Yet another 'spec me' thread....

valve90210 · 1 Oct 2008 at 12:10

Hi All

I am currently running an aging P4 2.8ghz system which has served me well for the past 4 or 5 years (I can't remember when I got it) but it is now starting to feel it's age so I'm contemplating an upgrade.

I will be wanting any new comp to last me 4 years or so again with maybe minimal upgrades (on current comp I've upgraded graphics card (which required new power supply) and added a bit more RAM), so a bit of future proofing would be good.

I use my computer for both gaming and a lot of Photoshop work. I'm Print Designer and as such I am always in Photoshop and can be working on huge documents which at the moment are bringing my current comp to it's knees!

I have Halflife 2 which used to run beautifully on my present comp but after buying the Orange Box and the upgrades to Source which that entailed, I can no longer play HL2 as after about 10 mins it suffers from the long undealt with problem of the looping sound crash, so I'd love to be able to play this again along with the expansions etc which currently I've owned for nearly a year and not been able to play... ;o( My main Gaming is FPS so I'd be looking to be able to play the latest and best of those too.

I have a lovely keyboard and mouse so I don't need those, nor do I need monitors as I have a nice pair of 19"s already. Though they both only have VGA inputs so that would need to be considered when choosing graphics cards.

I've never done any overclocking but if it meant I could get much better performance for the price then maybe I'd have to learn though I don't really want to be spending my life tinkering with the workings of the computer as I normally have a lot to be doing that requires actually using it.

So, from this could anyone put me together a spec? I'd be looking at spending about £600ish or less if possible.

Thanks in advance

Valve

greywolf · 1 Oct 2008 at 12:31

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
Asus P5Q Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Reaper HPC Enhanced Bandwidth Edition Dual Channel DDR2 (OCZ2RPR800C44GK)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4850 PCS Extreme 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST3500320AS)
Corsair TX 650W ATX2.2 SLi Compliant PSU
Antec Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case
Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM

Total = £560.88 + shipping

You will also need an OS on top of this if you dont already have it. Also im not sure if the case comes with case fans, so you might need to add them also. Put a 500gb hard drive in although not sure if you will require more or not being a Print Designer. If you do want to overclock i suggest also adding a new heatsink such as the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro which is only around £17.

Kearney_1988 · 1 Oct 2008 at 12:35

pretty solid spec there, as far as i know the antec 300 has fans but not for the front intakes. Dont forget to put a heatsink fan in there if you plan to overclock. Dont worry about how long it takes it can be done pretty easily in a night

valve90210 · 1 Oct 2008 at 13:04

Thanks for that, that looks like a decent spec. Only changes I might make would be to have 2 hard drives to help with Photoshop performance (mind you, the extra power of the CPU will probably mean it's not really necessary)

Also, are there any Nvidia alternatives on the graphics card front?

Never having overclocked before and always having got hopelessly lost when reading articles about how to do it (never tried reading them with the relevant hardware etc in front of me so I can see what they are talking about), I might take a while to get to the over clocking stage but we'll see.

I will be running some slightly older software (or really old in some cases...) such as Photoshop 5.5, which I know will not benefit from the multicore processor. My assumption would be that they will therefore use only a single core, which if it is running slower than my existing processor (although obviously the newer CPU will be more efficient etc) will I see much difference in performance?

Oh and can I still get XP? as I know vista has issues with some of my more expensive software (Quark...)

Valve

greywolf · 1 Oct 2008 at 13:38

For the price i believe the ATI cards have better performance that the current Nvidia's.

Yes i believe you will see a good increase in performance even tho you may only be using one core.

Yup you can still get xp, although you wont get the full benifit of the full 4gb of ram , only around 3-3.2gb is seen by windows. To get the full 4gb of ram used you will need 64bit OS.

flinco · 1 Oct 2008 at 15:12

ati cards are definitely better than nvidias offerings at the moment. for just over 600 you could upgrade to a 4870 which is a really great card. go for a 320 or 640gb hard drive, theyre faster than a 500gb one

valve90210 · 1 Oct 2008 at 15:38

are there any new offerings coming from Nvidia?

flinco · 1 Oct 2008 at 15:59

the 4870's rival is the gtx260 which is about the same price and worse in most games, but can be overclocked more than the 4870.

there is also the new version of the gtx 260 with 216sp which is about on par with the 4870 but is more expensive

then theres the GTX 280 but that is a lot more expensive.

there wont be any new models for while