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Computer Parts: The Best, the Decent, and the Horrible

For my new PC (I'm going to print this out,) what should I look for? I'm
going to put down some categories of computer parts, and please tell
me what's the BEST, what is DECENT for a lower price range, and what
absolutely SUCKS and I should AVOID THIS COMPONENT at ALL COSTS! :D

PROCESSOR BRAND

Best:
Decent:
Horrible:

PROCESSOR SPEED

Best:
Decent:
Horrible:

MEMORY SIZE (RAM)

Best:
Decent:
Horrible:

VIDEO CARD

Best:
Decent:
Horrible:

SOUND CARD

Best:
Decent:
Horrible:

APG SLOT: What is this, and why do I need it?

Yours truly, and thank you once again,
Apprentice Yery

Comments

  • DarkbackwardDarkbackward Member Posts: 115

    Sorry to break your theme (which is a good one) but I will post only what I know to be true.

    In the pentium line, the p4 or p3 is a good way to go. The p4 3.4 is about as good as it gets, but incredibly expensive. You can shoot for a p4 2.2 for a middle of the line deal which should be good enough for all gaming purposes for a while. However I would not recommend anything lower than that, as processor speed is INCREDIBLY important.

    Don't underestimate the power of broadband, get it. It is practically required for mmo gameplay, this is a neccessity to which all people can benefit from.

    A 60 gig hard drive is enough, forget the dual 120s and superfluous stuff. This is the part where middle of the line is probably too much, but you do need decent memory, for if you don't have an adequate supply you can experience significant slow down.

    Once again, sorry to break your clean formula, but I just had to post it this way.

    Type Seed Game into your search engine. Go to the game's website and learn about it. It may be the best game you've continued to ignore.

  • hawkwindhawkwind Member Posts: 124

    The new PCI express cards are great, the 128meg ATI RADIUM x300 works pretty good on a budget, It is better than some 256 meg AGP cards I tried before. Get the PCI express mother board if you can.

     

    My friend got 80 gig HD, DVD-DVD + and - RW, ATI Radion 128MB Video card and the thin 17 inch flatscreen with audigy 2 platnium card for about 1200$ from DELL, not too bad if you are looking for a ready built computer that plays video, games and burns DVDs and CDs and a few things for schoool. Heh, school, but then you can get a job and buy the Alienware system with 2000$ video card you dream of.

     

    We got Dell in the year 2000 and they sent a replacement HD in 24 hours TWO times cause I fired them playing online and such. (3 HD in 3 years the last one was western digital it lasted the longest)They sent a replacement keyboard and a CD ROM unit too which the techie changed at our house for free. Hey I could have done that but he came and did it no sweat.

    Don't ya eat the yellow snow!

  • WorfWorf Member Posts: 264

    No matter what gets posted in this thread, check the information for yourself.

    Here's my opinion:

    Processor:
    - Go with a Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon. (Or newer model.)
    -- Go with a minimum of a 2 Gigahertz processor.

    Processor Memory:
    - Go with 1 Gigabyte or more.

    Video Card:
    - I prefer nVidia at this time. 256 MB or better. (512 or above is even better.)

    Sound Card:
    - Sound Blaster.
    -- There is a REASON that everyone else tries to be Soundblaster Compatible.

    Hard Drive:
    - 100 - 200 Gigabytes would be a good starting point.

    Internet:
    - Go with ADSL or Cable if you can.
    Dialup just doesn't cut it when it comes to playing online games anymore. With DSL, you don't share bandwidth with others in your neighborhood like most Cable Internet connections do.

    ---

    Depends on how much you want and have to spend.

    Personally, I buy a new case, new systemboard, new processor, and new memory from someone I trust to build the basic system and do the rest myself. Then I upgrade the other items as I have the money to do so.

    Hope that helps a little.

    ::::20::

  • hulons1hulons1 Member Posts: 74

    sharkyextreme.com does monthly articles on what you're looking for.  Check it out.

