Buying a PC for gaming, what do you think of this one?

N

nickkrym

Geek Trainee
Im buying a PC so I can actually play normal games. I doint have all that much to spend, so I found a nice second hand one (still have 2 years guaranty so thats not a problem). The price is 950 euro, which is approx $1200, the following are the specs:

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHZ (3200 MHZ, Front side bus = 800 MHZ)
Motherboard: Asus Pro-Active P5GDI Pro. (Front side bus = 800MHZ or 533 MHZ, contains 1 PCI-Express slot, 3 PCI X1 slots and 3 normal PCI slots)
Memory: Nanya 2048 MB (4 x 512 MB, 2 dual channels)
Video card: XFX Nvidia geforce 6600GT 256 MB
Power supply: Paradigit 400 Watt.
DVD Speler: LG 16 X, 48 X, IDE, OEM, Black
DVD rewriter: LG -R(W) & +R(W) & +R9 16 x IDE Black
Hard drive: 160 GB 7200 RPM
Casing + cooling: Coolermaster Stacker (see link for specifications: http://www.coolermaster-europe.com/i...1&other_title= +STC-T01+CM%20Stacker)

Contains 2 120 x 120 x 25 Fans and a 80 x 80 x 25 fan for strong ventilation.
USB Slots : 8.
Extra software software:
Paradigit Windows XP Home Edition
Panda Titanium Antivirus 2005
Microsoft works 8
XFX drivers
Neor OEM suite
ASUS Moederbord drivers
Cyberlink POWER DVD
Click to expand...

My only concerns are the processor, video card (will it be enough for games such as Battlefield 2, Doom 3, all the new ones, etc.) and if the mother board supports extra memory. The guy throws in alot of games so thats good. Should I go for it??

Thanks,
Nick
 
Well, the video card will play Doom 3 at 1024x768 at the very least, and can play FEAR at the same level with medium detail settings.

If the games are something you'd play, fine, but to be honest, you could piece together something a little better for the same price. I also don't know anything about the brand of power supply included; I've never heard of it.

Let me show you what you could piece together that'd do a better gaming job:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 £88.00
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ AM2 £99.95
RAM: Corsair PC5400 DDR2 512MB x 2 (1GB) £107.00
Video Card: XFX GeForce 7900GS 256MB PCIe £145.00
Hard Drive: Seagate 320GB SATA £65.01
Optical Drive: Samsung 18x DVDRW £25.00
Power Supply: OCZ Modstream 520 £63.00
Case: Gigabyte GZ-X1 £29.95

Total (all prices include VAT): £622.91

Intel's older Pentium 4's were designed to scale clockspeeds, but were outperformed by AMD. Core 2 Duo is an entirely different venture and puts Intel back in the game.

The base system isn't bad, and if you can get a little better video card (say an 6800GT or 7600GT) then I'd say go for it. However, between that and the unknown power supply, I'd advise against it unless you're willing to upgrade those. The 6600GT is a nice card, but for the price of that rig, there should be something better. If you were to get it, I'd have them replace the power supply or do it yourself. Not knowing who made it makes me nervous.
 
thanks for the reply. Dont worry about the power supply, Paradigit is a Dutch company and its trustworthy. I was wondering, if i wanted to upgrade the processor, would it be expensive? and is it easy to replace a processor? I might bargain the price down and do that
 
Well, that CPU is one of the fastest speed grades, so a CPU upgrade would be possible, but not worth the money. Your better to spend the money on a video card than the CPU for gaming, give that it's the real bottleneck of that box. Replacing a CPU isn't that difficult, but sometimes the socket orientation can make things a little cramped inside a case. The CPU is also an LGA775, so you must be careful not to touch the underside of the CPU packaging since it has the contact pads on it. Again, that's not the recommended upgrade for that box, though.
 
Don't worry about the CPU, granted a faster one would bump up the frame rates in some more demanding games but it still far exceeds any minimum requirements and even recomended ones rarely top 3.0GHz. The graphics card, as mentioned already, while adequate, isn't anything cutting edge and really will kind of hold you back by todays standards. It only retails for probably 60 pounds now anyway so you're not getting a killer deal in that aspect. I don't know your budget but one of the best buys out today is the 7600GT like B said or maybe something in the X1800 line if you can find them cheap.
 
Hi guys,
for the same price I found the following deal. It does not have a guaranty but its much better, what do you think (940 euro):
Videocard Saphire x1900xtx

Processor Intel Core 2 Duo e6700 ( 2x 2,66Ghz )

Memory Corsair (2 GB)

Hard drive 320 GB Maxtor Sata 2

Motherboard Asus P5WDG2-WS

Power supply 600 Watt OEM

Casing NZXT trinity Neon + TEMP meter

DVD drive NEC - dvd+/- ram drive

Cardreader concept tronic 16 in 1

OS Windows XP pro + licence on the box

Office Licence seperate
Click to expand...

What do you guys think of this?
 
Yeah, that looks pretty good. I would find out what exact power supply they're using, however, but that's the only thing I can see being an issue.
 
It will play most games maxed out. Don't expect fantastic performance in Oblivion though, thats such a demanding game.
 
Actually even Oblivion should run fine, not 60fps or anything but judging from the tests I've seen it's about the second fastest single card (no Crossfire/SLI configurations) for that game. The system is a teriffic deal, I'd be a bit concerned about the guarentee though, there must be some bit of insurance as otherwise you can't really be sure about the longevity of that system.
 
The XTX cards are the top performers of the line. I believe the XT's are the next step down.
 
Yeah that's true, XTX cards are clocked a wee bit higher is all. Perhaps you say the crossfire edition of the XTX which could be clocked a bit different for some reason, of if used with another card could yeild weird results is the game doesn't take advantage of crossfire with both cards working in tandum.
 
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