New PC, now what?
I would like to thank everybody here for all their help inthe past. I have a new issue now... a new computer...
Specs: 2.5ghz celeron, 768mb ram, 40GB HD, Intel "Extreme" graphics, this is a base model eMachine with 512MB added. I am trying to configure it to run optimally with the likes of CoD, Battle Engine Aquila, Homeworld 2, and other graphics heavy games. What should I look for, what should I tweak, how can I make this an awesome computer? Any help would be appreciated.
Specs: 2.5ghz celeron, 768mb ram, 40GB HD, Intel "Extreme" graphics, this is a base model eMachine with 512MB added. I am trying to configure it to run optimally with the likes of CoD, Battle Engine Aquila, Homeworld 2, and other graphics heavy games. What should I look for, what should I tweak, how can I make this an awesome computer? Any help would be appreciated.
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other than that the specs are pretty okay
try getting a better card for yourself
Intel's Extreme Graphics is not even a DirectX 7.0 compatible part, meaning that even the simplest of 3D calculations must be calculated by the CPU, severely hampering your performance.
If you want to have a chance at all to play Call Of Duty, Battle Engine Aquila, Homeworld 2, Doom 3, Half-Life 2 or UT2004, you are going to need a new graphics adapter.
Depending on how much you want to spend, both ATI and NVidia have cards that will suit your setup. Personally, for that system you have configured, pickup a ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128 MB card and you'll be in much better shape to play 3D games. The difference will be night and day compared to your Intel "Extreme" Graphics.
What speed of memory does your E-Machine use? I'm guessing it's DDR, but I have a sinking feeling that it's DDR266...
To be blunt, the only way you can really make an E-Machine awesome is to sell it and use the money from that sale to purchase a system designed for high-performance from Alienware, Voodoo or Falcon Northwest, or to build it yourself.
If you have an AGP slot, it's pretty easy to install but check first and if you decide to go that way we can walk you thru installation and optimizing.
Does your emachines even have an AGP port? Many commodity computers with built-in graphics don't even have the ability to allow you to upgrade the video card.. PC2100 is low-bandwidth memory..
As far as your last question, the best PCI solution isn't gonna even allow you to play the games you want to play. The very best PCI video card you can get is the Radeon 7500 (or is it 7000, I forget)... and it's not gonna perform very well for current games.
You need a new computer.... sorry
PowerColor makes a PCI Radeon 9000 64 MB video card, which will give you DirectX 8.1 video card extensions, however there is one downfall to this card: Because it is operating on the PCI bus, the clock speeds of the core & memory of the video card have been scaled back so the card does not completely saturate the available bandwidth of the PCI bus. This results in a substantial performance drop, to the level where the Radeon 9000 performs just as well in raw frame-rate tests as the GeForce 4 MX. Therefore, it will perform better than Intel's Extreme Graphics, but it won't be as fast as the regular AGP Radeon 9000.
Pray to god you have an AGP slot...
Powercolor Radeon 9000 64 MB PCI - $91.00
As for your pagefile, if you have under 1 GB of RAM, the general concensus is to set your page file to 1.5x the amount of system RAM you have and place the page file on the FASTEST hard disk in your system.
Depending on the chipset features that are supported by your system (probably the i845GE chipset), I don't think your system can utilize higher-bandwidth memory. Sure, you can install DDR333 or DDR400 memory modules, but because the system only supports at the maximum DDR266 modules, you wouldn't get any tangible benefits (other than the modules could be utilized in newer systems, which DO support DDR333 & DDR400 modules fully).
Check your E-Machine documentation and post what chipset that -Machine has (it may be referred to as Core Logic, System Logic, Northbridge/Southbridge or just Chipset).
1. The GeForce FX series is crap. Crap, crap, crap, crap, CRAP. ATi's cards in the same price range outperform every one of nVidia's offerings. The GeForce FX is THE SINGLE BIGGEST SCREW UP in the history of the graphics industry, if not the entire computer industry.
