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Should I buy or wait...

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do you really need a computer now?? why don't you get a duron 750 for like $30 and then upgrade to a palomino processor when it comes out
 


<< The reason I want it fast is for alot of games, alot of paintshop, alot of Office (though I wish I didn't have to🙁 ), and I'm learning Visual C++ 6.0, so I hope alot of that. I think I'll hold off on the GF3, only get 256mb RAM. The reason I want the case is because it comes with a good 350 watt PS. It also looks good and I may overclock it and you can supposedly get good cooling in an antec. >>



You are smart enough to know that Office can run fine on a pentium ONE so don't worry about that. And since you are not a professional (yet) i know you aren't filtering 200 megabyte pictures or compiling 2-million line programs.

basically, you have to ask yourself, do you want a fat wallet or do you want to save 0.0006 seconds when you run spellcheck?

I don't play 3d games, but i KNOW things weren't so horrible back when TNT-2 was cutting edge, so why not just give the nforce chipset a chance. Even if you MUUUUST have a zillion fps, that's almost entirely up to your video card so don't sweat the processor.

If you want the case for FASHION, I can understand that (personally i'd rather buy a nice suit, at least it impresses the girls &amp; coworkers more than ripped jeans) ... the power supply is a non-issue- if you win the lottery &amp; can afford all the drivers, burners, and peripheral crap necessary to drain a regular power supply I'm sure you spare $20 upgrade that to a higher power unit. As for overclocking, you'd have to be a FANATIC to care about the difference a case makes... again, it's a personal decision for you, but is the POSSIBILITY of gaining another 15 or 30 or 50 mhz from this fancy pantsy case really worth $60?

The ram choice is very wise, I wouldn't knock you for running out and buying another 256m no matter what your budget is, but this way you can watch your resource monitor to confirm that you really need it.



<< Do you think I wait for the nForce, Athlon 4, and Win XP? I'm not going to use '98, I've made my mind up on that. We use '98 and I am always seeing the blue screen. >>



Definately wait for the nforce, the performance gains will easily dwarf any you get from a special overclocker's case. But the REAL reason to buy it is it's basically got geforce mx &amp; great sound for FREE.

As for athlon 4, well that's up to you to decide how much of a hardon benchmarks give you. I KNOW a duron-800 will be fine for your apps, so it's just a matter of deciding how fast you need your games to go. I'd at least try out a duron-800 + geforce2/3 combo, if you don't like it, well sell the duron for a $10 loss and buy an athlon4-1xxx when it drops in price by $50.

no comment on OS, that's a seperate issue from hardware.

-g
 


<< Expensive hardware does deprecite faster only because it has value >>


That statement makes no sense whatsoever.

Low-priced hardware is often a good deal. I bought a Voodoo2 board in 2/2000 for $49...and I sold it last week for $36. I bought a Voodoo Banshee board in 7/2000 for $38...and I sold it today for $35. As long as the cheap stuff you buy was originally expensive, you rarely lose much money.
 


<< most people in these forums upgrade before their hardware is worth nothing. >>



That's what I'd like to do, and when I get my new system built I plan on upgrading it, but I'm not made of money. I make $100 a week and have to pay gas with that and other things. I figured that if I save up enough I could get a good system and not have to worry about upgrading for a few months (let my wallet recover).
 


<< Expensive hardware will ALWAYS depreciate faster. If you want to buy expensive, that's your deal, but i NEVER saves you money on &quot;resale Your full of it Expensive hardware does deprecite faster only because it has value cheap hardware has little value and in a short time has no value... >>



Ok, how about you put your $$ into expensive graphics cards, i'll put my $$ into GICs, and in a year we'll see which is the better investment?

 
dude what is a GIC??

&quot;Guaranteed Investment Certificate&quot; - a secured low-interest term deposit.

My point being, computer hardware can only be a &quot;bad&quot;, &quot;horrible&quot;, or &quot;egregious&quot; investment. Anyone who buys a graphics card based on how much they can sell it for in the future is foolish.
 
