Will this system be enough for the latest games?

pete159pete159
edited June 2004 in Gaming
Im going to be getting a new system in a few weeks, this is what i've picked out so far. Will it be enough to play all the cool games that are around now? I can get 1 gig memory if i need to.

mid w/400 watt
-asus P4p800-se m/b
-intel P4-3.E cpu w/1M Level II cache
-samsung 512DDR400 memory
- panasonic 1.44 floppy
-seagate 120G 7200rpm HDD
-ATI all in wonder 9600 video card
-Logitec MXDUO cordless kb & MX700 mouse combo
-samsung 19" samsung 955 DF
-LG 16XDVD
-LG 4082 8XDVD burner
-SB audigy II 6.1 sound card-oem
-windows XP home w/ cd & manuals
-D-link 704P wired router

:Canflag: :celebrate

Comments

  • TheBaronTheBaron Austin, TX
    edited June 2004
    in short, yes. but a few things:

    1) your psu, at 400w, had better be a name brand like Antec or Enermax, or you can probably expect problems

    2) the 9600 aiw is already outdated, i would look at the newegg refurbished graphics card section if you're on a tight budget for that sort of thing. as far as the latest games go, i'd suggest at least a 9800 pro

    3) why do you have a 16x dvd when you have an 8x dvd burner?

    4) why not save yourself some money and ditch the audigy? the onboard sound is fine
  • entropyentropy Yah-Der-Hey (Wisconsin)
    edited June 2004
    Also, while i haven't tried the MX700, the last wireless mouse I had was utter trash. Randomly darted around the screen, and whenever you picked it up, it jittered like mad. I would seriously get wired; wireless mice are just not up to par yet. I agree totally with everything TheBaron suggested as well. However for mid-level games with not-too-high of settings, a 9600 pro/xt should be well enough, but a 9800pro is definitely better.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    Get the MX700. Do not buy a corded mouse.
  • entropyentropy Yah-Der-Hey (Wisconsin)
    edited June 2004
    Thrax, ever use the MX510? It's unbefarkinglievable to say the least. Does the 700 not have any jumpy/jittery issues at all, whatsoever?
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    None. Period.
  • entropyentropy Yah-Der-Hey (Wisconsin)
    edited June 2004
    Then I stand corrected. The extra $20~$25 would prolly be worth it.
  • madmatmadmat
    edited June 2004
    I would suggest not going with the onboard sound unless it's hardware based and not AC'97 as the AC'97 audio is completely processed on the CPU and will give you a drop in frame rates as a result...not to mention that the Audigy II sounds far better and offers hardware 3D positional audio.
    I would personally go with a 3.0c instead of the 3.0e unless you're planning to OC the cpu and if so then I'd say get the P4C800-E instead of the P4P800 as it's going to offer better performance (or an IC7-G if you don't just have to have an ASUS board) but for a stock clocked system the 3.0c will offer better performance and be less stressful on the power regulation part of the mobo.
    Just my 2 cents.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    Oh yeah, definitely get a 3.0C. Avoid the Prescott at all costs.
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    When someone says "the latest games" I figure they will be doing some serious gaming. I would also say that you should consider what games may be coming out in the coming year or so. There is nothing worse than getting a new system and a few months later find out that you can only play the hot new game that just came out on lowered settings. :banghead: I agree with the agregate of what has been said so far and make my recomedations as follows:

    • Get the 3.0C and ditch the "Preshot".

    • Upgrade the board to the Asus P4C800E-Deluxe (much better board).

    • While the 9600 Pro is a great vid card the 9800 Pro is considerably better. (almost twice the score in 3DMark03).

    • Try to get 2 sticks of RAM (1GB). (Then you will be able to run dual channel) (More is better anyway)

    • Get a quality "Name Brand" power supply of at least 400W.

    • Get the SATA version of that hard drive. :D
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited June 2004
    I'll pretty much be echoing what everyone else is saying. :)

    Go the P4 3.0C instead of the Prescott as it performs better with gaming than Prescott except at extreme overclocks on the Prescott. It will also run cooler than Prescott.

    Spend a little more and get the Abit IC7-G or Asus P4C800E-Dlx mobo for the added features.