     

  • _myko_myko Member Posts: 333

    PROCESSOR BRAND

    Best: Athlon FX
    Decent: P4 / Athlon 64
    Horrible: Celeron

    PROCESSOR SPEED

    Best: 3.4GHz
    Decent: 3GHz
    Horrible: 1GHz

    MEMORY SIZE (RAM)

    Best: 4,8GB (dependant on motherboard, RAM > 1GB actually decreases gaming performance in some circumstances)
    Decent: 1GB
    Horrible: 256MB

    VIDEO CARD

    Best: 2 SLI nVidia 6800's
    Decent: any single ATI
    Horrible: on-board graphics

    SOUND CARD

    Best: Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum
    Decent: Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS
    Horrible: on-board sound (not bad, but not especially good)

    HARD DRIVE (IMO)

    Best: Seagate
    Decent: Western Digital
    Horrible: Maxtor

    ---sig---

    PvE in general is pretty lame, if you think long and hard about it. You are spending your time beating a severely gimped AI that would lose to a well trained monkey. Best not to think too long and hard why you are wasting time playing games in general actually...

  • dsorrentdsorrent Member CommonPosts: 1,627

    I concur on _myrko's post, with the exception of:


    Originally posted by _myko

    PROCESSOR SPEEDBest: 3.4GHz
    Decent: 3GHz
    Horrible: 1GHz

    Don't get hung up on the "speed" rating in Hertz. The AMD FX-55 only runs at 2.6 Ghz, yet it's faster than a P4 EE 3.46 in a DirectX 9 Test.

    It really depends on what you want to do. If you are looking at gaming, then the AMD FX-55 is the top of the line. If you're into video editing, you'll probably want to go with a Pentium Processor.. They seem to have the fastest encoding times.

  • DekothDekoth Member Posts: 474

    Unfortunatly your format will not tell you the truth of whats best for you.

    the best question to ask yourself is this.

    Is my machine primarly for Gaming? or is it primarly an all around machine?

    If its for gaming, then you want an Athlon 64, at least a gig of Ram, an a top tier Graphics card, R800 Pro, or 6800GT offer about the best bang for your buck, Nforce 4 motherboard, and make sure you buy decent ram Corsair, Mushkin, Crucial, Kingston, avoid the crap.

    All around machine, P4, at least a gig of ram same ram rules as AMD., Same graphics card and I think the 865 Chipset motherboard is the preferred pentium chipset, I may be mistaken I have not build a P4 rig in a while.

    As for sound, Unless your an Audiophile witht he Nforce 4 and 865 motherboards the onboard sound is darn nice, and I usually hate integrated anything, The best sound will come froma Soundblaster ZS though.

    Harddrive, If Serial ATA, Seagate/Western Digital, if regular IDE Western Digital/Seagate, avoid the rest.

    Remember this, Buy the max you can afford confortablly and dont worry about the rest.

     

    Oh and dont ever let anyone talk you into buying a Celeron, they are absolute Crap. It may say its fast with Ghz but I assure you it is not.

  • dsorrentdsorrent Member CommonPosts: 1,627


    Originally posted by Dekoth

    Harddrive, If Serial ATA, Seagate/Western Digital, if regular IDE Western Digital/Seagate, avoid the rest.

    Hmm, I've heard good things about the Samsung 120GB SATA Drive... Just out of curiosity, why avoid anything but Seagate/WD?

  • JulianDracosJulianDracos Member UncommonPosts: 1,528

    Part of the problem is money.  Often what limits people is how much money they want to spend.

    First thing is that AGP means accelerated graphics port.  This was the best you could get and is still the one most commonly used.  It went up to 8X and was meant to provide 8 times the speed/bandwidth of the PCI slots (the small white colored slots on your motherboard).  Recently they came out with PCI express or PCI-E.  It is 16X right now.  They might soon go to 32X.  So it provides twice the bandwidth at the moment.  PCI-E is the best right now and video cards are cheaper for them at the moment.  It is the standard computers are moving to.  They also allow for SLI.  This means you can basically run two vid cards at the same time for double the speed. 

