Alereon, Lissa is looking at Dell and Gateway. Dell only offers the Radeon 9800 (not Pro) in her price range, and to even get the option of choosing a video card from Gateway, she must move out of the price range.
This makes a good segue into another PC option - custom-built at a local shop. b]Lissa**, you can tell them what you want (light digital photography and decent gaming capability) and the price (sub $1000) and ask them to configure a system. If you get a written estimate, complete with all the parts names and numbers, I’m sure the SDMB community can let you know if you’re getting a good deal or not. Plus you get what you want, and you don’t get what you don’t want or need.
Another option is refurbished. Here is one sitting at Dell now:
Dimension 8250 (System Identifier 09ELC602)
Dell Dimension 8250: Pentium® 4 Processor at 2.4GHz with 533MHz system bus/512K L2 Cache, Integrated Audio and NIC
System Price $925.00
Promotion Discount ($75.00)
Discounted Price $850.00
Memory: 512 MB PC1066 RDRAM (2 RIMMs)
Floppy Drive: 1.44 MB Floppy Disk Drive
Hard Disk Drive: 30 GB EIDE Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
Video: 128 MB DDR ATI RADEON 9700 TX with TV Out
Modem: 56K Telephony Modem for Windows-Sound Option
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows XP Home
CD ROM Drive: 48X Max Variable CD-ROM Drive
CD Read-Write Drive: 40X/10X/40X CDRW Drive
Software: Microsoft® Works Suite 2003
A little light on hard drive size, but otherwise this should fit your specs. Monitor is separate, though. Refurbished monitors are $118, still under $1000 before s&h (if any).
Right… like I said, you have to make a choice as to what this rig will be. A good gaming rig is as expensive as a good CAD rig… which is crazy expensive.
I would suggest building your own rig and not buying from Dell or whoever to save money… but it can be hard sometimes, but hen again you save money and gain skills in the process.
If you want to save money get the $100 geforce card I was talking about and don’t do integrated anything except maybe onboard lan… if so make sure it’s a 3com. Onboard sound is still bad… I don’t suggest it… it will drop your frame rates.
Save more money? get the 256MB cas2 stick of corsair instead of a 512 stick… like I said the quality is most important, and for most games, you will not see the difference… yeT.
If you value your eyes, stay away from the integrated Intel video. Poor 2D and poor 3D.
If you are on a budget, you should look into building your own machine. It’ll save you some cash and it’ll familiarize you with your computer. Or perhaps one of your friends is familiar with putting together computers. (it’s not that hard :))
Integrated audio is not that good as well. It’s better to buy a separate audio card.
XP Home edition is fine as well. Unless you require the features of the Professional version (ability to join a domain, more encryption/security options, multiprocessor use etc.), the Home version will suit you fine.
D_Odds: There is no Radeon 9800 non-Pro card. The only 9800 card is the Radeon 9800 Pro, which costs $400 retail. I doubt that one could possibly obtain a sub-$1000 system from a major OEM featuring a Radeon 9800 Pro.
Thaidog: The nVidia Geforce FX 5200 is a rather slow card, suitable for non-gaming applications, perhaps, but not where performance counts. It benches slower than even a Radeon 9100, coming in at near Geforce4 MX level performance. Brand of NIC is also irrelevent; there are no differences between a 3Com and integrated NIC that even a high end gamer, much less a casual user, will notice. Finally, CAS latency on RAM really isn’t that important. Sure lower latencies are better, but when it’s a choice between 512MB of CAS2.5 and 256MB of CAS2, take the 512MB, every time. IRT onboard sound, sure it reduces framerates. However, the $50-$100 that gets to be spent on RAM, CPU, or videocard because it ISN’T being spent on a soundcard will help framerates far more than they are hurt by the extra overhead.
What Lissa could do is to go with an AMD Barton with the nForce2 chipset (I recommend the Asus A7N8X mobo), maybe the one that supports 400MHz FSB. It’s a bit expensive, but it has lots of built-in features, including a network controller, so she can save $ on other components.
The nVidia Geforce FX 5200 is a DX9 card which benches better than both the cards you are talking about give equal systems in 3dmark03… please, what benchmark are you talking about? He will need a DX9 card and if he does not need an expensive one it should be DX9 and not DX8. $100 is a damn good price for a GPU that clocks at 350mhz with 128MB of on card ram at 350mhz also. Secondly, if you get and integrated nic, it should be a good one and 3com has a good record for good integrated nics. CAS is important and I can prove it with benchmarks… you will not see any differences in 3dmark benchmarks from moving to 256MB of ram to 512Mb of ram and if its cas2.5 you will see a difference in your score. Any sound card with onboard processing will show an increase in performance with video gaming.
The June issue of MaximumPC has a good read on having onboard audo processing vs having processing built in to the card you buy and how it affects framerate… the article is on the ne M-audio sound card… beware of this product, it is still a card but has no oncard sound processing abilities… but the point is onboard audio and cards that don’t do their own processing suck. It’s worth the very little extra money and some times even less money in the case of the M-audio card.
