For the love of god don't waste money on a pentium. random extra bits are going to run a lil more than 20, at least twice that (or so i'd budget.) Something very important that most people (not the one's on this board, tho) tend to overlook is getting a good motherboard. this is critical. Get a warrantee for it too. I'd also seriously recommend getting one configured for a hardware RAID (Striping, not redudancy) on it. real inexpensive, will provide tremendous improvement in read/write times, even with 5400RPM drives.
(NWN) Help me with Computer Stuff plz
- Thread starter turtle
- Start date
heh, I have been clunking around an old PC for a while now. I built a PC when I got into college five years ago, and found out how hard it was to pay off a CC debt when you have tuition and rent to pay. that thousand dollars put me in the hole for three years.
I just got my hands on a G4 and it is a beaut. NWN, here I come...
I just got my hands on a G4 and it is a beaut. NWN, here I come...
Some advice from a Hardware God...
Qualifications: I've been building my own computers since 1995. Worked at a computer store as a technician for 1 1/2 years, then went to work at Microsoft. One of the first people to overclock their Pentium, AND I've been Intel-free for ~4 years now.
Some general pointers:
1. Know what you want to do with your computer, and build around that idea.
2. Get the most reliable components over the fastest. Some web sites talk about how great something overclocks, but frankly, if it's not on the WHQL list, there's something wrong with it most likely.
3. Don't get parts that lock you in to a single vendor. Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway all want you to throw away your computer and buy a new one instead of upgrading it. Gateway isn't quite as guilty of this as the others, IIRC, but I haven't bought a stock computer in some time.
4. http://www.newegg.com
Nope, I'm not an employee, I've just bought a lot of stuff from them, they have excellent prices, excellent policies, and are a pleasure to work with. The couple times I've had to send something back, they've been REALLY good about a fast turnaround with the replacement part. They even credited me once for a part that was no longer under their warranty, but under the manufacturer's warranty, something they didn't have to do. I am *VERY* happy with them.
5. Don't buy winmodems if you can help it, unless you need one only for limited use. (I have one that I only use for fax services) They suck up CPU time, and are horribly inefficient.
6. Memory, memory, memory, memory! Games especially will suck memory out of your system like a vampire. If you can get it, go with 512mb, if not, 384. 256 is bare minimum these days.
7. Go with Windows 2000 instead of XP. XP is a bloated pile of crud with no real redeeming features, and a higher price tag to boot. I should know, I worked as a software tester at Microsoft during the XP test cycle.
8. NVidia is the One True Video Card Manufacturer for now. ATI makes nice hardware, but their drivers suck.
9. Sound is a weird thing. I *REALLY* hate Creative Labs right now for reasons I'm not going into (that would be a whole thread, but basically they have killed a bunch of new tech so that they could remarket the same crap year after year...) so find something else OTHER than a Creative Labs product. Problem is, there's not much else out there that works.
10. Don't buy Intel. AMD is much cheaper on a performance/$ basis. Not only that, but there are ZERO compatability issues. Intel JUST reclaimed the performance crown (barely) but the processor costs 2x as much as AMD's most expensive processor. AMD is a bargain. (Note: I own stock in AMD, and it's in the crapper. I've lost 50% of it's value, so I do have something to gain by saying this.
Even if I didn't own stock in them, I'd still tell you to buy AMD.)
11. Build it yourself! You'll learn a lot about how computers work in the process... But if you don't want to, there are a lot of people out there who will help you.
Qualifications: I've been building my own computers since 1995. Worked at a computer store as a technician for 1 1/2 years, then went to work at Microsoft. One of the first people to overclock their Pentium, AND I've been Intel-free for ~4 years now.
Some general pointers:
1. Know what you want to do with your computer, and build around that idea.
2. Get the most reliable components over the fastest. Some web sites talk about how great something overclocks, but frankly, if it's not on the WHQL list, there's something wrong with it most likely.
3. Don't get parts that lock you in to a single vendor. Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway all want you to throw away your computer and buy a new one instead of upgrading it. Gateway isn't quite as guilty of this as the others, IIRC, but I haven't bought a stock computer in some time.
