lol theres 18 pages in that review.... can you sum it up?
alot of mother boards now are offering 3 pci slots to tri sli, and would it realy be all that more effective to get 2 600$ cards or 3 300 or 200$ cards? cause i'm sure there is no 6x sli for a while
umm sorry vista is still a horrible OS even if you know the ins and outs of computers. I have 2 guild members plagued with the BSD Display driver has stopped running and has recovered
Display driver Atikmdag has stopped responding and has successfully recovered
or
Display driver has stopped running and has recovered
Display driver R300 has stopped responding and has successfully recovered
And both video cards makers claim its a vista error, Microsoft acknowledges this error and after over a year they cannot/do not have a fix for it. Yet my 2 guildies cannot play any video game or program which uses a decent amount of GPU power. Go ahead and find a 100% fix and its non existent. Both were both from 3rd party (Dell and powerpc). One of them is a total pc-head who knows more than most people i met...yet still has not found a fix for it Vista is cursed...and guarantee you it will be replaced or had have a MAJOR overhaul before xp stops getting support in 2014. If it wasn't for DX10 Vista would have been dead and buried already.
I've used Vista 32 and i'm using Vista 64 now, all those problems your mates are having that you listed are driver related problems. You just need the latest nForce/Forceware/ATi Catalyst drivers and that should stop the problems. There are even Hotfixes out there from Microsoft.
I'm having no probalems at all with Vista, i have at present these old titles installed on my Vista 64 machine.....
StarCraft (1998)
Outcast (1999)
Rune (2000)
Deus EX (2000)
WarCraft III (2002)
Jedi Knight II : Jedi Outcast (2002)
I haven't had a single probalem with any of them and haven't needed to tweak anything. Juat install theb games and patch them up to date, no problems.
As for more recent titles i have installed at the moment....
COD4
Sin of a Solar Empire
C&C 3 Tiberium Wars and Kanes Wrath
The Orange Box (Half-Life, Half-Life 2 ect ect)
Savage 2
Fable The Lost Chapters
Warhammer Mark of Chaos
The Witcher
WoW
Lotro
The only game on this list that doesn't work properly is The Witcher but if go on thier tech forum you will see people with XP having the same problems. Theb only other game that i can't get to work properly is UTIII but again it doesn't work everyone on XP either.
Vista isn't the probelm it's lazy and slack development of games.
Apparantly you did not read my thread. ATI and NVIDIA both with the same error? and btw there have been numberous updates to the drivers since these problems started and with no avail. People have even replaced whole video cards which caused the error to come back 2 - 3 weeks later. Google these two error messages and you will see hundreds of forums and tech boards complaining of the error, with no fixes. I dare ya....google them.
Oh and if vista is not shitty, then why is it already scheduled for death by 2010/2011, and microsoft already working on Windows Vienna (aka Windows 7). This would give Vista a shorter lifespan than even Windows ME.
Also you could cut 300 bucks from that system by substituting a cheaper CPU, cheaper case, and geforce 9600 instead, and it would still be a pretty nice setup.
Total Cost - $850 Also you could cut 300 bucks from that system by substituting a cheaper CPU, cheaper case, and geforce 9600 instead, and it would still be a pretty nice setup.
Ya know. I always wonder about people when they do this. You have a 450W power supply? What exactly are you going to do with that? If you are lucky, you might (and I stress might) by able to power that all with that PSU. Then what? If you want a second GPU or more RAM or more drives, you have to get a new PSU again because you didn't spend the extra $50 or so to get a real PSU.
Then there's this belief (Apparently) that people don't need an operating system, a monitor, a mouse, a keyboard, or a soundcard in order to actually run their computer. If you're going to claim that you can built a budget PC, you have to include those things. The only thing you might not absolutely need is a soundcard because most motherboards have at least some type of integrated sound included.
Then, you say that you can drop $300 from the price by replacing $500 worth of equipment with $200 worth of equipment. What exactly could I get with $200? Hell, the 9600GT alone cost roughly $170. That leaves me $30 to spend on a CPU and a case. Unless you are suggesting that I build my own case out of cardboard and tape, and a the slowest p4 available for purchase, I don't think your price theory works out too well.
No offense man, but it really bothers me when amateurs give advice to new people wanting to learn how to build their own box. They learn more bad habits learning from people like you than they learn by reading some self-help articles on the web.
So really, you have a $850 price tag. Add $50 more for a real power supply. Add $50 for a keyboard. $40 for a mouse. $250 for a 21-22" monitor. Now your price tag is roughly $1250. This isn't even including if you want to upgrade to Vista. Also, since you're including a CPU fan, let's add a couple extra $12 case fans just for the hell of it. Why not? You did.
Here's what it boils down to. If you waited so long between buying PC's, it will cost you quite a bit to get a nice gaming computer. However, after you buy it, just upgrade a few parts every year, you won't have to give an arm and a leg and you'll always have a relatively up to date computer to play all of the latest in cutting edge video games. It's a hobby. A hobby will typically come with a price tag, you just have to accept it.
