Upgrading for Half Life2

[Consoles_Suck]

Hi, i only got upto 225 pounds , to try and prepare my pc for halflife 2, what would it be best to get , i was thinking along the lines of a amd 3000xp and 512 of ram
heres my pc's specs

try not to laugh..

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 - 128mb 8x agp
Gigabyte board... 4x agp.. and only usb1..
Amd Athlon 2000xp
256mb of 2700 ddr ram
30gb harddrive...

even just updrading it so i can play ut2004 smoothly would be much appreciated

 

[Reefsmoka]

Well it would be an Ati Radeon 9800pro definatly for £125 delivered from here:
http://www.lowestonweb.com/Products/DisplayInfoMain.asp?e=2F99A0AD-B9A8-470B-B643-2A672531F699
That will definatly be enough graphics card for the job.

Next you will need all the memory you can get, this is an extrememly memory hungry game, so the more the better!

If i were you i would save another £30 and get 2 sticks of 512 PC2700.

This is great value stuff: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Crucial_Value.html (the 6th one down).

That should help you play Half Life 2, but you really need to upgrade your processor. A 3000XP with fan can be bought fro around £100, so i would consider that too.

 

[floppybootstomp]

As reef said really.

Video card and memory are your prime concerns here, go for the 9800 Pro and at least another 256Mb of memory.

I wouldn't worry about the processor speed too much, that one should do you OK, but I would consider, apart from vid card and RAM, getting a bigger hard disk.

 

[Consoles_Suck]

Ok, thanks, is there really much difference between an Ati Radeon 9800pro and a FX 5200 theyve both got 128mb of ram.. a gig of ram for £100 is a great price thanx for the link

 

[Reefsmoka]

well i had an FX5200 in my machine and got a 3DMark03 score of 1096 (which is pathetic). I slapped in a Radeon 9800pro and it jumped to 5800 (which is pretty good).

It doesnt matter how much video ram its got, its all down to the speed of the ram (Mhz) and the speed of the GPU (Mhz). An FX5200 ram runs at 400Mhz and the GPU at 250Mhz, the radeon memory runs at 680Mhz and the GPU 380Mhz.

Just check out this Unreal Tournament 2003 benchmark. You'll see the Radeon 9800pro is 3rd, where as the FX5200 is is around the 42nd mark !

 

[ChristopherP]

quality not quantity...

 

[Consoles_Suck]

Ok, thanks would it be possible to overclock a athlon 200xp much?

 

[Reefsmoka]

You can overclock an AMD 2000XP yes, but to get any significant difference you would need to have your computer water cooled. And for the price of a water cooling system you would be able to by a 3000XP processor and a new graphics card.

 

[ChristopherP]

AMD generally dont overclock as well as intel. To overclock well you need a decent motherboard, power supply, Heatsink, CPU fan and also a good chip - and thats luck of the draw.

 

[floppybootstomp]

AMD generally dont overclock as well as intel.

Oh my, how things have changed. Sad, very sad. But possibly true.

Time was, Intel chips were locked and we were overclocking them Athlons til they squeaked, and laughing all the way at them Intel owners.

Then Intel woke up. You can actually thank AMD for that, their (at the time) superior chips prompted Intel to address what people really wanted.

But yes, right now, I would actually admit Intel CPU's may just have the edge when it comes to overclocking. Only just though

 

[Reefsmoka]

But yes, right now, I would actually admit Intel CPU's may just have the edge when it comes to overclocking. Only just though

Only just!

I sense an AMD fanboy in the house ^^, or just a Intel playa hater .

You can wack a good 1000Mhz on top of a P4 with HT, provided you has suffeceint cooling. Intel are taking back whats rightfully theirs .

 

[floppybootstomp]

Intel are taking back whats rightfully theirs .

Oh no, oh no no no.

AMD were the pioneers of serious overclocking, if it wasn't for AMD, you'd still be getting some fancy arsed Intel CPU that claimed to be 5Ghz based against some spurious figures that was locked solid.

AMD's pioneering made Intel wake up and address the issue. Fact.

And yes, I am an AMD boy, but not an Intel hater. When Intel make a chip that rivals AMD in real performance, without any hype or bulls**t, I'll bite. But not yet.

No brand loyalty here, whatever is the best bang for the buck. And that goes for ATI & Nvidia as well.

 

[ChristopherP]

the new LGA775 chips, however, are locked and can not be overclocked to give a performaance increase f over 10%