Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (
More info?)
"AndyNoSpam" <andynospam@zetnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:2004100912540978254@zetnet.co.uk...
" My system is not designed to be a very high end games machine. Hope to
spend somewhere like £900 inc vat at most "
You can see from the following two articles that the FX5700 was a mid-range
card a year ago, and is now sliding down the heirarchy:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/
You say you're planning to get an OEM system, but is that from a
'box-shifter' like Time, Tiny, Dell or PC World? They may offer cheap
deals, but you are unlikely to find quality graphics cards in their systems.
They also use specific OEM operating system installations, with which you
can have problems upgrading. If you don't wish to build your own, then you
might benefit from shopping online for the parts, and then getting a
more-friendly local shop to build it for you.
Looking at your proposed spec, you should look at either a socket 775
Pentium system, or even a socket 939 Athlon64 system.
If I was building a system for your useage and budget, I would look towards
an Athlon64, which would give better gaming performance than an equivalent
Pentium4 system, as well as being cheaper. Currently there are two sockets
for Athlon64, socket 754 (skt-754) and socket 939 (skt-939).
You could build something with the following spec:
- EZ Cool EZ103H case
http://snipurl.com/9ney £52.82
- Antec TruePower 430W
http://snipurl.com/9nkq £58.32
- MSI K8N Neo Platinum skt-754
http://snipurl.com/9nja £79.84
- AMD Athlon64 3000+ skt-754
http://snipurl.com/9nil £111.72
- KingMax PC3500 2x 512MB
http://snipurl.com/9nkm £136.05
- Seagate Barracuda 200GB 8MB SATA
http://snipurl.com/9nk3 £78.94
- Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro
http://snipurl.com/9njl £146.82
- Sony DRU700A Dual-Layer DVD+-RW
http://snipurl.com/9nh7 £58.74
- Sony CD-RW/DVD-ROM 52x32x52x16
http://snipurl.com/9nkf £28.15
- Windows XP Pro OEM
http://snipurl.com/9nhc £59.93
TOTAL: £811.33
The above items are from differing online retailers, and the prices,
although including VAT, don't include delivery. You could get them all from
the same online retailer, paying slightly more in purchase price and less on
delivery. Either way, you could get this lot delivered for approximately
£850.00, before paying someone to put it all together.
If you wanted a system with maximum upgrade-potential, then I might advise
you to wait for a few things due to arrive soon. Currently, skt-939
processors are very expensive, but the skt-939 Athlon64 3000+ is on the
horizon (
http://snipurl.com/9ni1 ). Skt-939 PCI-Express (PCI-E)
motherboards are also on the way with the new Nforce4 chipsets, and the
PCI-E 6600GT is getting great reviews.
Skt-939 will have a stronger CPU roadmap, PCI-E will be further upgradeable
than AGP, and, unlike skt-754, skt-939 chipsets can take advantage of
dual-channel memory performance. By exchanging the following items in the
system I previously specified, you would pay an extra £100 or so, but it
should be well worth it.
- Skt-939 Nforce4 PCI-E motherboard (approx £100)
- AMD Athlon64 3000+ skt-939 (approx £125)
- GeForce 6600GT PCI-E (approx £200)
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