StarDestroyer.Net BBS

And at present there are several good deals going that fit my price range and desires. I'm trying to avoid spending over £800, though it's not disasterous if it goes a little over that.

The candidates...

From evesham.com (UK based online company):

Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processor
512MB dual channel DDR RAM (PC3200) 400MHz
120GB 7200rpm hard drive with 8MB buffer
128MB DDR ATI Radeon 9200 graphics with TV-out & DVI
17" Viewsonic E70f+SB (CRT) monitor

Price: £769.00 inc VAT

From Dell.co.uk

Processor
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor at 3.0GHz with HT Technology and 800MHz fsb
Operating system
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition and Microsoft® Works 7.0
On-Line Promotion
Was 256MB, Now 512MB DDR RAM
Monitor
17" Analogue Flat Panel Monitor (17.0" v.i.s)
Harddrive
40GB Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
Optical Drive
48x DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo Drive
Graphic Card
Integrated Intel® Extreme Graphics
Speakers
Dell ADA425 Stereo Speakers with Subwoofer
On-Line Promotion
Save £671Inc. VAT when you choose an accessory

Cost: £749 inc VAT

From Tiny.com:

rocessor - AMD Athlon 64 3200 Processor
Operating System - Microsoft Windows XP Home
Memory - 1024MB DDR RAM
Hard Disk - 200GB 7200 RPM ATA-100 Drive
Optical 1 - 8x Multiformat (+/-) DVD-Rewiter / DVD Copier Drive
Optical 2 - 16x DVD-ROM Drive
Graphics - 256MB ATi Radeon 9200 All-In-Wonder Graphics with PCTV & TV Out
PC-TV System - PC-TV System, Media Software and Remote Control
Modem - Dedicated high speed Supanet optimised 56K modem*
Internet Access - Supanet Internet Access Preloaded
Network - 10/100 Ethernet Port for Home Networking
Firewire - 2x 1394 Firewire Ports
Sound - 6 Channel Sound Onboard
Keyboard etc. - Multimedia Keyboard & Optical Mouse
Ports etc. - 1.44MB Floppy Drive, USB2.0 Ports x4, Parallel & Standard Ports
Case - Full ATX Tower Case with Upgrade Capacity (7 Drive Bays)
Motherboard - MS6741 K8 Micro ATX Motherboard
Software 1 - Microsoft Works Version 7
Software 2 - Microsoft Office 2003 - 60 Day Trial
Software 3 - Cyberlink PowerDVD Software Suite
Software 4 - Pinnacle DVD Copying Suite
Model - S2822

(Note: the Tiny PC comes without a monitor- one can be bought for an extra £99, a 17" SVGA CRT monitor)

£698.85 inc. vat (without monitor)

I did have a look at Advent computers and Time computers, but could find nothing there that was reasonbly priced for what it offered.

Avoid the Dell, you'll regret it if you tried to run some games on it with it only having an integrated Intel Extreme Graphics chip. I like the model from Tiny.com the most, though it is more expensive than the model from evesham.com. The question I have for you then is do you have an existing monitor that you could reuse, or must you get a new one?

Dude built one yourself and save hundreds. A month ago i build myself a Athlon 2400XP. Buy buying the bits myself it only cost 490 quid.

My specs are:

Athlon 2400XP
K7 Triton Mother Board
1024 Mb Memory
80 GB Hard Drive
CD RW/DVD Rom Combi Drive
ChiefTec case.

Also i put in ultra silent fans and replaced the PSU with something quieter.

try here or Ebay auctions for cheap parts.

Thanks for the advice. In the end I went for the Tiny model, should be delivered in around 10 days. Decided that I already have a monitor, speakers, and can pick up a cheaper flatscreen monitor if I sniff around a bit.

Shame about the graphics card, though, since you were spending so much on this machine you should have gone for something better, unless you don't intend to play any of the newer games.

Vohu Manah wrote:Avoid the Dell, you'll regret it if you tried to run some games on it with it only having an integrated Intel Extreme Graphics chip. I like the model from Tiny.com the most, though it is more expensive than the model from evesham.com. The question I have for you then is do you have an existing monitor that you could reuse, or must you get a new one?

The Radeon 9200 is not much better, but UT2004 should be playable in medium settings, forget about Farcry, HL2 or Doom3 at anything but minimum settings.

Shogoki wrote:

Vohu Manah wrote:Avoid the Dell, you'll regret it if you tried to run some games on it with it only having an integrated Intel Extreme Graphics chip. I like the model from Tiny.com the most, though it is more expensive than the model from evesham.com. The question I have for you then is do you have an existing monitor that you could reuse, or must you get a new one?

The Radeon 9200 is not much better, but UT2004 should be playable in medium settings, forget about Farcry, HL2 or Doom3 at anything but minimum settings.

