Think I am gonna have to finally bite the bullet and get a new pc, can anyone have a look through these 2 specs, and tell me if they are ok, which one to go for, and if anything needs changing or adding please.

Cheers

Dan,

INTEL

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 £115.72

ASUS P5B Socket 775 Core 2 ready P965 chipset onboard audio ATX £54.99

Crucial 1GB DDR2 533MHz / PC2- 4200 Unbuffered Non ECC x 2 £28.58

Casecom Black Midi Tower Case With Front Panel LCD - No PSU £11.58

Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM £62.27

LiteOn DH-16D2P 16x48 DVD-Rom Black Bare Drive - OEM £9.93

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium x64Bit OEM 1PK DVD £60.96

PowerColor X1950Pro AC2 512MB DDR3 256bit Dual DVI PCI E Graphics Card £77.38

Casecom Silver 500W ATX Power Supply - 20+4pin ATX12V 4x Molex £14.99

£436.40

AMD

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6400+ £106.41

Gigabyte GA M57SLI-S4 SKT AM2 Nvidia MCP55P PCI-E 8Channel audio ATX £53.04

Crucial 1GB DDR2 533MHz / PC2- 4200 Unbuffered Non ECC x 2 £28.58

Casecom Black Midi Tower Case With Front Panel LCD - No PSU £11.58

Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM £62.27

LiteOn DH-16D2P 16x48 DVD-Rom Black Bare Drive - OEM £9.93

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium x64Bit OEM 1PK DVD £60.96

PowerColor X1950Pro AC2 512MB DDR3 256bit Dual DVI PCI E Graphics Card £77.38

Casecom Silver 500W ATX Power Supply - 20+4pin ATX12V 4x Molex £14.99

£425.14

For a case, I suggest this one: http://www.coolermaster.com/pr ... amp;tbcate=168&id=177

That's what i'm using. It has a tooless design, and lots of room inside. Except behind the front panel there are punch-outs for the 5.25" drives. If you don't punch it out correctly, you end up with metal tabs sticking out that will scrape the paint off of the sides of the CD drive. And, the tooless design does not allow you to screw in the hard disk. But it's a good case anyway.

I'm going to upgrade and was going with: (dabs)

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 - £114.15
Gigabyte S775 Intel P35-DS3L - £56.40
Corsair Memory TWIN2X2048-6400 2x1GB XMS2-6400 CL5 - £41.10

And don't forget with that AMD 6400 that it is OEM, so no fan or heatsink, plus I'd go with 6400 (800mhz) RAM....and I wouldn't go with the 64bit operating system yet either....and that Intel motherboard doesn't match up with the 1333mhz FSB of the processor either (if I looked at the right one) and it's only a small point as well.

The only reason I went for that case was the price, I want it as cheap as possible, but still capable of running LFS for the next 5 or so years.....

Dan

Where are you getting those prices from, I'm interested in doing the same as you?!?

Dan, I think the Asus P5K is a better motherboard compared to the Asus P5B

Quote from mrfell :

Dan

Where are you getting those prices from, I'm interested in doing the same as you?!?

Ebuyer.

Is there a website, that would give you ideal specs for gaming systems?, TBH, I am a little lost, its been a long time since I built a system.

i know of scan.co.uk but tbh i'm pretty useless at knowing which components are best suited to each other.

edit just realised i dont think scan actually gives up recommendations

www.komplett.co.uk is a good site for upgrades and new builds.

They offer upgrade & new system 'packages' which have been tested for compatability with each other

Intel CPU's > AMD CPU's atm.

Dan, if you want a cheap motherboard that supports 1333 MHz CPU's, then you can have my P5K thats new and boxed for £60 delivered...

I'd get a slower CPU and more memory, though...

Cheers fellas, hopefully I will be able to put this together early in the new year, Jak, I'll give you a pm when I have the money, and if you still have it, I'll get it off you.

Any ideas what the equivalent nvidia card to this would be...

PowerColor X1950Pro AC2 512MB DDR3 256bit Dual DVI PCI E Graphics Card £77.38

An 8600GTS would be slower, however would have DX10. It would be somewhere between a 7900GS anda 7900GT, however the 79xx series have fallen off the face of the earth in the new market.

@ Dan, i'm afraid this will be on eBay well before Christmas, sorry

Ok, no worries

Whatever you do, make sure you have 2gb of ram inside… espesialy if you are going to use Vista.
If you what to keep it cheap you could have the C2D 6550 instead of the 6750. They both have exactly the same core... only difference is 330Mhz which you could clock easily on your own without even touching any Volt setting… Just make sure you have DDR ΙΙ 667 or 800 because the fsb of these cores is 333mhz (DDR 667).

