Dream PC? What does everyone think of this?

[rottielover]

Hello to all!

I'm really new to this site, but not new to computers.

I would like to know everyone's opinion on what I think would be "my dream game PC".

AMD Thunderbird 1ghz

Giga-Byte GA-7ZX (I'm not worried about overclocking)

PC 133mhz 256meg RAM -not sure what brand suggestions?

3DFX Voodoo 5 5500

Sound Blaster LIVE! Platinum

I'm also having problems locating fans for the Thunderbird, most places say "Not in Stock". Anyone know of any that ARE avalible?

 

[Auric]

At least replace that stank viddy card with a Radeon.

 

[steelthorn]

I think the voodoo 5500 video card is excellent! I' have one and it's the best video card I've ever had.

 

[mpitts]

Looks nice!

I would go with either Mushkin (http://www.mushkin.com)or Crucial (http://www.crucial.com)RAM.

What types of games will you be playing on it? You may be better suited with a GeForce DDR or GeForce2 GTS.

 

[Auric]

I have an S4. It is the best card I've ever had. That does not mean I recommend it to everyone over superior products. It looks to me that the Radeon is the best available at the moment so that should go in a dream system.

 

[rottielover]

I like to play flight sim's

F/A-18 from Janes
Falcon 4.0 from Microprose
Etc. etc.

I also play Rouge Spear sometimes.

I have read the reviews of both the Voodoo5 and Radeon cards.

However, look at ATI's reputation. Thier Rage products had VERY crappy drivers. 3DFX and Matrox have the best history as far as drivers and compatiability go.

If the Radeon card can get 30 fps more than Voodoo5 in benchmarks but I can't get the drivers working what good is that??!?

Just a thought.

BTW I haven't really looked at the GForce cards, what features do they offer over the Voodoo5 card?

BTW: This "dream system" is going to be my reality in just about 1 month, so I would like products that are currently avalible also.

 

[inquis]

you will want mushkin or crucial memory, as someone i think has already said. Now, I would buy it in two 128mb sticks instead of one 256, because I think with that mobo you can interleave the memory and get better performance. you could not do that with just one stick.

for the kind of gaming you are going to do, get a voodoo5. you will love the FSAA for the kind of games you play... if you were more into hardcore must-have-more-framerate games, go geforce2.

you might also save some cash if you went lower-powered Duron instead of hardcore Tbird... the 1gig Tbird won't give an appreciable improvement over a 700mhz Duron, though you WILL save several hundred dollars. The top-of-the-line cards today are hampered by memory bandwidth issues... there would be little difference in gaming speed between a 1000mhz and a 700mhz chip in your case.

hope this helps, inquis

 

[rottielover]

I'm very confused on the video card now,

Help me pick.

Choice is between

Guillemot/Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS 64MB
Voodoo5 5500


I read the reviews on both, and the GeForce2 card (the 3D Prophet) seems to well outperform the Voodoo5 card, but yet Inquis mentions FSAA. Sorry what is FSAA?

I'm kinda leaning tword the GeForce because the games I like seem to like raw power in a video card.

Also, If I go with a 700mhz Duron instead of a 1ghz Tbird, What kind of performance hit am I taking? Should I wait for a mboard that can overclock the duron, or just suck it up and run at 700mhz for the next 3 years.

 

[Mikewarrior2]

3dfx has the best driver history?

man, you must not use win2k...... or real opengl apps... or q3 for that matter...




Mike

 

[Kill_Phil]

you said you play flight sims, and those games are where the voodoo 5 is excellent because it has fsaa (full screen anti alaising)
what it does is removes the jagged lines from a scene and it does it very good too. have a look at this to check out fsaa more in depth

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1276&p=19
"The games that FSAA truly shines in don't need a video card with a 667MP/s fill rate, they don't even need a card with a 480MP/s fill rate, they run just fine on something like a Voodoo3 or a TNT2 which makes the performance hit caused by 2 or 4 sample FSAA much easier to bear."

 

[Howard]

The GTS does FSAA, and better to boot.

 

[Sugadaddy]

I'd go for a 900 T-Bird, which isn't far from 1gig, but probably costs half as much. For the vidcard, Radeon 64mb ddr, or hercules geforce2 gts 64mb ddr.

 

[Auric]

I think people get confused into thinking 3dfx has good driver history based only on the games the company paid to have written for their proprietary driver.

As for being better for racing and flight sims, I understand they are limited to 1024x768 in DirectX otherwise only one of the chips is enabled. Sounds weak to me.