IF you’re going to say benchmark, please give links to your proof.
thaidog: A link to Tom’s Hardware Guide is about as close to proof as a link to the Weekly World News. However, your own cite shows that the performance difference between CAS2 and CAS2.5 RAM is under 1%. 0.2% in 3Dmark 2001, to be precise. The difference between 256MB and 512MB RAM is the difference between working or not for some games, such as Battlefield 1942. Total RAM also becomes increasingly important for overall performance as time goes on.
As for the Geforce FX 5200, what good is DirectX9 if the card is too slow to run DirectX9 applications? That link shows the Geforce FX 5200 Ultra coming it at a little more than half the speed of a Geforce4 Ti4200, less than 4fps faster than a Geforce4 MX440. The succeding pages show it being beaten quite handily by the Geforce4 MX440 a number of times.
In regards to the M-Audio Revolution 7.1, it uses the Via Envy24HT Audio Processing Unit, currently the state of the art in consumer audio. It’s one of the best soundcards available, not something to “beware of.” It most assuredly does it’s own hardware sound processing, though it does incur moderate processor overhead for 3D sound. In Tech-Report’s real world tests, the difference between the Audigy 2 and the M-Audio Revolution 7.1 was between 5-10% on an average system.
While the CPU load of a free onboard sound codec chip will be even larger than the 10% we’ve seen here, remember that by using the onboard sound you save about $100. When spent on an upgraded CPU and videocard, this $100 will MORE than make back your performance loss.
1st I own that M-Audio card, so I know it’s a good card… it’s currently in one of my workstations… my point with that card was that it is good but not as good as the current creative cards for gaming.
Those benchmarks are for one DX8 game and will be easily reversed for any DX9 game written correclty. Secondly, those benchmarks are from March 10th 2003 with the 1st driver revisions things have changed quite a bit since March 10th.
Finally, since most video cards today have much more onboard memory than they did when BF1942 came out, system memoy makes much less difference since the card does not need to pull textures from system memory and they can be pulled directly from the onboard 128MB worht of ram… maybe 6months ago it would have mede a difference or with a 32MB or 64MB card you will see a big difference in loss of performance.
This test by Overclocker Cafe (performed April 27th) shows the Geforce FX 5200 coming in slightly slower than the Geforce4 Ti4200 at 3DMark 2003, a DirectX9.0 test. This shows that the card is actually MUCH slower, closer to the 25% margin shown by the 3DMark 2001SE score. While yes, it will RUN DirectX9.0 applications unlike the Geforce4, the Geforce FX 5200 isn’t going to be usably fast at anything, even older apps.
Increased amounts of video memory won’t lighten the load on system RAM. The problem with Battlefield 1942, for example, is that the game itself, primarily the AI, sucks up large amounts of system RAM, necessitating at least 512MB to properly run in singleplayer mode. The textures will fit perfectly fine into 64MB of video RAM, if they didn’t swapping between video and AGP (system) memory would reduce performance to completely unplayable levels. This can be tested by reducing the resolution and color depth that the game runs at, you’ll note that RAM requirements are not reduced by any substantial amount.
And no, there is no Radeon 9800 non-Pro. Tom is comparing the new Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB to the Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB. That’s why there’s only four bars on each graph, two at AGP8X and two at AGP4X.
First page of the url 9800 (regular) yes the compair was for the Pro serices… go back and look at the boxes pictured.
My point with the Geforce FX 5200 is that it is DX9, it costs little, and you will still find it in the stores when ready to purchace… the Ti4200, as much as I lke my Ti4600, is being phased out for the FX line and when all is said and done the drivers will keep the card ahead of anything the 4200 can currently pull.
BF1942 is just one game… I should mention I don’t have, by the way, or have seen any benchmarks for, but AI sucking up more than 128Mb of system ram is unusual to say the least.
I’m not going to argue my points any more since we’ve gotten off subject, but I stand by my points as does the information. Good luck my firends.
This could go on forever Lissa. So did you decide? I guess you just pay your money & take your chances. Another place to shop is ebay once you have your model nbr, just search for it there.
Ok, the thread is back from the dead because of new developments. My husband was just promoted and part of their executive development plan allows for the purchase of a new computer from Dell. They will pay for the base package (about 800) and you have to pay for the add-ons. So, since all of you were so wonderful and knowledgeable, we would like to run our proposed system configuration by you. We still added only $1000 of our own money, so we really don’t want go voer this budget.
But, if you see something we can delet to add something better, please let me know. The purpose of the computer is still gaming, internet and email.
Pentium 4 processor @3.06 ghz, with hyperthreading technology
1 GB DDR SDRAM Dual channel at 333mhz
17 inch monitor (not really importnt to us)
128 MB DDR ATI Radeon 9800 graphics card
120 GB Ultra ATA 100 hard drive/ 7200 RPM
3.5 " floppy
MS XP Professional Operating System
Integrated Intel Pro 10/100 ethernet
56 k modem
CD 1: 16x DVD ROM Drive
CD 2: 48x CD-RW drive
Soundblaster Live. 5.1 Digital Souncard with Dolby Digital 5.1
Now, my only concern is with the 16x DVD ROM Drive. The 48x one is actually cheaper for that port. Is the 48x one better, or is the 16x just as good?
Thanks again everyone, we are looking forward to having a good system.
I think we have really added some features in this set-up that will really make it optimal.