Doom3 Capable Budget Upgrade? Update: Bought Xbox Instead, But New Dell Deal Linked

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: Markfw900

Originally posted by: sxr7171

Originally posted by: Markfw900
I have only one comment to add that hasn't been said already. I just got a new Dell 2400 at work. This thing is a piece of crap! It goes crazy and I have to re-boot it. Several other people on my floor have the same problem. Two of them bought Dells for home, then wanted me to upgrade them, Then I looked at them and had to tell them, "sorry, it doesn't have a AGP slot, or no room to expand memory, or no room for another drive", etc.... And then they said, well could I just replace the motherboard, and again the answer was NOPE.

And I am a father with a teenager. If you don't take these peoples advice, don't get mad when you son tells you he has a piece of crap.

Anyone who buys a 2400 with the expectation to upgrade is quite dense at best. The only reason Dell introduced the 2400 was to take some of the ultra cheap-ass market away from the likes of eMachines, HP, and Compaq. It was meant to target the people who buy their computers at Best Buy. A 4600 is a minimum from Dell, and you can find one for a really good price every once in a while.

I think you missed my point. My company of 120,000 employees decided to upgrade the computers for my division. They bought about 10,000 just for this "refresh" as they call it, and these are for business use only. They are still crap! and for a gaming system, it requires much more than a business system requires. Also, I don't know that the model number is 2400, it is just a little desktop box with a 2.4 ghz processor, a laptop type CDROM drive and integrated everything, and it is unstable as hell. My point was that their supposedly stable business systems are crap IMO. I would NEVER buy a Dell (unless they could sell the whole system for less that I could buy the CPU/memory/HD)

I had a Dell at work too, and it was a bottom of the line Optiplex. I hated it because it was slow and crappy. We're all enthusiasts here so we are all used to nice machines. As much as I hated that Dell, it was stable and it didn't really give me problems. Once in a while a particular unit may be defective, but Dell has an excellent track record as a maker of business desktops like IBM has an excellent track record of making business laptops. If they all sucked and they were all so unstable, then companies would start buying something else.

When I had a trading floor position we had dual processor Dell workstations and they performed very well, and were stable as anything could be. The entire trading floor used Dell machines in what was a mission critical environment. I really don't care what anyone thinks of Dell, but you have to give credit where it's due. They make life easy for people who are seeking decent machines at a good price (sometimes you have wait for a good price though) with no hassle.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: AIWGuru

yes it does. a little over 600 W/ winXP. i posted this previously in this thread.

Yeah, but when he buys the dell he's also buying a $300 LCD. That's fine if he wants one. If he doesn't really feel like spending $300 on an LCD and could live with his current monitor or a cheap CRT, he's spending too much with Dell.

What I'm saying is that the promotions change. One day it is a free monitor, the next day it is a $300 rebate. So if you wait, you're going to get a really deal on a Dell. Didn't I already that mention that in my post though?

 

[Mik3y]

i wonder if any bosses would allow people to build their own pc's and bring them to work to use instead of the crap they have?

 

[Markfw]

had a Dell at work too, and it was a bottom of the line Optiplex. I hated it because it was slow and crappy. We're all enthusiasts here so we are all used to nice machines. As much as I hated that Dell, it was stable and it didn't really give me problems. Once in a while a particular unit may be defective, but Dell has an excellent track record as a maker of business desktops like IBM has an excellent track record of making business laptops. If they all sucked and they were all so unstable, then companies would start buying something else.

You missed my point again. Even IF I even acknowledge that for the most part you can get a cheap business machine that is not upgradeable, but does the job at work from Dell most of the time, they certainly are the LAST machine on earth to buy for a gaming machine for even a semi serious gamer, OR anybody who EVER wants to upgrade it.

 

[Ornery]

Originally posted by: AIWGuru

Originally posted by: Ornery
WTF are you laughing about, nimrod? Have you finally gotten over the FACT that it DOES have an AGP slot? And, you were so GD sure it didn't! Now I'm supposed to listen to whatever else you have to add? FOAD.

First, keep the personal insults out of it.
Second, I was basing the fact that it has no AGP slot on what other people in this thread posted.
You remind me of someone plugging their fingers and singing "LA LA LA LA LA! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR THIS!"

I don't know what came over me, that was TOTALLY uncalled for. My apologies, AIW.

 

[nick1985]

so whats the update ornery, what have you decided on?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Mik3y
i wonder if any bosses would allow people to build their own pc's and bring them to work to use instead of the crap they have?

