Enquiry

[-K-]

Hey people, Im planning to get a new comp yea, and I happen to come across this company thay custom build ur pcs, and its price is ok and within my budget. So I was wondering if it is ok for me to trust these companies or not..?

[-K-]

And one more question, is AMD better or Intel?

[-K-]

and one more thing yea, is Pentium D better or AMD fx (forgot what its called )

[bigH2O]

Generic questions don't help us help you. I don't know if you can trust the supplier, you didn't say who it was.

AMD and Intel are pretty much equal... that question is sort of like asking which one of the Williams sisters is better at playing tennis. Shop on price and specifics for your use.

A more important question to investigate is the motherboard and ram you will be utilizing in the system. A Pentium D or an AMD 64 won't provide you a bit of performance advantange if you run them in a dog of a motherboard... same is true with memory. If you run cheap memory, you create a bottleneck that simply can't be overcome by sheer processor speed.

Get back with your supplier and get the specs on the system he's offering you. Post them here and we'll help you evaluate whether or not you're getting a good deal.

[-K-]

yea... the motherboard is ASUS SLI, coz im getting a SLI comp for gaming yea... ram probably getting 2G ram (2 x 1GB )

[bigH2O]

Well the ASUS SLI is a socket 939 mobo, meaning you will have to run the Athalon 64 or the 64 FX. You can rule out the Pentium completely if you're locked into the SLI.

Not to rain on your parade about the SLI, but it really is not that high end of a board. While it's screaming fast, It doesn't have an AGP slot in it, which you are eventually going to regret when you become fed up with PCI graphics. It does support DDR memory, but you should max it out with the most it will accept at 4 x 1gig PC 3200. The board has IDE, SATA and raid built in... make sure your supplier takes advantage of the SATA and doesn't drop in some cheaper, slower IDE drives.

What kind of pricing are you being offered, and what are the rest of the specs on the system?

[-K-]

hey m8, i got like graphic card, geforce7800GTX pci express, creative xi-fi for soundcard, 300GB hard drive disk space, yea i remember the part abt SATA, but what do you mean by AGP slot?

on ur pesonal opinion, what do u think is good tho for gaming + why would i get fed up? can u pls say in detail, coz the price isnt that cheap, its around 1900 quids yea

[bigH2O]

AGP stands for Accellerated Graphics Port. It is a dedicated port that does nothing but transfer video information back and forth between the processor/memory on the video card and the main processor/memory. A PCI solution uses a shared bus, where all of the devices in your computer share the bandwidth. That's okay for most normal applications, but high end gaming can be "bottlenecked" by PCI if you have too many devices on the bus. Evidence of this bottleneck is stuttering or pausing occasionally, and even a two or three frame stutter every once in a while can get real annoying after time. If you use this machine purely for gaming, and don't add additional stuff to it, like *any* expansion cards, then the PCI bus will be dedicated to the video... but if you add a sound card, a modem, etc, then the bus will have to be shared with all the devices on it. The better the video card (more ram, bigger processor) the less work the main processor and ram have to do, so less data has to be moved around the system, but still if your bumping heads against the data from the modem and sound card, you will experience occasional burps.

There are mobos available that have built in high end graphics directly on the board. That eliminates the bottleneck of the PCI, and provides even faster throughput than AGP offers... but they are expensive. Of course you're looking at a $500 video card and a $125 mobo right now, so you have lot's of wiggle room in price. Even the most advanced mobos with built in graphics won't be much over $625.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to talk you out of the SLI... just offering my observations. I run ASUS boards almost exclusively... I'm just not sure I would pick the SLI for a top of the line gaming box.

I don't know what a quid amounts to in US dollars, so I'm clueless as to what 1900 quids is.

[-K-]

yea m8, i got what u mean, quid = pounds £, quids just the way we say it yea, but the manufacturer they only provide asus motherboard, so i gotta stick to it and try not to put so many ****s ;p. i got a laptop, so probably gonna use that for video stuffs.

If you were a gamer, what would u prefer, mind telling me ur point of view

[bigH2O]

The Asus board should be fine if that is all the dealer will supply. If I were building my own box specifically for gaming at this moment, I'd probably opt for a DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D mobo. It's blindingly fast, has built in graphics (2 seperate video channels to drive 2 monitors), has all the important features (DDR, SATA, etc) and smokes just about everything else in the gaming arena right now, while not being tremendously overpriced. Of course, five minutes after you buy it, it will be surpassed by somebody elses offering. That's my only gripe about computer technology. Whatever you buy is guaranteed to be obsolete before you can discard the packaging.

