Judge my spec

nero120

nero120

nero120

Soldato
Joined
12 Jan 2004
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Okay, got Oblivion today and my current rig cant do it justice so its upgrade time. I want a micro atx setup to save space. 500 is my budget. Please rip apart my proposed new specs and tell me what you think!

- Antec Aria Micro ATX Desktop Case 300WATT: £56.94
- AMD (Venice) Athlon 64 3200+ (ADA3200BAA4BP) OEM Skt 939: £88.49
- Asus A8N-VM CSM Socket 939 NVC51PV M-ATX VGA Sound Lan USB 2.0 1394 1000 FSB SATA: £47.09
- OCZ Platinum EL Dual Channel Kit 2x512MB DDR400 PC3200 CL 2-2-2-5 Revision 2: £102.11
- Hightech X850XT IceQ II Turbo 256MB PCI-E: £127.64

Inc vat and delivery the whole thing comes to £503.23

Will this rig let me play oblivion in kick-ass mode? What do you guys say?
 
Instead of spending £102 on 1 GB RAM, you can either get a Geil value 2 GB set for £111, or you can get a cheaper 1 GB set for around £55-60 which lets you splash out on a better graphics card. Just my opinion. :)
 
I was thinking along the lines of what explicit said, a 7600GT (or 6800GS) with cheaper RAM seems better for gaming. (assuming ram works of course! :P)
 
For example:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3200BPBOX) (CP-118-AM)
£108.84
Gigabyte K8NMF-9 nForce4 Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-041-GI)
£49.29
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL)
£55.17
Sapphire ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-121-SP) **this week only**
£199.69
OcUK Value Aspire X-Qpack Cube Case - Silver (CA-008-AS)
£70.44

Total inc VAT: £483.43

Add around £10 for delivery, still under £500. I would prefer a better graphics card over expensive 1GB ram.
 
Thanks for the replies. So would oblivion play better with 1gb cheap ram and an X1800XT, or with 2gb standard ram and X850XT?

Edit: what about this:

Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out Dual DVI PCI-E: £185.18 (£217.59 inc VAT)
 
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nero120 said:
Edit: what about this:

Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out Dual DVI PCI-E: £185.18 (£217.59 inc VAT)
Click to expand...

The connect3d x1800xt is the same as the saphire one, except the saphire one is on offer this week for £199.
 
Okay in light of your comments, here are my revised specs:

- Antec Aria Micro ATX Desktop Case 300WATT: £56.94
- AMD (Venice) Athlon 64 3200+ (ADA3200BAA4BP) OEM Skt 939: £88.49
- Asus A8N-VM CSM Socket 939 NVC51PV M-ATX VGA Sound Lan USB 2.0 1394 1000 FSB SATA: £47.09
- Connect3d X1800XL 256Mb DDR DVI-I + DVI-I + VIVO: £169.77
- Viking 1GB DDR PC3200 400MHz 184pin Memory Module: £49.35 (I can use this alongside my existing 2x512MB 3200 sticks, adding up to 2GB in total)

Comes to £490.39 inc vat and delivery. I read the X1800XL can be clocked up to XT speeds so that should do right? Any comments?
 
Yep, that looks better than the original spec in terms of graphics card. The XL should overclock fairly well, but I'm not sure if it can be flashed to XT speeds. You may want to consider geil value ram, which is actually decent despite its value name and is only £5 more.
 
Explicit said:
Yep, that looks better than the original spec in terms of graphics card. The XL should overclock fairly well, but I'm not sure if it can be flashed to XT speeds. You may want to consider geil value ram, which is actually decent despite its value name and is only £5 more.
Click to expand...

Thanks Explicit. Do you think it would be worth chucking the extra ram and changing the proc to AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Socket 939 Dual Core? If its really worth it I could stretch my budget as with this and minus the ram it comes to £534.81. Would the proc performance gains outweigh the less ram and extra costs? Or alternatively, would it be better to go for the standard 3800+ which is about 10 cheaper?
 
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So you mean keep your old 1GB ram, and spend the money on an X2 instead? That's certainly a good cpu for multitasking. But the single-threaded performance of the X2 3800+ is roughly the same as the 3200+ unless you overclock it. Dual core is always nice though, and if you can manage with your current ram then go for it. You can always upgrade ram later on. And I wouldn't adivse running 4 x 512MB anyway since it will drop performance slightly.
 
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