Good computer setup?

In 6 months, it will be considered old. Steal the parts.

Good idea... Too bad none of the shops here in Spain have any of that stuff (Having a really hard time finding somewhere within Spain to order it from as well).

Even if it''s considered to not be brand new, it''ll still be able to play the games in 6 months time fairly well. Even the computer I have now would''ve been able to play newly released games if it hadn''t been for either the motherboard or the CPU malfunctioning, making CPU intensive games impossible to play (Painkiller runs at 30-40 fps at 1024x768 with 6xAA, and max on all graphics settings -- Dungeon Siege runs at 5-10 fps with lowest graphics settings...)

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Looks good

I usually trust the PC Gamer (it is PCG right?) dream machine or others in the series.

Athlon 64 is not worth the money. Unless, of course, you run Microsoft SQL server, because that's the only commercial app that takes advantage of 64-bit processors. By the time 64-bit apps are mainstream, your computer will be considered slow and you'll want to upgrade anyway.

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Where to find the intensity (Updated May 1, 2004)

[edited by - amish1234 on June 9, 2004 12:50:57 PM]

quote:

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Original post by amish1234
Athlon 64 is not worth the money. Unless, of course, you run Microsoft SQL server, because that''s the only commercial app that takes advantage of 64-bit processors. By the time 64-bit apps are mainstream, your computer will be considered slow and you''ll want to upgrade anyway.

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There will already be a few new games to use the 64bit released in the very near future, with a slew of them to follow as soon as more people buy 64-bit processors. Of course, if you use linux and can/will compile things from source, most of the programs you''d use will take at least some advantage of 64-bit processing

And for what it matters, for most software the CPU is not the bottleneck.

quote:

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Original post by amish1234
Athlon 64 is not worth the money. Unless, of course, you run Microsoft SQL server, because that''s the only commercial app that takes advantage of 64-bit processors. By the time 64-bit apps are mainstream, your computer will be considered slow and you''ll want to upgrade anyway.

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Benchmarks suggest that Athlon64s run 32bit stuff ~10% quicker than equivalent rated 32 bit athlons. They also run cooler.

The Athlon64s do particularly well in areas such as Games and Compilation, which makes them quite appropriate for someone interested in game development. They''re particularly useful if you''re doing forward looking development and intend developing for a future 64 bit platform.

Whether they''re worth the money is kind of a separate issue, but poo-pooing them because there are few decent 64 bit apps currently available is a bit silly.

MSI sucks. Get Epox, Asus, or Gigabyte. Abit''s good too.

the Athlon64 is undoubtebly good.. and so is the p4 Extreme edition (which goes for twice as much). It all depends on what you want to spend... I think the ideal balance of performance and price would be a computer with an Athlon ~2800, Geforce 5900 / Radeon 9800, 1024MB RAM, ~120GB 7200RPM w/ mb cache. You can build a computer like that for around ~700. To me, that''s more worth it than paying an arm, leg, and your firstborn for a p4 extreme or an Athlon64

Well I''m definitely getting some kind of Athlon64, and I don''t believe that the MSI motherboards are crap. The only bad thing I''ve heard about them was that "they don''t last long", however that could mean two years which is enough for me.
MSI''s are much cheaper than Asus, plus they even beat Asus in some benchmarks. Not to mention that the MSI clocks the CPU dynamically so when 100% cpu is being used it goes faster, and if it''s too hot it goes slower. And some other nice stuff like auto-updating BIOS.
I am considering getting one of the latest Asus instead though, because the availability of MSI cards here in Spain seems to be very poor.

I would get a faster CPU if it hadn''t been for the ridiculous price differences between small speed intervals such as 3200+ vs 3400+. It would probably be more worth the money to buy 3000+.