I agree if you buy a vidcard based on resale thats wrong
If you buy based on how much you play games,what kinda games you play and on it being future proof and last resale then you have made a good buy. and if your a real gamer then the Ge-Force 3 is for you.
 
had enough for today. My first ever exam in college was today. I take a CSCI for the User class. It was easy. There were questions like where it the toolbar, ect... It was the only thing a junior in high school is allowed to take 🙁 Enough computers, I'm going to bed.
 
This will go over like a fart in church.
Take 200 bucks and go buy a lawnmower. Your 16 ! F*ck 5.25 an hour 20 hours.
Get 10 yards in your area at $30 bucks each.or even $20 each . Take you 1 or 1 and a half hours per yard every week.
Shut down Quake and open calculator !!
Then build whatever you desire !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hell, you can earn $100 before lunch every day and take 4 days off !!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Okay, I am a gamer, but I'm not 16 (try more than twice that 🙂). I can afford to upgrade with fair frequency, but I don't.

Come on GF3 guys. A GF2 64MB non ultra + 1 GHz proc (AMD or Intel - I don't care) + 256 MB RAM (SDRAM or DDR - I still don't care) will run ANY current or near-future game at great framerates. Want to save ~$175? I wouldn't splurge on the Ultra. I wouldn't splurge on a Pro. I'd find a GF2 64 and OC it to 200/400 and voila - you have a GF2 Pro. nVidia's GPU yields are that good. That's why the GF2s are phasing out. Want to save $250? Get a Radeon LE, hack the registry and OC it and get a Radeon DDR for $70.

Think how few games take ANY advantage of T&amp;L right now, let alone all the great stuff the GF3 is capable of. Most of the games we'll be playing in the next 18 months will be based on Q3A level engines. Hell, Duke Forever is still using the Unreal engine and Return to Wolfenstein the Q3A engine (I believe). If you've been getting good framerates in 3D Mark 2000/2001 then guess what? You're going to be able to run Max Payne engine games just fine too. The only real world difference between a GF2 and a GF3 is fantastic framerates vs. incredible framerates. If you don't primarily play action games /shooters, then framerates are even LESS of an issue. All you really need is a VGA card to run StarCraft, Diablo and AOE II. Okay, maybe a Voodoo 2 😀.

As for the CPU, spend less and maybe dabble in the Dark Art of overclocking. Your best investment is a future proof mobo, not a top-speed CPU. I've run everything from a Celeron 400@500 to a C2-533@825 to a P!!!700@933 on the SAME BX6-r2 I bought 2 years ago. Upgrading when the CPU prices are good + (judicious) overclocking + solid mobo choice = good investment in my book. If you don't want to overclock, then there's plenty to choose from in the 900MHz-1.1GHz range that's going to do just fine. I would probably get a full blown Athlon rather than a Duron if your doing anything that's going to benefit from the larger L2 cache though.

Look at the cash you save now as a downpayment on your NEXT upgrade...when you REALLY need it.
 
If you can, wait until August and get the new Palamino hardware. I have to buy soon, but if i didn't i would wait for the new Athlon 4's. THere should also be some price drops in GeForce cards by then.

As for dvd drive, would you really use it for dvd's? I know i don't use mine for anything but cd's.

If you don't like waiting like me, then do what i did, buy the parts that don't change much in price first (ie. monitor, speakers, sound cards). THen get the parts that change fast in price, last (ie. Ram, Mobo's, cpu). If you do wait for the Palamino boards, then buy your cdrom drive, monitor, case and hard drive now, and then you'll feel like you're still building your computer and it will take away some of the impatience of wanting to get the 1.4GHz right now. It works, believe me.
 
