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UrbanFungi
Stranger
Registered: 12/23/07
Posts: 61
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Socket 478
#8607285 - 07/08/08 07:03 AM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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It was four or five years ago that me and my roomies were smoking a bowl. We all looked at each other and said, "Does this shit smell like burnt rubber?" We investigated and it wasn't the weed. We thought the downstairs neighbor had done something. I get up and get on my PC and it's locked up. I open up the case and the CPU fan is hanging by the wires and the clips have melted off the heatsink. I replaced my custom machine with an HP from Best Buy. I accidentally fried it installing my slave drive... best buy gave me a new PC. Here are the specs on the HP:
P4 2.8 Ghz, Socket 478 Chipset Geforce 5200 AGP 4 gigs RAM (recent upgrade) 250W Power Supply
It's five years later and I'm playing bf2 a lot, especially a mod called project reality. I couldn't play at all before I got the new RAM. It's very graphics intense because of large maps and destructible environments. Some of those maps are 16km2.
I really need to upgrade because I am getting owned w/ 10-15fps (on a good day). I've researched and socket 478 isn't used anymore and its very hard to find motherboards. AGP isn't used anymore either. I'd like to be able to play this game with a better framerate. On the other side of the same token, I'd like to be able to play new games in the future.
Should I just upgrade my AGP card and power supply and then a year or two down the road get a new PC? Or do you think I should go all the way and just rebuild this POS? I found a Micro-ATX Socket 478 MB that has a PCI-Express 16x slot. It uses the same RAM that I just purchased.
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Visionary Tools



Registered: 06/23/07
Posts: 7,953
Last seen: 1 year, 11 months
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Now's a good time to get a core 2 duo. I can't advise on dollar costs, but if I was building a system (minus monitor and inputs) for gaming, I'd do it for £400-500.
Go for a core 2 duo, I don't remember model names, but you're looking for a 2.4ghz chip. I can't say about the new amd chips, as much as I like AMD, I don't think their new products are competative, price wise. Go for a socket 775 motherboard, avoid nforce chipsets as they are still buggy.
A gig, or two gigs of ram, a geforce 8600, 200-1000gb sata hard drive (my preference is for two drives, having the OS on one drive and games on another. Unless you need to write lots of information to a computer fast, don't bother with RAIDing them). Don't bother with any creative labs product, they are buggy as fuck and hate their customers. Which is fine, I can't tell them not to work like that, but I can withhold my money from them, and implore people to research why they are cunts, and why they wouldn't want 3rd party programmers making better vista drivers for their old products.
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero



Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
Loc: Caribbean
Last seen: 3 months, 8 days
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> if I was building a system (minus monitor and inputs) for gaming, I'd do it for £400-500.
What is that in real money? Regardless, it is less than €650, and for a gaming box that is very, very cheap. I would expect to pay around €2000 for a decent high end gaming box.
For the original post... if you are low on money, upgrade to the absolute best AGP video card that you can buy.
http://ati.amd.com/products/RadeonX1650/radeonX1650proagp/index.html http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_7800.html
I'm not claiming anything about the performance of the above cards, but I think they should work with your system and look to be decent. Be sure you are looking at the PRO AGP on the Radeon card and the GS version on the nVidia card.
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supra
computerEnthusiast
Registered: 10/26/03
Posts: 6,446
Loc: TEXAS
Last seen: 13 years, 1 month
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if you upgrade the whole system, get a core 2 quad in my opinion. THe q6600 is a great chip and has a low cost right now. A good mobo for about 150, and a good graphics card, should be well under $1000 and be able to play any game that is out now, and some for a while. I can play crysis with everything on high, and still get 40fps with an 8800gts graphics card.
peace
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RuNE
bomberman


Registered: 09/23/00
Posts: 2,331
Loc: tartarus
Last seen: 8 years, 3 months
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Re: Socket 478 [Re: supra]
#8619682 - 07/10/08 10:23 PM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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>q6600
Or rather, an E8400.
It runs cooler, you can OC it like a bitch on standard air, and it's a great bang for the buck. Most games do not utilize 4 cores properly just yet. There are pretty long threads about the 2 CPU's going head to head, but it usualy comes down to the new E8xxx series for games, and the Q6600 for apps like Adobe products.
-------------------- ~Happy sailing~
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero



Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
Loc: Caribbean
Last seen: 3 months, 8 days
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Re: Socket 478 [Re: RuNE]
#8619839 - 07/10/08 11:06 PM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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> Most games do not utilize 4 cores properly just yet.
Most games do not utilize 2 cores yet. (Properly has little to do with it)
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Visionary Tools