Short answer: yes. Can you tell which two of my rigs I keep at work? Hint, they both have 15000rpm SCSI drives.

Incidentally, with the 30 "kids" being nForce 220D (classic nForce with IGP and single-channel memory controller), I have no problem endorsing nForce or nForce2 for people wanting stable systems, as long as they don't go and pair up the nice boards with cheese-O-matic RAM & PSUs. They're a delight to support. Got parts for another six of those coming in on Monday

 

[Ornery]

Originally posted by: nick1985
so whats the update ornery, what have you decided on?

The whole thing has gotten too expensive to just do on a whim. I wouldn't mind spending the $400 for the Dell, along with a $75.00 video upgrade, but more than that is getting to be some kind of investment. Since it will obviously require more than that... pffffttt.

My wife isn't too keen on another console, so right now I've got nuthin'!

 

[AIWGuru]

Originally posted by: nick1985
i was under the assumption of no monitor needed

Yeah, but dell doesn't give you the choice. You have to buy that $300 LCD if you want the pleasure of doing business with them.
re: the person who said that promos change with time. Well, if this was a birthday gift, that doesn't really help him, does it? Anyway, he's not going to go for it so it's all very moot.

 

[AIWGuru]

Originally posted by: Ornery

Originally posted by: AIWGuru

Originally posted by: Ornery
WTF are you laughing about, nimrod? Have you finally gotten over the FACT that it DOES have an AGP slot? And, you were so GD sure it didn't! Now I'm supposed to listen to whatever else you have to add? FOAD.

First, keep the personal insults out of it.
Second, I was basing the fact that it has no AGP slot on what other people in this thread posted.
You remind me of someone plugging their fingers and singing "LA LA LA LA LA! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR THIS!"

I don't know what came over me, that was TOTALLY uncalled for. My apologies, AIW.

Happens to the best of us Forget about it.

 

[nick1985]

Originally posted by: Ornery

Originally posted by: nick1985
so whats the update ornery, what have you decided on?

The whole thing has gotten too expensive to just do on a whim. I wouldn't mind spending the $400 for the Dell, along with a $75.00 video upgrade, but more than that is getting to be some kind of investment. Since it will obviously require more than that... pffffttt.

My wife isn't too keen on another console, so right now I've got nuthin'!

there is no way that rig will run doom 3 with decency.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: Markfw900

had a Dell at work too, and it was a bottom of the line Optiplex. I hated it because it was slow and crappy. We're all enthusiasts here so we are all used to nice machines. As much as I hated that Dell, it was stable and it didn't really give me problems. Once in a while a particular unit may be defective, but Dell has an excellent track record as a maker of business desktops like IBM has an excellent track record of making business laptops. If they all sucked and they were all so unstable, then companies would start buying something else.

You missed my point again. Even IF I even acknowledge that for the most part you can get a cheap business machine that is not upgradeable, but does the job at work from Dell most of the time, they certainly are the LAST machine on earth to buy for a gaming machine for even a semi serious gamer, OR anybody who EVER wants to upgrade it.

Sure but there are other Dells for people who don't want to build their own. Consider the 4600 or the 8300. They are fully upgradeable. A 2400 is the last machine I would buy for anything other as a foot rest. The Dell servers we had were upgraded with more memory and newer processors as we needed to run more and more complex financial models. A 4600 can have anything replaced that needs replacing or upgrading except the motherboard (which has to be Dell), but there is a warranty in case it breaks, and I have never needed to "upgrade" a motherboard before.

I've had a 8100 for about 2 1/2 years now, and I have upgraded the audio, video, hard drives, memory, and added a TV tuner. I still have 3 PCI slot left for all kinds of stuff I might want to put into it. They aren't that bad if you're a busy person. If you buy an el cheapo 2400 or bottom of the line Dell then don't expect to be able to upgrade it.

BTW, have you seen the Anandtech review of the Dell XPS as a gaming machine? It's not everyone's cup of tea but it has a target market.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: AIWGuru

Originally posted by: nick1985
i was under the assumption of no monitor needed

Yeah, but dell doesn't give you the choice. You have to buy that $300 LCD if you want the pleasure of doing business with them.
re: the person who said that promos change with time. Well, if this was a birthday gift, that doesn't really help him, does it? Anyway, he's not going to go for it so it's all very moot.

AGAIN, did you ignore my post that says that if you wait you should be able to get it with a $300 rebate instead of the monitor? Or do you keep ignoring every point that goes against any of your statements?

