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high-end budget computers |
Type Zero
Admiral
Joined: October 14, 2003
Posts: 49
From: Under Your Bed
|  Posted: 2005-12-03 10:33
i have for the life of ame been looking for a new computer to replace my aging S4020WM compaq presario but i'm stuck cause i can't decide on weather to custom build my new rig or buy it from a factory
my ideal specs
Processor - AMD Duel core Tech
Memorey - 4 - 8GB 400 or better
HDD - 250GB - 1TB
ATI - Crossfire
wireless everything (LOL)
a 19"moniter
5.1 dynamic surround sound system at least 500watts
if you have any suggestions please add to this post or post your ideal pc specs or a link to a already rig thats cought your eye
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NoPants2win
Cadet
Joined: February 23, 2002
Posts: 1275
From: Poorly ventilated paint storage facility.
| Posted: 2005-12-03 10:57
Build your own. You've made all the hard choices, just pick a mobo...
Crossfire is really going to restrict your mobo selection though. It might be hard to get everything you want without getting bent over the counter.
[ This Message was edited by: NoPants2win on 2005-12-03 11:00 ]
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You sir, have an incurable case of rationality. I'm afraid the only thing you can do is develop a deep cynicism before the stress of searching for something you cannot find causes a stroke.
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2005-12-03 11:25
Quote:
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On 2005-12-03 10:57, NoPants2win wrote:
Build your own. You've made all the hard choices, just pick a mobo...
Crossfire is really going to restrict your mobo selection though. It might be hard to get everything you want without getting bent over the counter.
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The Gigabyte Quad UltraT supports Crossfire, but I have a review board, and I don't know if they are in production yet. If not, wait for them, because you can have 4 ATI cards  (like moi).
But alas, you still have me and Beast to beat 
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Drafell
Grand Admiral
Mythica
Joined: May 30, 2003
Posts: 2449
From: United Kingdom
| Posted: 2005-12-03 11:28
To be frank, "high end" and "budget" do not belong in the same sentence.
As for system specs...
Go for the fastest CPU you can afford, definately AMD dual core.
No point in going above 4gb memory, even 2gb will be more than enough for pretty much anything you will run. 3gb if you really insist, but there are no real term performance gains from more memory unless you are looking into professional Video editing or CGI.
Cross fire is OK, but it does severely restrict your choice of motherboard, and it also requires matched cards. Also, there are few, if any chipsets that support two 16x PCI-E slots for full dual crossfire configurations. When these boards come out they will be expensive. You are better off just using a single graphics card, with the added benefit that it is much more compatible for older games.
There are quite a few games that gain no benefit, or even just refuse to run on a Crossfire configured system.
For harddrives I would recommend getting two 250mb SATA drives in RAID 0 configuration. This gives the best performance at the least cost. You will generally find that the smaller drives also have slightly higher native read/write speeds compared to their larger brethren.
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2005-12-03 11:51
Quote:
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On 2005-12-03 11:28, Drafell wrote:
There are quite a few games that gain no benefit, or even just refuse to run on a Crossfire configured system.
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Actualy, there have been no reported games that refuse to run on crossfire systems, and ones that were reported, were actualy due to a problem with the way windows handles the crossover of work on a duel core CPU. There are patches from microsoft that fix this, and AMD.
It is true however, that some games gain no benifit, like half-life 1, and so on. Crossfire only comes into its own when you put SERIOUS strain on the system. Then the cards really do split the load 50/50, and not in a 25/75 way that nvidia does. Due to the fact that a lot of games are just going to run at 999999 fps on a single card anyway, running it with a crossfire, or even an SLI setup, does no good and is a waste of processing power.
On the other hand, Nvidia SLI does not support super FSAA like ATI do. So if you want to run an old game with an insane amout of FSAA and AF, then crossfire is deffinatly the way to go. Since it's the only duel card setup that truely does share the load 50/50. And if you have a duel crossfire setup, the load is split 25/25/25/25  .
[ This Message was edited by: BackSlash *Jack* on 2005-12-03 11:52 ]
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Doran
Chief Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 29, 2003
Posts: 4032
From: The Gideon Unit
| Posted: 2005-12-03 12:39
ill take 2 of whatever backslash has
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DOM700 [-IMO-]
Fleet Admiral
Joined: July 26, 2001
Posts: 3175
From: Eckental, Germany, Sol-System
| Posted: 2005-12-03 14:38
/me begins to wonder whether Backslash works at a shop for graphic cards...
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2005-12-03 14:49
Quote:
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On 2005-12-03 14:38, DOM700 [-IMO-] wrote:
/me begins to wonder whether Backslash works at a shop for graphic cards...
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/me has a friend who works at OCUK
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Drow
Fleet Admiral
Joined: June 06, 2003
Posts: 449
From: USA, WI
| Posted: 2005-12-03 17:47
I think the question is.. Jack, how much do we need to send you for your computer?
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2005-12-03 18:20
Lots of monehs
and ladies
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DOM700 [-IMO-]
Fleet Admiral
Joined: July 26, 2001
Posts: 3175
From: Eckental, Germany, Sol-System
| Posted: 2005-12-04 02:21
or an assassin?
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JRE
Grand Admiral
Joined: August 14, 2003
Posts: 571
| Posted: 2005-12-04 05:25
HEHE I have you all beat post specs later off to bed.....Jack will wheep.....
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JRE
Grand Admiral
Joined: August 14, 2003
Posts: 571
| Posted: 2005-12-04 05:35
Tyan S4882UG2NR-D SSI EBB MBD QUAD AMD K8 PCIX GETH VID SCSI little hint on what I have under the hood.....4 yes 4 amd Dual core processors with well lets just say If I can afford this than the rest is just outrageous..............O and my little 3.2 pentium D is just a teaser for solitare and such
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2005-12-04 06:29
Quote:
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On 2005-12-04 05:35, Galactic Drunk (JRE) wrote:
Tyan S4882UG2NR-D SSI EBB MBD QUAD AMD K8 PCIX GETH VID SCSI little hint on what I have under the hood.....4 yes 4 amd Dual core processors with well lets just say If I can afford this than the rest is just outrageous..............O and my little 3.2 pentium D is just a teaser for solitare and such
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Yeh, but ... Anything over the 6GHZ is just wasted.. Plus no operating system except linux properly supports the hand over of 2 CPU's, let alone 4 quad cores... It's just a waste unless you're running a server. Windows runs MUCH faster on a single core, because that's what it was designed to do. And graphics cards are becoming the decider of games nowerdays, because textures, shading, etc, are not handled by the CPU, but by the graphics card. The only thing I can possibly see to come of use of this, is physics processing, which again, is only designed to use one core...
I'll stick with my FX-59R and my 2 X1800XT's and 2 X1800 Crossfire cards.
[edit]
Looking up the stats of this board, it IS a server mobo. It only supports OPTERON CPU's, which are NOT designed for caming. Even a 3200+ XP would beat down an opteron in gaming benchmarks. Ok, maybe that's a exagerating a little, but it doesn't come close to a true AMD X2 or FX CPU. I'd change what you're going to buy, because that is NOT a gaming board. It doesn't even have a PCIE slot, it has an onboard Rage XL, which is an eXtra Lite version of the card. Not to mention a VERY old ATI chipset.
[ This Message was edited by: BackSlash *Jack* on 2005-12-04 06:33 ]
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After burn
Cadet
Joined: August 20, 2005
Posts: 29
| Posted: 2005-12-05 10:45
/me begins to cry because he only has one CPU
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