I've got a mate who wants to upgrade their fairly crufty old system a bit. It's got a Athlon 3200+ in (I think), and currently has some unknown but old AGP graphics card with only 128 Megs of RAM. Budget is about £50.
My knowledge isn't too great on the low-end of ATIs/Nvidia's range. Best I've currently come up with is this:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152190
But I almost think that spending £50 might be too much.
Any ideas anyone?
What about a second hand 6800 or something?
Yeah, that'd do. Assuming one can be found.Originally Posted by dave87
Incidentally, he wants to play GTA4 on this machine... I don't think that's gonna happen personally.
Given the 360 stuggles at points, I'd highly doubt it.
But he can try
Either that, or spend circa £200 on a basic 775 setup with PCIe?
It's like you were in the room or something!Given the 360 stuggles at points, I'd highly doubt it.
But he can try
Either that, or spend circa £200 on a basic 775 setup with PCIe?
lol, was that the conversation you had with him?
Just confirms, great minds think alike
That is yet to be confirmedJust confirms, great minds think alike
It didn't fall off, it merely became insufficient at it's purpose and got a bit droopy...
For a basic build you are still going to exceed £200 if it is for gaming!!
A basic system would comprise the following:
A cheap motherboard ~£40
A decent dual core processor ~£50
2gb of RAM ~£20
A new hard disk ~ £30
A reasonable gaming card ~£65
A decent new PSU ~ £30
A copy of an OS like Vista ~ £65
Total ~ £300
If you already have a copy of a suitable OS and are willing to buy some secondhand bits you maybe to get for around £200.
So does anyone know how a ATI 3650 512MB will compare against an old nvidia 6800 or 7800 with 256 MB?
Yeah, I think some recycling will be involved if he goes down that route. This guy is a PhD student in my department, and is about as vague as it is possible to be. I asked him how much money he had to spend, and he seemed unsure what money actually was. He mentioned that he thought he spent it quite often, but didn't really keep track of how much he had. I can't wait to read his thesis in two years' time.
He must get a stipend I assume? Stipends are usually £10k+ so if he saved up he could get a nice pc that could last a while. Probably needs around £500 though. Perhaps he can get a copy of an OS through the university or department. I also remember MS were doing Vista for around £40 for students a few months ago as part of their Ultimate Steal promotion.
In fact the cheapest way to play GTA4 would to get an XBox 360!
Yeah, I told him that also.
As to the stipends, yeah PhD students these days are loaded. He should get about £14k tax free, plus extras for various things which prob adds up to another £2K.
good job I'm the only one in the office and I'd finished my coffee before reading this.
depending what he currently has there's a good chance he'd need to upgrade his psu as well esp for something like the 6800 they were not low powered cards.
given the current state of the pc version of gta4 an xbox360 or twice as much on a new pc is probably his best bet.
I've got an old msi agp card 5900 heh I regretted buying that lol and a 6800gt that the fan is busted on which may or may not work. If your m8 is interested in either we could work something out.
I have seen AGP X1950 pros go for £50 but more often about £60 including the postage on ebay.
Some time ago now there were two excellent linked reviews on tomshardware that looked at matching an agp graphics card with barton 2500 and 3200 cpus.
Focus of articles was on value for money and establishing whether you were cpu or gpu bound given the system config.
I havn't got the link to hand (sorry) but google it and you may find it - or perhaps somebody here bookmarked it and can post the link.
The articles are well worth a read.
Fraz (18-01-2009)
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