Total Cost - $850 Also you could cut 300 bucks from that system by substituting a cheaper CPU, cheaper case, and geforce 9600 instead, and it would still be a pretty nice setup.
Ya know. I always wonder about people when they do this. You have a 450W power supply? What exactly are you going to do with that? If you are lucky, you might (and I stress might) by able to power that all with that PSU. Then what? If you want a second GPU or more RAM or more drives, you have to get a new PSU again because you didn't spend the extra $50 or so to get a real PSU.
Then there's this belief (Apparently) that people don't need an operating system, a monitor, a mouse, a keyboard, or a soundcard in order to actually run their computer. If you're going to claim that you can built a budget PC, you have to include those things. The only thing you might not absolutely need is a soundcard because most motherboards have at least some type of integrated sound included.
Then, you say that you can drop $300 from the price by replacing $500 worth of equipment with $200 worth of equipment. What exactly could I get with $200? Hell, the 9600GT alone cost roughly $170. That leaves me $30 to spend on a CPU and a case. Unless you are suggesting that I build my own case out of cardboard and tape, and a the slowest p4 available for purchase, I don't think your price theory works out too well.
No offense man, but it really bothers me when amateurs give advice to new people wanting to learn how to build their own box. They learn more bad habits learning from people like you than they learn by reading some self-help articles on the web.
So really, you have a $850 price tag. Add $50 more for a real power supply. Add $50 for a keyboard. $40 for a mouse. $250 for a 21-22" monitor. Now your price tag is roughly $1250. This isn't even including if you want to upgrade to Vista. Also, since you're including a CPU fan, let's add a couple extra $12 case fans just for the hell of it. Why not? You did.
Here's what it boils down to. If you waited so long between buying PC's, it will cost you quite a bit to get a nice gaming computer. However, after you buy it, just upgrade a few parts every year, you won't have to give an arm and a leg and you'll always have a relatively up to date computer to play all of the latest in cutting edge video games. It's a hobby. A hobby will typically come with a price tag, you just have to accept it.
That is so true....i have a 1yr old kid, mortgage, taxes, and live on Long Island, NY (anyone familiar with this area knows the cost of living rivals Hollywood for the most part). I don't have money just to throw around every time a game comes out. So i do what this poster suggested, i pick a part on my computer and upgrade it once a year. Last year i bought a 8800gt. before that a monitor, year before that a processor. I spend 100-200 a year tops and usually wait until the Black Friday deals. It makes life so much simpler. This year i need to upgrade my mobo and proc. Maybe 200 bucks total. But it basically keeps my comp up to date and i never have to worry about my computer being obsolete (except for the OS...which right now i am still in love with xp pro x64)
Total Cost - $850 Also you could cut 300 bucks from that system by substituting a cheaper CPU, cheaper case, and geforce 9600 instead, and it would still be a pretty nice setup.
Ya know. I always wonder about people when they do this. You have a 450W power supply? What exactly are you going to do with that? If you are lucky, you might (and I stress might) by able to power that all with that PSU. Then what? If you want a second GPU or more RAM or more drives, you have to get a new PSU again because you didn't spend the extra $50 or so to get a real PSU.
Then there's this belief (Apparently) that people don't need an operating system, a monitor, a mouse, a keyboard, or a soundcard in order to actually run their computer. If you're going to claim that you can built a budget PC, you have to include those things. The only thing you might not absolutely need is a soundcard because most motherboards have at least some type of integrated sound included.
Then, you say that you can drop $300 from the price by replacing $500 worth of equipment with $200 worth of equipment. What exactly could I get with $200? Hell, the 9600GT alone cost roughly $170. That leaves me $30 to spend on a CPU and a case. Unless you are suggesting that I build my own case out of cardboard and tape, and a the slowest p4 available for purchase, I don't think your price theory works out too well.
No offense man, but it really bothers me when amateurs give advice to new people wanting to learn how to build their own box. They learn more bad habits learning from people like you than they learn by reading some self-help articles on the web.
So really, you have a $850 price tag. Add $50 more for a real power supply. Add $50 for a keyboard. $40 for a mouse. $250 for a 21-22" monitor. Now your price tag is roughly $1250. This isn't even including if you want to upgrade to Vista. Also, since you're including a CPU fan, let's add a couple extra $12 case fans just for the hell of it. Why not? You did.
Here's what it boils down to. If you waited so long between buying PC's, it will cost you quite a bit to get a nice gaming computer. However, after you buy it, just upgrade a few parts every year, you won't have to give an arm and a leg and you'll always have a relatively up to date computer to play all of the latest in cutting edge video games. It's a hobby. A hobby will typically come with a price tag, you just have to accept it.
Firstly, I'm laughing at you for calling me an amateur when I manage IT for a large corporation.
