your opinions please

[psalliss]

i havent really upgraded my pc for almost 2 years now so i think its due a nice upgrade. basically i want to know how much of a step up in performance the spec below would be compared to my current spec. also any suggestions you want to make would be gratefully appreciated, will the below system be stable.

DESCRIPTION QUANTITY PRICE COST
AMD Athlon "Barton" XP3200+ 400FSB (Socket A) CPU - OEM (CP-058-AM) 1
£254.95 £254.95
Asus A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 (Socket A) Motherboard (MB-019-AS) 1
£74.95 £74.95
OCZ 1GB (2x512MB) PC4000 Dual Channel Series EL-DDR (MY-012-OC) 1
£276.00 £276.00
Seagate Barracuda Serial ATA V 120GB - OEM (HD-004-SE) 1
£77.00 £77.00
PowerColor Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB - Retail (GX-006-PC) 1
£222.90 £222.90
Asus DRW-0402P/D DVD±R/RW Drive - Retail (CD-005-AS) 1
£127.50 £127.50
Asus DVD-E616 16X DVD-ROM / 48X CD-ROM - Retail (CD-002-AS) 1
£21.50 £21.50
Teac 3.5" Floppy Disk Drive - OEM (RD-000-TE) 1
£8.40 £8.40
ThermalRight SLK-947U (Socket 478 & Socket A) Cooler (HS-009-TR) 1
£37.25 £37.25
YS-TECH FD8125 SILENT 80mm fan - 4 Pin (FG-008-YS) 1
£4.80 £4.80
Chieftec Dragon DA-01BLD Full Tower - Blue (CA-036-CT) 1
£89.00 £89.00
Arctic Silver III Thermal Compound (3g) (OA-002-AC) 1
£3.95 £3.95
Globalwin Super Silent 22dBA 520W ATX Power Supply (CA-002-GW) 1
£109.95 £109.95
Subtotal £1,308.15
VAT £228.94
Total £1,537.09

current.

asus a7v333 raid board
xp 2000
512mg pc2100 ram
60 maxtor drive
120 wd drive (to be put in new system)
radeon 8500
audigy platinum sound card
teac 32x writer
cheap dvd rom
21 inch hitachi monitor (to be used new system)

cheers

[Bindibadgi]

Wouldnt go for a 3200+ Mebbe a 3000 or 2800 and OC a little perhaps. Put the rest in a savings account for next year towards future upgrades perhaps

What's a comparitively priced P4/875P system like?

[Austin]

XP2000+ is still a mighty fine CPU and with a good gfx card will smoke a faster CPU with mid-range gfx card, in gaming of course. Even so it really makes no sense to get a £300+ XP3200+ when practically ALL Barton are capable of this and easily so. Get an XP2500+ for £70, even if you only get to 2.1ghz 400FSB that's still roughly an XP3100+ and saves you an amazing £200-250. Seriosuly there's no secret to this, as is usual a company produces a range of components based on the same design inherently capable in the lower end of much faster speeds but clocked lower to supply demand.

A7N8X Deluxe is a mighty fine mobo, Abit NF7-S is top notch too. 1GB RAM is a bit overkill, esp as more RAM is easily added later (slightly less so with Dual Channel), if you have the cash though why not? I doubt you'll see any benefit over 512MB for a good while, does depend on what you do though (I'm assuming you're an average user). PC3200 is easily all you need for SktA, I much prefer Crucial, TwinMOS or Adata to OCZ but they are all well repsected brands. PC4000 is a total waste on SktA.

Seagate's SATA is nothing mroe than a std PATA drive in SATA form with no perf gains. Much better idea to look to Maxtor's SATA which is streets ahead ... or simply look to PATA drives now as SATA really isn't needed (by the time it is 120GB is likely to be considered small).

9800PRO is awesome and the best of the current cards. 9800XT is a little better and should sell for about the same price, that's due out any time now. Do consider a Rad9800 (nonPRO) as they o/c to 9800PRO speeds, in fact most 9700 can too even nonPRO) but if you aren't overly limited (budget-wise) it makes sense to get at least 9800 (nonPRO) now.

Any reason for Asus pref in optical drives, most people much prefer other brands. Dual (+ & -) Writing is very wise, but 8x burners are just coming to the market and may well be worth investing in (or waiting for 4x to drop in price). Why 2 DVD drives? Copying from optical to optical is NOT recommended, much better to burn an image to the HD.

[Bindibadgi]

I thought the 7200.7 drives now employ CSA?

All the SATA drives out are still first gen and crap though.

[SilentDeath]

they are better than there pata equivalents

[Austin]

Originally posted by |SilentDeath|
they are better than there pata equivalents

But does the added cost (though small) warrant them? SATA drives should have lower CPU usage, smaller cables and have the potential to hot swap but other than that I think only Maxtor have enhanced the drive itself (vs it's PATA brother) and you get a regular IDE power connector (as well as SATA power) which saves you a little bit too. Still my NF7-S v2.0 with SATA Maxtor 120GB seems to be under-performing ... IMHO stick to PATA, even 7200-2MB were far from slow.

[daveham]

Have you thought about a Duron 1600...these can overclock very nicely and cost just over £30.

[Korky]

the 9800XT wont sell anywhere near £220, but thats a great price for a pro, definitly worth the money.

EDIT: NF7-S for life ;-)

[SilentDeath]

i wouldnt notice if my 120gb maxtor performed faster, only use it for storage, but the non-performace related sata improvements are worth the £15 extra imo

[Volcano]

Barton 2500+ will do 2300 actual mhz for £65 or so.

Abit NF7-s mobo would be a better choice imo for roughly the same price.

1gb PC2700 twinmos will run at 200mhz no problem for about half the price.

You can get DVDRW for under £100

As for the rest of yer kit id say they were all fine buys

[Trickle]

I personally wouldnt spend as much on the memory. I deffinately wouldnt spend as much on the PSU or CPU.

[P4boy]

looks nice - when can you send it round to my house

[aeronic]

if youre going for stability, i presume that you will not be overclocking.
The barton 3200+ has such a huge price premium over, say the xp2800 or xp2500 and only a slight performance increase.

ocz-4000 ram may be sweet, but its overkill, especially if youre not clocking.

also, if you really want a decent performance hike, i would suggest waiting for an athlon64 or intel prescott.
(or if you do like clocking, consider a p4 2.6c - some run up to 3.4ghz or so on default volts)

[cliky]

I always ask myself a simple question - Do i really need a computer to this spec?

yes its 'nice' to have a decent spec but do you really need it?

are you playing Q3 24/7 or other hi res games constantly? are you doing some high mathamatical computation?

if not then for that money you could build 2 decent systems!!

I have 5 systems (admittedly 2 are duallies 1 intel 1.4 amd 1 MP1.2) and the highest spec of my other systems is a 'mere' 2.8 barton AMD followed by p4 2.2 and an AMD 'Classic' 500mhz!!

I find that the 2.8 is more than adaquate.

I use to always be constantly updating my pc but when you ask yourself the simple question above 9/10 times what you have is probably good enough!