Building a new gaming machine - need advice on hardware.

Tellox

doing my shopping on Komplett, and have a limited budget. Trying not to go over €1100, but as I need a monitor, and a machine capable of gaming for quite a while, that'll be pretty hard to stay inside.

all suggestions welcome

daveJAM

Ok, I know I told you to build your own PC but I was only joking. I mean at the last LAN you couldn't even install a NIC. Still though, the sooner you get a new PC the sooner we get to chuck your old one down the stairs of Cybermart. I'll give you a hand if it means we get the Compaq any sooner. Any Cybermart regulars will know how serious I am!

ykt0di9url7bc3

and this time we'll def put the parts outside of compustore!!!

Zyox

Im buying a PC from komplett in 10 days or so (after Leaving Cert).

I've gone top of the range gaming pc here. Eg. XP2100+, sb audigy and Gainward GF4 4600
That all comes to €1840.12 incl vat and delivery. (ex monitor, im getting that from dabs.com)

If you got say an xp1800, 256 of ddr ram, 40gig hdd, some gainward gf3 and basic case etc you could most likely fit that budget. Also, go for a 17inch monitor (could get it off komplett if you like, they seem alrigh) or try dabs.com (its english, but nice prices all the same once you convert them to euros)

my monitor will be Mitsubishi/NEC DiamondPro 920 (19") and is costing €540

but dont go all out like me and yeah, €1100 sounds reasonable especially with komplett

po0k

Get a good motherboard.
Above all else, get a decent motherboard.
nothing will hold you back later on more so then a substandard limited mobo.
You can unplug a certain bit that's slow and swap it for somethign with more UUNNF! later on.
To do this your motherboard has to be new and of good quality.

DO NOT SkIMP ON THE BASICS.

Gerry

I reckon go for the p4 1.6A northwood and the asus p4s533 motherboard, which is a rolls royce. I built a machine based on this combination, and it runs flawlessly at 2.5ghz, with no voltage tweaks. I don't think you can get everything for 1100, but I wouldn't settle for less than the above combo.

PPC

Originally posted by Gerry
I reckon go for the p4 1.6A northwood and the asus p4s533 motherboard, which is a rolls royce. I built a machine based on this combination, and it runs flawlessly at 2.5ghz, with no voltage tweaks. I don't think you can get everything for 1100, but I wouldn't settle for less than the above combo.

Any P4 PC that has come in the shop with speed troubles has been with games. P4's just cant hack it.
AMD's chips are cheaper and give better preformance.
My Athlon 1900 is at 1730 and out preforms a P4 2Ghz easily
Also im 360FPS max in Q3.

Can't get the timedemo to work though

Gerry

No, a p4 northwood 2.5 ghz @ 155 fsb can't hack games? Stop talking rubbish, please. Any P4 that comes into your shop with troubles with games hasn't been setup correctly, either by you or whoever built the pc, or else is an older p4, like the 1.4 - 1.6 . Of course a an xp 1900+ clocked to a 2100+ will outperform a p4 2ghz, did you not read up about AMD's PR Rating?

Quigs Snr

The AMD Athlon XP1800 is possibly the best price/performance chip out there right now. The P4's are coming down in price and can be well overclocked. For me the advantage of pentium is that it doesn't react as badly to heat ! The AMD's are awful in that regard, I think it makes them less reliable all round.

If I were on a budget and buying from Komplett I would probably get.

17" Hansol Monitor
40GB 7200rpm HD
Athlon XP1800
256MB DDR
SB LIVE Value card.
LG combined DVD/CDRW drive
Floppy (Any)
Chieftec 340W case & PSU.
Cheapo Keyboard, Mouse and Modem
Maybe the MSI KT3 Mainboard, although I'd prefer an ASUS myself.

When it comes to graphics cards, which invariably it does with games machines, then get the best you can afford. If you are on a budget I would still go for something like the

Gainward GF4 Ti 4200 - it's better than a GF3 and can clock up to beyond GF4 Ti4400 levels if you cool it right.

None of these parts are state of the art, I don't really like DVD/CDR combo's myself, but if I was on a mission that's what I'd get, unless DVD and CDR is unimportant in which case a CD drive or DVD drive on its own and you will save about 70 -90 Euro.

I reckon you'll get all that close enough to your budget.

