Advice Re A New Setup..

Post by **wraith** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 2:00 pm

Hey guys, need some help with hardware choice.

I stil use my dual athlon system, MP2300s and a 9800 pro.

Until now its been great for everything but the last few games are showing me its time to give up and move on...

I need a mobo, cpu, graphics card and memory but without spending too much. Its mainly for CS:Source, Med Total War 2 and iL2.

I am working on rough budgets of the following..

mobo Â£80
CPU Â£80
Graphics Â£100 tops
Memory, whatever it takes for 1 or 2 GB of something decent.

Any advice as to which way to go, anything I get willl be a decent upgrade now, not sure whether to go AMD/Intel or ATI/Nvidia.

Thanks in advance

Post by **mcmav** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 3:23 pm

Intel Core 2 Duo E4300, Socket 775, 1.80 GHz, 800MHz FSB, Allendale Core, 2MB Cache, Retail Â£74

Abit AB9 Pro i965, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX Â£82.40

512MB Power Color RX1950Pro Arctic Cooling PCI-E(x16) Mem 1400MHz GDDR3 GPU 600MHz 36pipes CrossFire

Â£103.90

all above from scan

Should do you tbh

I went over the 100 for gfx but saved enough on cpu to cover mobo and gfx

if you are not runing at a res over 1280*1024 then a 256MB card would do and they can be had sub 100

Supposed to be a price drop on c2d's in next week or so so might be worth hanging off to see.

Post by **Trig** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 5:06 pm

Agree on the AB9 Pro, same board as me.
I'd wait for the CPU prices to drop, if your desperate then get an OEM one as I also have a retail 6420 heatsink spare.
I've got some 512Mb sticks that'll tide u over until funds are better, and 1gb is enuf for most..
Will also have some 250Gb SATA drives in a few weeks.

Post by **wraith** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 5:45 pm

I was going to reuse my old eide HDDs and DVDR, I assume this mobo supports those as well as SATA?

Thanks for the replies guys, will go and look about to see whos got the best prices

Is overclocking still an option with the cpu and memory? Not too bothered about massive gains but a little free is a good thing

FInally, which OS?
Is it worth going with a cracked copy of Vista for games or am I better off with XP? If I go XP whats the best way, is this student edition I hear about the best option?
I still have windows 2k on my old machine and am very happy with it tbh

Post by **madman045** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 6:54 pm

Phil, I dont know about that board, but a lot of newer ones are only coming with one IDE port and usually 4-6 SATA if not more now.

Just something to bare in mind as your new rig will be hindered by disk performance.

Andy

Post by **Trig** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 8:17 pm

I've got that board and it oc's my 6420 to 333fsb with no extra voltage, it'll go further but I cba to twat about with it..

It will take EIDE but theres only 1 channel and tbh just buy a SATA drive off of me and use that as your drive and then stick an IDE/SATA convertor and just use all SATA is possible.

Post by **wraith** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:26 am

Well, looks like a good plan chaps, thanks.

Trig, how much for the SATA drive and when do you get it?

I will probably order these parts this week as my PC is now direly in need of a rebuild, it means I can elevate my old PC to server status and reinstall

What is current opinion on vista as a games platform, opinion on the web seems to be mixed

Post by **Trig** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:50 am

Stick with XP

Should get the drives in a week or so, Â£30.
Usually Seagate or Wd 250Gb jobs.

Post by **wraith** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:54 am

Save me one, I will take it

Post by **Hippy** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 10:09 am

You fancy swapping an almost new socket 939 motherboard for your old Radeon?
I'm still running a radeon 9700, so a 9800 pro would be a welcome upgrade

Will get the details of the board if you like, it's nothing special, has got 2 IDE sockets, 4 SATA2 sockets, 4 memory slots.
It's Micro ATX though, PCI express gfx slot at the top and 3 PCI slots underneath.
I used it for my old media center project, i replaced it when i thought it was bust, but it turns out it was the tv card and pci riser card that was bust instead.

Also got a single tuner ComproTV DVB-T card which is surplus to requirements, and an Athlon XP 2500+ (socket A) If anyone's interested?

Going to have an eBay day soon.

Post by **wraith** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:07 am

Sorry Hippy, that card will go to my son who has a 9600pro...

Post by **Hippy** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:11 am

Well i think that's just selfish!

Post by **Trig** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:02 pm

Got an x1650 here I bought by mistake as i thought it was PCI-E but its AGP...

Post by **Hippy** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:50 pm

Swap for a Radeon 9700?

Post by **madman045** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:51 pm

Trig wrote: Stick with XP

Should get the drives in a week or so, Â£30.
Usually Seagate or Wd 250Gb jobs.

I have to agree here, I use Vista everyday at work and home, my new laptop has 4GB ram in it, so I also stuck XP64 on and its certainly more responsive, just doesn't have Vista's new interface, thats about it.

When I get chance to rebuild my own rig, it will have both XP (maybe 64) and I just got vista 64 from work to try out...