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Recently inspired by how easy and cheap it is to shop online from the States and an article in a PC mag, I've decided that it's too tempting just to get a new PC, with XP for my iTunes and A faster processor for my games. However, many queries arose after just a few minutes of investigation.
1) Win XP Pro
against
Win XP Home
What's the difference? I only skimmed over the specs of a couple of comps, but XP Pro seems to merit another 20 or so dollars. What makes it more pricey and would XP Home be perfectly good for my needs (see top of page)?
2) There's a manufacturer called Acer. Never heard of them myself, but do you guys know anything useful; reliability, etc. My current comp is an Evesham, although I would have prefered a Dell, and found out a treasure chest of problems. Like ME's inefficiency with system resources and how Eveshams over heat...
3) Anyone know the HMCE site better than me and can direct me to the import tax for computers or electricals in general.
Any help would be great!
:)
1) Win XP Pro
against
Win XP Home
What's the difference? I only skimmed over the specs of a couple of comps, but XP Pro seems to merit another 20 or so dollars. What makes it more pricey and would XP Home be perfectly good for my needs (see top of page)?
2) There's a manufacturer called Acer. Never heard of them myself, but do you guys know anything useful; reliability, etc. My current comp is an Evesham, although I would have prefered a Dell, and found out a treasure chest of problems. Like ME's inefficiency with system resources and how Eveshams over heat...
3) Anyone know the HMCE site better than me and can direct me to the import tax for computers or electricals in general.
Any help would be great!
:)
Page:
Coin wrote:
> Optical Drives: Usually you'll want one or two of these, but it's
> better to buy one good quality drive than two bad ones. Around
> £20 for a DVD reader and CD 48x (more than good enough for
> playing games), or £50 for a DVD-RW, which I always think of as
> overkill.
I have access to a DVD/CD writer, so I wont need a writer, a reader will be just fine. I will however need a floppy drive, but from the sounds of it Biggles reckons £20 should be good for that.
> HDD: 200GB is more than enough. £50. Good makes... Western
> Digital, Samsung, Maxtor. Look for something with a decent buffer, as
> in more than 2MB.
n00b quezzie again, but what's a buffer speed?
> Video Card: I don't know too much about wether nVidia is better or
> ATi is, but I always go down the ATi road. You can pick up a 9600XT
> for under £100, which'll run almost all games, or it may well
> be worth shelling out for an X800, around £150-200.
I got a pretty new nVidia for about £90 so thats sorted.
> Sound Cards: Not too important, in my opinion. I have sh*te speakers,
> and as you said you did, a Sound Blaster Live! card, around £20
> is great.
My speakers are sh!te so I just need the basics, could even swing a basic sound card for free, so that shouldnt be a problem.
> CPU: P4 or AMD. Up to you. I recently picked up a 3.2GHz P4, works so
> well. Good thing about P4s - they're damn easy to overclock. Looking
> at around £150 for a 3.2Ghz P4. As for AMD, I have no clue.
I guess this is the bit that depends most on how much dosh I want to spend.
> Motherboard: Again, you can go AMD or P4. If you're using P4, you'll
> want soccet 478. I'm waiting for one to be delivered right now. A few
> months ago I bought a Gigabyte GA-8IK1100, which can be found for
> £70-80, and it's good. But if you can, get an Abit IC7-G,
> around £100 with P&P from Ebuyer. It has everything for a
> P4.
I'll have to look around for reviews and info on motherboards, cos I'm pretty screwed if I make the wrong decision.
:D
> I hope that helps... Sorry if I missed anything, or if anyone has
> posted all this before me (again :P).
Oh it does.
:)
> Optical Drives: Usually you'll want one or two of these, but it's
> better to buy one good quality drive than two bad ones. Around
> £20 for a DVD reader and CD 48x (more than good enough for
> playing games), or £50 for a DVD-RW, which I always think of as
> overkill.
I have access to a DVD/CD writer, so I wont need a writer, a reader will be just fine. I will however need a floppy drive, but from the sounds of it Biggles reckons £20 should be good for that.