Despite that it's a 256MB card?

Shogoki wrote:Shame about the graphics card, though, since you were spending so much on this machine you should have gone for something better, unless you don't intend to play any of the newer games.

Well, the machine isn't that expensive (go into a PC World or Dixons store and the same spec machine will be over £900), and all of the rewviews of the graphics card I've read have been favourable- great value for money and capable of running recent games- just not always in perfect resolution.

Sothis wrote:

Shogoki wrote:

Vohu Manah wrote:Avoid the Dell, you'll regret it if you tried to run some games on it with it only having an integrated Intel Extreme Graphics chip. I like the model from Tiny.com the most, though it is more expensive than the model from evesham.com. The question I have for you then is do you have an existing monitor that you could reuse, or must you get a new one?

The Radeon 9200 is not much better, but UT2004 should be playable in medium settings, forget about Farcry, HL2 or Doom3 at anything but minimum settings.

Despite that it's a 256MB card?

if the bus is only 64bits the extra memory won't do very much. If it is 128 it is better. I don't think there are R9200 's with 256 bits bus, so better check what you have.

I was going to say about taking out the existing card in my PC and sticking it into the new PC when it gets here. Unfortunately the existing card is a Radeon 7500. However, said card has run GTA Vice City, Call of Duty, FIFA 2004 and Rugby 2004 nearly flawlessly (in the case of GTA and COD, completely flawlessly. The other two games might be more to do with the glitches with the PC than the graphics card, which is the main reason why I getting a new one). It is possible to have two graphics cards running concurrently in one machine, or is that a really bad idea?

Sothis wrote:

Shogoki wrote:Shame about the graphics card, though, since you were spending so much on this machine you should have gone for something better, unless you don't intend to play any of the newer games.

Well, the machine isn't that expensive (go into a PC World or Dixons store and the same spec machine will be over £900), and all of the rewviews of the graphics card I've read have been favourable- great value for money and capable of running recent games- just not always in perfect resolution.

Yes, it's a nice graphics card, for year 2001, its basically a 8500 with directx9 support added in, but it's woefully underpowered by today standards, there’s even a PCI version of that card, you'll realize if you ever try to play the newer dx9 games, unfortunately the 256MB of RAM are quite useless, as the card itself it’s not powerful enough to run the newer games with enough detail to actually take advantage of all that memory, older games like vice city should be ok, their top video memory requirements are probably below 128MB, though, but even then you’ll have to sacrifice some performance.

The rest of the machine is quite beefy, you should still be able to play newer games, but the video card is going to be a serious bottle neck, a much better option would have been a radeon 9600 based card, for just a bit more.

Not all is bad, though, in fact it may turn out to be a nice choice, if you wait for the next gen cards, and you want to play the latest games, you can get one of the best current cards then, like the Radeon 9800 pro or xt or the nVidia 5950, at bargain prices, combined with your machine it should be enough to breeze through HL2 and Doom 3.

As for getting the 2 cards in the same PC, it’s doable as long as one of them is a PCI or the motherboard has 2 AGP ports (which I’m sure yours doesn’t), but it’s only useful if you are planning on running a multimonitor setup.

Weird- how come then, that I play FIFA 2004, a graphically intensive game, on a 7500 card, and Rugby 2004, another graphically intensive game, on the same card, as well as GTA: VC, yet a 9200 card will struggle with this year's releases?

Anyhoo, like I said, so far all the reviews I've found say it will run games well, just not brilliant. But talk more of these next-gen ones

Sothis wrote:Weird- how come then, that I play FIFA 2004, a graphically intensive game, on a 7500 card, and Rugby 2004, another graphically intensive game, on the same card, as well as GTA: VC, yet a 9200 card will struggle with this year's releases?

Anyhoo, like I said, so far all the reviews I've found say it will run games well, just not brilliant. But talk more of these next-gen ones

That's because non of those games are graphically intensive, try Far Cry for a sample of what graphically intensive game is.

I know how Vice City and FIFA 2004 work on a 7500, because my parent's computer happens to have one, and i also had a 8500 on my own computer before the 9800 i have now, and well, i guess it depends on what you consider good, but in order to make those games run smoothly i have to sacrifice too much detail compared to my current card, so I can’t say I like how they look in order to be playable, my 9800 can run them all as smooth as butter with all detail to the max, plus 8x AA and AF.

So call me spoiled if you want, but after seeing a game running with AA i just can't go back.

And anyway, like I said, perhaps you don’t intend to get into HL2 or D3, should be able to run them, but I wouldn’t like the result.

I find myself having to agree, a 9200 is only an interim graphics card if you want to game seriously. My girlfriends last computer had a 9200SE card installed and it barely held it's own with any of the details turned up on it in America's Army (of course, with the built-in S3 SavagePro DDR, the game was unplayable).