Hi guys

(danowat, I hope you don't mind if I ask a quick question here - I'll try not to pull things too far off topic! )

I was wondering how the two setups danowat describes in his OP would be expected to perform with LFS.

I won't bore you all with my tech. specs , but basically the only problem I seem to have with LFS is slowdown to around 15-20fps at the start of a race with a full grid - and especially off-line with bots. From what I've read on the forums here, this problem is not uncommon.

So my question is, how do youi think the two setups danowat describes would fair in this situation?

The intel C2D based system should handle it better.

I used to be an AMD funboy before the lunch of the intel’s C2D a couple of years ago. But current intel’s processors are just better in almost any way.

Quote from danowat :

...

I've just bought a E6750/8800GT/2gb RAM system and found the only real limitation so far is the lack of RAM. Games that are rubbish at managing memory like BF2 still don't have enough to run comfortably and after loading a few maps it starts to cause stutter as it runs out of physical RAM and sometimes crashes with some kind of memory error message. I think the CPU/GPU were both overkill for my needs but given that I intend to keep this PC for several years I think it'll pay off in the end.

Quote from danowat :

Ebuyer.

Is there a website, that would give you ideal specs for gaming systems?, TBH, I am a little lost, its been a long time since I built a system.

Overclockers.co.uk has a good search and has a range of pre-set CPU/mobo/RAM bundles, no discount to buying the parts separately but it saves you having to work out what goes with what.

I strongly recommend you do not buy from overclockers though, I ignored Jakg's advice and ordered from them because they claimed to have 8800GTs in stock within a week of my order where no other sites would give a date. It seemed to be rubbish though as there were constant excuses as to why the cards hadn't arrived, ended up two weeks late (but they still processed the payment straight away), worst of all though they missed the times they'd told me twice then tried to pretend they hadn't advertised those dates.

Quote from dungbeetle :

So my question is, how do youi think the two setups danowat describes would fair in this situation?

Assuming the processor is the sole limiting factor (ie. you haven't got lots of AA and high res textures on a pre-historic graphics card) performance should be the same as my PC (E6750). I get about 40-45fps on an online race start and in typical racing traffic it's hovering around the 100fps mark (ie. faster than your refresh rate and not noticeable). Dropping down on race starts is noticeable but perfectly playable, I used to race with an average less than the minimum frame rates I get with this PC

What resolution are you running BF2 at? I remember maxxing it on my old PC (AMD 3700 / 7950GT / 1 GB RAM), and if i added AA then it would stutter a little as i was JUST running out of RAM. When i got a new CPU and 2 GB of RAM, it worked fine, and wasn't close to using all 2 GB.

Perhaps you should tweak Vista a little and remove all the useless services (ie ReadyBoost and the Tablet one...)

Ram: £34.98
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/116755

Case: £10.98
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/108273

HDD: £62.27
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124228

CPU: £103.23
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130485

Motherboard: £91.37
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/129126

OS: £61.61
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/123067

Power supply: £49.99
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/127861

Graphics Card: £68.54
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/127346

Total: £482.97

I didn't really trust the £15 power supply, being as that is what powers up the PC..

I think this PC list here will be good enough for years to come...

Quote from Jakg :

What resolution are you running BF2 at? I remember maxxing it on my old PC (AMD 3700 / 7950GT / 1 GB RAM), and if i added AA then it would stutter a little as i was JUST running out of RAM. When i got a new CPU and 2 GB of RAM, it worked fine, and wasn't close to using all 2 GB.

Perhaps you should tweak Vista a little and remove all the useless services (ie ReadyBoost and the Tablet one...)

1600x1200, everything maxed and some (4x?) AA though does the resolution and AA have any effect on RAM usage? It plays silky smooth up until the memory issues, compared to what I'm used to at least Most of my experience is in Project Reality, not standard BF2 so that may make a difference. As for Vista I haven't changed anything but the bits that get in the way and annoy me so probably a lot of ground to be made there.

Quote from ajp71 :

1600x1200, everything maxed and some (4x?) AA though does the resolution and AA have any effect on RAM usage? It plays silky smooth up until the memory issues, compared to what I'm used to at least Most of my experience is in Project Reality, not standard BF2 so that may make a difference. As for Vista I haven't changed anything but the bits that get in the way and annoy me so probably a lot of ground to be made there.

Theorhetically AA should make no (or very very very) little difference to system RAM usage, yet in BF2 it makes a rather large difference for no apparent reason...