Best Computer

[sam fisher]

lol help me find one!

 

[Vimacs]

leave your house, go in the city, find one, shouldnt be to hard

 

[racoon]

lubidog:
The PC I mentioned was a fully-fledged tower for 750€, I bought the stuff from birg.at , I am not sure about german sites but it should be even cheaper because of the lower tax.
I only know alternate.de but I got no idea if their pricing is good.

Review my topic earlier, the basic things I would recommend (which exceeds optimal WoW performance by far) :

Athlon 3000 up to 3400+ sochet 939 (boxed, the fan they sell is quite silent except when booting ;D ) should have a good price range.

nVidia gForce 6600GT 256MB RAM is pretty cheap now, maybe a gForce 6800 but it would be a bit higher priced.

nForce4 socket 939 Motherboard so you can easily upgrade, tough it can cost upto 150€ but it's worth the price.

Simply watch the prices, somewhere you will see that it's getting unproportionally expensive, you should buy stuff which do have a good price/performance.

 

[Javacat]

They are cheaper or cheap as DIY machines, without the hassle and MATCH. The exceptions in the DIY market, is custom overclocking and linux, and now those areas are being addressed. I'm increasingly seeing Linux machines admittedly on the lower specced machines, and overclocking is becoming a standard for many manufactures. I always built my own ever since the 486 came out, but I've had this machine for a couple of years and know that if it breaks I can buy a *better* machine for £150 http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/in...oduct_uid=89079

​

I've never had any problems matching hardware together. Prebuilt systems look good at first glance, but when you look deeper into it a lot of the parts are crap. BTW, you must have a crap computer if you can get a better one for £150. I built mine 2 years ago and would have to spend about £600 to get something anywhere near close to the same spec.

 

[nickspoon]

Better machine? IT'S A CELERON DAMMIT.

 

[Shikaku]

Buy the parts and make your own damn machine. The parts SHOULD come with warranty anyway, so if one thing dies you can replace it quickly.

You can't build one yourself? You want to know how? I just watched someone assemble one in front of me once, and then I could do it myself. It's not that hard...

 

[nickspoon]

It's true. At the moment, I'm replacing a PSU and adding a hard drive and ethernet card. I have never touched a PSU before, nor have I installed a hard drive short of the piss easy one in my PS2 (it's slide-in). The IDE cables are messing with my mind, but I think it should work. I would build my own computer if I had the money, but at the moment I'm 'merging' two old ones. And there are plenty of guides on the internet for this sort of thing.

*plugs in*

BANG!

 

[Cyclops]

I've never had any problems matching hardware together. Prebuilt systems look good at first glance, but when you look deeper into it a lot of the parts are crap. BTW, you must have a crap computer if you can get a better one for £150. I built mine 2 years ago and would have to spend about £600 to get something anywhere near close to the same spec.

​

LOL that can't be true. My originally post a PC for about £450 and is PCI-E,SATA,DL those technologies didn't even exist 2 years ago . I'd be betting you can buy a laptop for less than £600 thats better than your original PC. I won't mention monitors because the cost and performace of flatscreen is dropping more than a PC

If it is worth anything like £600 you originally paid too much....waaayyy too much and you had a time machine.

I suspect my computer isn't as good as yours, but I suspect mine was a better buy.

Example below.

Acer Aspire E300 AMD March 2006

* Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3200+
* Memory: 512MB DDR
* 256Mb nVidia GeForce 6600 PCI Express Graphics Card, TVO, DVI
* Disk: 160GB SATA
* DVD-RW: 16X Dual and Double layer
* Audio on board: AC97 (5.1)
* 9 in 1 memory card reader
* Multimedia Keyboard
* Optical Mouse
* Speakers
* Microsoft Windows XP Home + Microsoft Works

£389.99 £458.24 inc VAT

Acer Aspire T150 AMD March 2004(from PC World I had knocking around)

* Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3000+
* Memory: 512MB DDR
* ATI 9600 128MB VGA+
* Disk: 120GB ATA-100
* DVD-RW+
* Audio on board
* 6 in 1 memory card reader
* Speakers
* Microsoft Windows XP Home + Microsoft Works(2003)

£625 £734 inc VAT

So for about 60% of the cost every damn thing on the machine is faster/more modern technolgy/current, and they even through in a keyboard and mouse. If fact the only thing not upgraded really is the CPU and MEMORY and OS. Which If I look at my PC the only thing from my original PC is the CPU, I've replaced *everything* else. Please don't make me draw graphs.

Only WarmFluffy makes silly posts like that. Simply put your sooooo wrong.

 

[Javacat]

I'll go with the "paid way to much" . I just priced mine up again and it would cost me £670. That's for all of the original parts and excluding most of my hard drives. With the rest of my hard drives and a few tweaks it would cost me about £900.

Oh, and I got this laptop a few months ago http://www.ebuyer.co.uk/customer/products/...oduct_uid=91195. That laptop actually comes with an x700 as apposed to the x600 mentioned. It plays Half Life 2 almost as good as my pc, but for obvious reasons my PC has a faster loading time.

Having said that, I'll probably be getting a new PC later this year, once DirectX 10 is out.


What can I say, I'm a gamer B).

 

[Javacat]

I was bored and decided to reply to the rest of your post

LOL that can't be true. My originally post a PC for about £450 and is PCI-E,SATA,DL those technologies didn't even exist 2 years ago .

SATA was released in 2004, and my PC supports that. The majority of my drives are SATA.
I'm assuming when you say DL you are referring to dual-layer DVD. Again, I have a dvd writter that has supported this since 2004.

Acer Aspire E300 AMD March 2006

* Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3200+
* Memory: 512MB DDR
* 256Mb nVidia GeForce 6600 PCI Express Graphics Card, TVO, DVI
* Disk: 160GB SATA
* DVD-RW: 16X Dual and Double layer
* Audio on board: AC97 (5.1)
* 9 in 1 memory card reader
* Multimedia Keyboard
* Optical Mouse
* Speakers
* Microsoft Windows XP Home + Microsoft Works

£389.99 £458.24 inc VAT

Acer Aspire T150 AMD March 2004(from PC World I had knocking around)

* Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3000+
* Memory: 512MB DDR
* ATI 9600 128MB VGA+
* Disk: 120GB ATA-100
* DVD-RW+
* Audio on board
* 6 in 1 memory card reader
* Speakers
* Microsoft Windows XP Home + Microsoft Works(2003)

£625 £734 inc VAT

My (original) spec:
* Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3200+
* Memory: 1GB DDR2 3200
* 256Mb ATI Radeon x800
* Disk: 200GB SATA (I've now got 3 more drives)
* DVD-RW: 16X Dual and Double layer
* Audio on board: AC97 (5.1)
* 450W PSU
* Microsoft Windows XP Pro
* Sexy case (With LED's!!!!!)

This would now cost me £670

So for about 60% of the cost every damn thing on the machine is faster/more modern technolgy/current, and they even through in a keyboard and mouse. If fact the only thing not upgraded really is the CPU and MEMORY and OS. Which If I look at my PC the only thing from my original PC is the CPU, I've replaced *everything* else. Please don't make me draw graphs.

Please give me graphs. I like graphs. I'd especially like one showing how a 6600 would spank an x800.
From experience prebuilt systems usually come with crap motherboards, which gives a huge performance drop.
When I built my pc, I built it with not having to upgrade components in the future in mind and oh look, I haven't. Mine has lasted me 2 years, and PC's are only just starting use parts almost as powerful as mine. Overall I think that's a good job.

Only WarmFluffy makes silly posts like that. Simply put your sooooo wrong.

Only... I dunno. Who makes silly posts like that when they don't know any of the facts?