4. http://www.newegg.com
Nope, I'm not an employee, I've just bought a lot of stuff from them, they have excellent prices, excellent policies, and are a pleasure to work with. The couple times I've had to send something back, they've been REALLY good about a fast turnaround with the replacement part. They even credited me once for a part that was no longer under their warranty, but under the manufacturer's warranty, something they didn't have to do. I am *VERY* happy with them.
5. Don't buy winmodems if you can help it, unless you need one only for limited use. (I have one that I only use for fax services) They suck up CPU time, and are horribly inefficient.
6. Memory, memory, memory, memory! Games especially will suck memory out of your system like a vampire. If you can get it, go with 512mb, if not, 384. 256 is bare minimum these days.
7. Go with Windows 2000 instead of XP. XP is a bloated pile of crud with no real redeeming features, and a higher price tag to boot. I should know, I worked as a software tester at Microsoft during the XP test cycle.
8. NVidia is the One True Video Card Manufacturer for now. ATI makes nice hardware, but their drivers suck.
9. Sound is a weird thing. I *REALLY* hate Creative Labs right now for reasons I'm not going into (that would be a whole thread, but basically they have killed a bunch of new tech so that they could remarket the same crap year after year...) so find something else OTHER than a Creative Labs product. Problem is, there's not much else out there that works.
10. Don't buy Intel. AMD is much cheaper on a performance/$ basis. Not only that, but there are ZERO compatability issues. Intel JUST reclaimed the performance crown (barely) but the processor costs 2x as much as AMD's most expensive processor. AMD is a bargain. (Note: I own stock in AMD, and it's in the crapper. I've lost 50% of it's value, so I do have something to gain by saying this.
Even if I didn't own stock in them, I'd still tell you to buy AMD.)11. Build it yourself! You'll learn a lot about how computers work in the process... But if you don't want to, there are a lot of people out there who will help you.
der_kluge
Adventurer
Heh, sounds like NWN will do to the computer hardware industry what Origins did to it 15(?) years ago!
Origins made a game about 15 years ago that was a flight simulator. It was ahead of its time. I can't remember the name of it. Strike something, or something Strike. I forget. When it came out, NO ONE except the people with the absolute fastest machines could play the game. It came out later that Origins was intentionally doing that so that people would upgrade their hardware sooner. Turns out, they had some sort of kickbacks going on with the hardware industry.
Sort of like SimLife. That game is actually playable today, and it's 10 years old.
I intend to upgrade my machine for NWN as well. I will also be building my machine from scratch. My current computer, a 300mhz Pentium Celeron, I built solely from http://www.pricewatch.com - I highly recommend that site. I even went so far as to buy my CPU from one place, and the motherboard from a completely different place.
I will probably get the new case, motherboard, RAM, hard drive, and video card, and one of those fancy ball-less mouse.
I recommend Turtle Beach sound Cards. The sound quality is just vastly superior to Creative Labs' sound cards. Though, less supported, I suppose.
Origins made a game about 15 years ago that was a flight simulator. It was ahead of its time. I can't remember the name of it. Strike something, or something Strike. I forget. When it came out, NO ONE except the people with the absolute fastest machines could play the game. It came out later that Origins was intentionally doing that so that people would upgrade their hardware sooner. Turns out, they had some sort of kickbacks going on with the hardware industry.
Sort of like SimLife. That game is actually playable today, and it's 10 years old.
I intend to upgrade my machine for NWN as well. I will also be building my machine from scratch. My current computer, a 300mhz Pentium Celeron, I built solely from http://www.pricewatch.com - I highly recommend that site. I even went so far as to buy my CPU from one place, and the motherboard from a completely different place.
I will probably get the new case, motherboard, RAM, hard drive, and video card, and one of those fancy ball-less mouse.
I recommend Turtle Beach sound Cards. The sound quality is just vastly superior to Creative Labs' sound cards. Though, less supported, I suppose.
Grendel
First Post
Re: Some advice from a Hardware God...
I could not agree more. I always go Pentium/ Intel combo has much better driver/windows support. AMD makes a great chip and the Athalons are cheap, but VIA make turds. I haven't heard much about boards based on the NForce or AMD chipset yet so they might be better, but its the evil you know vs. the evil you don't.