Again I'd like to re-iterate that if you're a novice, athlon is an ordeal if you get it wrong, fit the heatsink incorrectly on the CPU and it will last a second or two before it fries itself (unlike the P4 which cuts out before it kills itself), the P4 is less prone to overheating which in the case of the athlon is sometimes quite a big problem especially for novices, getting the correct airflow through the case is very important for stability. With intel, maybe not so. Basically, you've less chance of messing up I reckon with the Intel machine but the AMD machine costs less and still gives more bang per buck and as Gerry points out those Intels sure do overclock very nicely, wheras the AMD not so nice in this regard.

That said Intel are catching up (in fact I think the current fastest Intel chip will beat the current fastest AMD) and their prices are going down, so consider them if you see a bargain.

PPC

Originally posted by Gerry
No, a p4 northwood 2.5 ghz @ 155 fsb can't hack games? Stop talking rubbish, please. Any P4 that comes into your shop with troubles with games hasn't been setup correctly, either by you or whoever built the pc, or else is an older p4, like the 1.4 - 1.6 . Of course a an xp 1900+ clocked to a 2100+ will outperform a p4 2ghz, did you not read up about AMD's PR Rating?

We had a northwood 1.8 with a GF3Ti500 and 512RDram and it crawled on games. 3 different people set it up all on speperate occasions. got 5k~ odd on 3dmark even after tweaking.
The guy wouldnt let use touch the clock speeds of anything even though you can get a 1.8 upto 2Ghz without it getting much hotter. But anyway we replaced the board chip and ram with a XP1800, ECS K7S5A, 512Mb ddr and he kept his graphics card.
Score went to 7.5k~ after first bench mark and 7.8K~ with tweaking.
2 machines where in the same week with the same type problems and we haven't seen em since either.
Maybe the new P4's are different but i haven't like Intel since they made the P3. And i've always used Intel chips.


Also my friend has a P4 1.8 at 2.1Ghz (16*133) and im still out preforming him by a good bit.

Any of the techies in our shop wouldnt go near a P4 after the trouble they've caused us.

Maybe you've had differnet experiences.
Also I don't get those horrible Win XP problems people get.

C'est la vié.

JustHalf

PPC, those scores don't sound right at all. What the heck were you doing to that chip? What was the motherboard, and did you bother tweaking it?

PPC

Some mobo cant remember.
We tweaked it till we we're blue in the face.
Got every blood site we could find.

We only get PC's back off game players really.
With Athlon there's hardly any problems.

Sorry but i'd be more inclined to go AMD after the trouble we get. Not only from our own machines but Gateway's and Dells.

3 years ago gimme a P3 anyday but now i don't even want a P4.

Also P4 on a budget, Pffft, get a grip.

Tellox

when I said limited,I didnt mean I was poor lads :P
first off,I've seen p4's and I've seen AMD's. AMD's run much better. Its really noticable.

dave, Im prolly gunna build it at CM so you and kieran can make sure I dont do anything dumbassed :P

finally, before the Compaq is destroyed, I'm gunna use the 20gig h/d to transfer some of the data... (the CD-RW doesnt work...bloody Compaq!!)

oh yeah, anybody want the RIVA TNT2 32mb card out of it?

Quigs Snr

PPC, just made the connection. Must be Planet PC ?

You guys are expensive sometimes but you're the only shop in town who know what the hell I'm talking about, when I come in and start crapping on about power issues with the K7S5A etc.... Didn't get those 400w Codegens in yet by any chance ?

Gerry

Heres a some benchmarks of the p4 (various speeds) with a geforce3 ti500, also an athlon xp 2000+ is tested alongside it.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MjUyLDQ=

Seems well able to keep up with the athlon. I'm not sure what you did to get such low performance, but this certainly has not been most other peoples experience. At standard speeds, the p4 and athlon are faster than each other in different games, depending on which motherboard you use, but you can overclock the p4 considerably more. Also, for a budget pc, you can get a p4 1.6A and asus p4s533 for 350 euro, thats about 90 euro more than an 1800xp and kt266a board, or about 60 in the difference if you want a kt333 board. I think the extra cash is worth it. The p4 clocks up to 2.4ghz - 2.5ghz without breaking a sweat, roughly a 50-60%. You can overclock the athlon to about 1800 mhz, a 20% overclock. I know thats not going to make any difference to you or tizlox, since you already have your minds set, but I'm just stating my experience anyway.

Quigs Snr

Tizlox, If you get stuck and need any help locating parts, software or just sticking it together or troubleshooting, I am also in Waterford and have been to Cybermart a few times (mostly to buy games and an old monitor or two !), never been to a LAN though, must show up sometime and show you lot how not to play quake. From talking to the guys in there, sounds like a pretty cool bunch.