[Zero Tolerance]

Not trying to start an argument.....but PCI-E is a newer standard over AGP. I will say that AGP will be a thing of the past. And what better than to have 2 cheaper PCI-E cards running in SLI mode to totally whoop an AGP card and for half the price.

Dont get me wrong....bigH20 is right on the money with PCI being a shared bus where AGP is a dedicated bus.....but the PCI-E...which is what SLI uses....is where its at.

Dont be afraid to use an SLI board. The only thing is you could of saved alot of coin by using 2 6600GT cards over 1 of the higher priced cards and had the same if not better performance.

Here is an article summary of comparing AGP and PCI-E

http://www.tcmagazine.info/articles.php?action=show&id=127&perpage=1&pagenum=14

Full review here

http://www.tcmagazine.info/articles.php?action=show&showarticle=127

Goodluck!

[d3v1u5b0y]

A cheaper alternative would be a dual-gpu card. From what I hear, they work really well with NF4 chipsets. Not sure why. Video array technology is supposed to be more efficent than SLI. The only problem is that it's strictly Alienware technology. Maybe soon other manufacturers will develop a similar alternative.

[bigH2O]

I'm by no means trying to start an argument over which technology is better or who's whatchamithingy spins faster. All I'm going to say about this subject from here on out is that you have to beware of marketing hype. Just because a couple of people claim their technology is the best, and a couple of other peeps jump on the bandwagon, and a few more people throw some money at it... it doesn't make it the best. Even if it is the best, it's only the best for today. Tomorrow there will be something better.

Benchmark your hardware if you want to know the truth, and even then you have to beware of the developers of the benchmark programs. It's all a big lie, so I guess I can only say that if you aren't willing to dig into the specs yourself, then just trust the hype you are fed, and buy whatever makes you feel warm and fuzzy.

[bigH2O]

A cheaper alternative would be a dual-gpu card. From what I hear, they work really well with NF4 chipsets. Not sure why. Video array technology is supposed to be more efficent than SLI. The only problem is that it's strictly Alienware technology. Maybe soon other manufacturers will develop a similar alternative.SLI is the latest buzzword. It's a way to draw big bucks from mediocre technology. Sorry, I'll shut up now.

[d3v1u5b0y]

True, there was a benchmark a few years ago between NVidia and ATI where certain features on the ATI board were disabled that weren't on the NVidia board. I can't recall specifics, but it was an unfair scoring system. This fraudulent activity reduced the trust consumers had in posted results for quite some time. Apparently someone was paid to jack the results. Again, I can't remember the specifics. I haven't heard a anything about it recently, though.

EDIT: It seems we're both posting at the same time. Sorry. Too many post-happy insomniacs in the world, i guess. :)

[bigH2O]

Don't be sorry. You're perfectly entitled to stomp on my daisy patch any time you can't sleep :)

Can you spec me out gaming system to solidify this thread while you're awake?

[d3v1u5b0y]

you want my specs or my dream specs? :)

[bigH2O]

Pretend all the parts were free. Spec out your own super duper system and let us all know what you would recommend.

Maybe we can get you an endorsement in PC World or the like and get the manufacturers to supply you with the parts for evaluation. Not likely, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

[d3v1u5b0y]

Lets see...PIII 750MHz, 192MB PC100 RAM...j/k

I'd opt for the nforce 5 chipset motherboard (something overclockable) with the 1066MHz bus w/ Intel 64 bit dual core mixed with AMD HT technology. At least 2GB DDR2 667 ULL RAM. Two GeForce 7800 GTXs in SLI. Four 300GB SATA II HDDs in RAID 0+1. DVD and CD-Burner. 32 in high-end LCD monitor. SB X-Fi Fata1ity. Am I forgetting anything? Yeah, phase change cooling system (hopefully developments advanced for this method on graphics adapters by the time I could afford this). 700 to 800 watt power supply.

[bigH2O]

Yep you forgot one thing. The mongo case with the blue neon strips all over it and the handle on top so you can carry it to the local gaming convention.

You be da bomb then.