Jim Galbally

ok it's not super-bling... but its still pretty top end:

1 x Connect3d ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB DDR DVI TV-Out Retail Box
2 x Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9 160GB Serial ATA150 7200rpm 8mb Cache - OEM
2 x Ebuyer 512mb DDR PC3200 400MHz 184pin Extra Value Ram1 x AMD Athlon XP3200+ 400mhz FSB 512 L2 Cache Barton CPU - OEM1 x Gigabyte GA-7N400PRO2 nForce 2 8xAGP Ultra400 400 FSB DDR400 IEEE 1394 Retail Box
2 x Ebuyer Extra Value 8cm Internal Case Cooling Fan 4 Pin1 x Speeze 5F273B1L3 Raptorcool AMD CPU Cooler for upto Xp3200+ and upto Sempron 3000+ Low Noise

all came to just under 500 sheets inc vat, delivery etc.

so, thats 320gb of HDD, a gig of ram, a 3200+ processor and a decent GFX card

roll on doom3 and halflife2

woohoo

CraigN

i used to run that exact setup

in the latest games jim i think your gonna be dissapointed

Ish

i will NEVER use ebuyer again. their prices are very good but trying to return a faulty/incorrect products is a nightmare they have no phone or email contact details. the only way to contact them is send them an enote from the site which never get answered!!

you only have to see the amount of complaints about ebuyer that are floating about to see they have a major problem with this http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...yer+complaints

Zetec Andy

your best off using www.microdirect.co.uk

Jim Galbally

they've always been good with me Ish... i stopped using scan.co.uk and moved to ebuyer after the big hoo-har over scam being shit at RMAs

Craig, i dont see how i'll be disapointed, my current spec is:

2400+
512mb (pc2700)
160gb ATA100
Geforce FX5200

and TBH it seems ok... im happy with the halflife2 performance...

doom3 runs a BIT slow for my liking, but still adequate... i think the performance increase im gonna get from that spec should do me

Martyn

I got my pc from http://www.nethighstreet.com/ dirty cheap and a very good service too

Phil

iTrader: (1)

Where does everyone think is cheapest for PC's these days?

I'm after something similar Jim but going P4 3.6GHz 1 gig RAM and a bigger SATA drive, they seem to add up more expensive building it yourself then a good complete deal these days!

I have looked around www.scan.co.uk www.ebuyer.com www.microdirect.co.uk

P.S. Jim I run HL2 on a way lower spec system and get 45-55fps (AMD 2200+, 512mb PC3200 and an XFX Geforce 4 Ti4200) on high detail at 1024x768 so you should be fine unless you are extremely fussy!

ballin

iTrader: (1)

www.overclockers.co.uk

Jim Galbally

phil, i recon i woulda been fine with just the GFX card to be honest, thing is i wanted to swap my HDD as the 200GB i got at the moment is full , so figurted i may aswell go for twin SATAs in a RAID config...

but to do that i needed another mobo

so figures i may aswell swap the chip

so then i needed new memory...

and it just kinda carried on from there

im gonna have oodles of HDD space, 320gb worth in the sata raid array, and a 160gb ATA100 off the ide channel... 480gb HDD space anyone? the fookin SANs i deal with at work aren't even that big

EscortWRC

You'll probably want to upgrade your graphics card to at least a 256 mb one

DanRSturbo

The spec of my current machine all bar the cpu as I'm waiting for a replacement from e-buyer is as follows

Amd Athlon XP 64 Bit 3200 CPU with 3400 fan
Gigabyte K8 Trition Motherboard
3 gig ebuyer extra value ddr ram soon to be replaced with 3 x 1024 kingston sticks
Nvidia 5600XT 256 meg vga card with dual monitor outputs running 2 x 17" CRT monitors in 1024 x 1280 Resolution
120 gig + 40 gig hard drives on IDE - 0
Pioneer slot loading dvd rom and samsung 48-24-48 cd-rw on Ide 1
Maxtor PCI ide controller, ide -1 1 x 60 gig drive, 1 x 120 gig drive
ide - 2 on the maxtor card - 2 x 160 gig drives

Soon i reckon the 2 drives on IDE-0 will be replaced with 2 serial ata drives, not sure yet

Jim Galbally

from what ive read dan, sata in a harware raid 0 config is a vast improvement in performance over the ATA133 stuff we're used to... rivals SCSI performance


escort, re: memory, most of the 256 cards about really offer no performance increase (except MAYBE for doom3) i know there are a few top end ones (6800 ultra x900 etc.) that it does makea difference on, but on a 9800 i didnt see the point. it's only used for textures anyway

AndyRST

Jim that 9800 pro GFX card is old, look for a 6800 (non ultra) if ya can or pay for the proper X900

The 6800 GFX card itself has more upto date architecture and more pipes makeing it better/faster than a 9800 pro

Jim Galbally

andy, i was looking at the 6800 and the 6600GT but decided against it, it really would be overkill for the rest of the spec, and i am not interested in future proofing at the moment.

also i only had a 500quid creidit limit on the card i paid with so had a 150quid budget for the GFX card

this will be my first dabble with ATi cards (ive been a nvidia man since the dats of the Riva TNT!) , lets hope theyre as good as people say!

