New Computer

[Arumakani]

Want to buy a new computer for under £850 but willing to go upto £1000. It should run Doom3 at full specs, aswell as any Unreal 3 engined game. Should also have no probs with Crytek's Crysis.

 

2 places I'm looking at are:

 

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/systems.aspx

 

or

 

http://www.goldenelectronics.co.uk/

 

Any help would be cool.

[Fingernail]

less than £1000?

 

Prepare to scrimp on some features then.

 

For instance, you'll need at least 2Gb of RAM I'd say, at least a 7800 or X1800, at least a 3800+ AMD or equiv pentium, which all means you'll have to get a cheapish mobo, case, you can save a lot if you get a CRT instead of LCD monitor, but other than that, you really need those 3 main components to be pretty decent.

 

Also I recommend www.scan.co.uk

 

I just ordered the parts for my PC from them this morning.

[Arumakani]

I was going to get it from them, but can't be arsed with building it. I can do stuff without keboard, mouse and monitor. Can use my Toshiba HDTV and a spare keyboard etc.

 

Which one of these then Dave?

 

http://3xs.scan.co.uk/Category.asp?SystemMasterCategoryID=20

Edited June 16, 2006 by Arumakani

[OrbWeaver]

It depends how important the "extreme" factor is. My X850XT/P4-3.4GHz/1024MB machine will play Doom 3 and Quake 4 perfectly well, but might struggle with Crytex or Unreal 3 (never tried them).

[Arumakani]

Well I want to play games as efficiently as possible with the best specs, for the next 2 to 3 years.

[OrbWeaver]

You're going to need to pay a hell of a lot more than £850 in that case.

[Arumakani]

Someone on the OXM forums in the UK said they can configure me one with a top notch ATI graphics card for £800

[Dram]

Well good, do that.

[Arumakani]

You being hostile?

[Dram]

LOL, no Just saying good that you found a good price etc. I'm browsing 3 forums atm lol...

[Arumakani]

That's cool.

 

I keep telling sparhawk I'm new to modding, which is true. Whereabouts in the Doom3 PC CD rom stuff is the editor? I finally managed to obtain a pre-owned copy for £9.99 and got The Movies for free

[Unstoppable]

That's cool.

 

I keep telling sparhawk I'm new to modding, which is true. Whereabouts in the Doom3 PC CD rom stuff is the editor? I finally managed to obtain a pre-owned copy for £9.99 and got The Movies for free

 

Make sure you don't get ripped off. Sometimes it's better to pay more to avoid getting scammed.

[Arumakani]

Cool man. I'll make sure it doesn't happen.

[Arumakani]

Hey sorry for bumping this.

 

Just ordered this computer for £1100, yeah I went over budget :

 

Black and Silver Jupiter case with front and back USB ports

530 Watt Hiper Power SLI PSU

Asus A8SX motherboard (Premium brand motherboard)

AMD Athlon 64 4200 x 2 Dual Core processor (2 cores each processing at 4.2Ghz in one processor)

2 GB Kingston PC3200 DDR RAM (Premium brand memory)

1GB PCI Express Asus NVIDIA 7950GX2 graphics card

Floppy Drive

250GB SATA hard drive

16 x Dual Layer DVD +/- Rewriter

Windows XP Home SP2 with free installation and original licence and CD supplied with the PC

1 Year Collect and Return Warranty

 

Should be ok for a few years you guys reckon?

Edited July 12, 2006 by Arumakani

[Fingernail]

yeah it's quite similar to my new one

 

however I hate to dissapoint you, the 4200+ (which is also what I have) does not mean 2x 4.2Ghz, it's more like 2x1.2Ghz in reality, roughly equalling a total performance of 4200Mhz

 

kinda, anyway. It's still great, though!

[Arumakani]

I thought the dual core meant that both cores run at the same speed and is cumulative as in 8.4 GHZ effectively?

[OrbWeaver]

I thought the dual core meant that both cores run at the same speed and is cumulative as in 8.4 GHZ effectively?

 

That's a marketing myth. Dual-core does not give you twice the performance of single core.

[Fingernail]

both cores run at the same speed and are cumulative at the performance of a 4200+ which does not diretly equate to Mhz or GHz as it is because of the way AMD chips work and the fact they are 64 bit.

 

So it's a little more complex.

[Arumakani]

That's a marketing myth. Dual-core does not give you twice the performance of single core.

 

Can you extrapolate? You seem to know a lot about hardware and software. You in the business or is it a hobby?

[OrbWeaver]

Can you extrapolate? You seem to know a lot about hardware and software. You in the business or is it a hobby?

 

Dual core allows the processor to "do two things at once", in certain circumstances. Many applications cannot take advantage of this, since they require things to be done in a certain order and cannot easily parallelise their operation. The main advantage appears when you are running several applications simultaneously, like encoding an MP3 in the background while playing Doom.

[SneaksieDave]

I'm wondering a couple of things. I stopped following comp tech years ago, when I realized it was too much work to keep up. My questions:

 

1. What is the current state of CPU advances? Is another "big push" coming soon, as with P3-P4? Are we going to see P5s at some point, or have we hit a barrier of some kind and there needs to be another super innovation?

 

2. If the answer to 1 is "yes something big and new is coming soon", then why would anyone upgrade right now? We're how many years into Pentium 4? They can only stretch these things so far.

[Komag]

Dude, you should ditch that floppy drive, taking up space man!

[Arumakani]

It's easier to carry around my pics of various PlayBoy Playmates around

[Ishtvan]

@Dave: I don't know too much, but it seems like Intel has been focusing more on low power consumption and multiple cores rather than another big push in raw speed.

[Komag]

Yeah, the feel in the industry right now seems to be an evolutionary shift to more breadth rather than more direct power/speed.

 

I think the driving factor is smaller portable devices, such as cell phones, iPods, new mini-laptops, smart-toys, etc. So that a lot of the research of low power consumption/low heat/small size stuff can be applied across a larger market.