Techie opinions please

[Mouse]

My poor old pc just doesn't cut the mustard any more, so it looks like it's time to upgrade. Here is what I'm considering....

ATX Midi Tower Case 300Watt (AOpen HQ45 Pro) with front USB, earphone/speakers and microphone ports

MSI KT3 Ultra ARU Socket A Motherboard with support for DDR memory and ATA 133 RAID controller

5 PCI slots, AGP 4x slot

AMD AthlonXP 2000+ 266MHz FSB

512MB PC2100 DDR Memory 266MHz

60GB HD 7200rpm EIDE Ultra DMA133

1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive

4 USB 2.0 ports, 4 USB 1.1 ports, 2 Serial Ports, 1 Parallel Port

On-Board Sound card A/C 97 compliant, 6 audio channels (MSI DVD 5.1ch. player included
)
Aopen (Burnproof) 40x12x48 CD-RW; Nero Burning ROM 5.5 and 1 blank CD-RW

MSI Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 64MB AGP graphics card with video-in and video-out (includes 3 games)

Logitech PS/2 keyboard and Logitech 3-button wheel mouse

Internal 56.6K v.92 PCI Modem (Intel chipset)

2-year Parts and Labour warranty
Free software installation manual
Includes Trend PC-cillin Antivirus 2002

Monitor & Operating System Software NOT INCLUDED

Cost=£699.95

The non-inclusion of monitor and software is no problem. As a first step, I would just use my Win98SE and my current 17in Philips minitor.

Any opinions?????

[Earthdog]

Looks like youve done pretty well there Mouse.

I personally shy away from anything Onboard. I prefer a PCI slot sound card ect. If it goes bad you buy another one. IF onboard goes bad you might end up having to buy another Motherboard. Sound cards are alot cheaper Depends on what the cost of the motherbaord is so I cant really say if its a bargain or not. Am glad youre getting a board with 5 PCI slots for exactly this reason.

Modem, get External. For security reasons they are much better than internal. If you keep the phone line plugged in (and most of us do) any time you arent home your computer can be dialed up and hacked, used as a tool in Denial of Service attacks, ect. Internal modems leave you vulnerable. Cant stress that enough. With External all you have to do is flick a switch and off she goes, safe and sound

MSI Geforce 4 ti 4200s have very loud fans. Loudest of any card on the market. Thats their only drawback. Benchmarking wise they are middle of the pack. Not bad.

GET THE 128 MEG VERSION!!!!!

Ill tell you why. The 64 meg cards have a faster clock speed. thats a fact. They will outperform the 128 meg versions to a certain point. BUT, my friend, AFTER that point the 128 meg versions SMOKE em.

Point in case: Doom 3 will run 80 megs worth of JUST TEXTURES. A 64 meg card simply CANNOT deal with that much data without taking a serious perfomance hit. A 128 meg card can run Doom 3 with ALL the detail set to its highest levels. A 64 meg card MUST have the detail tuned down in order to function without a noticable drop in frame rates.

My personal recommendation is the Asus V8420 Deluxe 128 meg (its a G4 ti 4200) unlike its other ti 4200 counterparts, it uses the same 3.3 nonasecond ram thats used in the faster 64 meg cousins, instead of 4.0 nanosecond ram like the otehr 128 meg cards.

You get a faster card with 128 meg of ram not only that but Asus Deluxe versions come with ALL the hardware recommended by nVidia. They dont rips you off on the hardware side, unlike everybody else.

Other than that, I think you did really well [img]smile.gif[/img] I think you may be getting ripped off on the price, but it sounds like a nice unit.

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/services/buy...converter.html
I calculated it to over $2,000 dollars Australian. Thats high. You should at least have a monitor in the deal.

[Mouse]

Thanks for the opinion/advice [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

[Earthdog]

If youd like to do a little research on the cards her here some links.

http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/8500_le.shtml

http://www.visiontek.com/g4_ti42_128.shtml

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzMx

http://www.amd3d.com/review/v8420/index.htm

http://www.neoseeker.com/Hardware/Video/Video_Cards/ There are a couple reviews here.

I could come up with about 30 more if you want em
Im planning on buying a ti4200 in about a weeks time, just waiting on my income tax check

This all got started because Azzy asked me if I could build him a computer and that he wanted good stuff, he just didnt know what to get. So I started doing the research on just about every concievable computer part. Toughest decision is the graphics card. Its the single most expensive (at least can be) part. Ive read about 92374923 reviews on various cards.

IMO the Geforce 4 ti 4200 is THE card to have. Half the price of a ti 4600 and not much slower, even overclockable to near ti 4600 levels. Youll be doin right with one of these puppies

I have to say that I agree with Earthdog. The 128MB version, or the 4600 would suit your PC much better.

The second thing is, Windows 98 SE will be a serious bottleneck for you as it just won't handle the RAM properly. I suggest going to XP as soon as you can.

Otherwise, the box looks great! I wonder if you could up the power supply. I had a 300W and it tended not to handle all the super wizz bang gadgetry that I had in there. I upgraded to 350W and all is hunky dory. I may just have had a bad power supply though.

Just a quick note to what Avi and Earthdog said... I would recommend the Ti 4600 both for sheer horsepower and for longevity, and should you go that route, I would recommend at least a 350w power supply. If, as i surmise, your gaming needs are essentially RPG or Tactical, and less FPS, the system you are contemplating should serve you well.
Cheers!

[adam warlock]

can you play Everquest on it? mine's a failure..... again



yeah you done well

[Animal]

Looks pretty good, just a couple of comments.

Go with USB 2.0, not 1.1. Microsoft will be releasing a service pack for XP with native USB 2.0 support very soon. In six months you'll be kicking yourself if you don't go 2.0. Also, DDR333 is a better alternative to 266. On a final note, the current AMD CPU's are old tech, they've pretty much reached their ceiling for speed. If you've got the cash go with the new 533FSB P4, or hold off for a few months for the new AMD cpu's.

[Earthdog]

Dont waste your money on a ti 4600 whatever you do. I recently joined a couple of other forums. These are computer related discussion boards.

9 out of 10 members at http://www.pchardwareforum.com/forum...p?s=&forumid=7
who bought a ti 4600 wish they had waited on the ti 4200. The ti 4200 will more than adequitely run ANY game made today and will still be recognised as top of the line (or near) quality for at least the next 2 years, probably 5.

The ti 4200 has almost the same frame rate at the ti 4600 at HALF the cost. To spend money on the ti 4600 is OVERKILL or ego based insanity

See for yourself: http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphi...418/index.html
http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphi...charts-01.html
And last but certainly not least... http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphi...charts-05.html
The benchmarks speak for themselves. You can overclock the ti 4200 to near ti 4600 speeds. So why spend the money? The ti 4200 is literally HALF the price. JMO but if you buy a ti 4600, youre nuts.

Yes definitely get a bigger power supply. Many of the members at HotHarware recommend 400 watts or higher to make sure your system never lacks juice. The Geforce 4 ti cards suck it up.

Most of the other stuff in your unit will be covered by more than just the sellers warrantee. Asus ti cards all come with a lifetime warrantee. (unless im dreadfully mistaken)

I think the MSI cards only come with a 3 year warrantee. Ive been looking and dont see how long their warrantee is.
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/produc...&MODEL=MS-8886 and http://www.msi.com.tw/program/produc...&MODEL=MS-8870

The first link there is for the best ti4200 MSI makes. Its got all the extra hardware you would need for Video in/out. Scope em out [img]smile.gif[/img]