 

[AIWGuru]

Originally posted by: sxr7171

Originally posted by: AIWGuru

Originally posted by: nick1985
i was under the assumption of no monitor needed

Yeah, but dell doesn't give you the choice. You have to buy that $300 LCD if you want the pleasure of doing business with them.
re: the person who said that promos change with time. Well, if this was a birthday gift, that doesn't really help him, does it? Anyway, he's not going to go for it so it's all very moot.

AGAIN, did you ignore my post that says that if you wait you should be able to get it with a $300 rebate instead of the monitor? Or do you keep ignoring every point that goes against any of your statements?

I think it's YOU who doesn't read. You quoted the text, so you should have read it. This addresses the rebate issue:
"re: the person who said that promos change with time. Well, if this was a birthday gift, that doesn't really help him, does it? (since he would need it within a time frame) Anyway, he's not going to go for it so it's all very moot."

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: Markfw900

Originally posted by: sxr7171

Originally posted by: Markfw900
I have only one comment to add that hasn't been said already. I just got a new Dell 2400 at work. This thing is a piece of crap! It goes crazy and I have to re-boot it. Several other people on my floor have the same problem. Two of them bought Dells for home, then wanted me to upgrade them, Then I looked at them and had to tell them, "sorry, it doesn't have a AGP slot, or no room to expand memory, or no room for another drive", etc.... And then they said, well could I just replace the motherboard, and again the answer was NOPE.

And I am a father with a teenager. If you don't take these peoples advice, don't get mad when you son tells you he has a piece of crap.

Anyone who buys a 2400 with the expectation to upgrade is quite dense at best. The only reason Dell introduced the 2400 was to take some of the ultra cheap-ass market away from the likes of eMachines, HP, and Compaq. It was meant to target the people who buy their computers at Best Buy. A 4600 is a minimum from Dell, and you can find one for a really good price every once in a while.

I think you missed my point. My company of 120,000 employees decided to upgrade the computers for my division. They bought about 10,000 just for this "refresh" as they call it, and these are for business use only. They are still crap! and for a gaming system, it requires much more than a business system requires. Also, I don't know that the model number is 2400, it is just a little desktop box with a 2.4 ghz processor, a laptop type CDROM drive and integrated everything, and it is unstable as hell. My point was that their supposedly stable business systems are crap IMO. I would NEVER buy a Dell (unless they could sell the whole system for less that I could buy the CPU/memory/HD)

The small form factor Optiplexes rock...but aside from them, Poweredges and Precisions...*shrug*. Even then, however, you get what you pay for. The nice ones cost extra. Bottom-of-the-line ones still suck.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: sxr7171
Yeah but if you equipped it with a $150 video card it will be acceptable. A PIII or Athlon 1 Ghz isn't all that shabby.

While I'm going slightly OT here(wait, aren't we there already?), I wouldn't overestimate a 1ghz chip. 1ghz isn't exactly slow of course, but you have to keep in mind what Doom 3 brings; besides its advanced graphics and sound, it's coming with a full-fledged physics engine, and that doesn't come cheap. Unless there's a way to turn down/off physics(unlikely since scripting likely requires it), it's going to maul that CPU well before it ever gets to graphics and sound.:Q

 

[smartsam]

What an eventful thread...so much debate about existence or non-existence I thought we were talking about the Loch Ness monster or life on other planets, not AGP slots in Dells... sxr171, thanks for a little moderation in the flamefest, though I am also of the AMD persuasion; indeed my rig closely matches most of the recommendations,and I am fully satisied with its performance. Those of you who insisted on including the OS price--of course you've got to do that, though as to being able to sell the Dell OS--does it come with an XP CD, or are you talking about the COA, and can you legally sell that from a Dell? Also, should ornery decide to go with that one suggested Dell deal, he could always fleabay the LCD and make the $300 back that way.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: smartsam
What an eventful thread...so much debate about existence or non-existence I thought we were talking about the Loch Ness monster or life on other planets, not AGP slots in Dells... sxr171, thanks for a little moderation in the flamefest, though I am also of the AMD persuasion; indeed my rig closely matches most of the recommendations,and I am fully satisied with its performance. Those of you who insisted on including the OS price--of course you've got to do that, though as to being able to sell the Dell OS--does it come with an XP CD, or are you talking about the COA, and can you legally sell that from a Dell? Also, should ornery decide to go with that one suggested Dell deal, he could always fleabay the LCD and make the $300 back that way.

