I’m a big fan of Half Life, and am very excited that the sequel is coming out shortly. But I need a computer that’s up to the task. I need to see all the alien blood & guts in their full glory.
My current machine is a bit long in the tooth, and uses a funny kind of RAM that’s difficult to replace. So I probably should get a whole machine.
I’d like to buy another Dell. Would one of their off-the-shelf machines do well for me, or should I get something customized?
Well, I’d wait for the reviews to guage what a decent spec will be, but a 4 GB dual Opteron 25x with SLI’d GeForce PCI-E video cards should do quite nicely.
Holy crap, I plan out computers as a HOBBY. Lemme give you some advice… I’ll keep the cost as low as possible while maximizing performance (all prices are from www.newegg.com):
Processor: Athlon 64 2800+: $141
Motherboard: Chaintech VNF-250: $71
Memory: Corsair Value Select 2x512mb (1 gig) PC3200 RAM: $157
Hard Drive: Seagate 120 gb 7200RPM IDE HDD: $89
Video Card: see below
Stuff like the case, mouse, keyboard, etc. will add another $60 or $70, but they’re not as important as the above hardware.
ABOUT THE VIDEO CARD: I’d recommend either a GeForce 6600 GT or a Radeon x700XT. Neither are out yet (for AGP), but they will be by the time Half-Life 2 hits store shelves. They’ll retail for about $200.
TOTAL PRICE: $728, give or take (depending on the minor articles you buy)
And there you have a computer that’ll run HL2 like a dream.
OPTIONS: You can halve the RAM price by only getting 512 megs, but I highly recommend the full gig. You can also shave another $30 by getting a Sempron 3100+ processor instead of the A64. DO NOT get a Pentium 4. Overpriced, overheating pieces of junk right now (damned Prescott core), and the Athlons thwomp them in gaming.
If the price is STILL too high, you can also shave $50 off the video card by getting a plain GeForce 6600 or a plain Radeon x700 (again, when they come out).
Perhaps somebody can clue me in. I had read an interview more than a year ago (when HL2 was originally supposed to ship) that said that HL2 would be ultra-scalable – that you wouldn’t need a beast of a computer to run it. Sure, you’d miss out on some cool stuff if you didn’t upgrade, but that it would run on a relatively modest machine.
Now I’m rethinking my purchase of the Radeon 9600 Pro I purchased. Do I need to worry here?
I second SPOOFE’s reccomendation, though I would go with an Asus K8N motherboard, for $89, because it has the Gb version of the nForce3 250 chipset, which has a built-in hardware firewall.
Right now for gaming the Athon 64’s are much better than Pentium 4’s for gaming - in Doom 3 for example - the Athlon64 2800+ outperformed a 3.2 ghz Pentium 4, and only Intel’s very expensive Pentium 4 Extreme Editions could match the Athlon64 3000+.
I just remembered these recent benchmarks using Counterstirke:Source , which is uses the same game engine as Half-Life 2. The Radeon 9600 XT gives a good 60 fps at 1024x768; the 9600 Pro is a slower clocked version of that card, so depending on your CPU & RAM, you should get at least 40-50fps in HL2 as long as you run it at 1024x768.
Interesting. In my thread here I was looking for advice on a video card for a pretty high-end Dell system, and long story short with the very knowledgeable responses there am now thinking about building my own box.
My dream box to build (given that I have about $2,500 to spend) now looks like this:
[ul]
[li]AMD Athlon 64 FX-53, 1MB L2 Cache, Windows Compatible 64-bit Processor (Socket 939): $830[/li][li]Asus A8V Deluxe VIA Socket 939 ATX Motherboard: $140[/li][li]Seagate 160GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive: $130[/li][li]Corsair XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series,(Twin Pack) 184 Pin 2GB(1GB x 2) DDR PC-3200: $500[/li][li]eVGA nVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT Video Card With Free Doom 3Bundle, 256MB GDDR3, 256-Bit, TV-Out/DVI, 8X AGP: $400[/li][li]Plextor 12X DVD+RW/-RW Drive: $75[/li][li]Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2: $70[/li][/ul]
Now with case and speakers and miscellaneous items and Windows XP, I’m about maxed out. Which means I’ve got no office software and no monitor (I have an old 19" CRT that’s barely functioning).
So, I’m looking for something that won’t be obsolete in 18 months. Any thoughts on this spec, what I should cut out or look for a lower-level item? Am I making any big mistakes here, or leaving anything out?
Also, if I do want to game (3D games), is a flat-panel LCD not worth it?
Cut the processor. Buying an $800 CPU is utterly absurd. The same chip will be available in six months for a quarter of the price (only slight exaggeration). If you really have a lot of money to throw around (and $2500 will build a hell of a gaming machine), I would suggest whatever AMD Athlon 64 costs about $300 right now.
And yes, you can have a good gaming experience with a flat screen monitor. I can’t recommend anything specific, but expect to pay at least $500 for a 17-inch (which has a greater display area than a 17-inch CRT, btw).
Honestly, if you want a machine that won’t be obsolete in 18 months, you would better off buying $1000 computer + $500 monitor now, and sticking the other $1000 away to build a new machine (keep monitor+speakers) in 18 months. Right now for a $1000 dollars you could get an
That system comes out to $935, and will give you 85% of the performance of the systems you specced, for less than half the price.
As for the LCD/CRT debate, current LCD’s with 16ms are pretty good for gaming, though if space/power isn’t an issue, I would spend $250 on a nice 19" CRT any day. Heck, if you have the room you could pick up a pair of 19" CRT’s and run dual monitors for less than the price of a single good 19" LCD. CRT’s are good especially if you are a gamer - with a CRT, you have a lot more flexiblity with what resolution you run at. This is very important as more demanding games come out - with a CRT, you could run all the current games, Doom 3 included, on the above system at 1600x1200. As even more demanding games come out, with a CRT you can drop to 1280x960, to 1024x768, to 800x600, as your machine ages. With an LCD, you can only run at the native resolution, or half resolutions, (for example, a native 1600x1200 LCD’s half res is 800x600), and still have the picture look good. If you try to run a 1600x1200 LCD at 1024x768, it will look terrible due to interpolation.
The A64’s are better than the P4 for almost ANYTHING, excluding a few random office tasks or working with 3D Studio Max (it doesn’t take advantage of the 64’s architecture, unlike Maya or Lightwave). And Athlons have always been geared towards gamers, anyway.
Oh yeah. I started making so many different hardware documents that I had to date 'em… I plan out a new on every two or three weeks. Yeah, the computer world shifts THAT FAST…
I remember when I was still all jazzed up about getting a Radeon 9800. Then the GeForce 6800 came, then the Radeon x800, then the 6600, then the x700…
::sigh:: I’m just waiting for the day when someone crazy billionaire hands me a few million dollars…