Ok, I have shown my cousin LFS, and he is now hooked. However he is going for a new pc and wanted to know if this system he found is any good. Why he asked me I haven't got the foggiest , but he has.....and I said I will try to find out. His budget is more or less £600 but doesn't need keyboard or monitor. It's not just for running LFS but as a general gaming unit, and he's building it himself.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Budget ... 2%A3600/lm/R15YNTN6EPSW2J


p.s. the dog at the end is not an intended buy.

Its good enough but i would never buy an asus p5 motherboard,its the worst ever made, i had 2 blown on me,+i got a new came already bad.many ppl can say the same,but its your choice

i don't see a wheel in there.

holding back a bit on the computer and spending for a good wheel, i think will give a better overall LFS experience

...

damn i sound like an ad

Quote from george_tsiros :

i don't see a wheel in there.

holding back a bit on the computer and spending for a good wheel, i think will give a better overall LFS experience

...

damn i sound like an ad

He's getting my old DFP, no point in getting a G25 yet, but if he commits to it then it will be the next purchase.

My 430 watt 73% efficency rated thermaltake never really gave me any problems on my old system, but i think for that system, you may want an 80%+ psu? You should be okay, I guess.

Have you researched that specific power supply and all the other parts?, also, if you plan on getting vista 64-bit, you should get 4 gigs of ram.

the 4850 is a great card. its faster than a 3870x2 or about as fast in most games.

the 4850 is (being rather generous here) 200w. the c2d is 50w. the mobo with ram and all is 50. the hard drives and all is another 50. so we are looking at 350W maximum peak. considering you have a small number of devices you won't pull too much from any psu rail so even if all your system goes full tilt (which never will) we are looking at ... about 400w (including losses) from the PSU which is very well within its capabilities.

i would buy a 450W better quality PSU if i were you though. less heat.

Poor guy! Any reason he's getting ATI? Probably price. But if the computer is being built specifically for LFS a lower card would be perfectly fine. In my opinion nVidea is the way to go. I've only had a couple ATI cards in the past but have never got the same performance from them at I have from even lower spec'ed nVidea's, that and their drivers/interfaces are poor in comparison. That being said my advice is nVidea is the way to go, but it's not my choice

looking at benchmarks, the 4870/4850 (230/160 euros) are significantly cheaper and more or less the same performance (in some cases, better, which is very important since they are cheaper) than the gtx280/260 (400/260 euros) .

so... what are you saying here?

http://www.techspot.com/review ... deon-4850-4870/page6.html

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=23

tired to search more.

Quote from george_tsiros :

looking at benchmarks, the 4870/4850 (230/160 euros) are significantly cheaper and more or less the same performance (in some cases, better, which is very important if you think that it is cheaper) than the gtx280/260 (400/260 euros) .
.. snip

I didn't say anything about any specific card, also I did say that their price may be better. I simply stated my opinions on the matter being that the nVidea cards have always done me better that ATI. (I don't know the specific cards anymore but it was my experience.) That and nVidea drivers are universes ahead of ATI, and that was my other key point. Just simply stating my experiences.

Quote from blackbird04217 :

Poor guy! Any reason he's getting ATI? Probably price.

your experiences being something completely subjective, while this guy wants something quite objective... like... numbers from benchmarks. and prices. we can't compare 'personal experiences' especialy when they are not even well defined (you don't even say what cards you compared or nothing else)

the 4870 is cheaper than even the gtx260 and is more or less the same performance league as the much more expensive gtx280.

do keep in mind that 'personal experience' doesn't matter much when comparing things. 'personal experience' amounts to 'anecdotal evidence' or 'original research' at best.

Quote from Gabkicks :

My 430 watt 73% efficency rated thermaltake never really gave me any problems on my old system, but i think for that system, you may want an 80%+ psu? You should be okay, I guess.

Do you even know what those numbers MEAN?

The mobo is trash though - does he need RAID or overclocking? I'd get a nice P35 based board tbh.

yes i know what that means. Do you know how to communicate without coming off as a complete ****

if ur gonna crossfire now, maybe go with an x38 or x48? I just got a mobo w/ a single pcie 2.0 slot.