    If it's budgetarily possible, upgrade to the AIW9800 Pro, which will give you a lot better gaming experience and will hold up better with future games like Doom3.

    Definitely go dual channel on the memory and don't skimp on the ram; buy some Corsair XMS3200 LL Pro if your not overclocking or Corsair XMS 4400, Kingston Hyper X or OCZ 4400 if you plan to overclock.

    The stock Intel heatsink is fine for stock speeds or mild overclocking; if you plan some higher vcores while overclocking though invest in a quality heatsink like a Thermalright SLK947-U or better.

    Buy the SATA version of your hard drive, which frees up more IDE channels for optical drives and gives great performance.

    There has been a fairly high failure rate on the Dlink DI604 routers and I don't know the quality of the DI704P. I'd go with a Linksys router of the same class. That's just my personal opinion though.
  • pseudonympseudonym Michigan Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    Vid card is your problem IMHO. It'll run some current stuff well, but in a few months (ie Doom3, HL2 and whatever else comes out) you might be in trouble.
  • XenogearedXenogeared
    edited June 2004
    Personally I wouldnt get the Audigy, ever. Get a turtle beach santa cruz, very nice card and half the price.

    i'm going to stray away from the pack when i say this : the 9600 card would be fine for now only if you get a 9600 XT. You dont need top of the line for doom 3, hell it can run on an xbox, but that doesnt mean you can run it well.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    The card you've chosen, the 9600 AIW, uses the base 9600 chipset. It's no where near fast enough to handle even 'the latest games' at highest settings, and it will be brought to its knees by future games. Max res you can reasonably expect from that vid card would be 1024x768. Believe me, I've owned the 9600, 9500 Pro, 9600XT, and 9800 Pro, and only the base 9600 has left me dissatisfied.

    I'd also like to throw in a vote for the P4C800E-Deluxe board. Although I'd never build a P4 box for myself, I used that motherboard in a client's machine once and it's the only P4 motherboard I'd ever use or recommend.
  • XenogearedXenogeared
    edited June 2004
    GHoosdum wrote:
    It's no where near fast enough to handle even 'the latest games' at highest settings

    haha, but thats the trick to bargain cards, you never run them at max settings.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    GHoosdum wrote:
    The card you've chosen, the 9600 AIW, uses the base 9600 chipset. It's no where near fast enough to handle even 'the latest games' at highest settings, and it will be brought to its knees by future games. Max res you can reasonably expect from that vid card would be 1024x768. Believe me, I've owned the 9600, 9500 Pro, 9600XT, and 9800 Pro, and only the base 9600 has left me dissatisfied.

    I'd also like to throw in a vote for the P4C800E-Deluxe board. Although I'd never build a P4 box for myself, I used that motherboard in a client's machine once and it's the only P4 motherboard I'd ever use or recommend.

    That or an IC7-MAx3 if that mobo is cheaper. One funny thing, P4E Prescotts at 3.0 GHz are $215.00 shipped at ZipZoomfly and Newegg as of this LAST weekend (I priced them Sunday, first day of this current week). but, if the mobo Ghoosdum recommended is very close to same or cheaper, go with that. The IC7-MAx3 will work better with an Abit BIOS flash to most currrent the latest version of the Abit autoflasher (from Abit'sd website) will get and load than what is shipped from distributors with it currently, especially with very fast P4 Prescotts.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited June 2004
    What I'm wondering is why you (pete) are going with Intel in the first place... I've got both a P4-E system and an Athlon XP system. Go for an Athlon XP or Athlon 64. And ditch the 16x DVD drive- get a cd-rw instead.

    Also, you'll need a *good* (Read: Antec, Enermax, PC Power & Cooling, Fortron Source, or Sparkle) 400w+ power supply.

    Dump the AIW 9600. Get a Radeon 9800 Pro, at least. I'd get a separate PCI TV Tuner card rather than an AIW card.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    Sicne the AMD chips of fast kinds have been out konger, one advantage you get from more AMD supporting motherboards is more mature BIOSs. An end user should consider that. BUT, real fast and the best Intel i875 chipset motherboards (not Intel boards) are quite usable with a BIOS flash and LLPT Corsair RAM. The IC7-Max3 latest BIOS that is really fed from Abit is mature enough for my uses here, and a 3+ GHz Prescott at real speed really zooms.