There are lots of reputable vendors out there, i recomend visiting www.pricewatch.com for the best prices on components, try to get most items from a single source to reduce shipping costs. heavy items (like cases, and monitors) should usually be bought locally, as the shipping cost will eat up the savings.
I disagree, i can barely play some of my games under win2k, they rock under win98. I am about to test on winXP to see how it performs, then i will be able to make a better judgement. However, I have a friend that moved form win2k to winXP on a celeron 450 (OC) and did not notice a performance hit it at all. It is my belief that any performance hit will be on a per instance basis and will not be noticable on a high end machine anyway.
I agree 100%
You can't tell someone to buy the cheapest processor motherboard combo that you know will have compatibilty issue and tell them to build it themselves.
If you are building it yourself and its your first project buy a PENTIUM processor and an INTEL based motherboard. It will make things go so much easier, sure it is a little more expensive but you it is better to get what you pay for than to pay for what you get.
I don't have a problem with AMD processors, they are great, and i do have a machine with an athalon, but the VIA tech chipset is CRAP, it has compatibility issue with just about anything you will put in your computer. You will spend more time reading through news groups and hunting for beta patches than you do building the machine. If you do go with an Athalon try to find a motherboard based in the SiS or AMD chipsets.
Vargo said:
I could not agree more. I always go Pentium/ Intel combo has much better driver/windows support. AMD makes a great chip and the Athalons are cheap, but VIA make turds. I haven't heard much about boards based on the NForce or AMD chipset yet so they might be better, but its the evil you know vs. the evil you don't.
There are lots of reputable vendors out there, i recomend visiting www.pricewatch.com for the best prices on components, try to get most items from a single source to reduce shipping costs. heavy items (like cases, and monitors) should usually be bought locally, as the shipping cost will eat up the savings.
I disagree, i can barely play some of my games under win2k, they rock under win98. I am about to test on winXP to see how it performs, then i will be able to make a better judgement. However, I have a friend that moved form win2k to winXP on a celeron 450 (OC) and did not notice a performance hit it at all. It is my belief that any performance hit will be on a per instance basis and will not be noticable on a high end machine anyway.
I agree 100%
10. Don't buy Intel. AMD is much cheaper on a performance/$ basis. Not only that, but there are ZERO compatability issues. Intel JUST reclaimed the performance crown (barely) but the processor costs 2x as much as AMD's most expensive processor. AMD is a bargain. (Note: I own stock in AMD, and it's in the crapper. I've lost 50% of it's value, so I do have something to gain by saying this.
11. Build it yourself! You'll learn a lot about how computers work in the process... But if you don't want to, there are a lot of people out there who will help you.
You can't tell someone to buy the cheapest processor motherboard combo that you know will have compatibilty issue and tell them to build it themselves.
If you are building it yourself and its your first project buy a PENTIUM processor and an INTEL based motherboard. It will make things go so much easier, sure it is a little more expensive but you it is better to get what you pay for than to pay for what you get.
I don't have a problem with AMD processors, they are great, and i do have a machine with an athalon, but the VIA tech chipset is CRAP, it has compatibility issue with just about anything you will put in your computer. You will spend more time reading through news groups and hunting for beta patches than you do building the machine. If you do go with an Athalon try to find a motherboard based in the SiS or AMD chipsets.
turtle said:
First off, the game was Strike Commander.
Secondly, you're thinking of RamBus DRAM. Basically, the difference is that SDRAM and DDR SDRAM are an "open" format, that any memory manufacturer can use, and RDRAM is owned by RAMBUS, a corporation with less ethical scruples than Microsoft, IBM, and Enron combined.
Okay, there's slightly more than that: If you're buying a Pentium 4 system, and you want the best performance you're going to get out of the system, you're stuck with RDRAM. Now, the last time I checked, RDRAM was more expensive than SDRAM, but I haven't looked in about a year.
Re: Re: Some advice from a Hardware God...
