An acquaintance of mine wishes to buy a PC for general communication and surfing needs as well as playing Live for Speed. The budget is $500-$600 and is simply needed to provide an enjoyable experience in this game, anything else is a bonus obviously.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883102810
This PC was being considered. The RAM would have 512mb added to it and a 6600gt graphics card is being considered.

Thoughs, opinions? Thanks for your help.

you might be better posting in and reading the hardware section....

Looks good, although I cant comment on the processor. Usually I steer away from Sempron's and go for the AMD64's.

I have a semprom 3100+ (64bit socket 754) in my computer and it runs beautifully with all new games i throw at it ie. F.E.A.R. 45 - 60 fps , call of duty 2 25 - 40 fps , LFS 60 - 90 fps or rfactor 30 - 60 fps. I know the graphics card i have (asus radeon 9600 pro 256 mb) has something to do with the smoothness in those games too but without the CPU i have those games wouldnt be as smooth and stuff. But next year im going to upgrade the cpu to an amd athlon 64 bit 4000 or 4500 , PCI-e motherboard and ati x***

Unfortunately, that system does not seem to have an AGP or PCI-E graphics slot. It only has 3 standard PCI slots. So you can forget upgrading to a 6600GT.

Just build a box from scratch. I did so the age of 13 and have done so multiple times since then. You should be able to build one just fine.

I agree with Forbin - there is no need to buy a PC ever. So much better to get the bits and bolt them together yourself. That way you know your PC much better than if a spotty 17 year old bolts it together, and you avoid their greasy finger prints all over the RAM contacts.

If you are a greasy, spotty 17 year old, please don't build PC's for a living. You'll only further my stereotype.

Ive got a 2800 sempron and it blows, dont knwo whether the 3100 si any better.

Quote from Stellios :

Ive got a 2800 sempron and it blows, dont knwo whether the 3100 si any better.

The best fps per dollar ratio would be sempron 2600, radeon 9600, 512MB DDR400, I think. Or some pentium 100mhz, which you can get for free nowaydays :insane: .

i have a semprom 3000+, 768mb ram, and a 256mb ATi radeon 9600XT. most of the time the framerate is never below 50... but at the start of a full grid race it could drop down to 15, and if there is a big crash it could go down to like 5.
So i would reccomend getting a x800gto, or if you are gonna go pci-e then a x800gto2. it is the one of the best out right now when it comes to bang for your buck... at least untill the 6800gs comes out . the x800gto2 runs really fast stock but if you unlock it then it can be as much as twice as fast in some games.


i am planning on upgrading to a x800GTO 256mbAGP myself. you should be able to find both the x800gto2 and 6800gs for under 200 bucks. they are both amazing cards.

I have radeon 9600, not XT, and 128MB version. The cpu is athlon64 3000+ running at 2250mhz (overclocked from 1800). Usually it is no less than 60fps with highest details, and with with a huge crash with 20 cars in front of me it may drop to somewhere 15fps fps for short periods of time.

I also had radeon 9800 pro, and it mostly gave more fps (compared to 9600) with few cars on the screen, gave even more than 200fps. But with 20 cars and highest details it didn't help much compared to 9600.

Gabkicks, the 6800GS has been out for quite a while now. It's a rather limited production part, though. Supplies are due to run out early next year on both of the cards you mentioned.

I also find your claim of "twice as fast in some games" very hard to believe.

i mean the agp version.
and the x800gto2 pci-e can be unlocked from 12 to 16 pipelines. plus it overclocks very well.

some agp versions are unlockable.

I don't think they ever plan to release an AGP version of the GS.

http://komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=316258&cks=SER

come on man do some reasearch lol unless that is an error. but many other sites say that the agp version should be out by early january. i have been trying to get as much info on midrange graphics cards since my 9600XT cant run certain new games at as high settings as i would like with a smooth framerate.

I've got a 9600 pro aswell (£15 from a mate), good card in my opinion. I've got an asrock dual sata 2, very cheap board, but i've had no problems from it at all, so could be worth a look. that would also mean socket 939 and a good processor(hopefully). Have a look on overclocking forums maybe, or www.anandtech.com forums, they can probably sort you out with the best bang for buck. LFS is processor intensive, so don't skimp on the CPU.

When the PC should only run LFS, here are my specifications:
GeForce 4 Ti 4200 or above (already gets shoddy with more than 15cars in sight at highest detail-level, still delivers a min. of 35fps)
Any motherboard capable of the CPU of your choice, AGP and DDR-RAM. Propably ASrock.
640 (512 + 128) MB DDR RAM
Any CPU that fits your wallet (not literally!! ) above Sempron 2500+. Anything above this is only needed when you want to have a nice race against a lot of AIs or you want to do some other fancy stuff.
I'd suggest to invest the remaining money in a nice steering wheel. Way more fun than 0.2 fps more due to 800Mhz more CPU-freq.

Vain

Quote from afastest :

The best fps per dollar ratio would be sempron 2600, radeon 9600, 512MB DDR400

pretty much my rig, built by me, only with a 2800+ athlon, 9600 XT and 1Gb DDR400 RAm, runs most games on full with ease, lfs never slows down

Quote from Gabkicks :

http://komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=316258&cks=SER

come on man do some reasearch lol unless that is an error. but many other sites say that the agp version should be out by early january. i have been trying to get as much info on midrange graphics cards since my 9600XT cant run certain new games at as high settings as i would like with a smooth framerate.

Hmm, that's news to me. First time I've been out of the loop on something like that. Thanks for the correction.