A little bit of advice please

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Hi I plan to oder a new PC to replace my old one. However, I feel I need a little bit of advice as i'm a bit out of my depth with computers. It's general use will be playing games such as MOH and Delta force: Black Hawk Down. Also be using internet bit and storing some movies and mp3's. i have a quote from CCL for a machine that I believe will be suitable and hope will be able to cope with newer games in the next year or so. Basic Spec is:

AMD Athlon XP2400+
128mb XFX Ti4200 8x AGP turbo
ASUS A7N8x-d (DDR M/Board) N/Force DUAL Lan/1394/SATA
80gb Maxtor D'max
512mb DDR (PC2100) 266
with a sony cdrw.

This will be about £500. Do people think this will suitable for my purposes. Also would anyone recommend a separate soundcard or will the motherboad suffice. I would appreciate any advice.
Thanks Mat
 

floppybootstomp

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Sounds OK to me. On board sound has come on a lot in the last couple of years, I expect it would suffice for your needs.

Would suggest trying it first then if not satisfied, consider a seperate Sound Card.

I'm fond of the Philips Range, but there's always the ubiquitous (but expensive) Creative cards, whose top range cards are very good, imo.
 

muckshifter

I'm not weird, I'm a limited edition.
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matcrye

Flopps hasn't had the pleasure of the A7N8x-d sound system. ;)
note the 'D' here Flopps

Oh, and I would suggest changing the video card to at least an FX5200 ... XFX do a 128 for the same price (£45-50) of the Ti4200

Get a pair of RAM even if it is only 2x256, if you can, go for 2x512/333/2700, just ask CCl for a matched pair, they'll know what you want.

Tell 'em to swop out the Sony for a Lite-on DVD/CDRW combo
;)
 
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The 'soundstorm' chipset on that motherboard is excellent and is ideal in terms of quality and optimising speed in gameplay.

I'd agree with Mucks that you should go for a better vid card if you are going to be interested in some of the games coming out in the next year or so. Many will be developed using the new Unreal, Half Life or Doom engines...all of which (especially the last two) will be very demanding if you want to see games at their best. There's no demonstrable benefit from the new 256Mb cards, so go for something with 128Mb onboard ram...but you might be better holding off on this until after september when nVidia are supposed to be releasing their next gen nV40 chipset...this will definitely push the price of all the GeForceFX cards down. If you do want to play games like those mentioned above at anything like their best, you'll have to be thinking in terms of £200+. (Games makers always understate what you will need to run their products)

I think Mucks is suggesting you get a pair of sticks of ram rather than a single dimm, so that you can use the dual channel feature that the mobo supports (Good idea.) Also, I'd look at PC2700 at least, instead of PC2100.
 

floppybootstomp

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Hmm. I seem to have come across as a complete pillock.

I was thinking of the budget involved when I said it was OK.

That's it.
 
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Originally posted by floppybootstomp
Hmm. I seem to have come across as a complete pillock.

I was thinking of the budget involved when I said it was OK.

That's it.

...:spin: you're certainly not a pillock, Floppy! I think you were spot on when you said it was OK whether it's in terms of the spec or the budget ...If Matcrye were to take my advice (never really a sensible thing to do) he'll probably have to fork out another £200!!:crazy:
 

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