More PC help please!

[Minty Seagull]

HI, im getting a new "tower block" tommorow for £200.

Its got -

250MB DDR RAM
20GB hard drive
TN2 32 MB RAM

Could some1 please explain that to me?

At the moment ive got -

855 MHz, 128MB of RAM

Is it a good deal?? And what will i notice with the new system - will it be alot faster as thats what im really looking for?

Thanks in advance - MS

 

[Deano's Right Foot]

In car terms I think you may have bought a moped.

Hope that helps.

(By the way, I know nothing about computers)

 

[Minty Seagull]

I havent brought it yet so if i really have brought the equal of a 'moped' can someone please tell me why?

 

[Cian]

That video card is from 1998 for starters; and you haven't said what processor speed it has.

 

[Minty Seagull]

That video card is from 1998 for starters; and you haven't said what processor speed it has.

Is that bad then?? How will it effect me??

I dont know what the processor speed is - what do you think i need to get by, i play games quite alot like FM2006 how would it affect that?

 

[Cian]

Its going to be far, far, far too slow to get the full potential out of FM5 let alone FM2006.

Stretch yerself to £299 and get a complete new Dell PC with everything; second hand computers are always crap.

 

[Marc]

my AMD Athlon 1.8ghz is too slow for me now, I need something meatier (and cheap) to go alongside my GeForce 5900XT.


sorry for the HIJACK but I felt like saying that

 

[beorhthelm]

Sounds a bit gash to me, 20GB HD rare these days. You want to have a minimum of 512MB Ram and 2GHz/2000+ processor. I would spend at least £300.

There are 102 PC companies out there, but a couple off the top of my head are Novatech, Overclockers and Misco






(MYOB, Why do you pontificate on IT when you talk out your arse: ChampMan/FM is 2D, so any old crappy card will do.)

 

[US Seagull]

Hard drive way too small (go for at least 80Gb or more)
Too little memory (go for 512Mb min)
Video card too old.

 

[perseus]

Fifty quid top whack.

I wouldn't pay that for it though.

 

[Bad Ash]

(MYOB, Why do you pontificate on IT when you talk out your arse: ChampMan/FM is 2D, so any old crappy card will do.)

MYOB never said anything about the graphics card not being up to playing CM/FM, he simply said 'it' (referring to the whole system) would be too slow, which is correct.

Go and stand in the corner

 

[Bad Ash]

Buy yourself a copy of MicroMart (www.micromart.co.uk) - it can be tricky to find so I guess I'd say WHS is the best place to look. Loads of internet sites advertise in there so it should give you a good idea of what you can get for your money (which can vary massively).

They also have a second hand section, so if you decide you don't really need to splash out on something leading edge you should be able to pick up an older bargain.

 

[beorhthelm]

 

[robbied69]

Can you tell me what you will be using it for, e.g. Word processing or game playing, downloading from the net?

 

[Barnet Seagull]

If you have around £200, you'd be better off spending it on something like this.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-AMD-2900-...717663520QQcategoryZ51144QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[binky]

256 MB RAM is enough for running windows and most 3D games up to the last couple of years. More modern 3D games have large texture maps which need to shifted about in memory, (and then to the graphics card memory), quickly, so the more memory the better. For modern game playing 512MB should be considered a minimum.

A 20GB hard drive cannot be bought now from any of the PC shops I frequent. Online or IRL. This would seem to indicate that the drive is second hand. 20GB is small by modern standards, but is big enough for office type work. Any sort of games or media collection though and you will fill it very quickly.

The TNT2 was a fine graphics card in it's day. It had great colour saturation compared to my Voodoo 3, to which it was comparable performance wise.
(No holy wars please. This is history now!).
These class of cards were great for playing Quake 2. I retired my TNT2, and voodoo cards when I started playing Unreal/Unreal Tornament circa 1998/1999.

There is no room in a modern PC for a TNT2 card unless all you want to do is play ancient games, (or 2d games which dont stress the graphics card), and surf the web.

The TNT2 card is not a contemporary of either DDR RAM or 20GB sized hard drives, indicating that this is probably not a complete second hand PC.
It sounds like the vendor is assembling a PC from spare parts left over from other projects. In which case I'd also be wary of the Motherboard and processor selection.


Personally, I'd avoid this deal like the clap. For circa £230 you could assemble your own PC to a decent spec.
Youll still need mouse keyboard and monitor, but these things can be re-used from your old PC, or picked out of a skip
Case and PSU
Radeon X700 Graphics card
Hard Drive - 80GB Seagate Barracuda
Motherboard. PC-Chips M848
Processor - AMD Sempron 2300+
Heat sink and Fan
RAM - 512MB Mushkin
CD/DVD drive

All the above parts selected from a single online store. You can probably get the price down a bit shopping around.

You will of course need to provide your own operating system from somewhere.

 

[Cian]

(MYOB, Why do you pontificate on IT when you talk out your arse: ChampMan/FM is 2D, so any old crappy card will do.)

\

That graphics card doesn't do good 2D - it doesn't do good -anything-! Believe me, I have one. It may be a "32MB Card", but RAM is only one of a number of factors involved in wheter a card is decent. When it came out, an 8MB Voodoo was a pretty smokin' card - it just had massive RAM to do massive resolutions; nothing more.

Its not good enough for FM6 on a 2Ghz P4 w/512MB DDR, let alone anything older.

 

[Cian]

The TNT2 was a fine graphics card in it's day. It had great colour saturation compared to my Voodoo 3, to which it was comparable performance wise.
(No holy wars please. This is history now!).
These class of cards were great for playing Quake 2. I retired my TNT2, and voodoo cards when I started playing Unreal/Unreal Tornament circa 1998/1999.

It was a -cripplingly expensive- graphics card, but good it was - for early 1999. I replaced a TNT1 with a TNT2 Ultra to be able to play Quake III, which it did admirably enough; but it flounders around with even a very 'light' modern game.

The colour was better as the Voodoo 3 didn't really support 32 bit colour - not sure if it did it for 2D but it definitively did not do it for 3D; drivers colour-stripped back down to 16 or 15 bit.

 

[clapham_gull]

Although still gonna be the cheapest part of the system, DONT scrimp on a cheap mouse and keyboard.

I've worked with the things for years and now my right arm and hand is basically f*cked. I can't hold a mouse in my right hand anymore without pain.

This was down to using bad keyboards, mice and in specifically in my case one of those awful touchpads you get on a lap top.

I've now have to use adapted keyboards (*), surgical arm wrests and an expensive mouse set up to enable to work left handed...

you've been warned....


(*) computer users, you'll be amazed the difference THESE make, the slight angle on the keys places your arms in a more natural position. Significantly reduces back pain etc...

 

[Grendel]

Processor - AMD Sempron 2300+

The clock speed of the Sempron 2300+ is only 1.5Ghz, so forget that if you want to play any modern games.