Upgrades

[PapaRoach]

Alright Right Now I run on a.

P3 500
128mb DDR 133 Ram
Ati Rage 128 Pro
Sound Blaster Live! with the live Drive 2
Seagate 5200rpm 19gb HDD

Now I dont want a uber system I just want to be able to play Planetside with reasonible FPS and low/med Settings. Any Suggestions and around how much it would cost?

Peace
PapaRoach

[NoSurrender]

i see oneee salvagable part in here but sentrosi is good at settin that stuff up and the part is your SB live

[PapaRoach]

I was thinking of Upgrading to....

Shuttle AK32A Socket A Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
512MB PC2700 DDR 333MHz
nVidia GeForce4 MX440se 128MB AGP TV Out
IBM 80GB EIDE / 7200 RPM / 2MB / 8.5ms / ATA-100 / Hard Drive
Speeze - Socket A Cooling Fan

But I have a Question EIDE? Will it still work with a normal IDE port or will I need something differant also will I be able to use a normal IDE (my 19gb hard drive) along side it on the same EIDE cable?

Peace
PapaRoach

[NoSurrender]

ummmm u IM sure u can do bettter than a 1800+ [/quote] nVidia GeForce4 MX440se 128MB AGP TV Out [/quote] that card suckz0rs i would say a Radeon 9500pro now i know its a 200 dollar card but itll last u out and i love mine and that is some good memory and if u use that coupon in the PS box u can save some moolah and i think u would because i think its just faster i think sooo but can i get a confirmation (make sure u use the cable from the IBM) and u might.... be able to hit medium mebe high with that card i know u dont want that but itll insure you with have your computer for a while

[Daleon]

If you don't mind oc'ing, I would highly suggest one of these:

http://www.gameve.com/store/gameve_v...?idproduct=267

http://www.gameve.com/store/gameve_v...?idproduct=268

These T-Bred B's can clock to as much as 2.5+ with excellent cooling. 2.2 or 2.3 with good cooling. That Shuttle I hear is pretty decent board. But I prefer Abit's for OC ease of use. The Abit NF7-S is excellent board.

That video card is rough, will barely play PS prolly. The 9500 Pro can reliably play well. Its down to $150 range now.

That IBM looks a little old, around time alot of their drives were having issues with going bad after little usage. They have since improved, and their ata-133 HD's are excellent again. Maxtor Diamondmax or WD's will prolly be better choice. Don't worry about EIDE crap, its all IDE.

512 ram will defintely get you started. 1 gig will play and load much smoother. You can find good 512 corsair 2.5 cas PC2700 at newegg for about $50 each.

Just use www.pricewatch.com and www.resellerratings.com for all your needs.

[Sentrosi]

Originally posted by PapaRoach
I was thinking of Upgrading to....

Shuttle AK32A Socket A Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
512MB PC2700 DDR 333MHz
nVidia GeForce4 MX440se 128MB AGP TV Out
IBM 80GB EIDE / 7200 RPM / 2MB / 8.5ms / ATA-100 / Hard Drive
Speeze - Socket A Cooling Fan

But I have a Question EIDE? Will it still work with a normal IDE port or will I need something differant also will I be able to use a normal IDE (my 19gb hard drive) along side it on the same EIDE cable?

Peace
PapaRoach

How much are you willing to spend? Post here how much $ you have and I'll get you a nice rig by Sunday.

To answer your questions;
A normal IDE port will work with your old 19Gb hard drive. The standard configuration in a PC is to have your master hard drive (your 80Gb one) on the primary IDE ribbon cable and your slave as your CD-Burner. Then you'd set up your secondary IDE ribbon cable with your master drive being your CD/DVD-ROM drive and your slave being your old hard drive (19Gb).

[BOZ]

It really depends what you want to spend. Me and the guys I work with have built 4 of the following machines...they're solid as a rock. They don't cost an arm and a leg and you have room for uber upgrades when you feel like you can afford it. Here is the system:

Case - Generic or Enermax - $35.00 - $60.00
CDRom - Lite On 52x24x52 CDRW Model LTR-52246S Retail $45.50
Floppy - SONY 1.44MB 3.5 INCH INTERNAL FDD DRIVE - OEM $7.00
HD - Western Digital w/8 Meg Buffer WD400JB - OEM $68.50
RAM - KINGSTON HyperX Series Model# KHX2700/512 $75.50
M/B - Aopen AK79G-VN Motherboard for AMD Socket A $110.00
CPU - AMD Athlon XP 2000+/266 FSB Processor CPU - Retail 2000+/ 1.67GHz, AXDA2000BOX $66.00
Shipping & Handling approx $30.00

We have been getting them from Newegg.com here are the advantages of this setup.