    For the moment I do not believe there is really any performance advantage between PCI-E and an AGP card, at least anything meaningful.  But if you want to save money and plan on keeping this system for a while and maybe just upgrading parts espically your vid card, then I would recomend you get a motherboard that has PCI-E and SLI. 

    Since you are on here I am assuming you are interested in gaming.  In which case there is zero reason to buy a Pentium.  They continually loose most of the benchmarks and AMD is now the gamers chip and is expected to keep the performanc crown for at least then next 12-18 months. 

    The best chip right now is the AMD FX-53.  It is equivelent to around 4 gig in speed.  Asumming you don't want to pay almost $800 then the AMD 64 3500+ is a good choice around $250.  I do not think it is worth it to buy an AMD 64 chip below 3200+ unless you are wanting to upgrade.  There are some really nice cheap systems you can build now using the AMD XP chip.  But given the move to PCI-E, 64 bit processing to come, and the fact that the processor on the 64 controlls the memory speed I recomend getting the AMD 64

    I do not think that anyone ever think there is too much memory or the best.  The most you can put on there is the best.  512 MD is the minimum anymore.  Recomended would be 1 gig.  Make sure it is the fastest you can find that will run with your system. 

    As for your vid card, avoid anything with MX in the title.  This vid card was made for stupid people.  It has crap for perforamance and is not direct X 9 compatibile.  Probably the best you can get would be Geforce 6800 Ultra w/ 256 MB ram in PCI-E using SLI.  Get two of them since that is what SLI is about.  That would be the "best."  If you get a Nvidiva Card it is really a waste of money to get anything below the 6600 line.  I would say most people should either get the 6600GT or the regular 6800.  Both of them have around the same performance and cost.  You should be able to find them between $180-$240 for a PCI-E card.  AGP will run about $20 more. 

     

  • dizirgeedizirgee Member UncommonPosts: 156


    Originally posted by Dekoth

    Harddrive, If Serial ATA, Seagate/Western Digital, if regular IDE Western Digital/Seagate, avoid the rest.

    You are pretty wrong,i bet IBM is much better than WD or seagate.In my opinion worst harddrives are WD.It was crap 3 years or so when every 3rd was bugged,since that i dont think about WD anymore.
    IBM hdd is way to go.

    to poster:
    CPU: AMD athlon 64

    RAM: 1gb (try buy it as 1 module )

    Vid card: dependts on money but 6600gt is decent when you cant afford 6800,ATI have good ones too but i dont like them ::::01::

    Sound card: I have onboard one on nforce2 and it fine....what you save on audigy 2 you can use on other parts ::::31::

    And for mb i would go for nforce one(for amd of course)

    ouh and btw high ghz rating(as sombdy said for example 3ghz) doesnt matter much,amd runs a bit lower than intel and performance is better or equal

    APG SLOT: What is this, and why do I need it? good joke man! ::::02::
    its where you put your agp vid card

    Wu name dizirgee->Tough Destroyer ::::40::

    I`m Lawful Good Human Fighter Paladin
    and you?

  • paradymeparadyme Member Posts: 238

    I wouldn't go as far as recommending SLI yet considering it will run you around $2000 and only work properly with about 30% of the games out there. Also High End PCI-E cards are harder to find then they're AGP counterpart yet they run no different proformance wise, and an X800 Pro AGP(with a little bit of magic can be turned into an X800 XT PE) and will run great for atleast the next 2 years and only cost you around $500 dollars, compared to $800 for a X850 XT PE or $2000 for 6800 Ultra SLI.

    Also PCI-E, SLI and DDR2 are still in their primary stages and the Chipsets on most motherboards arnt going to run perfect yet. Personally I am giving these technologies atleast another 6-8 months to develop before I invest in them.

