New PC Good Setup? Good Package?

[Waveyminter]

hey, just bought a Gaming PC for £825 ... pleasecheck this spec and get back to me : )

Processor (CPU) AMD ATHLON™ 64 X2 5200+ (2.6GHz) 2 x 1MB L2 Cache (Socket AM2)

Memory (RAM) 2048 MB CORSAIR XMS2 800MHz - LIFETIME WARRANTY! (2x1GB)

Motherboard ASUS® M2N: DUAL DDR II, S-ATA, x16 VGA, 3 PCI

Operating System WINDOWS® XP Home (inc. Genuine CD & License)

USB Options 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS (4 REAR + 2 FRONT) AS STANDARD

Memory - 1st Hard Disk 500GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 16MB CACHE (7200rpm)

1st CD/DVD Drive 20x Dual Layer LightScribe DVD Writer ±R/±RW/RAM

Graphics Card 512MB GEFORCE 8600GT PCI Express + DVI + TV-OUT

Sound Card Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeMusic 7.1:

Network Facilities ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT

Memory Card Reader INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (READS XD, MS, CF, SD, etc)

Case - (???)
Power Supply & Case Cooling 700W Quiet Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan

Processor Cooling ASUS SILENT KNIGHT II PURE COPPER ULTRA COOLER

Keyboard & Mouse Logitech® Cordless Internet Pro Desktop Keyboard & Mouse (Black)

Speakers CREATIVE INSPIRE 2.1 T3100 SPEAKER SYSTEM

Surge Protection 2 x Belkin 4 Socket 2M Surge Protector (8 Sockets)

/
Screen - 19" w/s Monitor
/
Software , power DVD, Bull guard,
/



Ok all of this is like £825

Please say if you think that i have been purely scammed or got a brill bargain!


Thanks,
Wavey

 

[Dr Super Good]

If you were done in, it would be with the processor.

Dual/Quad core from intel > most AMB as they are more power efficent and have more chache on them so suffer less from slow ram and people say that have great OC potential if you ever need more power.

Equally well the 8600 is not particually a top of the range gamming card so do not expect ultra high graphics.

With that setup you sould be able to run PS2 emulation at full speed and supreem commanders well.

Do not expect games next year to run near max well thoe.

Overall not bad, but like I said its weakest point is its CPU.

 

[brad.dude03]

Yeah, I'd definetly chuck that processor for a good Intel. The E6600 (the processor I use) is fully dual-core at 2.4 GHZ and it's damnably cheap. Great for overclocking as well.

You might also wanna pack another 2 gigs of RAM in there since it's cheap these days.

Not bad for the money though

 

[Samuraid]

For a pre-built gaming machine with good quality parts, it's not a bad deal. If you bought the parts and built it yourself, I would expect to spend only about 50-60% of the cost though.

 

[brad.dude03]

That's why I built mine myself. Built a great gaming rig for 1200 bucks, in a system that would have cost much, much more prebuilt.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Actually it would cost 50%-100% more as he is obviously in england where the tax is extreem making custom building your PC hard cheaply.

A good dual core costs 200£
A nvidia 8800 costs 300-400£
for 4 GB of ram is 100-150£
The HD would be atleast 100£

As you can see stuff is outragously priced here in Great Britian due to the 17.5% tax + added tax and income tax.

And remember that 1£ is more than 2US$

Also 4GB of ram is pointless in an XP system, since no game uses 2GB for now. However if you even go vista, 4GB is a must.

 

[GST_Nemisis]

DSG where do u get your components from??? i can get an 8800 for £150 and an 8600 GT for £50

also you only get taxed 17.5% on the things you buy, you only get income tax when you get paid, and seeing as you arent over 18 you arent affected by this yet.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Well I last checked the priced 4-5 months ago which probably explains the slight drop.

Well anyway, as I am under 18, I hardly have a job so can not by a PC anyway. But if you are working, you end up paying 50% of your money you earn as tax in the end on average, and that is a fact.