 

[sam fisher]

leave your house, go in the city, find one, shouldnt be to hard

​

Buy the parts and make your own damn machine. The parts SHOULD come with warranty anyway, so if one thing dies you can replace it quickly.

You can't build one yourself? You want to know how? I just watched someone assemble one in front of me once, and then I could do it myself. It's not that hard...

​

Never done anything to do with otherbaords or psu's

 

[nickspoon]

Only WarmFluffy makes silly posts like that. Simply put your sooooo wrong.

​

Where should he put his soooooo wrong?

Never done anything to do with otherbaords or psu's

​

That's OK, you don't need an otherbaord.

PSUs are piss easy to install (just a few screws and plugging leads into whatever needs power) and my just-now-upgraded computer works perfectly well.

 

[Cyclops]

SATA was released in 2004, and my PC supports that. The majority of my drives are SATA.
I'm assuming when you say DL you are referring to dual-layer DVD. Again, I have a dvd writter that has supported this since 2004.

So you except PCI-E good, SATA was available but was early technology often twinned with IDE, and often misses out fun stuff like hardare raid(I Like software raid anyhow), SATA-II did not exist at all. Dual layer did not exist in march 2004 nor did 16X drives,Dual-layer disks were not available till June(end of march japan), the fastest I could find was 8X but it did all the DVD+/-/RAM etc but not dual layer and the cheapest I could find was £90, 200GB sata-150 drive is priced at £190 and that was a maxtor.

Acer Aspire E300 AMD March 2006
* Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3200+
* Memory: 512MB DDR
* 256Mb nVidia GeForce 6600 PCI Express Graphics Card, TVO, DVI
* Disk: 160GB SATA
* DVD-RW: 16X Dual and Double layer
* Audio on board: AC97 (5.1)
* 9 in 1 memory card reader
* Multimedia Keyboard
* Optical Mouse
* Speakers
* Microsoft Windows XP Home + Microsoft Works

£389.99 £458.24 inc VAT

My (original) spec:
* Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3200+
* Memory: 1GB DDR2 3200
* 256Mb ATI Radeon x800
* Disk: 200GB SATA (I've now got 3 more drives)
* DVD-RW: 16X Dual and Double layer
* Audio on board: AC97 (5.1)
* 450W PSU
* Microsoft Windows XP Pro
* Sexy case (With LED's!!!!!)

This would now cost me £670

It all starts to be a little clearer now a quick check shows the X800 not being lauched till May that year and at that time it must have been more than a little expensive I'm guessing around that time £300-400 in May/June

Please give me graphs. I like graphs. I'd especially like one showing how a 6600 would spank an x800.
From experience prebuilt systems usually come with crap motherboards, which gives a huge performance drop.
When I built my pc, I built it with not having to upgrade components in the future in mind and oh look, I haven't. Mine has lasted me 2 years, and PC's are only just starting use parts almost as powerful as mine. Overall I think that's a good job.

Sure I suspect that your power supply which is hefty and must have cost some, does not include power connectors to graphics card, and you graphics card as fast as it is its limited to the 8X bus. Not that I'm even comparing the 2. I as I said before only run an Intel Extreme II, but then N64 emulation is as good as its going to get for me . I did any other gaming on my X-box.

Only WarmFluffy makes silly posts like that. Simply put your sooooo wrong.

Only... I dunno. Who makes silly posts like that when they don't know any of the facts?

​

Checked the facts, the hardware you suggesting you had, simply did not exist 2 years ago, and those that did are several times the cost of those of those today, even XP is down form £250 to £90, and are simply slower or not as good. I picked out a machine for £450 that is petty similar to your specs only...well better, to make it £670 I could add could add another 3 hard drives and a bit more more memory. I could even spend the £220 on a better graphics card.