The co-worker's Dell 4600(?) that I worked on had been chewed up by spyware and one trojan, and I had to reinstall WinXP on it. It did come with an actual Windows CD that did not have any inherent Dell-ification to it (which is nice, I hate having a bunch of babysitting software crammed down my throat). The WinXP license sticker was stuck to the computer case, of course, and the CD said it was "for purchase with a new Dell only," so the finer points of transferring the license would probably require that the substantial part of the system goes with it (case and motherboard perhaps).

 

[smartsam]

That clears a few things up.... thanks.

 

[smartsam]

Mech, what the heck do you do with with all those boxen? Substitute for Pixar's render farm when it's down?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: smartsam
Mech, what the heck do you do with with all those boxen? Substitute for Pixar's render farm when it's down?

Meaning my 30 "kids?" Unlike the other systems, those don't belong to me, I just built them; they're the property of the non-profit agency where I work as the bottom-rung IT guy.

The fleet there now consists of about 80 systems ranging from PentiumII 350's on up to the AthlonXP 2400+ systems on nForce 220D, plus one nForce2 system and one KT333 system. They don't have a lot of money so I provide my own "tools" at my expense. It may sound foolish, but hey... I've survived two rounds of layoffs. So far.

 

[RussianSensation]

I think if his son is so used to playing consoles on the TV screen, then running doom 3 at 640x480 or 800x600 with low detail settings can be accomplished at 40-60FPS with a Geforce 4 4200 64mb for mere $75.

Half-Life 2 Averaging 37 frames on Geforce 4 4600 @1024 res
further it shows 60 frames and 36 frames respectively in other tests.
Doom 3 - Geforce 4 4200 averaging 38 frames @1024

Might I point out top cards are managing 45-55 frames at 1280x1024 in doom 3. All this nonsense talk about 'our' computers not being able to handle doom 3 and half life 2 is getting on my nerves. With AA and AF turned on yes, they will not be able to play them smoothly but how much of a difference does it really make in those first person shooters where you run fast anyways and the graphics are already beautiful enough? AA and AF are luxury items not a necessity and no one cared for them 2 years ago when they were still available and still playable even back then. Now if a game can't play using those features everyone starts flipping out. You show me 1 game that looks better at 1024x768 with medium detail with 4AA/8AF then at 1600x1200 with 0AA/0AF with high detail (which will both give you identical frame rates in most games due to the performance hit of the prior) and then argue just how important these features are. And also the difference between direct x 8.1 and direct x 9.0 games? a couple shiny water effects, some new lightning effects ala need for speed underground, and shinier reflections in far cry? Really worth $210 for that new Radeon 9800 PRo aren't they? For me antialiasing and anisotropic filtering and these features are worth it, but for his son, i bet he could care less. We've accustomed ourselves to the best eye candy and 200 frames per second when our monitors only support 75-85 frames at 1600x1200 just to see our card waste 60% of it's capability.

When i was little I cared about graphics, but gameplay was always most important. I will not buy doom 3 for graphics I could care less. In conclusion, 2500+xp, 512mb ram, geforce 4 4200 will play doom 3 well enough.

The fact of the matter is even my pathetic radeon 8500 can play any game out there at 1024x768 and still deliver better performance and visuals for an equivalent game on a console and tV set. Yes, latest cards offer better eye candy, but for his son it will already look better regardless. Why break a wallet for a 9600 Pro or 9800Pro when he probably doesn't even know what AA and AF stand for?

 

[AIWGuru]

Everything you've said is true. That's why I advocate the cards I do.
Anyway, that build of DOOM3 is far from final, aswell.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: DopeFiend
You know what guys? I think we're wasting our breath here.
The guy wants a Dell. Let him buy a Dell and experience the India-based Tech Support for himself.

here here. personally i think he'll need it. less headaches to boot, no chance he'll ah heck something up. if his son wants to play q3 at a decent frame rate, he can buy his own pc, otherwise its a lost cause. ornery should just buy the kid an xbox or something.

 

[Ornery]

This may be the last post here for a while. Just want to say thanks for the help, and crash course in new video card, and AMD news. Hell, ancient news as far as some of you are concerned, I bet! None of this info will go to waste, because I'm archiving this topic.

While the AT Forums server wasn't accessible, I studied Barton info, as well as current Graphic card performance, and even glanced at 800MHz FSB info. That's enough for now. I've got to find a birthday present!

It's too late to order anything, and be sure it will arrive in time. I've already decided the PC upgrade is too expensive and involved to just slap together at the last minute. My wife may have to get used to the idea of a third console, 'cause that's all I can think of. I'm going to see what kind of bundles I can put together locally...

Thanks Again!