game machine

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dilbert Firestorm
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Dilbert Firestorm

anyone have any recommendation on what hw makes a good game machine?

I've not been keeping up with HW issues lately....
 
anyone have any recommendation on what hw makes a good game machine?

I've not been keeping up with HW issues lately....
Click to expand...

A stable motherboard, good cpu, fair sized quick hard disk with a
decent sized buffer, good graphic card, a decent amount of ram, and a
good moniter are the main things, all the rest of the bits support
them.



Christopher
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
"There's a light at the end
of the tunnel" says the optimist.
"It's probably a train coming
stright at us" responds the pessimist.
 
Christopher said:
A stable motherboard, good cpu, fair sized quick hard disk with a
decent sized buffer, good graphic card, a decent amount of ram, and a
good moniter are the main things, all the rest of the bits support
them.
Click to expand...

speaking of monitors, what would be appropriate, a regular 17" monitor or and
LCD 17" monitor?
 
speaking of monitors, what would be appropriate, a regular 17" monitor or and
LCD 17" monitor?
Click to expand...

Depends on how much you want to spend, but for games 19" is becoming
the norm, but at my old uni we had a game room with 22" beasties, so
22" is the one to go for if you have enough money, and a geforce 5900
256mg card to power the latest games, AND more importantly the next
generation of games.



Christopher
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
"There's a light at the end
of the tunnel" says the optimist.
"It's probably a train coming
stright at us" responds the pessimist.
 
anyone have any recommendation on what hw makes a good game machine?

I've not been keeping up with HW issues lately....
Click to expand...

- Anything expensive. ;-)

You didn't say what you intend to spend? Anyway, I recommend figuring
out how much you can spend on computers per year. Then you should
figure to replace your machine at least every 30'th month. Put
together a cheaper system and you can upgrade it more often.

This post doesn't in any way considers overclocking! I haven't a clue
about that. But I'm sure there's a number of cpu/mobo combos that are
really attractive for that. Hopefully, somebody else will post about
that.

Looking backwards, there's been thremendous progress in videocard
performance-value. So a halftime graphics upgrade has made a lot of
sense. With a ATI 9500 or Ti4200 even old 1-1.5 GHz hangs in there.
I strongly suspect that will hold true in the future too. Because of
things like cineX etc in strong development.

Most important for a game machine is a good 3D graphics card. Saving
$100 on the graphics, to put into the cpu or mobo instead, seems
stupid to me.
I think the two most interesting graphics chipsets right now are
Nvidias FX5600ultra and ATIs 9600pro. Personally, I wouldn't consider
anything else, almost regardless of budget.
If you're really in a pinch, you could look around for a really good
price on a ATI9500 or Ti4200, but it doesn't make much sense on a new
system, and such a card will have to be replaced soon.
Even if wealthy, I'd be more interested in spending the money on some
upgrade into a future generation, than on a FX5900 or ATI9800, today.

P4 or Athlon doesn't make much difference. The Athlon is much stronger
on old apps and the P4 is faster on SSE2 media apps, but on games the
P4MHz and AMD's XP-rating correlates well. The Athlon is faster on
some games, the P4 is faster on others, that is the outcome of their
much different architectures.
For Intel, I urge you to look at a P4 with at least 533MHz EFSB!
(effective frontside bus). If budget reasons makes you consider
anything less, you should perhaps do better looking at AMD instead.
At the low end, I feel much more comfortable recommending a
XP2200/2400 than a 2.4MHz, since I've personally been much
dissapointed in cheap P4's. The Athlons just crunch along.
At the other end, I'd sooner recommend a 3.2GHz/800EFSB P4 than an
Athlon XP 3200+. It seems the P4's branchhandling and prefetch isn't
as good as AMD's, but that means its general performance gets a
noticable boost from a faster memory access. I haven't checked this
myself, but the 800EFSB-P4s have been very positively recieved.

Dual channel DDR is the name of the game today.
For an Athlon mobo, you should definitly get a Nvidia chipset! For a
P4, Intel chipset, I think, 865PE or 875P, according to budget.

Couple of suggested systems in medium and high budget segments looking
like good value to me, are:
Medium - AMD (Barton) Athlon XP 2500+, ASUS A7N8X, dual-channel
DDR333.
High - Intel P4 3.06GHz/800, ASUS P4C800, dual-channel DDR400.
Graphics, as stated earlier. But for the 3.06 P4, if you really like
to burn money: The new Abit, (cool and silent), FX5900.

Zalman cpu-cooler and Papst evac fans will give you a quiet machine.
That's what I use. Well worth the money IMO.
Doesn't fit everything and there's another good cpu-cooler around,
can't remember the brandname though...
You have to look at the PSU too, of course. I'm totally confused about
what's good there, though.

I'm not terribly into music and sound, but my practice have always
been to disable any onboard sound and install a mainstream SB board
instead. For reasons of higher signal/noise ratios and driver issues.

For a really rock bottom, dirtcheap PC, go cheap Athlon:
XP 1900+, ASUS A7S266 or A7S333.
That's about $55 and $60 each, for cpu and mobo. I see no sense in
going cheaper.
(The A7S266 used to have a good reputation for reliability. I haven't
heard anything bad about the A7S333, it's almost as cheap and supports
PC2700).
Graphics, _still_as_stated_earlier_, but you could go look for a
really good price on ATI9500, Ti4200 or consider the
FX5200ultra/ATI9200. In desperation, look for a secondhand GF3Ti, or
try ATI9000. It's the best value at the really low end. Whatever you
do, don't buy any GF2/4 "MX" cards.

I'm a big fan of the two brands, LG and Samsung for DVD, CD and CD-RW
drives. Cheap and rugged. It may be just luck, but I've never had any
problem with these. I can't say the same about HP or Pioneer.
Mind you, my information base is just a handful of machines.

Hd's doesn't seem to matter which brand. They're all crap. It's just
luck, if it hangs in there for more than a couple of years.
Fujitsu does seem to be extra crappy though.

Also seems like you can completely ignore Serial ATA for now.


ancra
 
It wouldn't do to slavishly duplicate these configurations, but these
systems are realistic:

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/MVGSBG/article.php/2236481

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/MHGSBG/article.php/2240721

And, for a $4k system,

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/EGBG/article.php/2200301

My personal recommendation is to get a P4 2.4c or 2.6c, an Asus P4P800
(deluxe or ordinary), and overclock the CPU to over 3 GHz. ATI 9700Pro cards
can be had for less than $300. (Not as fast as a 9800, but cheaper.)

Have fun.

Bob Knowlden

Spam dodger may be in use. Replace nkbob with bobkn.
 
Wow, now thats a mouth full but right on the money. You said it all
exactly what I think.



(e-mail address removed) (Ancra) wrote in @nntpserver.swip.net:
 
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