Turbocache 256MB bad?

Anti

For newer games yes. Have a look at this:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/charts.html?modelx=33&model1=534&model2=541&chart=196


This is with a 7300gs tc. Which is a overlcocked evrsion of your card. It will hit 30fps in hl2 @ 1024*768 with no AA or AF. 30fps is the average score. So you can be sure alot of the time you will be getting 20+/-fps where there is alot of action. Also hl2 isnt really a new game, its almost 2 years old now.

Prey is newer but with this you get a average of 20fps:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/charts.html?modelx=33&model1=534&model2=541&chart=212


Something along the lines of a 7600GS will do you fine for modern games, Albeit at moderate resolutions and details. It costs 108euros from [url]www.komplett.ie:[/url]

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=319351

Should suit you down to the ground.

duridian

Nice deal!
You could keep an eye to the computer hardware section of boards sister site, adverts.ie as well. There are often great deals on second hand video cards there. For that new Dell you just got you would need a PCI-Express gfx card. The card you got with the system may be good enough if you don't play games, but it will struggle to play recent games.
It is aimed at the very low end of the market. Also because it is a turbocache card, that means it can rob a bit of the main system memory during games if its onboard ram is not enough for the game's requirement, which will nearly always be the case with games less than 4 years old now. With a turbocache card you can't really give ion to the MB quoted after, even though it says 256MB because it may mean that the card has only 64 actual megabytes onboard but can grab a further 196MB from the main ram to make up 256MB. (Or maybe even as low as 32 actual megabytes onboard in some cards.)
See this on Wikipedia.
ATI based cards have a similar cost cutting trick for the low end, called Hypermemory.

Of course even with this, the PC you got was still one heck of a good deal for the money it cost, so be happy!!

TerrorFirmer

anti wrote:

Something along the lines of a 7600GS will do you fine for modern games, Albeit at moderate resolutions and details

If you plan playing games with your new E6300, why bother even stopping at a 7600GS, which isn't even that great and will still be a bottleneck.

A X1950Pro is just a few quid over 200 on Komplett - great card for the price and will see you through any current games pretty much maxed out provided your monitor is 19" or less. So that'd 680-ish for a killer games machine, still a bargin in my book.

At the very least though I would go for a 7600GT for the 150-ish mark, or a X1650XT for similar price.

duridian

Possibly even less than €680 if you sold the 7300 turbocache. Might get around €30 or so for it from someone that didn't care about gaming and just wanted a cheap PCI-E gfx card.

TempestSabre

Nice PC.

Dempsey

You got great value for money

sdanseo

Would definately go for a 7600GT, it's what I have and plays my Battlefield 2 very very nicely with my rig below.

zod

ok. thanks for the advice lads