About to buy a new machine
 

About to buy a new machine

The budget is around £1500, the machine will be used for games, photo and video editing and some adhoc development.

I'm not considering MESH ;)

I am considering Evesham based upon pash good experiences with them.

Currently looking at this

http://www.evesham.com/products/info...D-66CE7BD69506

views and opinions?

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Very nice. Is RAM a little low though for that price ? I'd go for 2gig at that overall spec.

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

That's a lot of money for a 4600+ processor with a gig of memory. Does it have a screen with it? (it shows one, but does not state one in the spec).

there's this spec for £1399 on cube247.com

• AMD Athlon64 X2 5200+ DUAL CORE AM2
• 4096MB DDRII 667 Corsair Memory - The World's Premium Memory!
• 960GB Seagate Data Storage - RAID Stripe - Ultimate Performance!
• ASUS AM2 Deluxe Motherboard
• 16x DVD Player - Fastest DVD ROM Available!
• NEC DVD ReWriter AD-5170A 16x Dual Layer & Dual Format - The Best Drive In The World!
• ATI Radeon x1950 XT-X 512MB - What Dreams Are Made Of!
• Sony Floppy Drive
• Creative Labs X-Fi Xtreme Music Soundcard
• 12x USB2 Ports
• Firewire
• 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN Adapter
• Midi Tower Case

or this from pcspecialist.co.uk for a grand
http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/index....erformance1000

or this
http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/index....pec=gaming1000

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Im sobbing my heart out here £1600 quid on a box and its not even got a conroe in it arrrrghhhhhhhh

What I would build if it was for me

E6600
asus P5W DH deluxe
2 gig of ram
crossfire master card x1950 xtx
x1900xtx slave card
Big hard drives x 2
2 dvd rw
nice case
good psu
screen

there screwing you for about 400 quid profit on that build

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Zing, what spec could you supply for that price?

ps the pcspecialist gaming 1k machine had a 6400 in it :-)

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

see above thats an estimate build but I would say that would be doable easy for that money

think I could build what i stated and easy include my profit for that

he could buy my tower for around 1200 ;) lol lol with a 22 inch screen for 1500 ;) for that money ill deliver it personally lol lol lol

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

---------- Post added at 15:41 ---------- Previous post was at 15:39 ----------

also includes 3 yr warranty with 2 years on site which i have used in the past and the servide is good

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

yeah thats worth 400 quid lol lol if yoru unlucky 1 thing maybe 2 will fail in that time which would be cheaper to replace yourself.Anyway its upto you :)

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Now now easy tiger you don't wanna scare the punter away :) :D

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

when you shop with Zingle you get Zingles level of support.Id wager thats worth more than the 400 quid ;)

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Think I've never seen anyone so dedicated - he's mental : I'd second that.

I dont know how it happened buy some guy leeched onto me ringing me up all the time about his PC I told him where to get off :)

I just cant do this kinda support grrrrrrrrrrr shudders at the thought

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

i didnt say it was worth £400, what im saying is to make a decision on what i buy i need to be able to compare apples with apples. I appreciate i could build the same box for less than evesham, but the "its not worth my time" factor comes into it

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

well ok level advice.Buy a machine built round a conroe not an amd :)

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

I was looking particularly at AMD, their intel offering for about the same price is here

http://www.evesham.com/products/info...8-3A20A81670B3

what i dont understand is why they go for the Nvidia graphics

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

I'd agree with Zing on this one... Intel hare retaken the CPU crown from AMD with the C2D CPUs. I was a die-hard AMD fan until very recently, but I'm struggling to find a valid reason to not go for a C2D if you're spending that kinda money on a PC.

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

If I had that kind of money for a pc I think I'd get Zing to build me one

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

My first PC cos me 700.... since then I always build machines costing around the 400 mark and they have always served me well.

my 1500 budget always goes to a laptop.

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Zingle,
You know how you specify 2gig of ram in your post, thats quite a general statement, if your buying your machine which Ram and what speed would you buy bud?

Im not sure what the heck you should get to be honest.

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Well Im using ocz at the minute. Corsair for me resently has been a little hit and miss. I prefer the DDRII 667 as the latency is a lot lower than the DDRII 800 which has really slack timings even for DDR II :) and then theres the cost.Ram prices are quite high at the mo the major OEM's have gobbled the surplus up for christmas lol :)

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Currently using Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 RAM @ 5-5-5-18. Running it at 860mhz with just a .1v bump :)

Lovely stuff, seems to perform well, and it's running 1:1 with my C2D.

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Same here.....:tu:

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

me and a couple of my clients have had corsair ram fail with in weeks of buying it.

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Still going strong here :) And if it goes wrong, it's going back!

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

yeah but when your building a number of pcs you have to look for most reliable hardware,for me corsair isnt that :)

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Very true, heard some good stuff about Geil and OCZ recently :)

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

I'd give Zingle the dosh, he's gonna look at getting you the most bang for your buck.

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Theres a nice looking system here.Might run a bit over with a screen though

---------- Post added at 20:38 ---------- Previous post was at 20:30 ----------

or theres this one
dunno if the price will be right but I made it the gx2 and a 22 inch screen :) £1722

http://www.meshcomputers.com/Default...UCT&KEY=127801

I know you didnt want mesh but this is the spec you shoudl be looking for

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

i want that. :(

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

not a lot of use without a screen ;)

---------- Post added at 00:57 ---------- Previous post was at 00:54 ----------

lol, the MESH comment was to pre-empt you! :D

The OC one doesnt look bad, thats a single GPU rather than the dual that you suggested?

