Proposed new system

[arthurleung]

I have played BF2 on my friends pc, he only has 1gb ram and his pc is a lower spec than the pc's speced above and its fine.

I have a budget of around £1k. Its too easy to add £50/£100 here and there and double the cost. I need to balance cost with performance.

To be honest I will probably not go the SLI route not and get the PC spec on the link but with an AMD 3500+ Veince Core CPU.

You said "fine" not "great". BF2 taking 870m of my ram at 1024x768, it will EASILY exceed 1G at higher resolution

[Butcher]

You said "fine" not "great". BF2 taking 870m of my ram at 1024x768, it will EASILY exceed 1G at higher resolution

Why? Memory requirements for a game are largely independent of resolution. It just uses more video memory.

[Rhyst]

If anyone is bored and wants to spec me a £1k including tft monitor than Id be all ears.

Is it better to get 2gb of CRUCIAL 1GB DDR PC3200 400MHz 184-PIN UNBUFF 128MX64 Memory Modules or 1gb of better quality ram?

[YorkieBen]

Im running BF2 at 1280x960 and with med/high graphical effects on a 9800se (softmodded to 9800 non pro) with an XP3000 (slightly oc'ed) and 768MB RAM

it runs fine

[Rhyst]

Hello again, Can any one see any problems with this setup? If not then this is probably my final spec. Just need that credit card to arrive now.

EBUYER
--------

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SKT939 nForce4 Onboard Sound/LAN DDR - £69.93

AMD Athlon 64 3700 CPU Skt 939 San Diego Retail inc Heat Sink Fan £192.82

Connect3d Radeon X800 XL 256mb DDR with VGA DVI-I+TV PCI-E £161.68

2x Corsair (VS1GB400C3) 1024MB, DDR400 / PC3200, non-ECC, 184 DIMM, unbuffered, CL3, 64Mx8 DRAMs, £107.98

2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80gb, Sata Ncq 3.5lp 7200rpm 8mb £68.10

Antec SLK3000B Black Super Mid Tower Case - No PSU £25.52

Antec TRUE430PGB True Power 430W ATX Power Supply £48.04

AG Neovo F419 19" TFT 12ms 500:1 (Analogue & DVI) Monitor £160.99

Ebuyer Wireless PCI Lan 108Mbps Adapter £13.62 £13.62

Ebuyer 54mbps Wireless Cable/DSL (WI-FI) Broadband Router 4-port (802.11G) £26.37

Creative Labs Inspire 5.1 P5800 £30.89

Cart Total: £905.94

SubTotal: £918.58
VAT: £160.81
Total: £1079.39

[noah]

on the whole it looks good mate, should serve you well. make sure you get a decent cooler in there like a thermalright xp-90 and a good fan to keep it all quiet and cool. if its stretching the budget id drop down a grade on the cpu too.

[alexander]

I think you better get a better speaker. AND an Audigy2 ZS or other similar high-end audio card. If not your BF2 will sound crap. At least find a set of 5.1/6.1/7.1 which is THX certificated (I know THX is not a very good standard, but it is still a mid-high end speaker set indicator)

You better get 2x1G ram or 4x512M in order to play BF2 smoothly. Not enough memory will slow down the game despite your have the 3500+ and the 6800GT.

I would recommend getting a 20" Dell (2001FP/2005FPW) instead of a 19" AG Neovo. If not you will be wasting the potential of your 6800GT.

That isn't true.

My System plays Battlefield 2 completely maxed (4 x AA stuff?) out.

I have roughly the same system as him (3800+ Venice, 1GB Twinmos, 6800GT etc..)

He shouldn't have a problem atall.

[Rhyst]

on the whole it looks good mate, should serve you well. make sure you get a decent cooler in there like a thermalright xp-90 and a good fan to keep it all quiet and cool. if its stretching the budget id drop down a grade on the cpu too.

Thanks, btw, Im from Newport - a small world and all that.

[Rhyst]

I have read this weeks issue of Micromart. There is an article regarding AGP vs PCI-e. The conclusion, they are exactly the same and in some aspects AGP is faster. I have therefore decided to go for an AGP card which has given me a lot more choice on mobo's. Just thought I'd update my thread. Probably will be ordeing my final system tomorrow, cannot wait to play BF2!