Anyway, if you have a month then re-evaluate then. Lots can change in a month

 

[damocles]

I would go for the Tbird instead of the Duron, though i would prob go for the 900 as suggested above.

 

[Prodigy^]

Hellooooooooooo?

the guy plays Flight sims, and we all know that this is one of the best type of games to use FSAA in. So get the V5. it's a nice system as well although.....do you really need the platinum? do you do any pro music work? I'd just go with a live value

 

[Czar]

Yeah, change the SBLive Platinium to SBLive Value and then get some good speakers for the money you save.

If you in the near future plan on using Win2000 then I´d start to think about changing the Voodoo card. 3dfx has good Win9x drivers for Direct3d and games that work with their minigl drivers. With OpenGL and Win2000 then it is not so good.

Go with a GeForce2 GTS card instead if it suits your needs better.

Ati hasnt got any better drivers than 3dfx. Only Matrox (excluding the G200) and nVidia has had good drivers for all OS's. But thats only from my experience.

 

[hans007]

3dfx has some pretty good drivers. ATIs suck. Nvidia's are good. I've got a matrox g400 right now and well their drivers aren't all that great for windows 2000. Get crucial ram , its an actual brand the huge OEMs use unlike mushkin which is not a brand. Or get some corsair. You can probably use any FCPGA fan. Just read that hardocp article about feet. I guess a global win fop32 should be fine. Are you getting a microatx case? I've got one with my athlon classic 1ghz and its dope. The ga-7zm would be cool in that.

 

[Czar]

<< 3dfx has some pretty good drivers. ATIs suck. Nvidia's are good. I've got a matrox g400 right now and well their drivers aren't all that great for windows 2000 >>



I a gree with all of that except the G400, I have a g400 at home and Win2000 and everything runs smoothly, no problems. But I must say that all of them could use some improvement in Win2000.

 

[Robor]

Yucky: Since when does a GeForce2 GTS do FSAA better than the V5/5500? I haven't seen a single review that said anything like that. Faster yes, better FSAA, nope.

If he's going to play flight sims the the V5/5500 is the way to go because it's got the best FSAA available. However, I had a V5/5500 for a while (returned it because I didn't think it was worth $300) and tried 4X FSAA @ 1024x768 in Rogue Spear and it's unplayable. 2X was just fine but didn't eliminate *all* of the jaggies like 4X.

Rob

 

[Auric]

I'm diggin what Paulson sez. Is this thing supposed to be a dream machine or not? Ditto the SB Plat ain't no different than a Value for games. A phat drive is going to help for full installs but gobs of RAM ain't if you're going to run Win9x.

 

[hans007]

the g400 i'm running one right now in win2k. 2d is fine now after the whql released 5.04 drivers. 3d (especially in unreal tournament) looks bad , like some things still dont get rendered right. And opengl is painfully slow in w2k. Direct 3d is decent. Too they haven't released that minigl thing in w2k.

 

[rottielover]

ok UPDATE

I went for the Guillemot/Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS 64MB (GeForce2 card).

I'm going to run Win 2K Pro

Got the 700mhz T-bird

Got the SB Live! Plat, hey what the heck right? I already have some good speakers.

I think for now I'm going to have to use some 100mhz Dimm's I have from another PC (I've run out of the green stuff). Untill I can afford memory in the 133mhz.

 

[SUOrangeman]

AMD 760MP Dual Socket-A Motherboard
2 x Thunderbird 800 Socket-A
2 x Socket-A Golden Orb Cooler (TDUFR01)
2 x 256MB PC133 (CAS2? ECC?)
2 x IBM Deskstar 75GXP 30GB (DTLA-307030)
Promise Fasttrak ATA-100 RAID PCI (or onboard)
DVD/CDRW Combo Drive (Burn-proof?)
Zip 250MB ATAPI Internal Drive
3.5&quot; 1.44MB Floppy Drive
GeForce MX TwinView (or Single with onboard video, Video Capture?)
2 x 19&quot; SVGA
Aureal SQ2500 PCI
Klipsch Promedia v2-400
Telex USB Digital Stereo Headset (H-551)
3com 10/100MB PCI NIC (or onboard)
Microsoft Natural Pro Keyboard
Microsoft Intellimouse Optical **2.0**
Full Tower ATX case, 300W power supply (casters?)
4 x Senfu Super Box Starge Units

Man, I can't wait until Christmas!

-SUO