Man, i'm in the same boat as you. 17 years old making 5.50 an hour at the deli and i finally have enough to build my first new system. I'm looking at close to 1500 also if you want to see my system as it is right now, still subject to some change:

From Newegg.com
2 rounded cables- $22
Epox Ep-8k7a mobo- 122
MSI StarForce 831 GeForce2 Pro, 64MB DDR RAM- 142
AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.33GHz 266MHz Bus Socket A PGA Processor-173
**(not sure if i'll spend more for a retail chip though as some people said i should)
Floppy- 9
IBM 40GB 7200RPM -123
TOSHIBA DVD ROM, 16X DVD, 48X CD ROM- 60
HERCULES GAMING THEATER XP - 120
Netgear FA311 Ethernet Network Card 10/100 Mbps - 13
Altec Lansing ACS54 5 pieces Power Plus for Gamers speaker system -46

Total from newegg= 840 (with around 45-50 shipping)

Crucial:
[2x] PC2100 256MB DDR-SDRAM - $124

Bestbuy:
Samsung 955DF 19&quot; 300 after rebate (where are you getting yours for 269?)

Then other places (not sure where yet):
Antec SX840 Case with 2 more case fans~ 80
Taisol CGK760~ 35
Arctic Silver II~ 8
Mouse + Keyboard ~ 50

**Final** looks to be around 1475 after i get all the shipping costs figured out. Hope that gives you an idea of something and let me knwo where you found the great price on the monitor. Oh yeah, and i'm use win98se cause i my friend is having gaming problems with 2k, so i'm going to wait and save money there.
 
You have the patience of a saint jagr 🙂. Building a rig is like smack for me. Once I start I can't stop.

I'd just buy it all and start enjoying it now. If you've bothered to become a member of this forum, you'll be jonesing for a new mobo, CPU and vidcard within 6 months anyway, no matter what you bought or when you finished putting the damn thing together. That's what slots and sockets are for. They're not for hardware. They're actually tiny cash deposit ports that connect your wallet directly to the HW vendors pockets :disgust:
 
id say it depends on what u have now. can your current system run all the games pretty good and are you happy with it ? if so wait for a4 and nforce, if not buy buy buy!!!! also, u need to stop working for $5.75!!! is it worth an hour of your life for $5.75 and its boring? i was a bag-boy at a ralph's for $6 /hour and it was so bad T_T, i rather be semi-poor and use pennies and nickels at the coin star machine to pay for gas like i do now ^^
 
here's a little rant:

1. buy now, enjoy it. Screw waiting until August and getting the first round of buggy nforce motherboards and palomino, by then summer will be over and your parents will still not want you screwing around with their computer, and you'll hafta go back to school before getting to enjoy it

2. save some cash. Seriously! Like people are suggesting, get a 1 GHz, get 256 megs of ram (sure its cheap now, but i bet it will continue to fall), drop the cdrom, are you ever going to watch dvd movies??

i have a dvd player (blew $250 on it last summer) and have used it maybe 20 times...one of the dumbest purchases i ever made. there's very little software out on DVD now, and I dont see that really changing that much. I'd just get the CDROM drive, maybe a burner, making CDs is cool.

I dont know about any $30 case, but get a $50-60 one...you want to work for 6 hours for an Antec case? why??

$137 for a sound card seems extreme! Go with a cheaper one...Rhytheic Edge or something, maybe a *GASP* Live card.

And finally, ALi? com'on, get real. Go with the Epox motherboard based on the 760 chipset.

P.S. I can't belive your going to spend that kind of $ on an operating system...don't you have any friends who will let you use theirs, or IRC? Before everybody jumps on me, i'm sure that dparker has some mp3z, an OS is the same thing, if not he's been living in a cave...
 
I agree with most ppl here. You don't need to spend all that money on a system that will be worth a third in 6~8 months.

I currently have the following and can run any game fine w/o any prob:

Duron 750 o/c'd to 866
MSI Turbo-raid - Using on-board sound w/ $15 speakers
256MB pc 133 mem
GeForce2 mx
15gb Maxtor ATA 100 7200
19&quot; Sceptre monitor i got like 3 years ago
Generic 300w PS &amp; case

If you got a system with similar specs and upgraded the sound and speakers, you'd probably be looking to pay $1000~$1100. With the $1000 you save, you can put the into a short term CD and make a few extra bucks. You can upgrade next spring when all the new Hardware have been tried and tested.

Just my 2 cents.
 
I was just searching some older threads and....this came up!

just wondering,, dparker: what did you end up doing?

I'm also in the same boat

lemme know thanks,
and enable your PM!!!!
 
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