What computer do you use?

[mxs1030]

Quote:

Originally posted by Eagle_Driver Well, here is *my* system: Antec SX1035B case Antec TruControl 550W power supply AMD Athlon XP 2000+ CPU @ stock speed (1.67 GHz) Asus A7V333 motherboard 512MB PC2100 (DDR266) DDR RAM GeForce4 Ti4400 graphics card w/ 128MB DDR RAM 120GB WD1200JB hard drive (8MB cache) 8X DVD-ROM (40X CD-ROM) drive 52x24x52X CD-RW drive M-Audio Revolution sound card ACS-48 2.1 speaker set 10/100 NIC card 56K (v.90) modem (duh) DSL (faster than dial-up) Floppy (duh) Microsoft Internet Keyboard Logitech MX500 mouse Epson printer I had originally planned to switch from AMD to Intel. But when I found that I would have gotten a more up-to-date AMD-based setup consisting of a Athlon XP 2600+ (Barton) CPU with 512K L2 cache, an Abit NF7-S V2.0 nForce2-based motherboard with SATA and FireWire interfaces and 1GB (two 512MB sticks) of PC3200 Corsair XMS low-latency DDR memory for less $$$ than I would have paid for an Intel-based setup consisting of a 2.6c GHz Pentium 4 CPU with an effective 800MHz FSB, an Intel-made i875P chipset-based motherboard and only 512MB (two 256MB sticks) of the same Corsair XMS PC3200 CL2 DDR memory. So I stuck with an updated AMD setup in the end (but I haven't installed the new components in yet). Furthermore, my current motherboard doesn't support any of the newer 333MHz FSB or 400MHz FSB Athlon XP processors - at least not the particular board revision of the Asus A7V333 that I have (I have V1.02 [which is NOT AMD-recommended for anything above a 2200+, but V1.04 is AMD-recommended for up to a 2600+/266 CPU] - but I needed V2.0 or higher just to support the new 333MHz FSB CPUs). Oh, by the way, since I have already purchased the new parts, do I need a better video card than my current GF4 Ti4400? The R9600XT and the GFFX 5700U looks attractive in my price range, since they claim full hardware DX9 support (the GF4 Ti4400 is only a DX8-generation part) - but I am willing to go all the way to an R9800 Pro if the price is right (the R9800XT is still waaaay too expensive for my budget right now).

If you're planning to upgrade the vid card look into the 9700 PRO, it can be had at www.zipzoomfly.com for about $205 I believe.

The 9700pro is much like the HD580, often overshadowed by its successors ( the 9800 PRO and 9800 XT respectively ) the 9700 PRO offers the most bang for the buck in $200 price range without a doubt in my mind. The next great $200ish card, the 9600xt/5700u falls behind almost 25% in most benchmarks ( http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/over2003/index.html ).

you also might want to look into the 5900 NU also, Bestbuy has a special deal on it for $200 IIRC.

edit: but if I were you I would stick with the 4400, it's still a great card even by today's standards.

 

[BrodieR]

Here is my current set up. . .

Intel Pentium 4 3 Ghz w/ 800mhz FSB
2 x 512MB Kingston HyperX DDR ram (Dual DDR set up)
120 Western Digital SE
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Creative Audigy Platnium w/ Live Drive
Enermax Powersupply (450watts)
TDK 52x CD Burner
Sony DVD Rom
Logitech MX Duo Mouse/Keyboard
Lian Li PC7 Case (I think that is the model number...)
****ty Creative speakers.
Shure E2c (my main source of audio)

The main thing I want to add is a new sound card for music. Most likely something from M Audio.

This is what my graduation money bought me

I should have waited on the graphics card and processor though. Like 3 weeks after I ordered stuff the processor came down A LOT in price. . . I had payed like 450 for that, same price for the grphx card at the time.

 

[fredpb]

Homebuilt
XP2000+ AMD CPU
764mb ram
cd and dvd burners
80 and 120gb hard drives
Asus motherboard
Turtle Beach audio card
FX5900 vidcard
Entec case 350w power supply
Two case fans
floppy
DSL...modem. Router.
USR modem

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Quote:

Originally posted by mxs1030 If you're planning to upgrade the vid card look into the 9700 PRO, it can be had at www.zipzoomfly.com for about $205 I believe. The 9700pro is much like the HD580, often overshadowed by its successors ( the 9800 PRO and 9800 XT respectively ) the 9700 PRO offers the most bang for the buck in $200 price range without a doubt in my mind. The next great $200ish card, the 9600xt/5700u falls behind almost 25% in most benchmarks ( http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/over2003/index.html ). you also might want to look into the 5900 NU also, Bestbuy has a special deal on it for $200 IIRC. edit: but if I were you I would stick with the 4400, it's still a great card even by today's standards.