Secondly, that power supply has 33 amps on the 12 volt rail. Feel free to google how important that is compared to wattage. It will be enought to power the 8800 GT as well as provide enough extra juice for me to overlock that CPU to 4 ghz.
Thirdly, most people buying new PCs already have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Also I don't know where you're getting 40-50 bucks each for a mouse and keyboard - oem ones are less than $10.
I typically upgrade like this every three years. That is not a big investment!
I think the $1000-$1500 is achievable. If not, you wouldn't see tons of articles out there showing folks how to do it.
Keyboard, mouse, and monitor... most guides do leave those out. They count on the builder already having those components. They would simply recycle them, move them on to the next build. I know that those are the first 3 components I knock off when I build any system online OR when I begin planning to build my own box. I also don't include speakers... again, I have a few nice sets already and always plan on migrating them to my next build.
That $1000 is a 'at time of purchase' pricetag. This isn't necessarily saying 'future-proof'. But, the fact that the person would be 'building their own' system means they aren't potentially locking themselves into some 'proprietary' system, either.
Yeah, I'm all for 1-shot/1-kill... do it right the first time... set it/forget it... all of that. But the objective is to get the guy into a system that can get him into the game, sub $2000 (which was the point of the OP).
Sure, you can pay extra $$ and get a larger PSU.
By that rationale, you could get a MOBO that supports SLI.
You could do a lot of things here... obviously. You can always 'spend more money'. The point, however, is to provide a baseline for the user to reference. It's not some carved-in-stone 'do it this way or I'll smite you' guide.
Don't shoot the messengers here though. I mean, some people obviously don't think you can build a nice system for a low-price. And there are a lot of people that believe you can.
Don't take it out on each other here... wait and do it in AOC. If someone 'omg-permadeath' kills you on their $1000 system and you are on your $5000 rig with a custom-car-painted-chassis, then don't be mad. Your rig will look great while you are re-rolling a new character.
A great deal of focus should be placed on configuring your OS after the system build is complete. You can certainly shake loose some lost horsepower there.
Firstly, I'm laughing at you for calling me an amateur when I manage IT for a large corporation.
Secondly, that power supply has 33 amps on the 12 volt rail. Feel free to google how important that is compared to wattage. It will be enought to power the 8800 GT as well as provide enough extra juice for me to overlock that CPU to 4 ghz.
Thirdly, most people buying new PCs already have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Also I don't know where you're getting 40-50 bucks each for a mouse and keyboard - oem ones are less than $10.
I typically upgrade like this every three years. That is not a big investment!
You can be Bill Gates for all I care, it still doesn't prove to me that you know much about building a gaming computer. It's the same as saying that you're buying a sports car and coming home with a Neo Geo.
The power supply is one of, if not the most important piece of hardware that you put into that computer case, if you are so knowledgeable, you should already know that. Spending an extra $50 on a PSU that will support a variety of upgrades is the way to go, and any real gamer will tell you the same thing. By making sure the most important parts are upgradeable, you effectively cut down your costs of having to buy replacement parts for upgrades that you want to make. I don't think I've ever built a computer with a PSU less than 550W. If you still don't understand, here's an example.
You buy a non-SLI motherboard, you buy a PSU that barely allows you to run all of the hardware you have purchased. You buy a Dx10 graphics card and run it on XP. Do you notice the problem? What is the point of not being a SLI-ready motherboard when you can easily do that for little to no extra cash? Why would you buy a PSU that isn't going to allow me to get another graphics card if I wanted it? Or maybe a want more RAM and a couple more hard drives? For only a little bit more money, you can easily avoid having that problem. Why would you buy a Dx10 compatible graphics card when you have no intention on running it on Vista? So, if you don't buy that SLI board, you can't get the extra card, you'll have to be a brand new board, costing you more money. If you want to upgrade and your PSU doesn't have enough power, now you have to buy another brand new PSU. See what I mean?
You can't assume someone already has a mouse, keyboard and monitor. I'll use the same example for the monitor. You buy yourself a 19" monitor, max resolution is 1280-1024. You buy a 9600GT or better and you can still only run that resolution on a card that supports a much higher resolution. Like for instance, my 4 year old monitor has a delay of 25ms. New monitors cost less and usually run a standard 5ms delay. As far as a gaming keyboard and mouse go. If you're a gamer and actually want a real set, you'll be purchasing a MX518 or a newer logitech laser mouse and either a G11 or G15 logitech keyboard. Now I'm not saying it is impossible to play on a crappy OEM $10 dell keyboard and mouse, but what gamer in their right mind would do that?
Like I said, stop giving people bad habits and tell them either spend more money for non-crap or wait and save up for it. There is no sense in telling someone to buy crap, then replace crap in a year for more crap. Pointless. I'm not suggesting that you need to spend $1500 or more for a decent gaming rig, I think it's possible. I am however saying that if you're going to build any computer, no matter what it's used for, have the idea of upgrading it in mind. You'll be spending more money for replacing crap than you would if you bought the right stuff in the first place.
