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Thread ID: 50396 2004-10-19 08:59:00 Building a new Computer Lizard (2409) Press F1
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282652 2004-10-19 08:59:00 Hi all,

[Disclaimer: if you are tired of this kind of post, then move along. Any others, I welcome your comments]

I'm building a new computer with the following in mind:
Games (up to and including Doom 3 and Half Life 2)
Internet
DVD movie-watching
Possible video-editing (with later upgrades, but not so important)

Athlon XP2600+
Gigabyte GA 7N400 Pro2
512MB Kingmax DDR RAM
Seagate 160GB SATA HDD
GeCube ATI Radeon 9800Pro 128MB (256bit)

Budget = $1200 and under...

Thoughts/comments/suggestions [constructive]

Cheers,

Lizard
Lizard (2409)
282653 2004-10-19 09:08:00 isnt the Radeon 9800pro not worth the extra cash???? i might be wrong but ive read that here somewhere.......... Prescott (11)
282654 2004-10-19 09:12:00 9800pro is the best bang for your buck video card on the market and the baseline you want to be heading for to play doom3 at max details.....But it should be losing that position in the market right about............................................. ......not quite yet but soon, metla (154)
282655 2004-10-19 10:25:00 Looks good to me, although, I'm not sure, but have heard, and seen here many times, that the 9600XT may be worth a good look despite being a tiny bit more expensive. Faster is it?

Disclaimer: I am not sure....
~~~~~ s y ~~~~~ (2054)
282656 2004-10-19 10:41:00 You really want a Gb of RAM for games, makes things run much, much smoother. Get some value stuff 2.5-3-3 latency, the people at Anandtech say the difference between that and expensive 2-2-2 memory is only 10%.

Is a monitor included in that $1200?
alphazulusixeightniner (185)
282657 2004-10-19 20:16:00 SY the 9800PRO is considerably faster than the 9600XT, it has 8pipeline as opposed to 4 and has a 256bit memory interface as opposed to a 128bit memory interface.

Do you want to be able to overclock your new PC?

Perhaps consider something like this:

Gigabyte GA-K8NS $193.50
AMD Athlon64 $270.00
Transcend DDR400 512mb $186.35
MSI 9800PRO $454.50
Seagate 80Gb SATA $137.25

Total: $1241.6

Its a lil bit over budget and the harddrives a bit smaller but the jump to AMD64 offer better performance and should be easy to upgrade in the future. If you want to save some money you could downgrade to the Sempron 3100+ its eactly the same as the Athlon64 but without 64bit support. The MSI card has a R360 core so could easily be flashed to a 128mb 9800XT. Did you need anything else for the $1200?
Pete O'Neil (250)
282658 2004-10-20 03:39:00 > SY the 9800PRO is considerably faster than the
> 9600XT, it has 8pipeline as opposed to 4 and has a
> 256bit memory interface as opposed to a 128bit memory
> interface.

Thanks Pete. Would you be able to tell me whats good about the 9600XT that makes it the most expensive in the 9600 range?

As for the CPU, I thought I heard some guys talking about the Sempron being worse than the Athlon XP design.. is it so? How?

Thanks, much appreciated... still learning....
~~~~~ s y ~~~~~ (2054)
282659 2004-10-20 03:45:00 Am i allowed to answer?,wouldn't want to upset ya.....

Anyhow the 9600xt is just a revision of the 9600pro,its definitly faster but not enough to justify the price difference,having said that if you get a 9600xt at a good price then its a win-win situation.

It however doesn't even get close to the next range up...9800pro/XT.

The Sempron cpu is an Athlon in all aspects,except the performance is measured differently and they all have a fsb of 333mhz...the lower end Athlons had 266mhz fsb.
metla (154)
282660 2004-10-20 03:54:00 > Am i allowed to answer?,wouldn't want to upset
> ya.....

As long as its nothing negative or filled with sarcasm, why not :) Anyway, there was nothing you could answer me back with :p I'm asking, not voicing any opinions...

That was a nice informative post, thanks, much appreciated ;-)
~~~~~ s y ~~~~~ (2054)
282661 2004-10-20 03:56:00 The 9600XT is just a faster 9600PRO the RAM and the Core both run at faster speeds . The 9600XT also has hardware temp monitoring and has what ATI called "overdrive" which overclocks the core .

In most cases the Sempron does perform worse than the Athlon, but the socket 754 Sempron 3100+ is exactly the same as the Athlon64 2800+ just without 64bit support .

In most cases the CPU's arent very different they are just given a different rating . This is actually causing AMD alot of problems as they are struggling to differentiate between their budget and enthusiast products . There a couple of articles over at overclockers . com that make for good reading on the subject .
Pete O'Neil (250)
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