(OT) Shopping For Computer: Help?

[DarkJester]

Whats the difference between a 2.53 Gig and 2.8 ? Is it noticeable? And whats the difference between XP and XP Pro.

I plan on using the computer for gaming (Want the best for it) and internet mostly. No video processing or anything.


Can one of the Dell's play all the latest games? They said that the one im using now could when I bought it 3 years ago.... It could for about 6 months.

 

[Numion]

40 Gigs full in 3 weeks? Wow.... I have 10 Gigs atm and its only half full. Guess I don't download much.....

Well.. to be honest, lot of it was taken up by movies and music videos. i had around 100 music videos and several movies. About 10 gigs in a few games, so that explains the space. Now that I got the additional 120 gig drive, I shouldn't have that kind of problems for a while.

the reason for this whole thing is our campus network, from which you can DL at about 3 minutes per movie (700 megs), so it doesn't take much effort to fill any size of HD.

 

[Numion]

Can one of the Dell's play all the latest games? They said that the one im using now could when I bought it 3 years ago.... It could for about 6 months.

My 2.4 GHz Dell had problems with Battlefield 1942 when it had the original 256 megs of memory (when there was lot of action on the screen); now that I've upgraded to 512 megs it runs no problemo. I suspect though that the code of the BF 1942 isn't that optimal, since no other game caused any problems before it.

 

[BadMojo]

Whats the difference between a 2.53 Gig and 2.8 ? Is it noticeable? And whats the difference between XP and XP Pro.

I plan on using the computer for gaming (Want the best for it) and internet mostly. No video processing or anything.


Can one of the Dell's play all the latest games? They said that the one im using now could when I bought it 3 years ago.... It could for about 6 months.

I sincerely doubt that you would notice the difference between 2.53 & 2.8ghz P4's. Where you would notice a difference is between the GeForce4 Ti 4200 and the Radeon. The Radeon is MUCH faster and more "future proof" than the GeForce 4 4200.

Off the top of my head I can only think of one big difference between XP Home and Pro that doesn't involve networking...XP Pro can make use of a multi-processor system, and AFAIK XP Home can't. I wouldn't worry too much about the Home vs. Pro thing.

The Dell system mentioned earlier in the thread is certainly a respectable one, but like most large OEMs, they cut corners in a few places. The GeForce 4 Ti 4200 is by no means a hardcore gaming card. It is the bottom of the line GeForce4 card (the GeForce4 Mx really doesn't count). It's still a nice card, but it can't compete with a GeForce4 Ti 4400/4600 or a Radeon 9700 Pro. The integrated audio and the HK speakers are not on par with the Soundblaster Audigy/Logitech pairing. Every integrated audio solution I've ever encountered can't match the sound quality of a Soundblaster or Turtle Beach card. The modem in the Dell system is most likely a worthless hunk of garbage, but that won't matter if you have DSL or cable modem. They didn't mention the brand and model of hard drive offered, but it probably won't match up with the Western Digital. The WD has an 8MB buffer compared to 2MB for most of the HDs you will find in Dell, etc.

Make no mistake, the Voodoo PC is very expensive. $3000+ is a lot of money. The Dell that was mentioned here would probably do pretty well on most of the newest games out there, and it's half the price of the Voodoo. It's not a gaming hot rod, but its a decent "all around" computer. You don't want to spend over your budget for something that will still probably be on the road to obsolescence within a year.

One last thing to consider is upgradability. You might want to read some stuff at the Dell and Voodoo sites regarding upgrade policies.

 

[Emiricol]

Check out www.micropro.com.

 

[Mirth]

[Puts on flame-retardent suit, gloves, boots & helmet]

You want dependability? Why not get a Macintosh and play all your games on an Xbox or PS2?

[Argggh! It burns! It burns!]

 

[Kibo]

Whats the difference between a 2.53 Gig and 2.8 ? Is it noticeable? And whats the difference between XP and XP Pro.

I plan on using the computer for gaming (Want the best for it) and internet mostly. No video processing or anything.

Can one of the Dell's play all the latest games? They said that the one im using now could when I bought it 3 years ago.... It could for about 6 months.

If you can hold off you might want to wait a few more months for Serial ATA to shake out, and the new intel core to be available maybe with some nice tweakable chipsets.

For value performance, I'd probably lean towards a decent AMD XP setup. But since you seem a little more inclined to just purchase them from a major manufacture, you'll probably be able to get a nice deal the two weeks prior to chistmas. A good choice might be an alienware pc from Best Buy (or anyplace that carries higher end gaming pcs). Going with something like that, you won't have quite as much flexability as once you chose off the web, but those are the breaks. The geforce cards are nice, and should be capable of playing games acceptably for a couple more years. But if you care about anti-aliasing the benchmarks seem to favor the new ATI 9700 Pro, greatly. Make sure you get an agp 8x mother board. Even if you end up getting a 4x card, you'll be able to upgrade for $300 and add new life to your future aging game system. But if I at all could I'd wait to see the new intel core (it's not just a faster clock, it's got new features that could provide a significant performance boost) and Serial ATA HD's.

The best part about being able to wait is everything gets cheaper and faster.

 

[Aeolius]

You want dependability? Why not get a Macintosh and play all your games on an Xbox or PS2?

Drat! you beat me to it The new G4 towers running OS X "Jaguar" (10.2) beat anything I have used, thusfar.

 

[Corwyn]

If you want a good machine build one yourself or go to a shop that will build it for you.

I'm upgrading my system at the moment and I'm planning on getting the
asus A7V333 Mobo
amd 2000 xp cpu
with 512 mb pc 2700 memory (any more than this is a waste of money at this moment, unless you are running a server)
take a geforce 4 (for high end graphics and games take one with 126 mb memory)
Hard disk anything in the 60+range that runs on 7200 rpm.
that should get you a decent and relatively cheep system.

This type of set-up allows you to upgrade it later with relative ease.

Systems like a dell internal components usually aren't A quality and also don't allow for easy upgrading as there are usually built to only allow for the original components.

Hope that helps

 

[drothgery]

Whats the difference between a 2.53 Gig and 2.8 ? Is it noticeable? And whats the difference between XP and XP Pro.

I plan on using the computer for gaming (Want the best for it) and internet mostly. No video processing or anything.


Can one of the Dell's play all the latest games? They said that the one im using now could when I bought it 3 years ago.... It could for about 6 months.

The thing is that the system you set up was a long way from cost-effective. You could buy what I set up, which is way more than enough for any games that are out today (which have to run on P3/GeForce 2 systems and run well on sub-2GHz P4s), then in two years spend what you saved on a new box that would be far better than the system you outlined. So if you're wasting money anyway, you might as well go all out. If not, scale back to something more reasonable.

What I have right now -- a P-3 800 where only the memory and video card are less than two years old (I've upgraded to 512MB of RAM and a GeForce 4 Ti4200) -- can still almost play all the latest games, as long as you're not trying to beat obsessed fanboys with tons of disposable income in FPS games.

The combo of a fast P4 or Athlon XP, 512 MB of DDR 333 memory (don't bother with RAMBUS unless you've got money to burn), and a GeForce 4 Ti or Radeon 8500 (or better) will be a good box for quite a while. Generally speaking, the price premium for the absolute best isn't worth it.