Reply to Grendel:
You're right about the VIA chipsets, but they have been getting progressively better. AMD's chipsets are Rock Solid, when you can get them. Problem is, AMD keeps pulling them off the market, because they don't want to be in the chipset business. The NVidia NForce chipsets are also solid, BUT it's hard to overclock them at all. When I say Rock Solid, I mean Intel 440BX Rock Solid, not "Generic VIA POS" solid...
As far as Win2k v.s. WinXP - Some people have okay experiences, some people get the brown stuff. If you're almost always playing new games, 2000 works fine. If you're playing older games (mainly DOS stuff - almost nobody just getting into computers will run into this, unless you've got junkie friends) then XP does have some advantages over Win2k, but they're the same codebase, and my experience has been that the extra cruft on XP makes the OS less stable than 2k. If you do go with XP, make sure you turn off as much cruft as possible... You'll be much happier in the long run.
Reply to Grendel:
You're right about the VIA chipsets, but they have been getting progressively better. AMD's chipsets are Rock Solid, when you can get them. Problem is, AMD keeps pulling them off the market, because they don't want to be in the chipset business. The NVidia NForce chipsets are also solid, BUT it's hard to overclock them at all. When I say Rock Solid, I mean Intel 440BX Rock Solid, not "Generic VIA POS" solid...
As far as Win2k v.s. WinXP - Some people have okay experiences, some people get the brown stuff. If you're almost always playing new games, 2000 works fine. If you're playing older games (mainly DOS stuff - almost nobody just getting into computers will run into this, unless you've got junkie friends) then XP does have some advantages over Win2k, but they're the same codebase, and my experience has been that the extra cruft on XP makes the OS less stable than 2k. If you do go with XP, make sure you turn off as much cruft as possible... You'll be much happier in the long run.
Athlons are noisy
I agree with what most people are saying about motherboards and memory but am not so sure about the processor.
Sure it is true that AMD's beat the Pentiums in performance/price ratio but I have a 800mHz Athlon in my desktop and the thing produces so much heat that it needs two (big) fans to keep it cool enough to operate. That means that while computer is working it can be rather noisy. If you are interested in doing something else withyour computer (say litening to music from it) or even just having it on while not using it Pentiums might be better idea (depending ocourse how bothered you are with noise).
Of course if any of you computer wizards out there know of a way too cool the processor without much noise I would be greatfull to hear...
I agree with what most people are saying about motherboards and memory but am not so sure about the processor.
Sure it is true that AMD's beat the Pentiums in performance/price ratio but I have a 800mHz Athlon in my desktop and the thing produces so much heat that it needs two (big) fans to keep it cool enough to operate. That means that while computer is working it can be rather noisy. If you are interested in doing something else withyour computer (say litening to music from it) or even just having it on while not using it Pentiums might be better idea (depending ocourse how bothered you are with noise).
Of course if any of you computer wizards out there know of a way too cool the processor without much noise I would be greatfull to hear...
Cooling Athlons.
Too cool.
Actually, once again, Athlons have come a long way in the cooling departments. The newer manufacturing processes have cut down on the heat a lot.
That having been said, the #1 cause of loud fan noise is... Cheap fans!
I have two computers here next to me. One is a Duron 850 with a really nice fan on it (I don't remember the name right now, would have to rip open the case to find it) and the other is a Athlon 1.4gig chip with a $10 fan on it.
Guess which one I can't hear if it's the only one on?
Yeah, noise is a problem, but the better manufactured fans are QUIET. There are some new ones coming out that should (in theory) be even more quiet - they use electromagnets to "hover" the fans - meaning no surface contact at all.
Nice... I gotta get me a couple of those.
Too cool.
Actually, once again, Athlons have come a long way in the cooling departments. The newer manufacturing processes have cut down on the heat a lot.
That having been said, the #1 cause of loud fan noise is... Cheap fans!
I have two computers here next to me. One is a Duron 850 with a really nice fan on it (I don't remember the name right now, would have to rip open the case to find it) and the other is a Athlon 1.4gig chip with a $10 fan on it.
Guess which one I can't hear if it's the only one on?
Yeah, noise is a problem, but the better manufactured fans are QUIET. There are some new ones coming out that should (in theory) be even more quiet - they use electromagnets to "hover" the fans - meaning no surface contact at all.
Nice... I gotta get me a couple of those.
