OK im getting another gaming computer, so what are the minimum specs a computer should have? And what would be a good price? I dont want a monster, but something that will play new and upcoming games pretty well.
Well at least 2.4 GHZ. 512 is pretty good memory, but if you want to play with no lag get a gig. Video card, anything from FX5200 or above. But MXs are horrible. Also alot of fans.
Expanding to and adding on to the above post.
2.4GHz is minimum now. AMD or Intel P4 is fine. If you go AMD try ti go AMD 64 or better. You can use the factory fans or buy an aftermarket fan. Thermaltake is a good brand.
For Intel I would go Intel chipset and for AMD I would go Nvidia Nforce. I would look into VIA to see if they got their sound bug problems fixed.
Used to if you tried to do any professional sound recording on a Via chipset mobo their was a problem with background noise.
But other than that I have used VIA mobo's with no problems and I say dont rule them out. They have a new AMD mobo with a IIRC VIA 880 chipset that supports the dual channel mode that Nforce boards support.
My Intel board has a very nice onboard sound and my Nforce2 mobo has a excellent onboard sound but if you want a sundcard I recommend Audigy 2 or better.
All of my mobo's have built in 10/100 networking. If you need a card I recommend Netgear 10/100.
512MB DDR400 I would say is the minimum. 1024MB is better.
I would go higher on GFX card. I recommend a Geforce FX 5600 or Radeon 9800SE for budget. Anything above those is better. Also keep in mind that Nvidia and ATI are rumored to be releasing their new graphics chips around April 15th. The present cards will probably drop as soon as the new chipsets become available.
Minimum of ATA100 HDD, 7200rpm, 8MB of cache. SATA is good but presently is as fast as the current ATA133 drives with the same before mentioned specs.
With the current prices I would run a DVD+RW drive. They are getting affordable and store up to 4.3GB versus 700MB on a CD. DVD disks are more expensive, about $50 for 35 discs.
so, what would be the total cost of that? oh, if i were you jerome, i would look at tigerdirect.com
For $642 (tax included) My friend can build me a
Athlon XP 2700+ 333fsb o/c'd AMDXP 3200+
512mb ddr 400 dual channel
120gb sata hdd
Radeon 9500 Pro 128mb o/c'd Radeon 9800
48x cdrw
case w/ windows and blue neon light
Windows XP Pro
Office XP Is this ok? It seems reallllly good to me.
I went on Pricewatch, and most of the well priced things, were coming from stores that had horrible ratings, most were in the negatives:furious:. is the system i mentioned before a good deal?
I take what n0e says way too seriously
50 XP
1st March 2003
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Erm....I doubt he overclocked a 9500 that much....
dont buy anything that you know is already overclocked.
I think it is a good system and dont overclock stuff yet.
The Radeon 9500us still a very good card and did very well on the benchmark tests.
And if at all possible go fpr another 512MB of RAM.