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hamble
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Location: Bahrain
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| Posted: 05 October 2003 at 8:41pm | IP Logged
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Okay, I'm going to buy a new computer. I saw a video demo of the Half Life 2 Engine the other night, and now I have to have it. Question is, what spec should I get? I need something that's fast fast fast, got the best graphics card available but ain't going to cost me a total fortune. Someone please suggest to me the best choice for me money. I haven't been paying much attention to PCs of late, having moved to Macs for design work, but I'm thinking Geforce 4, 1Gb ram, 3Ghz Pentium 4 and, er, d'uh, a keyboard and stuff. I'm torn between a desktop and a laptop though. Suggestions please!
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Nhumrod
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| Posted: 06 October 2003 at 1:21am | IP Logged
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ham m8 - price performance id spend all my money on the gfx card. A mid to high range processor will be fine and all other components are secondary to the gfx card.
Go for an athlon 2.8-3.2 gig depending on the cost - intels r a ripoff unless ur a millionaire. As for gfx weve already had a discussion about gfx and if u wanna play hl2 with the best gfx go for the latest ati radeon (9800 i think?) as nividias cards will not go justice to the hl2 game engine cos theyre sh*t for directx 9.
plus - wait a couple of months mate cos if u check the other forums ull c the hl2 release has been delayed indefinately as the source code was stolen last month... by the time it comes out hopefully the 32.gig athlons (with 200mhz fsb) will be a bit cheaper, in which case defo go for that, thats what im savin my money for next time as i have ddr400 and a mobo which can handle it 
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hamble
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| Posted: 06 October 2003 at 7:15am | IP Logged
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K, what about motherboard?
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Harv
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| Posted: 06 October 2003 at 8:00am | IP Logged
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I agree with almost all of that, and D is right about the Graphics card.
The Ati Radeon 9800 PRO (and you must get the 'PRO' to make the purchase worthwhile), is the best on the market right now and looks set to still be the flagship card for the release of HL2.
(I recommend getting the Ati from Gigabit as they seem to have the best deal, and yet still manage to maunufacture the best and fastest memory to go with the GPU's processor.
I don't entirely agree with what D says about Intel though. It is possible to get an Intel that runs at the same speed as an AMD for the same price.
But i guess at the end of the day it is all down to a matter of opinion.
For the BEST computer, set aside money for: Processor, Graphics card and at least 512Mb of RAM.
The rest you can get for cheap money and not affect the perfomance much. AND it would be more expensive to upgrade your Processor after buying what you consider to be 'second best'.
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Nhumrod
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| Posted: 06 October 2003 at 5:17pm | IP Logged
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EPOX EPOX EPOX EPOX Mobos 
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hamble
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| Posted: 06 October 2003 at 6:39pm | IP Logged
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Okay, here is an approximate shopping list of what I'm thinking:
Athlon 64 3200+
Asus K8V Socket 64 Motherboard
1Gb RAM
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro
Seagate 120Gb Hdisk
DVD Writer
5.1 Soundcard
LCD Monitor
Windows XP Pro
I reckon I could bring this in at around one and a half grand if I'm lucky. And then heck, I can live on beans for a few more years. However being as I live in the middle of nowhere in the Middle East I fear I may run into some problems getting all of these parts for the system.
Anyway, comments on this list please.
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MrFist
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| Posted: 07 October 2003 at 6:43pm | IP Logged
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looks good to me
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MrAnderson
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| Posted: 08 October 2003 at 12:35am | IP Logged
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lookin very nice, cant say i'd go for the tft myself...would rather a 19inch crt, and then ge an xp3000 or summin lol, but thats just me ><
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Nhumrod
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| Posted: 08 October 2003 at 12:59am | IP Logged
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f**k me! athy 64?! u plannin to take over the world with that beast or summat?!?! Very f**kin powerful setup but u could probably go for the slightly slower 32 bit option and save urself about 50% of the price! PS If ur gonna go for a TFT make sure its an 18"...