Telling someone that they gotta get sli and Vista for Dx10 is kinda retarded because both of these things are negligible imo. The difference isnt even that noticeable with current DX10 games. Crysis is the exception but most of the features can be enabled in dx9 by editing the .cfg files. I wouldnt ever buy sli unless I had extra money to trow away.
As for the OS I had this friend one time that told me he found a free copy of vista on the internet somehow. AMAZING!
Also a e8400/q6600 is gonna be future proof for a while. If that 8800 isn't cutting it down the road when games like Alan Wake come out just get a 9800gtx
Like I said, stop giving people bad habits and tell them either spend more money for non-crap or wait and save up for it. There is no sense in telling someone to buy crap, then replace crap in a year for more crap.
Lol you seriously think a Xeon 3110 @ 4ghz and a 8800GT are crap? Gimmee a break.
The only think that seems relevant in your post is that IF you think you may want to go SLI or add a couple of more harddrives in the future, then you should get a bigger power supply (and a SLI capable motherboard). This I agree with.
But I have no intention of doing either, and the fact is that the vast majority of gamers have one hard drive and don't use SLI. Most people would upgrade by replacing the video card and/or cpu, and for that, the system I specced out is easily upgradeable.
umm sorry vista is still a horrible OS even if you know the ins and outs of computers. I have 2 guild members plagued with the BSD Vista is cursed...and guarantee you it will be replaced or had have a MAJOR overhaul before xp stops getting support in 2014. If it wasn't for DX10 Vista would have been dead and buried already.
Whatever! I have been using Vista since it went public and with a few driver issues at first .. it has been running smooth ever since. Vista had less problems than XP when it came out. But I am sure you wont believe me. I honestly dont care, I just wanted to make sure others know that Vista DOES work
lol....classic, heres a cookie
/cookie
Vista had less bugs than XP? 2 years on it still has bugs and compatability issues and requires 15% more CPU and RAM than XP - Vista doesn't work which is why 86% still use XP.
The ONLY reason more people use XP than Vista still is that since the birth of Vista the majority of people are now only JUST upgrading their PC. 99% of newly bought PC's (ie family or run of the Mill shop bought - which is a huge % of the market) will be shipped with Vista of one flavor or another.
Vista prices have just been slashed so another reason to buy it...
The majority of NON computer literate people I speak to have NO problems running Vista so I'm sure seasoned Pro's won't have any. Do you?
All in all Vista takes PC useage to another level. Damn, I don't even have to remember DOS anymore o.0
Not that this is really the place for this, but I would love to get some opinions from people more experienced at building PCs than myself. I do desktop support at my company, so I have a good general knowledge of pc hardware. I have not however built my own pc before. After reading through this post, I started looking at newegg.com for possible components. I just want a decent gaming pc at an affordable price. How does secure.newegg.com/Shopping/ShoppingCartPrintVersion.aspx look?
Thanks in advance for any opinions or suggestions.
Not that this is really the place for this, but I would love to get some opinions from people more experienced at building PCs than myself. I do desktop support at my company, so I have a good general knowledge of pc hardware. I have not however built my own pc before. After reading through this post, I started looking at newegg.com for possible components. I just want a decent gaming pc at an affordable price. How does secure.newegg.com/Shopping/ShoppingCartPrintVersion.aspx look? Thanks in advance for any opinions or suggestions.
Erm, it says your shopping cart is empty (unless I did something wrong)
im just so tired of hearing people say this once they see a video or a screenshot of AOC, these people see Nvidia release a $600 video card and ASSUME you HAVE to have that card to run anything i blame Crysis personally as that game is coded like crap and my proof is games like COD4 and UT3 that run 60+ fps on a WIDE range of PC's without even a hiccup, but NOBODY ever talks about those games and how well they run...just Crysis and how BAD it runs...sigh...but im getting off subject on a 19 inch flat panel this PC will run all current games with HIGH or better settings except for Crysis and no offense if you cant afford what i speced below you arent truly a PC gamer...nothing wrong with that, its not for everyone.. but PC gaming is just more expensive but its NOT as bad as people always claim total price $531.92 + shipping prices from newegg.com 2 gigs of memory $36.99 9600 GT $154.99 (its scary how close this card performs to my 8800GTS i bought for $380) 2.2 ghz duo core 2 processor $119 LGA 775 motherboard $32.99 575w power suppy $24.99 (i would acutally spend more for this but if you want low price) 120g harddrive $44.99 (go as high as you can afford if you want) asus DVD drive $11.99 Raidmax ATX case $19.98 Windows XP system builders Disc $85.99
Well all in all its an ok rig but i would never use that GFX even if you paid me for it.
NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT - 20.8 billion texture fill rate. - 57.6 GB/s maximum memory bandwith
Now here comes the 8800 GTS 512mb version which runs on a new chipset that makes is better by 5 billion texture fill rate ( per second ) which is what makes speed of the gfx
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 (512 mb version )GTS 41.6 billion Texture fill rate p/s 62.1 GB/s maximum memory bandwith. this baby runs on a newer chipset than the 8800 GTX / Ultra's which makes it able to compete with them and it costs half that , costs something like 350$.
And i wouldnt advise anyone here to run Vista , no matter how good your computer is , im running Core 2 Duo 3Ghz , 4gb memory DDRII pc6400 , 8800 GTS XFX Alpha Dog ( 512 ) Version
And vista is no where ready to able to compete with xp when it comes to the smoothness of be able to game properly without having vista fuckup anything.
All i heard is that their recent patch made some things worse and didnt fix anything.
BAM! DX10 PC that will max AoC(or close) Telling someone that they gotta get sli and Vista for Dx10 is kinda retarded because both of these things are negligible imo. The difference isnt even that noticeable with current DX10 games. Crysis is the exception but most of the features can be enabled in dx9 by editing the .cfg files. I wouldnt ever buy sli unless I had extra money to trow away. As for the OS I had this friend one time that told me he found a free copy of vista on the internet somehow. AMAZING! Also a e8400/q6600 is gonna be future proof for a while. If that 8800 isn't cutting it down the road when games like Alan Wake come out just get a 9800gtx
If this was directed at my post, I may have fumbled over my meaning. I didn't suggest that you absolutely have to have SLI, but having a mobo that supports it wouldn't harm anything, and more often than not, that motherboard is probably better for gaming than one that doesn't support SLI.
I forgot to mention that getting a Dx10 card for a Dx10 game and running it on XP is stupid. Now, I do understand that there really aren't any fully optimized Dx10 games out there, so it may not be a big deal yet.
Comments
Quad SLI with dual 9800 GX2:
www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/515/
Single 9800 GX2 review:
www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/512/
lol theres 18 pages in that review.... can you sum it up?
alot of mother boards now are offering 3 pci slots to tri sli, and would it realy be all that more effective to get 2 600$ cards or 3 300 or 200$ cards? cause i'm sure there is no 6x sli for a while
www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/512/11/
Call of duty results
so it's basicly 2 8800gts's alright.. i'll wait for the price to drop then. thanks!
Or you could "wait" until holodeck technology is upon us...
Don't wait, upgrade now and every 9 months.
S*D
I've used Vista 32 and i'm using Vista 64 now, all those problems your mates are having that you listed are driver related problems. You just need the latest nForce/Forceware/ATi Catalyst drivers and that should stop the problems. There are even Hotfixes out there from Microsoft.
I'm having no probalems at all with Vista, i have at present these old titles installed on my Vista 64 machine.....
StarCraft (1998)
Outcast (1999)
Rune (2000)
Deus EX (2000)
WarCraft III (2002)
Jedi Knight II : Jedi Outcast (2002)
I haven't had a single probalem with any of them and haven't needed to tweak anything. Juat install theb games and patch them up to date, no problems.
As for more recent titles i have installed at the moment....
COD4
Sin of a Solar Empire
C&C 3 Tiberium Wars and Kanes Wrath
The Orange Box (Half-Life, Half-Life 2 ect ect)
Savage 2
Fable The Lost Chapters
Warhammer Mark of Chaos
The Witcher
WoW
Lotro
The only game on this list that doesn't work properly is The Witcher but if go on thier tech forum you will see people with XP having the same problems. Theb only other game that i can't get to work properly is UTIII but again it doesn't work everyone on XP either.
Vista isn't the probelm it's lazy and slack development of games.
Apparantly you did not read my thread. ATI and NVIDIA both with the same error? and btw there have been numberous updates to the drivers since these problems started and with no avail. People have even replaced whole video cards which caused the error to come back 2 - 3 weeks later. Google these two error messages and you will see hundreds of forums and tech boards complaining of the error, with no fixes. I dare ya....google them.Oh and if vista is not shitty, then why is it already scheduled for death by 2010/2011, and microsoft already working on Windows Vienna (aka Windows 7). This would give Vista a shorter lifespan than even Windows ME.
You can easily build an awesome pc for under $1000 that will totally kick ass in AOC.
I just ordered this system from ncix.com:
Total Cost - $850
Also you could cut 300 bucks from that system by substituting a cheaper CPU, cheaper case, and geforce 9600 instead, and it would still be a pretty nice setup.
I think we have solidly shown that
1) gaming is a hobby that requires investment of funds
2) said investment will be easily met with 1000$/€ per year
3) the investment in this hobby is significantly less than most other pasttimes.
Yours in Hobby Plasma,
Star*Dagger
Then there's this belief (Apparently) that people don't need an operating system, a monitor, a mouse, a keyboard, or a soundcard in order to actually run their computer. If you're going to claim that you can built a budget PC, you have to include those things. The only thing you might not absolutely need is a soundcard because most motherboards have at least some type of integrated sound included.