2. Yes, you can use ram that's faster than PC2100, but depending on the board EMachines uses, it may be of no help at all.
3. before you go upgrading graphics cards and RAM, upgrade the cooling system. I've looked @ the new emachines, and for the price, they're decent, but they have no case fans. New systems require a great deal more cooling than they did when the P2/P3 was king. You really do need to get some case fans for it before you put in a high-powered graphics card and stuff, unless you want to risk possibly killing the card.
4. Paging file size is a really difficult issue. There are people who say less is better, and people who say more is better. Your best bet is to leave it alone and let Windows decide.
This is the model I got. The only thing I have changed is I added 512 of RAM (Kensington PC2100DDR), everything else is stock. It has two fans in it, would that not be enough? Sim Guy, You were spot on on the chipset.
According to Intel's block diagram for the i845GV, it only has "Digital Video Out" (IE Intel's Extreme Graphics).
Looks like you can only use a PCI video card.
On the bright side, you can utilize a 533 MHz FSB Intel Pentium 4 CPU in this comp... which will speed things up compared to your Celeron, but it will cost ya major $$$ for a P4B.
1. By 2 fans, I assume you mean 1 on the cpu, and 1 at the back of the computer in the power supply, right?
If so, then no, that is not sufficient.
2. Going for RAM that's faster than PC2100 won't make any difference without a motherboard upgrade.
I'm downloading SUN JAVA right now, and when that's done I'll use E-Machine's live chat feature to find out what board that thing has. E-Machines doesn't say, unfortunately.
I've got bad news, and worse news.
The bad news:
It's got a 250w generic power supply
The worse news:
It has a Trigem motherboard. Trigem is a generic, OEM-only brand. Their boards are notorious for being (for lack of a better term) total crap.
Other news:
Unless you upgrade the power supply, (and MAYBE the motherboard... if it has an AGP slot, and you're on a budget, it'll be fine) you won't be able to do much with this thing.
How many slot cutouts are there on the back of the case (or better yet, how many slots does the board have?). I don't know how computer-literate you are, so I'm going to attach a pic of what I mean... please don't take offense if I insult your intelligence, as that is not my intent.
Oh, and SimGuy, the board in the attached pic is an Intel i845gv board. It has an AGP slot.
We'll have to wait and see about the board before we can figure out what kind of graphics upgrade you could do. Also, it is going to depend on your budget.
The system you have now has a fair amount of potential in that the 2.5GHz Celeron is decently fast (it's ~= 2GHz P4) but the motherboard is holding it back. The problem is that the Pentium 4 (and Pentium 4-based Celerons... ALL Celerons that are 1.7GHz or faster are Pentium 4 based) is (IMO) an inherently flawed design.
The reason I say this is because the chip is extremely sensitive to the speed of the memory it has. AMD Athlons can run with old PC133 SDRAM without much of a performance hit. However, if you run a P4 on SDRAM, you will cut it's performance by 50-75%. The only way to provide the P4 with the memory bandwidth it wants is RDRAM (which is basically extinct, absurdly expensive, and not worth it), or dual-channel DDR. To use dual-channel DDR, you'll need a new motherboard.
I don't have time to explain it all in detail right now (I'll do it when I get home tonight tho... if I don't, remind me), but depending on your budget, a motherboard upgrade would probably be a good idea.
First thing to check though is that there is infact an AGP slot.
I can't believe our Digital Technologies lecturer today was telling us that the Northbridge and Southbridge are being replaced with the MCH and IOCH. Geez, he acts like a complete noob buying all this intel marketing crap.
NS
Okay, you already spent $xxx on the E-machine.. Now, you're gonna have to replace the motherboard, get some new RAM, beef up the cooling, a new video card, oh, and oh yeah, you need a new PS to support all this, etc... At this point, you will have spent way more than buying all the parts to build your own decent computer would have cost - which is why I humbly suggest, again, that you write it off, recover what money you can out of the machine, and build a new box.
Upgrading yours is going to run $100-$300+...