    Also when it comes to RAM if you want a really good deal go with PQI Turbo PC3200, with the 2,2,2,5 timings it will cost about $200 bucks and runs as good as most top end brands like Cosair, Mushkin and Kingston, and runs even better if your overclocking.

    My specs are:

    Asus P4P800E-Deluxe(865PE chipset)-Always go with either 865PE/875 chipsets for P4's
    P4E 3.4Ghz
    Corsair TWINX Pro Dual Channel 2048MB PC3200
    X800 Pro Flashed to X800 XT PE
    200G Maxtor
    Aspire Super Alien Case-Case cooling is very important
    Kingwin Liquid cooling

    It's cost me about $2500 over the last year pieceing it together but it runs everything on max settings 1280x1024 Res and by the look of whats coming out for the rest of the year should run everything else no problem. And I have no problem surfing the web while playing MMO's or playing Morrowind while I rest in Lineage 2.

  • kiniarkiniar Member Posts: 18

    Processor: Definately a Athlon 64 or FX chip.
    Memory: 1GB or better
    Graphics Card: PCI-E 6600 or better
    Harddrive: Seagate SATA
    Sound Card: Audigy 2 plat is best, onboard if you do not care

    But one of the most important factors is the ability to upgrade in the future. Work within your budget at the time and upgrade as the ability arises.

    ----
    If you never strive for more and are afraid to take a chance, then you have all you deserve.

  • DekothDekoth Member Posts: 474

    IBM? your kidding right?

    Need i bring up why they called their drives the IBM "Deathstar"?

    I work in the IT industry mate and While IBM has good servers there is a good reason they sold their HDD manufacturing to hitachi which does not have the best reputation in the HDD industry.

    I replace on average 400-500 harddrives a month, all of them Maxtor, IBM or Quantum. I replace them with Western Digital Caviar's I have a 1% Doa/Fail rate in the first 15 months. when I was using maxtor I had a 7% Doa/fail rate. Seeing that I deal with hundreds of these drives a month I think I know what I am talking about in terms of quality.

  • BendenBenden Member Posts: 103

    Sorry if I dont follow your tracks.

    Here are my recommended components with that philosophy : best  power(or efficiency) / price.

    PROCESSOR BRAND

    AMD (you cant go wrong whatever the processor type over intel)

    Horrible : AMD DURON/INTEL CELERON

    PROCESSOR SPEED

    Atlon 64 3000+ (2000mhz - s754)

    Fxs are too expensive considering the power gained.

    Horrible : <1.5 ghz cpu.

     

    MEMORY SIZE (RAM)

    1 go DDR PC3200 is enough at the moment. (brands : samsung is ok reliability/price or PQI. Take care, ask for original Samsung as printed on the pcb (green dye), not ram with just samsung chips, those are just "no name")

    get 2 go if you can or even 1.5 go.

    HORRIBLE : Less than 1 go (well you'll survive but, some games will make you regret that).

    VIDEO CARD

    hmm I'm lacking some info there. If I follow my power/ratio guideline i'll go for a

    ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 mo (sapphire Atlantis or other).

    Horrible : Nvidia 5200 and any MX model

    Best : more expensive ones (lol).

    SOUND CARD

    Dunno in fact, in doubt go for a Creative Labs Soundblaster Audigy 2 (heard bad things about 24 bits ones).

    APG SLOT: What is this, and why do I need it?

    That's where you plug your AGP Video Card, and only video card goes there. (still very few pci video card on the market).

    Video card used to be pluged on PCI slot before AGP appeared (or VESA Local Bus but  this standart was abandonned, thanks to those intel suckers). And ISA slots before that.

    All new mother boards include an AGP 8x slot now. Very new ones have PCI express (faster than pci and AGP, and you can plug any kind of devices on those).

    well, those are just recommendation, but this is what I would get or what I already have image.

