Has everyone else got more money than me?

Curiosityx

Curiosityx

Curiosityx

Soldato
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
3,941
Location
West Midlands
I sit here with a 15" Hansol TFT, a Barton 3200+ running quite happily for the last year or so, a Asus GeForce Ti4200 graphics card, 1Gb of memory and a Sata WD Scsi hard drive all tied together by an Asus A7N8e-e motherboard. All of which never complain no matter what application is thrown at them.

Judging by todays standards i would be lucky to get £200 for this setup which when bought most likely totalled £400+

I since decided to investigate an overhaul in light of Vista arriving on the scene next year and am suddenly very shocked at the findings.

I ran the Vista performance analyser today and scored 1!

Apparently my graphics card doesnt exist, my processor is average and i havent enough memory even though ive never suffered performance in games, applications or even VmWare but i still wont be able to run the new Aero interface according to Microsoft.

Now putting together an average spec for some new internals so that i would be running the equivilant of what i had bought 2 years ago in today's terms.

Total Price - ~ £800!!

Is it just me or is a 100% price increase a shock within a 2 year period?
 
Prices have steadily been rising the last lot of years especially for graphics cards. Used to be £300 was the top end price for a graphics card, now £500 isn't uncommon.
 
Linkage!! for the Vista Ready Tool

I got
Congratulations! Your PC can run the core experiences of Windows Vista.
Click to expand...

The only thing it did pick up on was that it wanted drivers for the Nvidia chipset on the mobo, audio drivers, and graphical drivers, but then i'd expect that because i wouldnt be running Vista drivers on XP.
 
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Curiosityx said:
I sit here with a 15" Hansol TFT, a Barton 3200+ running quite happily for the last year or so, a Asus GeForce Ti4200 graphics card, 1Gb of memory and a Sata WD Scsi hard drive all tied together by an Asus A7N8e-e motherboard...

...Judging by todays standards i would be lucky to get £200 for this setup
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I'd say you would be lucky to get £50 for it. Not taking the Michael, that's a compliment on your being sensible enough to keep hold of a system until it's really at the end of its rope.

It's not that we're richer than you, far from it, I am poor as hell. The difference is we're probably a lot stupider than you and also suffer from an inchy clicking finger when it comes to impulse-buying. :p
 
I blame competitive gaming for my impulse buying, someone always needs to boast about their PC, and you know how the rest goes, we all do it........ wether it be the PC or the car.
 
Úlfhednar said:
I'd say you would be lucky to get £50 for it. Not taking the Michael, that's a compliment on your being sensible enough to keep hold of a system until it's really at the end of its rope.
Click to expand...

Definately more than £50 tbh! Seen the price Barton 3200+ s are going for on ebay???
 
Úlfhednar said:
No, how much? I have a Barton sitting in a PC downstairs that I would like to get rid of lol.
Click to expand...

I sold mine a few weeks ago for £70~. They usually vary from £60 upto £90~ in rare cases :cool:
 
Go take a look :D

I bought mine in 2004 for £75, sold it 2 years later for £70 lol.

People are still desperate for old socket A CPU's to extend the life of their old rigs. the 3200 Bartons are considered gold dust really :cool:
 
benjo said:
Go take a look :D

I bought mine in 2004 for £75, sold it 2 years later for £70 lol.

People are still desperate for old socket A CPU's to extend the life of their old rigs. the 3200 Bartons are considered gold dust really :cool:
Click to expand...
That kicks arse, I wonder if my 2700+ is still sellable.
 
For some reason its mainly the 3200+, they can go for over a hundred. Now is a good time to upgrade based on that, or just sell the cpu and buy something slightly slower while you think about it

Apart from the gfx, your rig sounds fine but Vista is the future and quite ambitious for you to consider
 
Hopefully juding by todays technology standards the Socket A era shall be classed as Antique, then they shall start going up in price again...me waits..

can sum1 please throw oblivion with everything @ max at his graphics card
Click to expand...

I have no wish to play The Elder Scrolls nor am i a gamer but i can happily play FPS games with ease.

Paying £800 for Sli graphics cards then another £500 for a 20" tft so you can play your games at "MAX" and bragg about such to friends is your prerogative, personally i think its a little OTT.

My point in this thread being is that performance desktop prices has gone up by approximatley 100% in two years.

could you post link to the analyser!? i want to test it out
Click to expand...

Microsoft have released the "Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor beta" which will inform you if your machine is capable of taking full advantage of Vista, namely its aero interface. This is the link that has been posted above.

If you want the performance analyser it is built into vista itself and can be found under the system properties page.
 
800 quid has been a home-user general purpose desktop price point for a number of years. 400 quid can get you a desktop that can run Windows apps well, sure, but it's not a "performance desktop" price point as such.
 
Ti4200 one year ago?

It was budget when it came out anyway. The 3200 was hideously over priced for a long time until 64's came out and it too became budget. Hence why everyone got 2500s and overclocked.

Your probably looking at more like 3-4 years old and you could replace it with a 7600 gfx, 3700+, some extra ram and a new motherboard. You might need PSU, might not - depends how cheap you were last time round :)

total - couple of hundred quid.

Oh and £800 for a new powerful rig? Not a chance:

Asus A8N5X nForce4 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-120-AS) £52.82
Corsair 2GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x1GB) (VS2GBKIT400C3) (MY-080-CS) £135.07
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM) £105.69
BFG GeForce 7900 GT OC 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-018-BG) £193.82
Antec TruePower 2.0 430W PSU (CA-030-AN) £46.94
Click to expand...

There ya go, top end performance for £530, and not using a budget gfx card like that last heap you bought ;)

Still not convinced? Looking back to november 2004...

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-096-AM) (CP-096-AM) £111.56
Point of View GeForce 6800 GT 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (AGP) - Retail (GX-001-PV) £299.62
Abit AV8 (Socket 939) Motherboard (MB-052-AB) £78.13
Corsair 1GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x512MB) (VS1GBKIT400C3) (MY-061-CS) £117.44
Antec TruePower 330W PSU (CA-000-AN) £48.18
Click to expand...

Total £576.

I fanything, computers are getting cheaper, not more expensive
 
/edit - beaten by a faster typer ;)

Maybe you can look over your receipt and see how much each part actually cost you. My PC is 3 years old and by the time you add on all the extras like the PSU, Case, Screen, Hard drives - then I don't think prices have changed much at all!
 
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