Quote from Gabkicks :

yes i know what that means. Do you know how to communicate without coming off as a complete ****

a 600w PSU with 70% efficiency supplies 600w peak, but takes 857w from the mains. A 600w PSU with 80% efficiency supplies the same 600w peak, but takes in 750w from the mains - the efficiency doesn't make any difference to the PC itself, it makes a difference to the bill...

Quote from george_tsiros :

your experiences being something completely subjective, while this guy wants something quite objective... like... numbers from benchmarks. and prices. we can't compare 'personal experiences' especialy when they are not even well defined (you don't even say what cards you compared or nothing else)

I don't say the cards because I don't know all the specs, I know it was the ATI x600 vs nVidea ...???... I also know the ATI card had twice the video memory, and better specs as it was (I believe) 1yr newer. However all the games and things I had been doing at that time played a lot worse with the ATI. This is a fact in my mind. Proven and he asked for advice, not really the specifications or anything simply advice. I gave him my advice based on my opinions. (The drivers are also way better on nVidea than ATI thats a fact that I am making based off (yes my own opinion) but its still a fact none the less.

If you read my original post the piece of advice I gave was that if he was building the PC purely for LFS than he might as well get an nVidea card with slightly less specs. Thats all I wanted to contribute. And I think we can end this piece of madness as its no longer helping the OPer and I don't see any other reason why we need to bicker about fact vs opinion vs advice and all that nonsense...

you still continue to confuse fact with subjective opinion. 'fact' here being objectively measured performance of very specific cards in controlled conditions. not 'i had an nvidea card that i think was faster than the ati card'. "fact in my mind" is nonsense, i am sorry. that is an "opinion". "opinions" doesn't measure the performance of a card.

please try to be more careful. what are you? 15?

Quote from george_tsiros :

you still continue to confuse fact with subjective opinion. 'fact' here being objectively measured performance of very specific cards in controlled conditions. not 'i had an nvidea card that i think was faster than the ati card'. "fact in my mind" is nonsense, i am sorry. that is an "opinion". "opinions" doesn't measure the performance of a card.

please try to be more careful. what are you? 15?

He is way older then 15 and has quite some experience in computers and gaming/programming and all he did was give out his opinion on ATI cards. Based on things he noticed between ATI and Nvidea. He is perfectly allowed to give his own opinion on what he has experienced with ATI cards.

Btw, trying to guess his age and saying ''what are you? 15?'' simply makes you look stupid. People do that when they don't have any other strong argument agaisnt someone who clearly isn't doing anything wrong.

Did you read my last post? I was never trying to base anything on fact, nor did I go into detail with fact on performance or even say where my opinion came in about how one performed better or worse. I simply stated my opinions about the two cards, their drivers and user interfaces and my experiences with them. That is all I did for the person asking for advice. This dispute is quite idiotic and I am going end it with this post here as the general public can figure out that I was giving an opinion. I never made up facts of performance or tried stating something of the such.

BTW: Where does the comment "what are you 15?" come from? Sure we have our own opinions here about what should be allowed in this thread, least that what I assume this was about, but I haven't started screaming like a kid or typing with full caps, or other random stupid things that would be associated with such a comment.


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@ Mackie The Staggie: Hope your cousin gets a good value either way and hope to see you guys in LFS Glad to hear another is on their way.

I think the point is that on the internet you can find benchmarks and other proofs in a matter of seconds, and that "go for nvidea [sic] because they are the best" is NOT helpful unless it's backed up with some sort of proof.

i am quite pleased to see that there is some reason here, after all.

Well tbh, I have a ATI 2600 HD XT and have no problems at all. I run LFS with a stable 80 FPS with full AA and Af aswell as high resolution textures, smoke, etc. If I take off AA and AF it goes up to 200-250 FPS without the textures though.

I've personally not have had any trouble with ATI cards and they are quite good.

I got my pc from Dell.ca for 700$ without monitor (I already have a 19'' widescreen one) and here are some of the specs :

Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E6550 @ 2.33Ghz
2046 mb of RAM
ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 XT

It's running with Windows vista home premium.

If you guys have Dell over there maybe take a look I think that the quality you get for the price is really good. Plus their waranties are amazing. My brothers ram cooked on his laptop which damaged his CPU aswell and he got a box from the mail and they told him to put the CPU in there and mail it to their adress and a week later they sent him his pc fixed with everything working perfectly. Dell's really good imo so you should take a look at it.