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Nhumrod
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| Posted: 08 October 2003 at 1:03am | IP Logged
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PS u should set the hostname on it to WOPR and make your network workgroup NORAD lol
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hamble
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| Posted: 08 October 2003 at 7:17am | IP Logged
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Actually I was thinking of naming it SKYNET.
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Harv
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| Posted: 08 October 2003 at 7:45am | IP Logged
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Demonboy wrote:
| PS u should set the hostname on it to WOPR and make your network workgroup NORAD lol |
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Lmao D!
I remember watching that film when i was about 6!! Mathew Broderick rules!
I am SOOOOO gonna name my server WOPR when it gets built!
Edited by Harv on 08 October 2003 at 7:46am
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Nhumrod
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| Posted: 09 October 2003 at 1:17am | IP Logged
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lol
i have War Games on DVD - one of my all time fav films.. when i was a kid i wanted to write "Global Thermonuclear War" in BASIC on my Atari...
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Harv
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| Posted: 09 October 2003 at 8:09am | IP Logged
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lol
-How...about..a.nice...game..of.chess???
-Noooooo..., lets play global thermonuclear war.
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Nhumrod
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| Posted: 09 October 2003 at 11:48pm | IP Logged
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lol - its the voice when it says "Do you want to play a GAME?"
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Jaguar-infinity
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| Posted: 10 October 2003 at 3:15am | IP Logged
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ok if you get that i would officially be jealous if you actually went ahead with that setup. pointers on that setup tho. if you get LCD you would want a good quality one and a nice size - and they are £500+, As andy says if u can afford the space go for a good CRT for under half the price and spend the savings on CPU/Graphics.
Also AMD 64's are memory picky. You need to use registered memory not standard which from experiance adds about 50% onto the price of ur memory. And yet another pointer is that the 64's are so new and so are the mobo's that no one knows fully yet how reliable or stable the setups are, or how flexible. if ur going for a 64 might b an idea to wait till after x-mas to let the initial price drop a bit and get a better idea for the mobo.
Yet again there is also another issue with future upgradeability, atm for some reason AMD cant use part of its CPU, when the next gen mobo's come out then so will AMD's and the pin structure will change yet again, very likely within 2 years so upgradability will be limited in the long run. Oh and watch out, theres 2 types of 64's - they use different number of pins - 1 of them uses 700 something and the other version uses 900 something pins so make sure the CPU and Mobo truely are compatible. if u DO go for a 64 i'd suggest going for an FX version which is the 900 pin one, has better specs and performance :)
Someones gotta be the first to buy the things so if u want it and got the money spare then why not, but i'd go for a XP3000 myself atm than a 64, and i agree with Alex about the EPoX mobo's - i just got the new AMD board from them, the 8KRA2+ and im very very impressed with it and its features and capabilities, onboard RAID controller SATA LAN 6channel sound and 8x AGP support :)
hope this helps
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Nhumrod
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| Posted: 10 October 2003 at 3:19am | IP Logged
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2 points to add to that would be that yeah i agree with jag on the fx thing, ive heard theyre much better performers, secondly id go for a xp3200 rather than a 3000 cos it has a 400mhz fsb where the 3000 has a 333 i think, meaning your memory will perform much better (cos u can then get ddr 400 like ive got) and itll b running at the same speed...
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Jaguar-infinity
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| Posted: 10 October 2003 at 3:26am | IP Logged
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aye true - but u could always set the CPU fbs at 400mhz.... its not overclocking honest 
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Nhumrod
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| Posted: 10 October 2003 at 4:09am | IP Logged
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lol 
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Sirwomble
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| Posted: 10 October 2003 at 9:18am | IP Logged
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wot they said ... btw it scares me how much you 2 know about what to buy tbh....*background noise monitor on* "geeks shhh they'll hear you" *background noise monitor off*
not that im complaining as you were both helpfull too me ..
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|SFH| Sent From Hell :: Community Forums : Hardware / Software Bits & Bobs
Topic: Advice please (
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