Buying A New Computer in Off Topic

ID:184774
 
Jul 9 2006, 4:04 pm
I'm buying a new computer and I pretty much have no clue about them. Would you say this one's worth it?

Black and Silver MicroP case with 400 Watt PSU
Asus P5RD2 motherboard with onboard sound and onboard network card
Intel Celeron D Socket 775 3.2 Ghz processor (Upgrade to Pentium IV 3.0Ghz 2MB cache CPU for £30)
1GB DDR 2 RAM
Floppy drive and multimedia card reader
200 GB IDE hard drive
16x Dual Layer DVD +/- Rewriter
NVIDIA 7300GS 256MB graphics card
Windows XP Media Centre operating system with free installation and original licence and CD supplied with the PC (add a Windows XP Media Centre Remote for £25)

£435 including VAT + delivery. For those economically challenged, that's 804.633 USD.
#1 Jul 9 2006, 4:11 pm
Windows XP Media Centre operating system with free installation and original licence and CD supplied with the PC (add a Windows XP Media Centre Remote for £25)

DON'T WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T HAVE THAT
#2 Jul 9 2006, 4:11 pm
Where are you buying that from?
#3 Jul 9 2006, 4:12 pm
In response to Yorae (#1)
Why? What's wrong with it?
#4 Jul 9 2006, 4:17 pm
In response to DeathAwaitsU (#3)
Too many problems to say get HOME OR PRO
#5 Jul 9 2006, 4:19 pm
In response to Yorae (#4)
MY gramma uses media center and it runs fine.
#6 Jul 9 2006, 4:20 pm
In response to Yorae (#4)
Can you prove it? Or atleast come up with a list.
#7 Jul 9 2006, 4:30 pm
In response to Brind (#6)
#8 Jul 9 2006, 4:36 pm
In response to Anthony7 (#2)
#9 Jul 9 2006, 5:19 pm
In response to Yorae (#7)
Yorae wrote:
http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/os/ 0,39024175,10005650,00.htm

There is two versions released after that review that fixed many of the problems:

review of newer versions:
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/windowsxp_mce2005.asp
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/windowsxp_mce2005.asp
http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/ Microsoft_Windows_XP_Media_Center_Edition_2005/ 4505-3672_16-31138402.html

As you can tell many of the old issues are gone, of couse it has a few new ones to boot :P
#10 Jul 9 2006, 5:24 pm
Get the Pentium 4
#11 Jul 9 2006, 5:35 pm
In response to Airjoe (#10)
Yeah I'm probably getting both upgrades, reckon it's worth the price though?
#12 Jul 10 2006, 7:44 am
Make sure your processor is not dual-core, unless you aren't going to use it for games. Many people (including myself) have experienced dropping frame rates and slower loading times (but only a tad slower) from other people with somewhat the same hardware, but a single-core processor.

They also have the same brand, Pentium 4. I'd actually reccomend getting an AMD, somewhere around 2.4 GHz. They are uber fast and powerful. I'll give you a link when I find the page.

#13 Jul 10 2006, 8:34 am
Doesn't seem like a good deal to me. Perhaps you guys just pay more for hardware, but I have built similar systems with better game performance for about $200USD cheaper.

First off, don't go Celeron, the are not worth it. If you are going to spend that much on a processor, why not just go Pentium? But personally I would go AMD. They cost a lot less are just as powerful for most uses(The are a bit slower doing things like compiling large programs or creating large media files like movies).

Is the DDR2 ram faster than 3200? Because if it is just 3200, you are better off with regular DDR. DDR at 3200 is a good bit faster than DDR2 at 3200. DDR2 only beats it out because it can go faster than 3200, which makes up for the delay that DDR2 has.

7300GS sounds weak, I would have to look up info on it before I was certain though(Tomshardware.com).

IDE harddrives? Surely that thing can take SATA, why not get that. A hard-drive is already a bottleneck, but why not give it all the help you can.

WinXP Media Center/re sounds fine if you are getting it free, but if they are charging you, I would just go Pro. These days you can get an OEM copy of Pro for about the same price as Media Center, but pro is a nice slimmed down version and comes with networking ability that home and Media Center should already.