Then, you say that you can drop $300 from the price by replacing $500 worth of equipment with $200 worth of equipment. What exactly could I get with $200? Hell, the 9600GT alone cost roughly $170. That leaves me $30 to spend on a CPU and a case. Unless you are suggesting that I build my own case out of cardboard and tape, and a the slowest p4 available for purchase, I don't think your price theory works out too well.
No offense man, but it really bothers me when amateurs give advice to new people wanting to learn how to build their own box. They learn more bad habits learning from people like you than they learn by reading some self-help articles on the web.
So really, you have a $850 price tag. Add $50 more for a real power supply. Add $50 for a keyboard. $40 for a mouse. $250 for a 21-22" monitor. Now your price tag is roughly $1250. This isn't even including if you want to upgrade to Vista. Also, since you're including a CPU fan, let's add a couple extra $12 case fans just for the hell of it. Why not? You did.
Here's what it boils down to. If you waited so long between buying PC's, it will cost you quite a bit to get a nice gaming computer. However, after you buy it, just upgrade a few parts every year, you won't have to give an arm and a leg and you'll always have a relatively up to date computer to play all of the latest in cutting edge video games. It's a hobby. A hobby will typically come with a price tag, you just have to accept it.
Then there's this belief (Apparently) that people don't need an operating system, a monitor, a mouse, a keyboard, or a soundcard in order to actually run their computer. If you're going to claim that you can built a budget PC, you have to include those things. The only thing you might not absolutely need is a soundcard because most motherboards have at least some type of integrated sound included.
Then, you say that you can drop $300 from the price by replacing $500 worth of equipment with $200 worth of equipment. What exactly could I get with $200? Hell, the 9600GT alone cost roughly $170. That leaves me $30 to spend on a CPU and a case. Unless you are suggesting that I build my own case out of cardboard and tape, and a the slowest p4 available for purchase, I don't think your price theory works out too well.
No offense man, but it really bothers me when amateurs give advice to new people wanting to learn how to build their own box. They learn more bad habits learning from people like you than they learn by reading some self-help articles on the web.
So really, you have a $850 price tag. Add $50 more for a real power supply. Add $50 for a keyboard. $40 for a mouse. $250 for a 21-22" monitor. Now your price tag is roughly $1250. This isn't even including if you want to upgrade to Vista. Also, since you're including a CPU fan, let's add a couple extra $12 case fans just for the hell of it. Why not? You did.
Here's what it boils down to. If you waited so long between buying PC's, it will cost you quite a bit to get a nice gaming computer. However, after you buy it, just upgrade a few parts every year, you won't have to give an arm and a leg and you'll always have a relatively up to date computer to play all of the latest in cutting edge video games. It's a hobby. A hobby will typically come with a price tag, you just have to accept it.
That is so true....i have a 1yr old kid, mortgage, taxes, and live on Long Island, NY (anyone familiar with this area knows the cost of living rivals Hollywood for the most part). I don't have money just to throw around every time a game comes out. So i do what this poster suggested, i pick a part on my computer and upgrade it once a year. Last year i bought a 8800gt. before that a monitor, year before that a processor. I spend 100-200 a year tops and usually wait until the Black Friday deals. It makes life so much simpler. This year i need to upgrade my mobo and proc. Maybe 200 bucks total. But it basically keeps my comp up to date and i never have to worry about my computer being obsolete (except for the OS...which right now i am still in love with xp pro x64)
Then there's this belief (Apparently) that people don't need an operating system, a monitor, a mouse, a keyboard, or a soundcard in order to actually run their computer. If you're going to claim that you can built a budget PC, you have to include those things. The only thing you might not absolutely need is a soundcard because most motherboards have at least some type of integrated sound included.
Then, you say that you can drop $300 from the price by replacing $500 worth of equipment with $200 worth of equipment. What exactly could I get with $200? Hell, the 9600GT alone cost roughly $170. That leaves me $30 to spend on a CPU and a case. Unless you are suggesting that I build my own case out of cardboard and tape, and a the slowest p4 available for purchase, I don't think your price theory works out too well.
No offense man, but it really bothers me when amateurs give advice to new people wanting to learn how to build their own box. They learn more bad habits learning from people like you than they learn by reading some self-help articles on the web.
So really, you have a $850 price tag. Add $50 more for a real power supply. Add $50 for a keyboard. $40 for a mouse. $250 for a 21-22" monitor. Now your price tag is roughly $1250. This isn't even including if you want to upgrade to Vista. Also, since you're including a CPU fan, let's add a couple extra $12 case fans just for the hell of it. Why not? You did.
