Be Excellent To Each Other

Thanks Nemmie, that was where I was getting confused. I made the mistake of thinking Core 2 duo was the same dual core! What an idiot!

Am I being silly here, but that gfx card i listed above 8400GS is (according to that site) worse than my 5 yr old 6600?

What does the highlighted section mean?
XFX GeForce 8600GT 540M 256MB DDR3 TV DVI PCI-E (PV-T84J-UALG)
XFX GeForce 8600GTS 675M 512MB DDR3 DUALDVITVPCI-E (PV-T84G-YDQ3)

Edit, ignore, just noticed they are different.

Clock speed in MEGARHURTZ!

These gfx crds sure are difficult to get my head around. I am looking at that benchmark site, and some cards which should be worse are better, and then there is different manufacturers and then there is different amount of memory and other stuff.

This is well written and well researched stuff, a little out of date now, but I guess you're not wanting the bleeding edge: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gam ... ,2676.html

Why is this one so cheap? It appears to be a lot better than anything else in this price range.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Palit-GT-240-51 ... 639&sr=8-3

What?

Er...

errr, yeah, that.

May have included link now.

I think that's what I've got. SVP had it listed as an AGP card, which I needed at the time. When it arrived, I found it was PCI-Express, so I put it to one side till I got round to a new PC. Works fine for me, but then considering I'm playing stuff like Flatout and Blood on it, I'm not exactly pushing it. Oh, it does Mount & Blade fine actually, so it's good to play that again without ramping all the settings down.

I'm sure I paid less than £30 for it though.

I downloaded the demo of Mount & Blade t' other day. I really will have to get round to giving it a go at some point, especially since everyone keeps saying it's like Pirates!

Really, where from? New?

Ah, now I'm home and can check properly, mine is a different model. Sorry!

okay, what about this system?
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =FS-239-OK

Very nice but needs at least one o' these.

http://videocardshop.co.uk/viewproduct. ... -485X-ZDFC

They offer it with the 9800 GT for another £59. Not sure about the MB though apparently it isn't PCI-e2, I have no idea if I need that at all, or even if the GFX cards I am looking at are PCI-e2, but I want it now!

Also, I don't think I can use ATI GPUs with my monitor, the one I had in this PC (albeit an old one) would lose the signal whenever the chnnel was changed and I had to reset the PC to get it back.

9800GT is frrrpppp compared to the 4850. It's also hotter.

Don't worry about PCIE2. It's another con like DDR3, SATA3, full speed 16x PCIE lanes, PCIE 2.1, ETC ETC ETC.

They're only good if you buy them all at once and spend a fortune. Adding one or another will give you about 3-5% over DDR2, PCIE1 and so on.

As for your monitor? Well the signal coming out of the 9800GT would be the same as the 4850.

If you're that worried get a new monitor. Good LCD about £100 these days for a reasonable sized one.

Ha the 9800 scores 928 on benchmarks, the 4850 scores 1077. Granted, that is a significant difference, but when you consider my current card scores 140, I don't think I will be happy with a 9800*!


*should I buy one.

The 4850 is superior in many other ways Bobby. It has twice the amount of Vram as the 9800 and that Vram is significantly faster.

Honestly, it's a far better card. The 9800GT isn't bad by any means but I wish I'd not got mine and put the extra and got the 4850.

That particular 4850 also comes with a complete shroud cooler, again far better than the 9800GT. And, I bet cash that they would palm you off with a Palit or comparitively poor 9800GT with a whack cooler on.

ATI cards can also force anti alias where there is none, Nvidia cards can't.

Also, try and upgrade the case if you can. That one is absolutely weeny and even with a 9800GT in there would get too hot. I had an Advent very similar with a 9800GT in and you could have had a barby on it.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Dell-XPS-710-Gami ... 19be30ef20

Make an offer of £275.

Doesn't sound that good on paper but the 8800GTX is still by far and away a very beefy capable card. 2gb ram is enough and the dual 250gb drives could be striped. It also comes with a perfectly acceptable operating system, giving that it doesn't give anything up (media center is there etc).

It's also got a far superior PSU, motherboard (IIRC those are either SLI or Crossfire capable) build quality, upgradability due to its size and the case is pure alu. It'll also run a lot cooler.

To be honest there is one tiny downside, and that's the motherboard. It's BTX so basically configured upside down, and if it goes you're a bit fucked. Mind you, it's made it this far.

You get your 7 day no quibble and I will teach you how to torture test the fucker to make sure it does what it's supposed to within that time

OK that one is SLI. Just read some tech info. Here is a shot of the internals. Note the enormous CPU cooler, PSU and graphics card cooling.

you're saying the things I need to hear, here JC, so please don't think I am ignoring your advice. I m just a tightwad when it comes to money! The 9800 is actually this model, if that makes any difference?
http://www.tengodirect.co.uk/product/GA ... 30485.html

Also, what is bad about Palit? I have often wondered how much affect the manufacturer had upon the card. See that link I posted earlier was a palit

Just to clarify, I don't need a new HDD, and could make do with the case I have (need new PSU). So am just trying to glen what makes a good system, and what goes together well, etc. It has been a long time since I looked into all this in any depth!

OK. Some companies take the reference designed card and simply put a sticker over the cooler. Some companies buy reference cards with no cooler and put on a superior one (see also : that XFX 4850). And some companies, like Palit and Gainward, buy reference boards and put on fucking shit coolers in order to make them as cheap as possible. This sounds good to the buyer but as an end product it runs hotter and therefore worse than any other.

With certain cards Nvidia and ATI do not allow this (IE high end ones). But with cheap cards anything goes as they say.

As I said, I know that Dell does not sound as good on paper as the one you are looking at on OCUK. But here's the thing. That one on OCUK is a budget small PC with a good sounding CPU and RAM. The motherboard is worth about £25 (hence why they don't tell you what it is) What the fuck is a 'OCUK value 450w psu'? Oh, it's a shit no named PSU that will probably blow up that they have tried to make sound good. 'Intel approved cpu cooler' means OEM and therefore absolutely shit cooler, and so on and so on.

I really can not emphasise enough how I would rather give up speed for component quality. But, here's the kicker Bobby. The 8800GTX is a bit of an animal. On speed terms it's pretty much level peggings with a 260GTX and only about 15% slower than a 280GTX. This is why Custom PC magazine urged all of their readers NOT to fall into the 200 series trap and hold onto their 8800GTX/Ultras.

It's in a different league man.

Just read your latest post. As I said, I would rather give up some raw processing speed for build quality and the raw components that are so important to the happy running of a machine. Cooler, fans, ETC ETC. Take a look at what a decent Alu case will cost you for example. I would say a min of £90+ That Dell supports SLI, meaning it supports dual 8800GTX cards. That means it has to have a min 700w psu in. A good CPU cooler will cost you £35+ etc etc.

Hard drives are so cheap it's probably worth getting a new one anyway.

Indeed. Mates have been snapping up 1tb drives for about £45 recently. I think they know that cheap NAND is on its way.

Edit. What the fuck's a 1th? is that like a fourth only bigger?

feexorz.