Gerry

After looking at the build quality of codegen psu's quigs, I'd recommend trying a different brand of psu. The codegen 300w I used before gave 12 amps on the 3.3v line, ( decent 250w psu's will have 14 amps ) ran extremely hot, and struggles to run a tbird 1200. The 5v line drops to about 4.8v. The psu weighs nothing, and when I opened it up to rewire the fan to a higher voltage, I discovered the fan wires melting into a live heatsink on the board.

Quigs Snr

I still prefer AMD at this time and if I were you thats what I'd get. However, Gerry has got a good point too. Here's some backup for what Gerry is telling you, I have been following this site for a few years and this guy started out as a pro AMD guy, now he seems to be swinging to INTEL, the fourth article tells you why :

http://www.emulators.com/pentium4.htm

Gerry

hehe, looks like a complete swing around to me. That article is well worth the read, if you could be bothered PPC. Note however that he is a little unfair on the athlon xp, it does perform better than the tbird at the same speed, and I have not had near the amount of stability issues he describes with amd machines. All the athlon machines I have built are still running, a few had minor stability issues ok, which I have sorted.

Quigs Snr

Gerry, the Codegens aren't great, but around christmas I had an ECS K7S5A with a Tbird 1333 which had all sorts of problems which apparently could be solved with a better PSU, I needed a 400W with at least 28A on the 3.3v line, however could not get one in this country at that time. Planet PC had the 350W Codegen (only 14A on the 3.3 line), which didn't do the job, but in fairness to the lads they let me take it home and try it out and refunded me when I brought it back. So fair play to them, good shop and the lads know their stuff. Most other shops just said you only need a 300W to run an Athlon and tried to convince me, when I explained I was looking for 28A on the 3.3v line, not advice, do you have it yes/no, they got a bit offended. Planet PC on the other hand did seem to know what I was on about.

I RMA'd that board in the end anyway.

Interesting Article alright. I have to say I am torn. For my next upgrade, the INTEL might be an option. I think certainley, I will consider INTEL when putting machines together for other people, because in my own experience (with Pentiums, 2, 3, Celeron), I tend to put them out the door, and never hear of them again, same with Duron's, the Athlons, though do SOMETIMES tend to give problems, possibly due to the cheaper quality motherboards often available for them. Heat is also an issue, you can put in the best cooling in the world and then the guy puts the PC up next to the radiator !

JustHalf

Well, you don't need a 300W PSU to run an Athlon.

I was running mine off a 230W PSU quite comfortably. (TBird 1GHz @ 1.33GHz)

Quigs Snr

True. But you're the exception rather than the rule. It also very much depends on the voltage regulation capabilities of the motherboard.

If you look at AMD's approved PSU list you will see a few 250W PSU's for some of the lower end Athlons, however, you're putting a gun to your own head if you go with on of these. Stick in a DVD drive, a CDRW, A Zip drive, Floppy Drive, 2 hard disks, a couple of case fans, then a USB scanner and Printer and chances are you are in trouble. The power draw will be too great and you will start getting BlueScreens and hangs. Happens all the time.

If you build PC's for other people and Gerry, Myself and PPC do, you tend not to take chances. Realistically 300W is the bare minimum. You don't know what power hungry bit's people are going to put into these machines so you try to be safe and go for a decent quality PSU (this is when you start looking at the Amp rating in the 3.3v and 5v lines), most PSU's which rate decently in this regard tend to be 350W PSU'S (although the wattage is not as important as the TCO - Total Combined Output, which is dependant on the Amps on the various lines).

Some do get away with the smaller PSU's but they tend to be in a minority. People who build machines commercially, can't take that chance. I''ll eat my own shoes by the way if you can go into any shop that makes up it's own PC's and buy and Athlon system with anything less than a 300W PSU !

JustHalf

Hey, I do know that

PPC

Originally posted by Gerry
hehe, looks like a complete swing around to me. That article is well worth the read, if you could be bothered PPC. Note however that he is a little unfair on the athlon xp, it does perform better than the tbird at the same speed, and I have not had near the amount of stability issues he describes with amd machines. All the athlon machines I have built are still running, a few had minor stability issues ok, which I have sorted.

I have an article somewhere (need to find it that P4's arent all their cracked up tobe.

Originally posted by Quigs Snr
PPC, just made the connection. Must be Planet PC ? [/B]

Its weird I actually chose PPC from PPC weapon from MW2

Gerry

I retract everything in the face of this new infallible evidence. You can find an article that will prove anything right, if you are willing to believe it. This thread serves no useful purpose any more, if you want to tell us all how the athlon still outperforms the p4, start another thread.