help with pc for hl2

[Pete]

good day all

please can you guys give me some advice on my ideas for a pc to play hl2 on

been working on a pc for hl2 for around a year now
originally it was gonna be a r9500 and amd1800+ with 512mb ram and a nf7-s but after the delay i gave up for a while
then started thinking some more now this is the comp i wanna buy

Rig

Motherboard: MSI K8T Neo-FIS2R

CPU: Amd Athlon 64 2800+

RAM: 512MB PC3200 DDR SDRAM (may upgrade to 1 gig after a while)

Graphics Card: GEFORCE 6600GT AGP 128mb (when they are released, anyone know when that is?)

Power: Enermax Noisetaker 370W ATX

Thong case from pcworld and an 80 gb hardrive

this comes to around 470 quid

Thoughts?

if anyone has spotted anything that will suck or will slow down the whole system, please tell me, and if i can get something cheaper by going intel or Ati route then tell me as well

just checking to see if this pc would be fine for about a year of gaming
(dont mind turning settings down in bout a years time)

thanks alot guys

[Shogun]

You will want 1gb of ram, you will notice the difference

[Pete]

ok but it is gonna set me back a hell of a lot
but it is definitly worth it right?

[Shogun]

It is definitely, especially with the newer games coming out with very large levels and lots of high res textures. It wouldn't set you back all that much....

[myth]

one gig is a must! 2 is prefered for a game like HL2...

[Pete]

errr your obviously one of those
'must have top everything' nuts
being a 15 year old, unfortunatly for me i have only just persuaded my parents to give me a 40 pound a month allowance and i dont currently have a job....to lazy
so i cant honestly afford to get 2 gig of ram
sorry
anyway i thought valve wants as many pc owners to be able to play hl2 as possible so they have made it for low spec pcs
but the top spec will have outstanding graphics and physics
so i dont raelly care
i jsut want nice enviroment and a nice framerate to go with it....not to worried about having anti aliasing which is something the 6600gts arnt good at....or so i have read
thanks anyway

[Thorsson]

Valve's recommended system is:
2.4 GHz Processor
512MB RAM
DirectX 9 level graphics card

But let's face it, these specs are usually worthless. Generally speaking getting 1 Gig of RAM is really worthwhile, but you have to cut your cloth to what you can afford.

Your choice seems pretty good, except I don't know the case (sounds kinky tho'). If you're going to go to LAN parties then you might want to get the Super Lanboy.

[MD]

Your choices are not bad, Valve's recommended specs are not too far off to be honest, I just preloaded HL2 the other day adn it came with a video test in the Counter Strike Source addon, so I ran it, bear in myind my system is a 2.4P4, 1GB of PC2700 and a 256mb 6800GT I got this....



Pretty good framerates, I wshould have no touble at all playing HL2, I would say your problem is not going to be the ram it will be the sucky 6600 graphics personally.

m@

[Pete]

right thanks for that guys
so is there anything in the ATI market that is mabye 30-40 more expensive than the 6600gt but much much better or in the nvidia camp?
i read some reviews about the PCI-E version of the 6600gt and they all said that it could get 70 fps in 1280*1024 pretty much top graphics, but with AA and AS off completly, that was in doom3 and farcry
im not to bothered about AA and AS to tell the truth

i probably wont get the case thats there thorson, it was just a cheapish one that was on pcworld (go have a look at it if you want)

again thanks for all your comments this is helping me alot
Pete

[Shogun]

errr your obviously one of those
'must have top everything' nuts
being a 15 year old, unfortunatly for me i have only just persuaded my parents to give me a 40 pound a month allowance and i dont currently have a job....to lazy
so i cant honestly afford to get 2 gig of ram
sorry
anyway i thought valve wants as many pc owners to be able to play hl2 as possible so they have made it for low spec pcs
but the top spec will have outstanding graphics and physics
so i dont raelly care
i jsut want nice enviroment and a nice framerate to go with it....not to worried about having anti aliasing which is something the 6600gts arnt good at....or so i have read
thanks anyway

I know the feeling mate, but 1GB of Ram really is crucial (see what i've done there? ) and shouldn't be too expensive for you.