New System Check

[AintIGreat]

I have just bought a new system with the following spec:

Windows Vista Premium
Intel Duo E6400
2 GB DDR2-SD RAM
320 GB SATA 3G Hard Disk Drive (7200 rpm)
NVIDIA GeForce 7500 LE Graphics Card
20" ViewSonic Widescreen LCD Monitor

I'm not really that clued up on hardware and just want a few recommendations on checks that I can do to ensure that the system is running how it should be.

Any suggestions?

Cheers.

[staffsMike]

7500.. sounds like a pc world job..*hisssss* lol

What do you want to check?

When the PC boots it will tell you you're cpu and ram speeds (frequencies) otherwise download this

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...fo/CPU-Z.shtml

it will tell you everything you want to know about your processor

something like TAT or coretemp will tell you what temperature it runs at.

[TimmiT]

Yuo can also run some ofe the benchmark software, such as 3dmark, and see how you rate vs similar equip.

[Madafwo]

Smells like Compaq

My mate just bought one, however I am ripping out the graphics card and beefing up the RAM on his. He needed a system there and then so PC world it was, even though it killed me. Looking at the system specs, the thing that is really going to let you down is the graphics card. nVidia don't even list it on there site and all I can find out is that is uses Turbo Cache and is loosely based on a 7300 Series card.

The PSU should be fine for anything up to a 7600GS which should give you a bit of a boost on the graphics side. If you wanted to push it further you would need to beef up the PSU then the skies the limit as it uses a standard ATX PSU and the motherboards they put in usually have the full compliment of 6 PCI-E lanes.

[staffsMike]

7500 is an OEM version of either the 7300 or 7600 can't quite remember

[AintIGreat]

I know the graphics card is shocking and I'm going to change it soon.

Is there any point of getting a DirectX 10 card yet?

I was thinking of getting a Sapphire X1950GT 256MB because there doesn't seem to be a great slew of DirectX 10 games coming out yet and this card seems like a good short term measure.

Any thoughts?

[tigerboyce]

yes thee is point as there will be, and the outperform most dx9 cards atm anyway, so why would you not want to.

and there will be cheaper ones (8600) this month hopefully aswell

[kalniel]

The *current* dx10 cards are worth getting simply because they're so fast even at dx9. But if you can't afford the premium then a cheaper dx9 card will tie you over for some time yet.