    My 3.1 GHz timed Prescott which started as a 2.8 GHz is outfolding my Northwood which is timed at 3.2 GHz and stable-- by a factor of 1.5-1.7X in Favor fo Prescott with 2 folding client consoles on XP on the Prescott. Prescott is getting more Tinkers between its two clients, as a PROPORTION, than is Northwood, by a large percentage of Tinkers versus Gromacs (Prescott gets 2.5 Tinkers for every .9 Tinker sent to the Northwood box). Both are on same motherboard model and version. I have two boxes with IC7-MAx3's in them, both same BIOS rev and RAM timed exactly the same. NO graphical clients running. My Beta Team stats are team separated at Team 32853 and look at points ratios in about a week to two from now for the Prescott IDs versus the Northwood one on that team. Ignore ID jdii1215 on that team, I had things pooled at once time and wanted per console ID breakouts so I am using my own Team.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    Good point, John.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    Agree with much of what is said above. CPU. If the main goal of this computer is gaming, you really should go with an AMD64-based system. Vid card. Instead of all the gee-whiz stuff on the AIW, spend the money on a serious gamer card - 9800Pro.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    One thing to note:

    My Intel box runs on XP Pro based as SP1a. It runs as an ACPI Multiprocessor Board based box per XP, with the latest Intel chipset drivers from Intel and latest inf files from them. That switch to latest Intel chipset files in and of itself increased my XP performance visibly, versus what was supplied, on both the Northwood and the Prescott boxes.

    The funniest thing is that for REAL EXTREME Intel, you get to wait a bit, the newest major gen chipsets from Intel support DDR2 AND PCI-Express. These are 900+ series chipsets, Intel chipset gen 9. WiFi integral to Intel chipsets has been pended indefinitely. Performance benches on these chipsets on specimen DESKTOP Intel chipset based boards from board mfrs other than Intel or Tyan are starting to hit the web. Extremetech has articles online now on these latest chipsets in use on specimen boards.
  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited June 2004
    Id go with a AMD system and save yourself a truck load of cash...


    *ANTEC ALUMINUM SERIES SUPER LAN BOY MINI TOWER CASE $80.00

    *NEC 8X DVD+RW/-RW Drive, Model ND-2500A $68.99

    *Lite-On 16X DVD-ROM Drive, Model XJ-HD166S $27.99

    *Thermaltake SILENT BOOST $34.99

    *Maxtor 200GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive, Model 6Y200M0 $133.00

    *Kingston ValueRAM Dual Channel Kit 184 Pin 1G(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200 $181.00

    *ABIT "NF7-S" nForce2 Chipset Motherboard $85.00

    *Antec P4 ATX12V 450 Watt 2 Fans, Model "SL450" $65.00

    *AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 333 FSB, 512K Cache Processor $146.00

    *Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack SP1a $90.00

    *ATI RADEON 9800 PRO 256MB DDR, 256-bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP $268.00


    Total (Before tax): $1,179.97
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    the newest major gen chipsets from Intel support DDR2 AND PCI-Express
    And that is probably a generation that should be skipped. At the current technology, neither DDR2 nor PCI express implimentations are showing consistent performance above DDR/PCI/P4 Northwood/AMD64. Kudos to Intel for already having chipsets out supporting the new architecture; but it needs to mature before the performance matches the price.
  • TheBaronTheBaron Austin, TX
    edited June 2004
    Geeky1 wrote:
    What I'm wondering is why you (pete) are going with Intel in the first place... I've got both a P4-E system and an Athlon XP system. Go for an Athlon XP or Athlon 64. And ditch the 16x DVD drive- get a cd-rw instead.

    Also, you'll need a *good* (Read: Antec, Enermax, PC Power & Cooling, Fortron Source, or Sparkle) 400w+ power supply.

    Dump the AIW 9600. Get a Radeon 9800 Pro, at least. I'd get a separate PCI TV Tuner card rather than an AIW card.

    everyone is just mimicking everything i said :D
    i feel so accomplished
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