Here's what it boils down to. If you waited so long between buying PC's, it will cost you quite a bit to get a nice gaming computer. However, after you buy it, just upgrade a few parts every year, you won't have to give an arm and a leg and you'll always have a relatively up to date computer to play all of the latest in cutting edge video games. It's a hobby. A hobby will typically come with a price tag, you just have to accept it.
Firstly, I'm laughing at you for calling me an amateur when I manage IT for a large corporation.
Secondly, that power supply has 33 amps on the 12 volt rail. Feel free to google how important that is compared to wattage. It will be enought to power the 8800 GT as well as provide enough extra juice for me to overlock that CPU to 4 ghz.
Thirdly, most people buying new PCs already have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Also I don't know where you're getting 40-50 bucks each for a mouse and keyboard - oem ones are less than $10.
I typically upgrade like this every three years. That is not a big investment!
yup that psu is fine for that build
I think the $1000-$1500 is achievable. If not, you wouldn't see tons of articles out there showing folks how to do it.
Keyboard, mouse, and monitor... most guides do leave those out. They count on the builder already having those components. They would simply recycle them, move them on to the next build. I know that those are the first 3 components I knock off when I build any system online OR when I begin planning to build my own box. I also don't include speakers... again, I have a few nice sets already and always plan on migrating them to my next build.
That $1000 is a 'at time of purchase' pricetag. This isn't necessarily saying 'future-proof'. But, the fact that the person would be 'building their own' system means they aren't potentially locking themselves into some 'proprietary' system, either.
Yeah, I'm all for 1-shot/1-kill... do it right the first time... set it/forget it... all of that. But the objective is to get the guy into a system that can get him into the game, sub $2000 (which was the point of the OP).
Sure, you can pay extra $$ and get a larger PSU.
By that rationale, you could get a MOBO that supports SLI.
You could do a lot of things here... obviously. You can always 'spend more money'. The point, however, is to provide a baseline for the user to reference. It's not some carved-in-stone 'do it this way or I'll smite you' guide.
Don't shoot the messengers here though. I mean, some people obviously don't think you can build a nice system for a low-price. And there are a lot of people that believe you can.
Don't take it out on each other here... wait and do it in AOC. If someone 'omg-permadeath' kills you on their $1000 system and you are on your $5000 rig with a custom-car-painted-chassis, then don't be mad. Your rig will look great while you are re-rolling a new character.
A great deal of focus should be placed on configuring your OS after the system build is complete. You can certainly shake loose some lost horsepower there.
Firstly, I'm laughing at you for calling me an amateur when I manage IT for a large corporation.
Secondly, that power supply has 33 amps on the 12 volt rail. Feel free to google how important that is compared to wattage. It will be enought to power the 8800 GT as well as provide enough extra juice for me to overlock that CPU to 4 ghz.
Thirdly, most people buying new PCs already have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Also I don't know where you're getting 40-50 bucks each for a mouse and keyboard - oem ones are less than $10.
I typically upgrade like this every three years. That is not a big investment!
You can be Bill Gates for all I care, it still doesn't prove to me that you know much about building a gaming computer. It's the same as saying that you're buying a sports car and coming home with a Neo Geo.
The power supply is one of, if not the most important piece of hardware that you put into that computer case, if you are so knowledgeable, you should already know that. Spending an extra $50 on a PSU that will support a variety of upgrades is the way to go, and any real gamer will tell you the same thing. By making sure the most important parts are upgradeable, you effectively cut down your costs of having to buy replacement parts for upgrades that you want to make. I don't think I've ever built a computer with a PSU less than 550W. If you still don't understand, here's an example.
You buy a non-SLI motherboard, you buy a PSU that barely allows you to run all of the hardware you have purchased. You buy a Dx10 graphics card and run it on XP. Do you notice the problem? What is the point of not being a SLI-ready motherboard when you can easily do that for little to no extra cash? Why would you buy a PSU that isn't going to allow me to get another graphics card if I wanted it? Or maybe a want more RAM and a couple more hard drives? For only a little bit more money, you can easily avoid having that problem. Why would you buy a Dx10 compatible graphics card when you have no intention on running it on Vista? So, if you don't buy that SLI board, you can't get the extra card, you'll have to be a brand new board, costing you more money. If you want to upgrade and your PSU doesn't have enough power, now you have to buy another brand new PSU. See what I mean?
You can't assume someone already has a mouse, keyboard and monitor. I'll use the same example for the monitor. You buy yourself a 19" monitor, max resolution is 1280-1024. You buy a 9600GT or better and you can still only run that resolution on a card that supports a much higher resolution. Like for instance, my 4 year old monitor has a delay of 25ms. New monitors cost less and usually run a standard 5ms delay. As far as a gaming keyboard and mouse go. If you're a gamer and actually want a real set, you'll be purchasing a MX518 or a newer logitech laser mouse and either a G11 or G15 logitech keyboard. Now I'm not saying it is impossible to play on a crappy OEM $10 dell keyboard and mouse, but what gamer in their right mind would do that?
