Viewing Thread:
"What's the best possible computer I could get for £400?"

£400 to £450, anyway.

Ready built, separate components, whatever, with a 17inch LCD screen.

Thank ye

Damarus wrote:
> In conclusion I'd say that you have no idea what you're talking
> about.
Don't really care what you think but he said 'play games'. Nothing about the latest and plus mine runs everything I throw at it and when your racing the 2004 formula 1 season whilst sitting on the sofa in front of the TV you don't care weither your mobo is the latest.

down plays BF2. I know he does because I've played with him several times. Therefore I tried to spec a computer for him that would run it (and similar games) fairly well without costing a bomb.

Marzman wrote:
> Don't really care what you think but he said 'play games'. Nothing
> about the latest and plus mine runs everything I throw at it

Try "throwing" something new at it.

Ammo?

Marzman wrote:
> No. I still reckon buying low-spec parts and building a machine is a
> good idea. Mines a Athlon 1.6ghz, 256mb ram, 128mb Nvida graphics,
> 40gig hard drive and it cost less than £200 to build last
> summer.

A 1.6Ghz Athlon with 256MB RAM isn't going to be playing any of the newest games that down wants. Sorry.

Why do you insist on trying to get down to make the same balls down 2 year old system that you have when he clearly wants something better?

I'd definitely go with the 6600GT and 1GB of RAM, and anything above a 3000+ Athlon if you want to be playing BF2 and the more recent games without any problems.

Memorandum! wrote:
>When my graphics card came out in 2002 it cost about
> £350 and it started showing its age when I played Doom 3/BF2 on
> it, so I can't see an entire PC for £400 lasting 'many years'.

I bought a 2003 £120 graphics card, and it still handles most things - albiet not BF2.

I can run BF2 pretty well (2x AA with shadows off). That doesn't mean a 6600GT level card (best that'll fit into a £400 budget) is going to last 'many years'. In fact, use HDR or a lot of dynamic shadows and its performance will drop drastically NOW, never mind in 2 years time.

Your 2003 card is finito now. 2 years is not 'many' years. It'll struggle with BF2/FEAR and basically any upcoming game, because games now are very shader intensive. Within a £400 budget it's difficult to get more than an 8/12 pipeline card, which will be okay NOW but will fall off fairly quickly due to the top level cards having 24 pipes (!)

*kisses laptop*

I'll be owning you all with my 3200+ and 6800GT soon when I get my new mobo/cpu

OH YUEAH

SHEEPY wrote:
> *kisses laptop*

soon, my pretty, soon