Rene

get some more memory mate

FastFordChris

i've just built a full system for the same budget but i wanted to make sure i had a top spec mbourd that wouldnt be out of date next month, so the bourd i got was the abit guru one with pci express, SATA etc, doesnt have a limit on wat processor it will go up to as they havent made one that it wont take yet running a p4 3000 as p4 is the daddy

i'm running gig of ram aswell but it'll go up to 4gigs (gunna wait till ram gets cheaper)

got the same ATI graphic card but mines the 256mb one and its the dogs mate! got one of thos hard drives u've got (160gb one) no probs with it so far

the comp runs a full norton virus scan in less than 10mins! (old comp took 40!)
i use the comp for graphic programs for my work and college and it hasnt struggled one bit!

it is a bit noisey but i am running 8 fans in the comp but havent fitted a fan controller yet. 3 of them are on the mbourd itself!

PhilM

Anyone got an Athlon XP2500+ cpu they wanna sell me?



PS, Jim, thanks for your help recently dude, looks like the PC i am upgrading to is pretty much what your doing too, you didnt tell me that!

AGAR-COSWORTH

How true, ive got the same graphics card that you now will have and i was VERY dissapointed with Doom 3 after attempting to play it. Don't know about other games - haven't tried any as im still a bit pissed off at spending 35quid and not getting the game to run well at all with a newish pc

Jim Galbally

its due to the way whoever coded the doom3 engine was a lazy fucker who didnt optimise anytihng it EATS texture memory

SimonT

Thats pretty much what I'm running at the mo Jim Not bad price either.

I get all my PC stuff from www.aria.co.uk

Im currently saving for my new system. Gonna set me back about a grand in just memory and processor

Šhatter Box

fuck knows what mine is all i know it work if it goes wrong me bro fixes it or up dates it

Ollie MK5 Turbo

You call that a computer spec. just look at my baby.

Šhatter Box

SimonT

Amigas fookin rocked!

DanRSturbo

Ahhh, the commodore Amiga, legendary, only upstaged by the commodore 64, the real explanation for epilepsy IMO

Jim, don't overclock your vga card, Andy RST did his and fried it

Moonie

Get all my stuff from here - http://www.aria.co.uk/

Jim Galbally

dont think i'll bother...PC will be about 50% better than the old one anyway, no point doing MORE to it also im ordering an arctic cooling fan for the 9800 as soon as ebuyer have them back in stock, theyve got really good reviews at keeping the temps down on the cards

SimonT

Snap! I got a mate who works there so sometiems get a VAT free discount

Jim Galbally

ok got the fucker working FINALLY

my oh my what a paid in the arse this SATA stuff has caused me

in order to install XP onto a machine with sata, you need to have the drivers on FLOPPY DISK

now, i dont own a floppy disk took me ages of driving round mates houses to get one then i realised that i needed to boot into windows to copy the drivers from CD onto floppy

had to re-install windows onto an IDE drive, copy the drivers onto a FDD, then reinstall AGAIN onto the raidset

hell, i d this shit all the time and even i got wound up by it

anyway, tried doom3 earlier... in high detail @ 1024x768 it runs at a fairly decent FPS in 80x600 it's lightening quick! (used to run shit even on 640x480 on old system!)

just as soon as ive installed SP2 on, im gonna get halflife2 fired up and seehow she runs on the souce engine i got the DNA drivers installed and theyre optimised for source, so hopefully it should run proper bling

one problem i do have, is that if i disable the gigaRAID (ide raid) controller, the PC wont bot. but i dont actually use gigaraid, i use the sli SATA one... so it means i gotta wait 10+secs everytime the PC boots up for it to go thru the gigaraid stuff dunno if i can be arsed to fix that or not tho...

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Jim - sell me your old HDD then since you got two new fookers

Jim Galbally

matt, giving my old stuff to a mate

Matt

try here infuture lads...

Andreas

Mine is probably wider.

Ultrasharp 20" widescreen coming up next week.


Hope I can afford a new mobo and cpu too as my Athlon 2500+ will get a hard time keeping up with this monitor and my 6800GT gfx-card.

Jim Galbally

ok guys... HEEEEEELP

can't get the fucking thing to run at 2.4 GHZ

had it running at 1.2 ghz yesterday, i just ASSUMED that it was reading wrong it was running 100 FSB.

anyway, with it set to 166 FSB (2.0ghz) it runs fine...

with it set to 200FSB (2.4 ghz, what it should be for 3200+) it wont boot into windws

fookin thing

im SURE im doing somethng wrong

Jim Galbally

oh no wait, the sodding XP3200+ is a 2. ghz chip 200 x 11

stupid mate told me it was 200 x 12

oh well letssee if it works now...

Andreas

What Barton CPU did you get then?
Mine aint very stable at 3200+ and takes more voltage to boot. (Barton 2500+).

Jim Galbally

fixed it :P

set the multiplier to 11 on the mobo dip switches and now it all works fine

its a proper Barton XP3200+ not an overclocked 2500