CDRom - CD recorder at 52X also very quiet
HD - fastest hard drive next to the IBM 180 Gig or the serial ata's
Ram - 333MHz at CL2 2-2-2-5-1T very fast
M/B - fully integrated, sound is great also has usb 2.0, Lan and video (Gforce4 MX) comparable to upper end Gforce4 Ti4200 video cards. Plus you can always upgrade to any of the new video cards running up to AGP 8X. You can also upgrade to dual bank memory and Athlon XP processors with 333 FSB.
CPU - best bank for the buck

This system runs Unreal Tournament 2 Demo with very respectable FPS. The game is very smooth and stable.

So....for just a little over $400 you can have a great system with options to upgrade as you see fit. This is just the box, you can use your old Windows software, keyboard, mouse, speakers and monitor. Good Luck

BOZ

[scottyg]

ya thats a nice computer, im assuming that american dollars?

[Daleon]

Sentrosi - Generally I don't think its the best idea to have your burners on the same channel as your HD's. I keep both my HD's on IDE1 and my CDRW and DVD-RW on IDE2. This use to be a big deal when burners first came out, but now that many have smartburn and more memory for buffer overruns its prolly ok to mix them. But this way also keeps my cables much cleaner inside my case and allows much better airflow, since my HD's are way at bottom and burner's way at the top.

Boz - The onboard G4MX video on those MB's, they use system memory I think. I checked out the Aopen web site and didn't see any mention of dedicated 32, 64, or 128 DDR memory for them. If so, your eating into your 512. PS already uses more than 512, so your degrading system performance even more. Do you use any kind of frames counter like fraps99 to see what your performance is like?

[NoSurrender]

intergrated sucks... and MX sucks... thats all

[NoSurrender]

yea u get em dale ~hands dale a Chainblade~

[Sentrosi]

I'll have to rearrange things in my case next time I open it up. I never thought about doing it that way because of what I've been told. But with all the tech out these days, it won't make that much of a difference if you put all your opticals on one IDE and all your hard drives on another.

And an old dog can learn new tricks.

[BOZ]

Yes Daleon it does use system memory. The whole point of this system is cheap price with lots of room to grow. I haven't seen this setup tested with PS but it surpasses minimum specs easy. If you can afford it I would recommend getting the:

GAINWARD/CARDEXPERT GeForce 4, 8X AGP. Ti 4200, 3.5ns, 64MB DDR. $107.00

Doubling the ram can be tricky on the nforce2 motherboards because of the twin bank setup. To get mine to work solidly I had to purchase the Corsair TwinX (dual 512 Meg) sticks for about $400.00. You might get lucky with 2 sticks of the Kingston but you might also be unlucky, just make sure to read the sites restocking/refund contract before using them.

And yes scottyg these are american dollar figures.

BOZ

[BOZ]

Daleon,

It's ok to put both hard drives on the same IDE channel only if they are the same speed, otherwise your stuck at running that channel to the slowest speed hard drive. The new CD/DVD recorders/players will not affect the channel speed. I have my CD/RW on my primary with my primary hard drive and loose nothing. My slower hard drive is on my secondary IDE channel.

BOZ

[Daleon]

True, I forgot all about the ATA speed thing. But both of mine are currently ATA100.

I wouldn't worry to much about the twinx thing. Thats something mainly Corsair did to squeeze extra money out of ppl. I use their PC3500 XMS cas2, 1x512 and 2x256's, and do dual channel no problem. There is nothing special about the twinx stuff except when they pull it off the production line they take two from the same batch and pair them. Corsair themselves don't suggest using Twinx stuff for Intel Canterwood's dual channel, instead use the normal stuff. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone who bought the same brand, same speed, and couldn't do dual channel. Its only a 3% or so boost either way on AMD's.