Buy now?

-Ben-Ben
edited June 2004 in Hardware
Ok guys im in a dilema.

Theese are my planned new PC specs.

AMD Athlon 64 3000 (Socket 754) - £133
Abit KV8 Pro (Socket 754) Motherboard - £73
GeIL 512MB PC3200 Golden Value - £70
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 Serial ATA 160GB 8MB Cache - £74
XFX GeForce FX 6800 GT 256MB DDR3 - £290
Logitech X-620 6.1 Speakers - £80
LG GSA 4081BB 8x DVD±R/±RW Drive - £58
+ 100 for misc items.

The game im waiting for is HL2 and i was wondering what the prices of theese items are going to be like when HL2 comes out(assume late summer) is it worth waiting?

Is the saving only going to be like 40 quid or is it going to be substantial?

Comments

  • TheBaronTheBaron Austin, TX
    edited June 2004
    i wouldn't expect a significant price drop between now and august
  • -Ben-Ben
    edited June 2004
    Ok cool so would your advice just to not bother waiting and buy now?

    I was thinking that the 6800GT would lose some of its price because it's super new. And has only just started coming into the UK in bulk.
  • KingFishKingFish
    edited June 2004
    I know you are probably price conscious but I'd really consider getting better ram like Mushkin, Kingston Hyper X, or Corsair. It's much less likely to crap out on you. Also consider getting two smaller sized hard drives and put them on a raid 0 array. Hard drive access and transfer speed is normally the bottleneck on system performance and is most likely the area to show a noticeable boost in performance.

    KingFish
  • entropyentropy Yah-Der-Hey (Wisconsin)
    edited June 2004
    Yeah, I have geil ddr500 and regret it. Great ram, but you absolutly cannot change any timings whatsoever. Also, Intel is having a major pricedrop in august...not sure if you even care about intel, though. :)

    //EDIT:
    Personally I would say get an X800 or an X800 xt, but it's hard to say where nVidia's top will sit against ATi's top because there haven't been many benchmarkser
  • MediaManMediaMan Powered by loose parts.
    edited June 2004
    Moved from Emergency Help Forum to Hardware. Besides a desire for a new rig...I see no real emergency.

    MM
  • -Ben-Ben
    edited June 2004
    Im not that price concious as you can tell i got a graphics card which is about half of my systems final cost lol.

    I have read up on the geil ram and it does seem very decent.

    Raid 0 haven't read greatly into that. I did read that if one of you're hard drives fails you're screwed.

    Oh damn i thought i clicked on general hardware :P Sorry about that.
  • KingFishKingFish
    edited June 2004
    It's true that with raid 0 you're hosed if one fails. Everyone should have a solid file backup policy to ensure that you don't get caught with your pants down at an inopportune time. I hate when that happens.

    KingFish
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited June 2004
    No one in their right mind would buy a S754 system, IMO.
  • -Ben-Ben
    edited June 2004
    Lol :D

    entr0py. I decided long and hard about the graphics card and i chose nV because i like the full 16 pipeline goodness. And the SM3.0 which i will be using once i get into directx API work later this year :D

    Why geeky? there dosen't seem to be a huge difference at the moment. That warrants the price increase. And S754 is still going to be around for a while. And when the time that socket bites the dust i will probably do a full system upgrade.

    I am going to be using this system for atleast 2-3 years with maybe a processor upgrade and a new graphics card later on in it's life span.
  • entropyentropy Yah-Der-Hey (Wisconsin)
    edited June 2004
    Alright, fair enough :) x800xt has 16 pipes ... and methinks it'll kick the nuts off your GT :D SM3 I'm not sure about - I haven't really read much at all about it. But now you've confused me ... isn't it Ultra > 6800 > GT (from most potent to least) ? If not, please edjimuhcate me
  • -Ben-Ben
    edited June 2004
    Yes GT is meant to compete with x800pro which only has 12 pipes.

    Specs i was running 2 months ago.

    650mhz duron
    256 pc 100 spread out over 3 slots :P
    7 gig harddrive lol"!

    At the moment im running a 1ghz duron
    with a 80 gig harddrive lol
  • KingFishKingFish
    edited June 2004
    I think that with AMD's pricing plan (or lack thereof) that S754 will be a viable option for many enthusiasts like myself. If the prices don't come down considerably that is exactly what I'll be buying.

    KF
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited June 2004
    They have a good writeup on the X800 Pro/X800 XT/GF6800 Ultra over at hardocp they posted in the last day or so and gives some good head to head comparisons with several games, a good read if you are in the market for a new graphics card. They tested on both Intel and A64 machines too. Their testing is showing the X800 Pro matching or even beating the GF 6800 Ultra on several games too, so the X800 Pro should handily beat the GF 6800GT.

    Here's a link to the article.
  • csimoncsimon Acadiana Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    great find Mudd!
    When we moved up to the faster CPUs such as the Pentium4 at 3.0GHz or the Socket 754 Athlon64 3000+, we saw performance skyrocket and saw the performance differences become very noticeable between the cards. This pattern continued with the Pentium4 3.4GHz and the Socket 939 Athlon64 3500+. As the CPU speed increased so did the difference in performance and IQ abilities, typically showing the X800XT-PE and X800Pro gaining in performance more than the 6800Ultra, especially in FarCry.

    If you compare the price points of the cards' MSRP, you will find that the GeForce 6800Ultra at $499 MSRP should compete against the Radeon X800XT-PE, which also has an MSRP of $499. The X800Pro comes in at a lower price point of $399. You would think that video cards set at the same price would perform similarly, but as we have shown in our initial X800 series review, our recent VisionTek X800Pro review, and now this article, this is not the case. The X800Pro at one hundred dollars less than the GeForce 6800Ultra was either matching or beating it in game performance.

    The AMD 754 seems like a good choice right now ...with the upcoming release of Doom III I think you're good to go if you follow your instinct. I would definitely invest in Ati at this point however.

    My thoughts on RAID 0 is this. If you plan of doing heavy duty video streaming and video editing then RAID 0 is a good choice ...but only as a secondary disk setup. If you want the setup to last (and some may argue) I would not put the OS on it or boot to it. Booting to the array wears out the boot drive signifigantly.
    Boot to an sata stand alone drive such as a raptor even and have the array setup seperately and it should last you a long time and give you oustanding editing and streaming performance.

    My $.02
    Good luck
  • entropyentropy Yah-Der-Hey (Wisconsin)
    edited June 2004
    Yep...read that the other day. Just goes to show nVidia screwed up once again :D I'd hate to see what happens when ATi decides they need to use new technology. Amazing to think that nVidia had to revamp their whole architechture and ATi beats them using a 9800 on steroids :D
  • -Ben-Ben
    edited June 2004
    Well that's settled :D

    I will order once work sorts out my paycheck that they gammyed up >:(

    Any other comments on spec etc etc?
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