Registered: 06/23/07
Posts: 7,953
Last seen: 1 year, 11 months
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Re: Socket 478 [Re: Seuss]
#8620451 - 07/11/08 03:23 AM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
Seuss said: > if I was building a system (minus monitor and inputs) for gaming, I'd do it for £400-500.
What is that in real money? Regardless, it is less than €650, and for a gaming box that is very, very cheap. I would expect to pay around €2000 for a decent high end gaming box.
For the original post... if you are low on money, upgrade to the absolute best AGP video card that you can buy.
http://ati.amd.com/products/RadeonX1650/radeonX1650proagp/index.html http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_7800.html
I'm not claiming anything about the performance of the above cards, but I think they should work with your system and look to be decent. Be sure you are looking at the PRO AGP on the Radeon card and the GS version on the nVidia card.
I'm saying that a gaming system can be built for cheap. I would be struggling to build a 2000€ system unless it had dual monitors. There's no point in paying for the premium tax that companies put on all their new flagship stuff when in three months time it'll be £100 cheaper.
And, FYI, pounds sterling is issued by the bank of England. The paper currency the US uses is issued by the "federal" reserve, a privately owned company who seem really keen on destroying the dollar, and forcing other countries to find an alternative.
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Visionary Tools



Registered: 06/23/07
Posts: 7,953
Last seen: 1 year, 11 months
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Here's a quote for a budget gaming system. I'd have a bigger hard drive and a faster processor (with a better HSF) in mine, but this would be a good start for someone.
Casecom KB-7760 Black ATX Midi Tower Case - No PSU, No Case Fans Included £10.99 NEC Optiarc 7173A 18xDVD±RW/RAM DL LabelFlash Beige Bare - OEM £10.99 ECS 9600GT 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI TV Out PCI-E Graphics Card £106.99 Seagate ST380215AS 80GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 2MB Cache - OEM £23.07 2xOCZ 1GB DDR2 533MHz / PC2-4200 CL4 1.8V Non ECC Lifetime Warranty £27.97 ASUS P5G-MX i945GC Socket 775 onboard VGA 6 channel audio mATX Motherboard £29.99 Seasonic S12 II 500W PSU - 12cm Fan 80Plus Efficiency £52.75 Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 Socket 775 2.4GHz (800MHz) L2 2MB retail box £75.13
VATax and shipping brings it up to £349.63. You can put that into a currency converter to get it in any dfigure you want.
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero



Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
Loc: Caribbean
Last seen: 3 months, 8 days
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> I would be struggling to build a 2000€ system unless it had dual monitors.
I wasn't counting the cost of displays... when I hear "gaming computer" I immediately think absolute top of the line best hardware money can buy... looking at SLI/Crossfire video cards (plural), water cooling, overclocking, ddr3 memory, etc. A very good computer can be put together at your price tag, but I would not call it a gaming computer.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Visionary Tools



Registered: 06/23/07
Posts: 7,953
Last seen: 1 year, 11 months
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Re: Socket 478 [Re: Seuss]
#8620985 - 07/11/08 09:37 AM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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I spent £600 on mine, plays any modern game I can throw at it at 1280x1024. It has a single 8800GTX in it.
I wouldn't have dual cards in my system, the power supply could cope with it (especially with the 9000 geforce series) but the power bill wouldn't justify the 0-50% performance boost.
I wouldn't use DDR3 ram either, for the moment the premium doesn't justify the extra 10-15% performance. If the budget allowed it, I'd rather go for 3-4gb of DDR2 instead of 1-2gb of DDR3.
My next upgrade though will be http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/audio-and-laptop-products/trimon as steroscopic vision is totally cool and I'd like to have things besides my photoreel viewers and certain red/blue films with those funny colour glasses.
Edit: It's driver specific, and they are only making new drivers for vista. Fuck that. I like steroscopic vision, but not that much.
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Edited by Visionary Tools (07/11/08 09:39 AM)
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RuNE
bomberman


Registered: 09/23/00
Posts: 2,331
Loc: tartarus
Last seen: 8 years, 3 months
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Re: Socket 478 [Re: Seuss]
#8621429 - 07/11/08 11:39 AM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
Seuss said: > Most games do not utilize 4 cores properly just yet.
Most games do not utilize 2 cores yet. (Properly has little to do with it)
Which is why I recommended the E8400.
Q6600 Specs: 2.4Ghz, 8MB L2, 1066, 65 nm E8400 Specs: 3.0 Ghz, 6MB L2, 1333, 45 nm
If you're stuck with 1 core for any apps, you're getting 3ghz vs 2.4ghz. Also, the FSB is higher, and it's a smaller nm. The small nm design allows you to OC it right out of the box on standard air, I've seen lots of reports on extremeoverclocking.com of people taking it up to 4ghz on just air. All that and it's a great bang for the buck. It screams gaming CPU to me.
But anyway, I think most games in development now are serious about implementing multi-core technology. Games like Crysis already utilize more than one core, and everyone agrees that it's set the new bar in gaming.
-------------------- ~Happy sailing~
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