 

[brad.dude03]

I don't have a job yet I saved for a $1200 PC, and i'm 15.

You have no excuse DSG

 

[GST_Nemisis]

if you are working, you end up paying 50% of your money you earn as tax in the end on average, and that is a fact.

no you dont? what the hell are you on about?? i work full time and i get about 25% taken in tax. not that im happy about it but its not exactly 50%

 

[Dr Super Good]

It is if you include consil tax and property tax and vat onto your income tax and all the other minor taxes they have hidden on everything.

 

[GST_Nemisis]

no its not?? who told you that?! do you even work to confirm this? where do you get this information from because im sure you dont get it first hand as i have to pay all these taxes and it in no way adds up to 50% of my earnings. and anyways, you are forgetting something very important, we get paid more than alot of places and we have a very strong currency, so although things are more expensive it balances out because we get paid more, for example, US minimum wage is $5.85 and uk is £5.52....so we get paid almost twice as much.

 

[brad.dude03]

Haha you guys suck, Canadian minimum wage is like $7.60

 

[Samuraid]

California minimum wage is currently $7.50. It will be $8.00 in early 2008.
http://www.dir.ca.gov/Iwc/MinimumWageHistory.htm

Canada currently has California beat though especially with the Canadian dollar worth more.

 

[brad.dude03]

Yeah I think that's what helped us along, for now anyway

It's good that at least the California minimum wage is up, even if it's not worth much over here xD

 

[Jaakko]

However if you even go vista, 4GB is a must.

And why is that? lol

 

[Dr Super Good]

Because vista uses atleast 1 GB from what I have heard, 1.5 for ultimate and the other extra ram means better speed, since a 1 and a 2 GB would techinacly do but a 2 GB and a 2 GB would be way faster due to dual channel support mode. Atleast this is the general consensces through out theinternet for high preformance on vista. SP1 will hopefully reduce the ram needs by allowing you to revert back to a XP style and everything that would reduce the ram needs by 100 MB odd.

 

[brad.dude03]

Yeah, Vista, with it's attempts to further monopolize the software industry, includes A LOT of applications with the OS that would normally be purchased for a third party, such as a dvd burner, malware scanning software, etc. Since these things come inclusive with Vista, they all tend to suck up resources.

Simply put, Vista is a giant resource hog, and the more RAM you have the smoother it runs.

 

[Samuraid]

With Aero disabled, you can run Vista on 1GB of RAM without too much trouble, provided you have nothing very "heavy" running. I've run Vista beta on 512MB of RAM with Aero disabled, and it runs decently...as long as you don't have very much else running.

If anyone runs 4GB of RAM in Vista, it's almost a given that they need a 64-bit version too, because otherwise they won't be using all their RAM, which is quite silly.

 

[Dr Super Good]

I thought the max ram for a 32 bit OS was exactly 4 GB of ram...
Since 2^32(bytes)/1024(KB)/1024(MB)/1024(GB) = 4 (GB)
Guess I was wrong.

Vista is basically badly optimized, with its functions it has it should use much less ram. Like I stated, hopefully SP 1 will enable you to eithor turn more stuff off or to make in unload not needed stuff from ram.

 

[Samuraid]

32-bit architectures can address exactly 4GB of memory space, however many of the devices in the computer (I/O, drive controllers, video card, etc...) are memory-mapped and use up a portion of the addressable memory space.

 

[Jaakko]

Well 2 Gb with Vista works just perfectly.

 

[Waveyminter]

Max ram is 4gb but most Hardware will not use the amount so i'm just aging and Blowing an extra XX pounds on stuff that wont be used. I will probs upg to Vista in a few Months after all the bugs and that are cleared and that i think it has improved. ; )

Delivering on the 15.12.07
(Home Call)

: ) i need a EXt drive to put all my stuff on. some games i cant find the discs.. so ill just transfer : D