Gaming System Buyers Guide August 2005

[Harold]

great article frazor, congrats. im actually already getting one of the items on your list, im going to Hull in september for a LAN with some mates, and one of them has ordered a saitek eclipse for me. i couldnt find it anywhere in the Netherlands.

[FraZor]

Sweet, and an excellent choice mate. Maybe you could do a review for us?

[NightSpirit]

Indeed. A very informative article which I shall have to refer back to when I get round to buying a new machine to play X3 when it's released

[DemonKnight]

Yea nice advice there Mr Frazor anyone who needs some help with buying a new system this is well worth the read.

I going to wait a bit longer to build a new system need to save some money and as i did spend £300 on a gfx card just over a year ago for this reason. BTW I personaly will go for 2GB of RAM in my new system.

[Outrunmaster]

Yup, agreed its a very thorough and useful guide.

Am probably going to wait a little longer to upgrade my system too. Reckon its worth me getting a mid range Nvidia AGP card for a year or so, just to play EQ2 without the ATI problems? Then in a year or so i can pump a larger amount into getting a much better pc, rather than cutting corners (and prices!!) if i try now... hmmmm...

[DemonKnight]

BTW I have a 5950ultra 128Mb GFX card if you want it for £50 dunno if it would be better than your current card dunno what you got.

If i remember correctly i ran the MEM at 900Mhz and core at 475MHZ with no probs as it has been flashed from a 5900 to 5950.

[Outrunmaster]

I currently have an ATI Radeon 9600pro 128meg (the mem on mine is certified to only 550mhz). I have no idea how this compares with your 5950ultra - advice please anyone? If it is noticably quicker, then I will deinitely have it off you - it would be an ideal stop-gap until i save up for a total rebuild.

I guess i could throw it in and run 3dMark to see how it compares?

Cheers matey

[DemonKnight]

By all means give it a go if it faster then you can buy it if not i have it back

I did find a review which list loads of different cards and how they perform against each other and in all the benchmarks the FX5900Ultra 256MB 450core 850mem beat the 9600pro by quiet alot and you got to remember that my card has a core of 475 and 900mem with 128mb so probs going to see similar performace to this card.

here

[FraZor]

Might be worth it as a stop-gap.

[os008]

Hi all,
This is my first post, i registered especially to comment on this article ... Congratulations on a well done and very informative guide, despite of what anyone would say, u really sumarized everything i have been reading about for 6 months now, great work man, i know i'm a stranger here among all the UK users here, but i wanted to comment, thanks.


here's what i would have chosen ...

Athlon 64 X2 4400+ ... 319
DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D ... 82
OCZ 4x512 433 Gold GX 2-2-2-5 ... 254
Club 3D 7800GT PCIe ... 246
Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB SATA2 ... 77
NEC ND3540 16x IDE ... 25
Zalman CNPS7000B-ALCU ... 18
Tagan TG530-U15 530W PSU ... 48
CoolerMaster Cavalier 3 Case ... 55
Vantec Stealth 120mm x2 Case Fan ... 16
Logitech Z-5300e 5.1 Speakers ... 100
Viewsonic VP191B 19" LCD ... 320
Microsoft's Digital Media Pro Keyboard ... 10
Logitech MX510 ... 24
Razer eXactMat Mouse Pad ... 20
1614 Total

I hope u update the article at least every 6 months, thanks again