The fact that you bought a case that lights up like a christmas tree screams volumes. You built a super-ninja machine which is very nice, and at the very earliest june and I suspect much later than this. I cannot imagine your machine had much change out of £1000, and it isn't as good as the £450 one shown. Its lost well over half its value in about one and half years, and I suspect you can skip your monitor now.

The reality is you could for the price I suspect you paid, bought a new machine every 6 months, and would have a nicer machine than you have now, and could have sold the first 2, given them to the kids, have a home network, a file server/firewall well it would have justified XP Pro.

 

[Javacat]

So you except PCI-E good, SATA was available but was early technology often twinned with IDE, and often misses out fun stuff like hardare raid(I Like software raid anyhow), SATA-II did not exist at all. Dual layer did not exist in march 2004 nor did 16X drives,Dual-layer disks were not available till June(end of march japan), the fastest I could find was 8X but it did all the DVD+/-/RAM etc but not dual layer and the cheapest I could find was £90, 200GB sata-150 drive is priced at £190 and that was a maxtor.

I didn't realise you were going to the exact month. I built it in august 2004, but that's almost 2 years ago.. sort of... <_<.

200GB sata-150 cost £76.67 when I built this PC (http://web.archive.org/web/20041010211508/...og/Maxtor2.html)
16X dual-layer drives were available in 2004 and cost around £30 (http://web.archive.org/web/20041018012950/..._RW_Drives.html)

It all starts to be a little clearer now a quick check shows the X800 not being lauched till May that year and at that time it must have been more than a little expensive I'm guessing around that time £300-400 in May/June

Yes, I bought a £300 graphics card :unsure: .

Sure I suspect that your power supply which is hefty and must have cost some, does not include power connectors to graphics card, and you graphics card as fast as it is its limited to the 8X bus. Not that I'm even comparing the 2. I as I said before only run an Intel Extreme II, but then N64 emulation is as good as its going to get for me . I did any other gaming on my X-box.

My PSU is plugged into graphics card, aswell as 4 hard drives (occaisionally 5), a DVD writer, a floppy driver (!!!, well once in a blue moon) and several fans.

Since you don't want to give me any graphs I went and got some myself.
6600 PCI-E benchmark - http://www.gdhardware.com/hardware/video_c.../6600gt/002.htm
X800 AGP x8 benchmark - http://www.gdhardware.com/hardware/video_c.../x800xt/002.htm

Newer doesn't always mean faster.

Checked the facts, the hardware you suggesting you had, simply did not exist 2 years ago, and those that did are several times the cost of those of those today, even XP is down form £250 to £90, and are simply slower or not as good. I picked out a machine for £450 that is petty similar to your specs only...well better, to make it £670 I could add could add another 3 hard drives and a bit more more memory. I could even spend the £220 on a better graphics card.

My computer is still faster than that, and it has room for improvement. To bring that PC up to the spec of mine you would need:
A better graphics card
More RAM
Bigger hard drive
Bigger PSU
A sexy case

Find me all of that for £200.

The fact that you bought a case that lights up like a christmas tree screams volumes. You built a super-ninja machine which is very nice, and at the very earliest june and I suspect much later than this. I cannot imagine your machine had much change out of £1000, and it isn't as good as the £450 one shown. Its lost well over half its value in about one and half years, and I suspect you can skip your monitor now.

The case was just a bit of fun. I bought a new monitor recenetly for it (19" 4ms TFT) and that isn't going in a skip anytime soon I'd rather have a computer that I know can play all the latest games, and any other games to come out in the next few years than build one and expect it to last a few months.

The reality is you could for the price I suspect you paid, bought a new machine every 6 months, and would have a nicer machine than you have now, and could have sold the first 2, given them to the kids, have a home network, a file server/firewall well it would have justified XP Pro.

I'd very much like to see a new £450 machine playing FEAR playing smoothly, with near maxed out settings.
Having said that, my 5 year old duron, which cost me about £500 at the time plays Farcry quite nicely although it misses out some of the fancy DX9 effects.