Help with new specs

[HaGG]

Howdy, Me and my brother's PC's are getting on and they are struggling in the latest games and it's time for an upgrade.

The first PC has a budget of £580, some part's will be coming over from previous computer but a lot needs to be changed, it's going to stay on XP.

I'm unsure about the motherboard.

The second PC has a budget of £880, again some part's will be coming over. I currently have a Raptor 74gb and it's a couple of years old now, I'm guessing the new Raptor will be able to work in raid with it?

Thanks for reading and any help or recommendations would be appreciated

 

[Yiuca]

1st comp, Abit IP-35E along with a change in Heatsink/Fan perhaps Tuniq Tower?

2nd Comp - Well this is personal preference but I think the Abit IP-35 Pro being cheaper & still decent board may suit you better, may... That's upto you if there is a specific reason for you getting an X38 board, then keep it... If not, then I think just save the money for now.

8800GT is about £20-40 more & outperforms the 3870's in real life benchmarks so far... That's upto you if you want to go for it though since I see the other comp has it but it is the better card in terms of value for money & generally performing better for little more is usually worth it to most of us. (myself included) Upto you however.

Is there a specific cause of getting another Raptor? I personally would have been happier with bigger storage size despite the sacrifice in speed, I imagine it would indeed work in RAID config if you wish however... So that is upto you, just giving opinion!

 

[HaGG]

Thanks for the reply. I went with the x38 because I thought it would be more future proof as it supports the new Intel processors and 2.0 PCI.

The ATI card was because the motherboard is crossfire and I figure it will be closer then it is now with some proper drivers and because of the budget.

Also I think I might have heard that ATI have more features for playback? Video features?, or something along those lines, is that correct?

I currently have a 250gb for storage and it's got a good 100gb free, I was going for the raptor because I thought it might speed things up

 

[Yiuca]

Thanks for the reply. I went with the x38 because I thought it would be more future proof as it supports the new Intel processors and 2.0 PCI.

The ATI card was because the motherboard is crossfire and I figure it will be closer then it is now with some proper drivers and because of the budget.

Also I think I might have heard that ATI have more features for playback? Video features?, or something along those lines, is that correct?

I currently have a 250gb for storage and it's got a good 100gb free, I was going for the raptor because I thought it might speed things up

Well always your choice I recently bought comp of similar specs, I went with the IP-35 Pro as the next time I plan to upgrade is after Nehalem which is due Late 2008, so I will need new motherboard for that at that time most likely anyway.

If Crossfire is the AIM I guess it makes sense, If for gaming however it would seem Nvidia have abit of an extra stepping since they seem to have better relationship with Devs at the moment hence more optimized for Nvidia, that's the upside to Nvidia, ATi cards are great at shader calculations mainly, but I'm not very knowledgable about the latest ATi cards as I haven't followed them except for their performance against Nvidia cards recently... I think it might have some extra in terms of multimedia playback, but I'm not 100%.

2 Raptors in RAID config should do that a little, Hopefully we'll get some progression in terms of HDD speed when Solid State Drives come down in price, since they have no moving parts they aren't limited to the same actual limits as traditional HDDs. (They can also pack more data into smaller sizes) But they are perhaps awhile off yet... (They are sort of like Flash Sticks, similar but have a few differences & are internal + HDD style too, but the point is Flash Drives/Sticks are in essense very similar to SSD's) Anyway babbling on, Enjoy HDD!