Thanks for the reassurance. I'm beginning to feel that I would have to spend more $$$ than what I had originally paid for my Ti4400 just to get a meaningful increase in gaming performance. And for the nearly $200 that I would have paid for either the R9600XT or the GF-FX 5700 Ultra, both of those cards would have been more of a side-step than a true upgrade from my current GF4 Ti4400 in most games - and games that take any advantage of DX9 won't be out on store shelves until later this year at the earliest.

 

[lan]

Quote:

Originally posted by Eagle_Driver R9600XT or the GF-FX 5700 Ultra, both of those cards would have been more of a side-step than a true upgrade from my current GF4 Ti4400 in most games - and games that take any advantage of DX9 won't be out on store shelves until later this year at the earliest.

Well, that depends on how you like to play games. If you like antialiasing and anisotropic filtering, the Ti4400 takes an unacceptable massive speed hit. I had a Ti4400 overclocked to near 4600 speeds and it's fine with those off. I tried a 5700 Ultra 9600XT and 9800Pro in the last 2 months. Well Halo and Deus Ex 2 still were dog slow but that's not why I returned them. Actually none of the video cards work well in my system with games, refresh rates, LCD, and projector. Just impossible.

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Quote:

Originally posted by lan Well, that depends on how you like to play games. If you like antialiasing and anisotropic filtering, the Ti4400 takes an unacceptable massive speed hit. I had a Ti4400 overclocked to near 4600 speeds and it's fine with those off. I tried a 5700 Ultra 9600XT and 9800Pro in the last 2 months. Well Halo and Deus Ex 2 still were dog slow but that's not why I returned them. Actually none of the video cards work well in my system with games, refresh rates, LCD, and projector. Just impossible.

Hmmm... I was comparing the results with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering turned off.

*goes to check lan's current system specs*

 

[mxs1030]

Quote:

Originally posted by lan Well, that depends on how you like to play games. If you like antialiasing and anisotropic filtering, the Ti4400 takes an unacceptable massive speed hit. I had a Ti4400 overclocked to near 4600 speeds and it's fine with those off. I tried a 5700 Ultra 9600XT and 9800Pro in the last 2 months. Well Halo and Deus Ex 2 still were dog slow but that's not why I returned them. Actually none of the video cards work well in my system with games, refresh rates, LCD, and projector. Just impossible.

I've never heard of anyone having problems with all three of those cards, mind I ask what was the problem?

 

[lan]

Quote:

Originally posted by mxs1030 I've never heard of anyone having problems with all three of those cards, mind I ask what was the problem?

Well my displays are not regular. Apple 22" LCD and Sanyo Z1 projector. The text modes don't appear on the LCD for the 9600XT or 9800PRO. So to see the BIOS screen, I have to boot off single analog display. Strange that I could see text modes with my Radeon VE and Ti4400 before. The 5700Ultra worked though in that regard. I have to program a custom resolution in Powerstrip for the projector (960x540). Now Matrox, ATI, and Nvidia all have different levels of dual monitor support and such. So with powerstrip and winxp fighting over dual monitor and refresh rates it ended up that I could either play games OR use 2nd display for the projector not both. If I tried to get both working, I'd end up an invalid graphics mode being sent to LCD which is just a black screen. That couldn't be fixed without restarting the computer.

I actually don't have the other displays on in windows when playing games. I deactivate them in display properties. I think any game heavy in vertex/pixel shaders is just too much for video card. You can even see 3Dmark2003 is not very fast in DX9 tests in higher res. So if you can wait until next gen cards, that maybe the best thing to do.

 

[mxs1030]

ah.

 

[averydonovan]

Self-built:
Athlon XP 2500+ Barton clocked to 10x220MHz
512MB DDR400 SDRAM (2.5-3-3-11 timings)
EPoX 8RDA+ motherboard
80GB WD800JB and 40GB WD400BB Western Digital hard drives
Lite-On DVD-ROM and CD-RW drives
ATI Radeon 9100 128MB clocked to 275/250
Hauppauge WinTV stereo card
Chaintech AV-710 soundcard
Older Antec case w/ 300W PSU
Windows XP Pro SP1

Despite the overclocked CPU I don't really use this machine for gaming. I do a lot of audio conversion for my portable player, compiled stuff in Gentoo Linux a few times, and some other more utilitarian uses. I really can't wait to put in another stick of that cheap Corsair ValueSelect memory I'm using now so I can run in dual-channel mode. Hopefully the next stick I get will support the same overclock the current stick of it does. My machine is mainly an over-powered web surfing machine most of the time.

