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Geek Culture / I need your advice.

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Dom
20
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Joined: 31st May 2004
Location:
Posted: 14th Jan 2005 01:18
Im making my first P.C for gaming primarily. Cos this P3 600mhz with onboard graphics is rubbish so... Should I invest in a more powerful Processor or a more powerful Graphics card. Or should I compromise and get an Athlon XP2800+ and a Nvida XFX Geforce FX5500 256mb? The total cost of my P.C so far is £390.

P.S I want it for 3D gaming.


Thanks to Animeblood for the Logo!
Ali M Oldboy
20
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Joined: 6th Nov 2004
Location: England, UK
Posted: 14th Jan 2005 01:19
No...

[b]Nukesoft[b]
[b]Bigfoot's Choice! [b]
Dom
20
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Joined: 31st May 2004
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Posted: 14th Jan 2005 01:26
Huh that doesnt really answer my question...


Thanks to Animeblood for the Logo!
Jimmy
21
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Joined: 20th Aug 2003
Location: Back in the USA
Posted: 14th Jan 2005 01:28
Raaaddddeeeeoooonnnnn

bitJericho
22
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Joined: 9th Oct 2002
Location: United States
Posted: 14th Jan 2005 01:30
I would probably compromize


Yarr join LoGD and defeat your fellow coders!
Kevin Picone
22
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Joined: 27th Aug 2002
Location: Australia
Posted: 14th Jan 2005 01:34
Well, If you want the latest and greatest and can afford them, buy them.. But if you want better value for your cash though, a better strategy is to not buy the current latest and greatest gizmo's, but rather a level or so down. Which often works out to be a a lot less expensive with minimal performance impact.

Anyway, if your gamer then my vote is go with the more powerful video card.

Kevin Picone
[url]www.underwaredesign.com[/url]
Play Nice! Play Basic - Next Generation Basic (Release V1.05 Out Now)
Dom
20
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Joined: 31st May 2004
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Posted: 14th Jan 2005 01:46
Cool thanks. Any recommedations though?


Thanks to Animeblood for the Logo!
CattleRustler
Retired Moderator
21
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Joined: 8th Aug 2003
Location: case modding at overclock.net
Posted: 14th Jan 2005 01:56
Nvidia PCI-Express... enuf said

Neofish
20
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Joined: 7th Apr 2004
Location: A swimming pool of coke
Posted: 14th Jan 2005 02:07
Quote: "PCI-Express"

That's because tis faster right? (I need to learn my stuffs )

Shadow Robert
22
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Joined: 22nd Sep 2002
Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 14th Jan 2005 02:38
Saberdude if you wait just an ince-y bit longer, the NVIDIA GeForce 6200 TurboCache will be out.

You should be able to pick-up an NVIDIA GeForce 6200 TC 16/128 for around £35
While this seems cheap it'll round out to about the same cost your spending now to get yourself a PCI-X Mobo. This said they only develop them for Athlon64 and Pentium4 Processors, heh so I guess you'll *have* to upgrade the CPU to a 64-bit, ya know because you need to for the mobo.

While it might surprise you that the TurboCache (and ATi's HyperMemory released around April) cards only carry 8/16/32MB of on-board Ram. The clever chappies at NVIDIA devised a clever way of providing what Console gamers have had for a good decade. A way of unifying the Ram being used without meaning that you compromise of what is being used. This is for the most part down to Intel's PCI-X technology given it act's like AGP for the entire bus but meh!

The benifit is that in actual fact often your paying for the memory on the card itself and not the actual card and chip. The NVIDIA 6-Series were originally designed to be interchangeable GPU, because of the MXM Technology they devised mid-2004 for Laptops.. we might start to see an enormous drop in the price of our hardware.

It has been getting a little ridiculous paying £300 for something that if it were just the GPU would cost probably around the same as the CPU equivilants.

Watford Electronics have some good deals on system parts, I'd suggest checking out thier site www.Watford.co.uk.
You can already pick up PCI-X versions of X700 & 6600GT Cards, which come to around 75% of the AGP price, this is probably deliberate to make people switch over so they can do higher volume, but who cares the reason
Dazzag
22
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Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: Cyprus
Posted: 14th Jan 2005 02:41
Doesn't matter if it's faster or not. Basically your motherboard won't support it. Hell, unless you bought the MB within the last few months it won't support it.

If you get a new graphics card then make sure it won't be limited by your CPU. Can't imagine, say, a 9800 would be running to full potential on a 600Mhz CPU. Still a GPU like the GF2 or perhaps even GF3 or low GF4 (my GF3 is faster than my GF4 for example) would probably run fine on the machine, cost next to peanuts these days, and even if the CPU throttles the GPU back a bit, then so what? Not as if it's hundreds of pounds.

When I had my old 450Mhz P2 I had some old rubbishy graphics card. I upgraded to a Voodoo 3 and the damn thing ran like a dream. Totally. Was the latest, fastest, and most expensive card out (was about £200 I think), then the GForces came out. I resisted for a bit, refusing to believe my previously bleeding edge hardware was so behind in speed. Eventually got a GF2MX I believe (lowest of the low) just to try it out at low cost, and even that *blew* the Voodoo away. Something like 2 or 3 times faster in DB if I remember rightly. I remember thinking my game was so smooth now, even with 2 player split screen. Wow. And the Voodoo 3 would probably beat your onboard video, unless it's a built in GF2 or somesuch.

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Shadow Robert
22
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Joined: 22nd Sep 2002
Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 14th Jan 2005 02:48
the ironic thing is that the CPU only limits the low-end capabilities of the card, when your running high-resolution scenes it actually performs better; heh

your kinda *forced* to run Doom3 on better quality settings. This said anygame that can take advantage of it is beyond the processing power.

personally speaking I say if you want an AthlonXP 2800+, purchase yourself a Duron 2.0 GHz and a small pot of Silicon Paint (a matchstick might be an idea but i don't think you can buy them as single units).
then simply visit a site like amd-modders.co.uk and follow some interesting tutorials mwhahahaa

It's the skin flint's guide to getting yourself a £50 Processor for £20 heh, seriously it allowed you to keep your budget and spend it on better hardware. £30 can equal the difference between GeForce 5200 Ultra and GeForce 5700 Ultra.. speed wise though, there really isn't a comprison.

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