Thats about all I have to help you.
#14 Jul 10 2006, 2:42 pm (Edited on Jul 10 2006, 7:12 pm)
In response to CaptFalcon33035 (#12)
CaptFalcon33035 wrote:
Make sure your processor is not dual-core, unless you aren't going to use it for games. Many people (including myself) have experienced dropping frame rates and slower loading times (but only a tad slower) from other people with somewhat the same hardware, but a single-core processor.

They also have the same brand, Pentium 4. I'd actually reccomend getting an AMD, somewhere around 2.4 GHz. They are uber fast and powerful. I'll give you a link when I find the page.


AMD are great, get a dual core, my brother has one, assuming you set it up correctly i havent see it drop any frames. Perhaps when AMD's new reverse hyperthreading comes out it'll be compatiable with dual core. Anyway i'd go for dual core as its always handy and some games are programmed to use both

EDIT: Found this while i was looking round

AMD to Boost Single-Threading Performance on Multi-Core Chips, Say Sources.
AMD to Launch “Anti-Hyper-Threading” Shortly
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20060622143710.html
Apparently, all Socket AM2 A64 X2 series will have this capability. According to the article, all you need is a BIOS update, and a driver for Operating System support. For those who don't know, the idea is to improve single-threaded performance by getting two real cores to act like one virtual one.

So pretty much, get a dual core and you'll be able to use it as one core :D
#15 Jul 10 2006, 2:48 pm
In response to Danial.Beta (#13)
Danial.Beta wrote:
Doesn't seem like a good deal to me. Perhaps you guys just pay more for hardware, but I have built similar systems with better game performance for about $200USD cheaper.

Where do you guys buy this stuff, in australia for a good computer that will last a couple of years its about $1200, for a 4400 amd dual core, good mobo and a 7900gtx.

First off, don't go Celeron, the are not worth it. If you are going to spend that much on a processor, why not just go Pentium? But personally I would go AMD. They cost a lot less are just as powerful for most uses(The are a bit slower doing things like compiling large programs or creating large media files like movies).

Damn straight, if you were going to get a intel, do not get a celeron, they are slower
Is the DDR2 ram faster than 3200? Because if it is just 3200, you are better off with regular DDR. DDR at 3200 is a good bit faster than DDR2 at 3200. DDR2 only beats it out because it can go faster than 3200, which makes up for the delay that DDR2 has.
DDR2 for the most part is faster because of the timings they used to achieve the speed that they have. If you look into the timings of most DDR2 ram they are a lot higher than most DDR1 ram. There is a lot of debate over whether having ram with lower timings or a high frequency is better. I'd suggest OCZ ram, I dont know if they do DDR2, but if you were to get an AMD unless you got AM2 you wouldnt be able to use DDR2 anyway.

7300GS sounds weak, I would have to look up info on it before I was certain though(Tomshardware.com).
Depends on how much you want to spend, i'd get that if you dont want to spend anymore, if not, get a 7800 or a 7900.

IDE harddrives? Surely that thing can take SATA, why not get that. A hard-drive is already a bottleneck, but why not give it all the help you can.
I've had two sata controllers cause grief to me when installing xp on them, or even running it on them. Now im not saying sata drives are inherintly bad for running windows its just from my experience its good to have both.
I'd go for Sata anyway as you probably wont have an excess of like 8 or more hard disks like I do which is what is probably causing the problem

WinXP Media Center/re sounds fine if you are getting it free, but if they are charging you, I would just go Pro. These days you can get an OEM copy of Pro for about the same price as Media Center, but pro is a nice slimmed down version and comes with networking ability that home and Media Center should already.
Unless your computer has a hdtv tuner or some sort of tuner its sort of poinless to get the media center edition
Thats about all I have to help you.
#16 Jul 11 2006, 8:59 pm
In response to Critical (#15)
looks like a fairly decent rig. If you want a better deal, gotta make it yourself tho;)

If you cant do that, or dont want to have someone do it for ya, your setup is pretty good