 

[JeffL]

Here's my rig, fully built by moi:

Athlon XP 2100+ @ 1.859Ghz
512MB
48x24x48 CDRW/16x DVD
52x CD ROM
Dual 40Gig 7200RPM in Raid 0
Leadtek Winfast Deluxe 2000xp TV tuner
M-Audio Sonica USB (also used with my laptop on the go)
ATI Radeon 9500 128MB Graphics @ 376.5/303
Thermaltake 8SE HSF
10 total system fans, excluding PSU fans with seperate external PSU
Dual 17" monitors for dual display
Asroc K7VM2 Mobo, socket A
XP Pro

 

[krmathis]

I have several machines!

Laptop: Dell Inspiron 4150
Pentium 4-m 1.8Ghz
512MB Ram
40GB hd
CD-RW/DVD combo
etc...
Windows XP Pro.

SMB server: Homebuilt
Pentium 4 1.8Ghz
Asus P4B-t
512MB RD-Ram
18,2GB IBM 10.000 rpm SCSI hd (OS drive)
2x 120GB WD hd
Linux 2.4.20

Gateway: Old Dell something
Pentium 120Mhz
96MB Ram
6.4GB hd
Linux 2.4.xx

 

[Armand Karlsen]

Main Rig: Homebuilt
Lian-Li PC-71 black full tower case
Enermax 431W fan control PSU
EPoX EP-8K5A2+ motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 2400+
Thermalright SLK-800 + YS-Tech 80mm 46cfm + AS.V
512MB generic PC2700 CAS 2.5
BBA ATi Radeon 9600 Pro
Creative SB Live Value 1024
Samsung SD-612 DVD-ROM drive
20GB WD 5400rpm ATA-100 HD
Win2k Pro

Secondary rig: Compaq Professional Workstation 5000
2x Intel Pentium Pro 200MHz 1MB L2
64MB ECC EDO DRAM DIMM (Argh! need more!

)
Win2k Pro

 

[hpn5350]

Mac:
Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
1GHz frontside bus/processor
512K L2 cache/processor
512MB DDR400 128-bit SDRAM
160GB Serial ATA
SuperDrive
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
64MB DDR video memory
23" Apple Cinema Display

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Here was *my* old system:

1. Antec SX1035B case
2. Antec TruControl 550W power supply
3. AMD Athlon XP 2000+/266 "Palomino" CPU with 256K L2 cache @ stock speed (1.67 GHz)
4. Stock AMD retail boxed CPU heatsink/fan (5400 RPM)
5. Asus A7V333 (VIA KT333) motherboard
6. 512MB PC2100 (DDR266) DDR RAM
7. GeForce4 Ti4400 graphics card w/ 128MB DDR RAM
8. 120GB WD1200JB hard drive (8MB cache)
9. 8X DVD-ROM (40X CD-ROM) drive
10. 52x24x52X CD-RW drive
11. M-Audio Revolution sound card
12. ACS-48 2.1 speaker set
13. 10/100 NIC card (Linksys PCI card)
14. 56K (v.90) modem (duh)
15. DSL (faster than dial-up)
16. Floppy (duh)
17. Microsoft Internet Keyboard
18. Logitech MX500 mouse
19. Epson printer

I had the motherboard/CPU/memory upgrade sitting for over a week - until yesterday, when I installed those parts. And after the better part of yesterday evening reinstalling Windows XP Pro, I finally got my upgraded system up and running now!

Here is *my* system today:

1. Antec SX1035B case
2. Antec TruControl 550W power supply
3. AMD Athlon XP 2600+/333 "Barton" CPU with 512K L2 cache @ stock speed (1.917 GHz)
4. Stock AMD retail boxed heatsink/fan (3000 RPM)
5. Abit NF7-S V2.0 (nForce2 Ultra 400) motherboard
6. 1GB Corsair TwinX XMS3200 Low Latency DDR RAM @ DDR400
7. GeForce4 Ti4400 graphics card w/ 128MB DDR RAM
8. 120GB WD1200JB hard drive (8MB cache)
9. 8X DVD-ROM (40X CD-ROM) drive
10. 52x24x52X CD-RW drive
11. M-Audio Revolution sound card
12. ACS-48 2.1 speaker set
13. 10/100 NIC card (integrated on motherboard)
14. DSL (faster than dial-up)
15. Floppy (duh)
16. Microsoft Internet Keyboard
17. Logitech MX500 mouse
18. Epson printer

Before, my old system ran its CPU consistently above 50C/122F. Now, my new system's CPU runs at only 38C/100F!

Moreover, my Internet DSL connection and downloading speeds are now twice as fast as before! Before, I had struggled to even reach 600kbps. But now, I'm getting 1.2Mbps!!!

It turned out that my old Linksys PCI NIC card and/or its available WinXP drivers had bottlenecked my broadband connection.

FINAL UPDATE: I wrote that back on 21 January. Yesterday afternoon, I've finally retired my GeForce4 Ti 4400, which had been in my system for well over a year, in favour of a 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro. Now I can finally play all of my current games at good frame rates with my AA and AF settings maxxed out!!!