Like I said, stop giving people bad habits and tell them either spend more money for non-crap or wait and save up for it. There is no sense in telling someone to buy crap, then replace crap in a year for more crap. Pointless. I'm not suggesting that you need to spend $1500 or more for a decent gaming rig, I think it's possible. I am however saying that if you're going to build any computer, no matter what it's used for, have the idea of upgrading it in mind. You'll be spending more money for replacing crap than you would if you bought the right stuff in the first place.
BAM! DX10 PC that will max AoC(or close)
Telling someone that they gotta get sli and Vista for Dx10 is kinda retarded because both of these things are negligible imo. The difference isnt even that noticeable with current DX10 games. Crysis is the exception but most of the features can be enabled in dx9 by editing the .cfg files. I wouldnt ever buy sli unless I had extra money to trow away.
As for the OS I had this friend one time that told me he found a free copy of vista on the internet somehow.
AMAZING!
Also a e8400/q6600 is gonna be future proof for a while. If that 8800 isn't cutting it down the road when games like Alan Wake come out just get a 9800gtx
The only think that seems relevant in your post is that IF you think you may want to go SLI or add a couple of more harddrives in the future, then you should get a bigger power supply (and a SLI capable motherboard). This I agree with.
But I have no intention of doing either, and the fact is that the vast majority of gamers have one hard drive and don't use SLI. Most people would upgrade by replacing the video card and/or cpu, and for that, the system I specced out is easily upgradeable.
Whatever! I have been using Vista since it went public and with a few driver issues at first .. it has been running smooth ever since. Vista had less problems than XP when it came out. But I am sure you wont believe me. I honestly dont care, I just wanted to make sure others know that Vista DOES work
lol....classic, heres a cookie/cookie
Vista had less bugs than XP? 2 years on it still has bugs and compatability issues and requires 15% more CPU and RAM than XP - Vista doesn't work which is why 86% still use XP.
The ONLY reason more people use XP than Vista still is that since the birth of Vista the majority of people are now only JUST upgrading their PC. 99% of newly bought PC's (ie family or run of the Mill shop bought - which is a huge % of the market) will be shipped with Vista of one flavor or another.
Vista prices have just been slashed so another reason to buy it...
The majority of NON computer literate people I speak to have NO problems running Vista so I'm sure seasoned Pro's won't have any. Do you?
All in all Vista takes PC useage to another level. Damn, I don't even have to remember DOS anymore o.0
Not that this is really the place for this, but I would love to get some opinions from people more experienced at building PCs than myself. I do desktop support at my company, so I have a good general knowledge of pc hardware. I have not however built my own pc before. After reading through this post, I started looking at newegg.com for possible components. I just want a decent gaming pc at an affordable price. How does secure.newegg.com/Shopping/ShoppingCartPrintVersion.aspx look?
Thanks in advance for any opinions or suggestions.
Erm, it says your shopping cart is empty (unless I did something wrong)
NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT - 20.8 billion texture fill rate. - 57.6 GB/s maximum memory bandwith
Now here comes the 8800 GTS 512mb version which runs on a new chipset that makes is better by 5 billion texture fill rate ( per second ) which is what makes speed of the gfx
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 (512 mb version )GTS 41.6 billion Texture fill rate p/s 62.1 GB/s maximum memory bandwith. this baby runs on a newer chipset than the 8800 GTX / Ultra's which makes it able to compete with them and it costs half that
, costs something like 350$.
List of SOE lies
And i wouldnt advise anyone here to run Vista , no matter how good your computer is , im running Core 2 Duo 3Ghz , 4gb memory DDRII pc6400 , 8800 GTS XFX Alpha Dog ( 512 ) Version
And vista is no where ready to able to compete with xp when it comes to the smoothness of be able to game properly without having vista fuckup anything.
All i heard is that their recent patch made some things worse and didnt fix anything.
List of SOE lies
Probably my fault. The components are as follows:
MOTHERBOARD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131013 - $134.99
PROCESSOR: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103228 - $169.00
VIDEO CARD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130318 - $204.99
POWER SUPPLY: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171014 - $79.99
CASE: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119068 - $53.99
MEMORY: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231098 - $34.99
I'm thinking of getting http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102730
and 2g of ram..is that enough to run Age of Conan on atleast medium graphics if not high?
Getting a new motherboard is out of the question.
From the FAQ
Required
OS: Windows Vista/XP
Processor: 3GHz Pentium IV
RAM: 1GB RAM
Video Card: Shader Model 2.0 and 128MB ram, nVidia GeForce 6600
Recommended
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz (E6600) or better
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX or better
RAM: 2GB or more
Enhanced for: DirectX 10, 64-bit processors, multi-core
Supports Parental Controls on Windows Vista
I forgot to mention that getting a Dx10 card for a Dx10 game and running it on XP is stupid. Now, I do understand that there really aren't any fully optimized Dx10 games out there, so it may not be a big deal yet.