  • BendenBenden Member Posts: 103

    Rentantilius has a point image (maybe "clown" is a bit too much don't you agree?). But he's going to need to upgrade his gear soon (next year ?).

    As usual dont thrust 100 % anyone me included of course (lol), and get most info you can from most sources you can. Good luck image.

  • JulianDracosJulianDracos Member UncommonPosts: 1,528



    Originally posted by rentantilus

    I'll be honest with you, a lot of these clowns are just having pissing contests.  I've never had a problem running any MMORPG, even massive 300+ person battles in Planetside and crowded town squares in Star Wars Galaxies.  Here are my specs:




    Can you get buy with lesser specs than the best?  Yes.  You will have no problems running most mmorpg below the top line specs here.  But he asked for the best.  You can buy a great gaming computer for $500-$800 essentiallt the same cost as the best processor. 

    In terms of cost and permorfance no, there is zero reason to buy an Intel chip at the moment.  You can find a better AMD chip for less cost no matter what your speed and price range is. 

    Maybe I am just lucky to have 3 Fry stores where I am at and a few Compusa's, but around Christmas time it was almost impossible to find the AGP video cards.  PCI-E is much easier to find for me and on the net.  It is also the direction everything to going towards.  So I see no reason to not recomend to someone buying an entirely new system to get an AMD 64 and a motherboard with PCI-E. 

  • RykerRyker Member UncommonPosts: 207

    Where I work we replaced around 500 or so IBM pcs, they were the old value points and put in new hps. The IBM hard drives we hardly ever had them crash, but when we put the new hps in they crash all the time. The hps use seagate and WD. They must of used some cheap made seagates and WD in those and the IBM probably was a better grade. Thats my experience on hard drives :)

    Edit: I quess I should have also said that I have also noticed a difference in the weight of the hard drives that are in the business pcs and those that you buy for home. The business ones are real light compared to the home ones. The Ibm pcs also had heavier feeling hard drives.

  • _myko_myko Member Posts: 333

    whatever HDD you go for, make sure it has 8MB of cache....the price premium is definately worth it. Crashing doesnt tend to be the fault of the hard drive, its things like corrupted MBR's, boot sector problems and file corruption that are hard drive faults, something a few of the hdd manufacturers seem to experience above 120GB. At and under 120GB pretty much any drive will do, over that figure be careful about the manufacturer you choose, see if you can find user reviews.

    as for whether this discussion is really relevant to MMORPG's, eventually games will need more power - people with celerons are probably holding back the genre ::::40::

    ---sig---

    PvE in general is pretty lame, if you think long and hard about it. You are spending your time beating a severely gimped AI that would lose to a well trained monkey. Best not to think too long and hard why you are wasting time playing games in general actually...

  • dizirgeedizirgee Member UncommonPosts: 156


    Originally posted by Ryker
    Where I work we replaced around 500 or so IBM pcs, they were the old value points and put in new hps. The IBM hard drives we hardly ever had them crash, but when we put the new hps in they crash all the time. The hps use seagate and WD. They must of used some cheap made seagates and WD in those and the IBM probably was a better grade. Thats my experience on hard drives :) Edit: I quess I should have also said that I have also noticed a difference in the weight of the hard drives that are in the business pcs and those that you buy for home. The business ones are real light compared to the home ones. The Ibm pcs also had heavier feeling hard drives.

    Thnx Ryker ,you are my man! ::::20::
    Dunno but maybe it can be that they for business class manufacturing crappy loads ::::12::,but as i said none of my friends or me have ever any prob with IBM hdds...

    and i said that WD 5 years ago or so was shity drives,maybe since than they improved but as i said i dont care about wd....ibm is way to go ::::24::


    And about pci-e thing...i would go rather for classic agp for now,coz pci-e is quite new and it needs time.But anyways difference in performance are now almost same...no big deal

    Wu name dizirgee->Tough Destroyer ::::40::

    I`m Lawful Good Human Fighter Paladin
    and you?

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