> HDD: 200GB is more than enough. £50. Good makes... Western
> Digital, Samsung, Maxtor. Look for something with a decent buffer, as
> in more than 2MB.
n00b quezzie again, but what's a buffer speed?
> Video Card: I don't know too much about wether nVidia is better or
> ATi is, but I always go down the ATi road. You can pick up a 9600XT
> for under £100, which'll run almost all games, or it may well
> be worth shelling out for an X800, around £150-200.
I got a pretty new nVidia for about £90 so thats sorted.
> Sound Cards: Not too important, in my opinion. I have sh*te speakers,
> and as you said you did, a Sound Blaster Live! card, around £20
> is great.
My speakers are sh!te so I just need the basics, could even swing a basic sound card for free, so that shouldnt be a problem.
> CPU: P4 or AMD. Up to you. I recently picked up a 3.2GHz P4, works so
> well. Good thing about P4s - they're damn easy to overclock. Looking
> at around £150 for a 3.2Ghz P4. As for AMD, I have no clue.
I guess this is the bit that depends most on how much dosh I want to spend.
> Motherboard: Again, you can go AMD or P4. If you're using P4, you'll
> want soccet 478. I'm waiting for one to be delivered right now. A few
> months ago I bought a Gigabyte GA-8IK1100, which can be found for
> £70-80, and it's good. But if you can, get an Abit IC7-G,
> around £100 with P&P from Ebuyer. It has everything for a
> P4.
I'll have to look around for reviews and info on motherboards, cos I'm pretty screwed if I make the wrong decision.
:D
> I hope that helps... Sorry if I missed anything, or if anyone has
> posted all this before me (again :P).
Oh it does.
:)
I don't actually have a floppy drive on my machine. You can buy external Floppy DD drives for about a fiver. My Mum has one.
Buffer litterally just speeds up the data transfer.
Buffer litterally just speeds up the data transfer.
Notorious Biggles wrote:
> No they aren't solid. I know quite a bit about CPU design - I
> taught the course. And yes, there are plenty of CPU fan boys
> around, any look at a technical forum would show you that.
News to me.
I merely have a preference. You don't know what my reasons for this are, because I haven't spoken about them. If I have, it's only been in general terms. It'd be far too boring to go into on the forums anyway.
I don't pretend to know more than you on this subject; to say that would undermine my argument completely as I'm still in the learning process. At present however, I know enough to favour Intel over AMD.
Besides, this argument is stale. All I can do is reccommend what I feel is the best hardware, and if you wish, you can disagree.
> No they aren't solid. I know quite a bit about CPU design - I
> taught the course. And yes, there are plenty of CPU fan boys
> around, any look at a technical forum would show you that.
News to me.
I merely have a preference. You don't know what my reasons for this are, because I haven't spoken about them. If I have, it's only been in general terms. It'd be far too boring to go into on the forums anyway.
I don't pretend to know more than you on this subject; to say that would undermine my argument completely as I'm still in the learning process. At present however, I know enough to favour Intel over AMD.
Besides, this argument is stale. All I can do is reccommend what I feel is the best hardware, and if you wish, you can disagree.
Coin wrote:
> RAM: A lot of options. Personally, I would go for two sticks of
> 512MB, PC3200, GEIL Value. It's cheap and it's damn good.
Are you sure that's necessary?
For a gaming PC, unless you want to run RAM heavy apps like MS Flight Sim 2005 (which really leans more towards software than gaming), and providing you've got a CPU with an 800MHz FSB and a 256MB graphics card, with dual channel PC3200 RAM, I don't see the need for anything more than two 256MB sticks.
There'd be no bandwidth increase and none of the current or near-future games will require anything above 512MB to run at full-spec. If you really want a forward looking machine, you'd be far more limited with AGP instead of PCI-E than you would be with your RAM. Besides, if you do find that you need more, for whatever reason, it's so easy to upgrade later.
> RAM: A lot of options. Personally, I would go for two sticks of
> 512MB, PC3200, GEIL Value. It's cheap and it's damn good.
Are you sure that's necessary?
For a gaming PC, unless you want to run RAM heavy apps like MS Flight Sim 2005 (which really leans more towards software than gaming), and providing you've got a CPU with an 800MHz FSB and a 256MB graphics card, with dual channel PC3200 RAM, I don't see the need for anything more than two 256MB sticks.