You have a few decisions to make:
CPU - AMD (better performance/$ ratio) or Intel (higher clock speeds/more expensive)
Motherboard - recommendations will follow based on above
Memory - depends on which cpu and motherboard, also will you expect to overclock (run system out of spec at higher speeds) at all?
Drives - Hard Drive(s)? CD/DVD Drive(s)? Burning ability?
Video Card - biggest decision is going to be cost range. There are good budget (<$100?), mid-range (<$200) and top end ($200++) solutions to suggest.
Cooling and Case and Power Supply fall fairly naturally together in one category, and will be guided on the above plus budget considerations.
Prime is right, you probably should ditch the E-Machine, possibly scrap it for parts, CPU, RAM, Floppy, CD drive.
I read a review of that model and it said there is no AGP slot, and that there are only 3 PCI slots. Pretty sad I must say
You could get by, by buying a new motherboard that will accept the 2.5Ghz Celly and your PC2100 RAM, and get a 350W or above PSU.
-> Any grade P4 "C" variant (the 800 MHz FSB type)
-> Either thte Asus P4C800-E Deluxe or ABIT IC7-MAX3 motherboard. Both overclock just as well... but the ABIT gives a slight performance increase over the P4C800-E Deluxe. Don't skimp on the motherboard. Dual Channel DDR400, SATA RAID, IDE RAID, Onboard 6 Channel Audio, OTES, etc are important features that are necessary to get the most out of the Pentium 4 platforum.
-> High quality Corsair/Kingston/Mushkin DDR400 (or higher) memory. Make sure you purchase 2 identical sticks of memory (or the "Twin" packs) that are designed for use in Dual Channel mode. By using Dual Channel memory, you effectively double the theoretical memory bandwidth available to the system (The P4C required 6.4 GB/sec memory bandwidth, which can only be delivered by dual channel DDR400 (3.2 GB/sec x 2).
-> For your hard disk, look no further than Western Digital or Seagate. As well, choose a SATA hard disk over the older IDE hard disk if budget permits.
-> High end video card? Radeon 9800 Pro/XT.
-> CD/DVD Burner? Plextor's PlexWriter PX-780A or Pioneer's DVR-A06 are nice. They both support the DVD+/-R & DVD+/-RW formats.
-> Case? Well... it's a matter of aesthetic style. Some people like the beige box, others don't. The Antec SX1040/1060/1080, Chenming 601AE and Chieftec Dragon are all the same case, short of slight visual styling and power supply. You'll want a nice large mid-tower case with plenty of internal space. Don't get anything cramped, as it will hamper your cooling ability.
-> PSU? Antec's TruePower 430W PSU will do you fine.
You could purchase a cheaper video card (9600Pro/XT), one of the slower P4C's (2.4 or 2.6 GHz), but you want one of those motherboards, the hard disk, the power supply and the dual-channel DDR SDRAM.
The case is up to you
You are in the US, so look at www.newegg.com for the best price on great parts.
The system above is a high end/fairly high cost system - especially the motherboard and video card, tho the drives are all on the higher end also (both HD if SATA and the Plextor/Pioneer DVDs)
A rock stable and fast configuration that many in here use or have close variations of - and is more "average" cost:
AMD 2500+ Barton CPU **Let us find you the right one, with the right stepping code**
ABIT NF7-S Motherboard (Alternative: Asus A7N8X Deluxe)
512 MB Kingston HyperX PC 3200 (DDR400) Memory *DUAL CHANNEL KIT 2 X 256 MB** (somewhat cheaper than Corsair or Mushkin but still high performance)
ATI 9600 Pro Video Card
Hard Drive - Western Digital 80 GB 8MB cache IDE HD (change size to taste)
Lite-On DVD + - RW (also plays and burns CD's)
Power Supply - as above. Case as above or to taste. Cooling, for cpu go with the (one I cant remember right now, available @ SVC for $20 with coupon code someone will be along shortly with the link).
I'm in Canada, so I'll let someone else suggest the retailers.
One more question - assuming you own a version of Windows, what version do you own?