Hows this for a gaming pc?

[MiNK]

Intel 875P Chipset Motherboard for Intel Socket 478.

SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON 9600 Video Card, 256MB DDR, 128-bit.

Intel Pentium 4/ 2.8C GHz 800MHz FSB, 512K Cache, Hyper Threading Technology.

Kingston ValueRAM Dual Channel Kit 184 Pin 1G(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200.

Maxtor 160GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive.

what could be improved so long as the price doesnt go up too much.

 

[bootoo]

I know absolutely nothing about pentium 4 systems but I'd go for a 9600xt, a 9600 pro, if you can find one a 9500 pro (I adore mine) rather than the 9600. I'm seeing tasty deals on 9700 pro's all around used and new. Mmm, 9700 pro...

 

[DaveSimmons]

Welcome to the forums! Here are two steps to becoming a better forums citizen:

Step one : read a few of the many similar threads in General Hardware before posting.

Step two: post your hardware question in General Hardware instead of in the Software forum. (And apply this "use the right forum" philosophy to future posts as well.)

 

[Davegod]

for a gaming PC, a plain 9600 doesnt really cut it. I'd suggest at least a 9600XT, but really I'd be thinking about a 9700pro or 9800pro. That doesnt exactly fit with "so long as the price doesnt go up too much", but tbh unless you fancy upgrading the plain-9600 sometime in the non too distant future...

could save some cash (i.e. to put towards the faster vid card) by going for a single 512mb stick of ram - which leaves you open to buy the second one for a nice & easy upgrade sometime later.

Also I thought seagate were meant to make the best SATA drives (discounting Raptors) since they're native SATA, probably not much in it though. www.storagereview.com is supposed to be the best place for looking up hard drives.

 

[techwanabe]

Originally posted by: Davegod
for a gaming PC, a plain 9600 doesnt really cut it. .

Well, it all depends... once you are getting into that territory, the improvements are much less noticable as you go up in video cards.

It all boils down to balancing cost with performance. If your loaded with cash, the argument is always in favor of getting the best and fastest. Fastest CPU, fastest hard drives (SATA) and fastest video card. There is a logical cut off in cost/benefit though. That cutt off is always a moving target, but look at each component and go up to the fastest bestest item before the price jumps alot. A quick look at Pricewatch will tell you most of the story there. Yeah, the 9600 Pro to 9700 Pro is probably in that ball park for video cards. 512 mb is a good compromise for memory and performance. Athlon 2500+ or Pentium 2.6/2.8 ghz are probably bood price performers.

 

[Nohr]

Half the memory to 512MB and use the extra to buy a better video card: GeForce FX 5900 non-ultra (be sure it has 850MHz memory), Radeon 9700 Pro, 9800 Pro & non-pro.

 

[bdjohnson]

sounds good sapphire makes darn good cards. I'm not so sure about the value ram. I always stick with crucial since I've heard bad things about value ram. My freind got some and he got all sorts of errors in memtest86.

 

[bsmithy]

lose the 256mb radeon, it has a bad $/fps ratio

 

[stnicralisk]

For 30 bucks more than a 9600xt you can get a 5900se/xt that blows it away.

Also I do agree with everyone else - get 2x256 - maybe you can even get tighter timings and put the extra money towards a 5900se/xt/nu or a 9700pro. It should handle anything for the most part.

EDIT: you could also get a smaller hard drive or an IDE hard drive - SATA is only really legitimately useful when paired with the new 10,000 rpm SATA drives with a standard 7200 the difference is only noticable after a long amount of transfer time.

 

[MiNK]

hmm, I geuss I should go with this video card then.

POWERCOLOR ATI RADEON 9600PRO, 128MB DDR