There'd be no bandwidth increase and none of the current or near-future games will require anything above 512MB to run at full-spec. If you really want a forward looking machine, you'd be far more limited with AGP instead of PCI-E than you would be with your RAM. Besides, if you do find that you need more, for whatever reason, it's so easy to upgrade later.
Well why don't you tell me your reasons then Mav, and if you are still learning, I'm happy to teach you.
As for RAM, I would recommend at least a gigabyte now for a new build. No, bandwidth wouldn't improve (although some memory controllers have considerably better efficiency when running only one stick), but it does help. Several games such as Command & Conquer Generals, Doom 3, Far Cry and Half Life 2 all benefit from lots of memory.
If you want to run programs like Photoshop, you ought to have at least a gig, it's an absolute memory pig. Dreamweaver, Flash, Director all like lots of memory. Windows XP itself often takes up as much as 200 MB.
As for RAM, I would recommend at least a gigabyte now for a new build. No, bandwidth wouldn't improve (although some memory controllers have considerably better efficiency when running only one stick), but it does help. Several games such as Command & Conquer Generals, Doom 3, Far Cry and Half Life 2 all benefit from lots of memory.
If you want to run programs like Photoshop, you ought to have at least a gig, it's an absolute memory pig. Dreamweaver, Flash, Director all like lots of memory. Windows XP itself often takes up as much as 200 MB.
Not now.
It ain't the most exhilirating subject to argue about. It probably seems like I'm avoiding the topic, which I am, but only because I'm not in the mood. Let's just leave it in this nice civil way for now, eh?
However, the issue of RAM interests me. It's pretty straightforward how programs like Photoshop will perform better with more memory, but if we consider it from a gaming perspective, what realistic improvements are you actually going to experience?
For example, if I were to upgrade my two sticks of Crucial PC3200 256MB to two 512MB sticks (bearing in mind that I've got a GeForce 6800 GT 256MB and a P4 2.8 GHz 800FSB), what improvements in gaming performance could I expect and why?
Any answers very much appreciated, as always :-)
It ain't the most exhilirating subject to argue about. It probably seems like I'm avoiding the topic, which I am, but only because I'm not in the mood. Let's just leave it in this nice civil way for now, eh?
However, the issue of RAM interests me. It's pretty straightforward how programs like Photoshop will perform better with more memory, but if we consider it from a gaming perspective, what realistic improvements are you actually going to experience?
For example, if I were to upgrade my two sticks of Crucial PC3200 256MB to two 512MB sticks (bearing in mind that I've got a GeForce 6800 GT 256MB and a P4 2.8 GHz 800FSB), what improvements in gaming performance could I expect and why?
Any answers very much appreciated, as always :-)
Coin wrote:
> Buffer litterally just speeds up the data transfer.
Haha. No, I know what buffering means, what I was asking is what effect does it have on this particular part.
:)
> Buffer litterally just speeds up the data transfer.
Haha. No, I know what buffering means, what I was asking is what effect does it have on this particular part.
:)
First up you could then increase the AGP Aperture size to 256 MB, which would net you a couple of FPS, without any other adverse effects. Levels will load faster, everything will be smoother. Every single time you have to dip into virtual memory on the hard drive you hurt performance. You're less likely to have slowdown when in the middle of big fire fights as well. Any game that "remembers" things, like dead bodies, will also appreciate the extra RAM as it won't have to put them on the hard drive. Future games will also appreciate more RAM. More room for AI threads etc.
Remember, only the graphics side of things are done by the graphics card. A fast CPU is all well and good, but it needs memory to store the data side of things in.
Remember, only the graphics side of things are done by the graphics card. A fast CPU is all well and good, but it needs memory to store the data side of things in.
I'm fairly sure I set my AGP Aperture Size to 256MB in the BIOS.
Anyhow, cheers.
Anyhow, cheers.
If you are just now with only 512 MB of RAM, then you are hurting performance. Whilst it is best to set it to match the size of memory on the video card, if you take up that much of your system memory it must be hurting performance.
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