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

well Wicked, I would just ask Zing what he could build for you with the dosh...the support will be better then that of say MESH, Eversham, and all the other builders. If I had the dosh I might just think about doing it that way myself as well.

also it helps the "help Zing through the winter" fund ;)

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

on the Mesh one I added the 1 gig 7950 gx2 (dual gpu) and the 22 inch screen :)
The OC one has the X1950xtx so you could add a master card if you fancied. Mind you ive not looked at the mobo all Intel it would be not sure if I like that idea or not lol

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

So do i mate :(

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Normally if I want something i'll get it, but that aint worth the effort, because I probably would notice minimal difference between my spec and that in real terms (ie day to day stuff) the only issue is that if you buy that you won't need a new PC for another 10 years :D

Windows Game Advisor said that mine was top 2%, yet it's a single core Athlon 64 on s754 done on the incredibly cheap about 15-18 months ago :D

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Then its wrong lol
You would notice a difference specially if you had a conroe instead. I can tell the difference between a single cored 754 machine and a dual core conroe or the low end 3600 x2 for that matter

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Yes you probably would - but only if you were maxing the CPU where the dual core would kick in as essentially that's 2 CPUs.

The difference between say a mid-range X2 or a C2D and that machine with 4 GB RAM etc, in real terms for everyday use, probably wouldn't be that much.

In any case, though I probably could upgrade this, if I changed the CPU it would be AM2 as opposed to 939, and if I did that, then i'd need new RAM and PCI-E graphics (Damn - there goes the new-ish 6600) and I'd probably not be able to fit the 3 PCI cards in (sound, TV, wireless), so wouldn't be worth the effort for something I probably wouldn't notice that much for browsing the web, email, odd bit of Office, kinda casual gaming and music :)

(woo, 5000th post!)

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Thats not true. Ive got a AM2 board with and nforce 3 chipset that uses agp gfx and ddrII ive used boards often that run apg and ddr I with Intel cpus also ie the D805
I would argue also and of the conroes will wee on a skt 754 cpu even if only using one core and imo you would deffo notice.I also would argue the mid range x2 cpu against a conroe in apps such as video encoding would show a difference markedly

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Be better to use PCI-E though wouldn't it, seeing as AGP is practically a legacy interface now.

I still maintain for web browsing, email, and MS Office type stuff, you wouldn't really notice a marked difference. Video editing, gaming, yes. But the fact remains, right now I have Media Player, Thunderbird and Firefox up, as well as anti virus stuff etc, and i'm hardly stressing this. CPU 15 odd %, RAM about 866, and Thunderbird seems to be such a RAM hog these days :( I have quite a lot running, but I do that, because I know the PC can cope.

Yeah a 754 is two sockets out of date and far from the fastest around, but there will still be people happy with their Pentium IIs running Win98 and crashing every 2 minutes! Likewise, some people will still be using old PCs, because it suits their needs fine, probably not for enthusiasts (in fact, defo not) but a £1000 PC four years ago could do exactly what the purchaser intends it to do, and is not interested in intensive tasks... those who do, keep on top of the game, and spend more on it. Believe it or not, I have a PII kicking around, it is perfectly fine for web browsing apart from the fact it's now running an unsupported operating system. Don't use it very often, but that's because this one is faster.

You would only notice the difference in things like benchmarking, video editing, gaming etc and yeah, in that situation a conroe would **** on a 754. But that is very much the tip of the iceberg, and for me, gaming isn't a priority, I play the odd bit of GTA:SA and Football Manager / Pro Evo and that's about it. Don't forget this may be a 754 but it is a 3700+, it's no slouch in terms of clock speed (it was the fastest 754 I could get, because it was all I wanted to upgrade). What would be noticeable is the fact it's not dual core, which is more of a gain, especially if you have more than one CPU-intensive task running at the same time. At the top of the ladder, I'd say the number of cores was more important than the clock speed. Is there much difference between, say, a 3500+ and a 5000+, all other factors (cache, cores) being equal? Course not. But there is a big difference between a single core 3500+ and a dual core 3500+.

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

the productivety of my machines have increased hugely since going dual core on both my main machines.Its knocked minuted off dvd ripping and it all adds up.Also as I have posted before my machines are geared towards high productivety when needed with extra hard drives etc so apps can run off seperate hard drives etc. So when I say I would notice the difference im only being honest:)
BTW the smallest x2 is the 3600 and its AM2 only iirc :)

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Nuff said, innit?

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Well yes and no because these still need to be run and processed so you could do all 3 and notice a difference on a dual core machine.I would say a difference would be noticed by someone used to a fast machine doing said work on an office machine and vice versa. Lesser machines will run those apps adequately but faster dual core etc machines will do more of said apps at a time

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

'suits you sir' :)

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Which in a way backs up what I'm saying - it's the dual core that makes the difference. That's assuming that what you are using the machine for is enough to get a significant benefit from dual-core to begin with, which depends on what you're doing.

I'm waiting for quad core :)

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Not really as these new cored cpus run single threaded apps much better than older models.I would put my c2d in a singled cored app ie prime 95 running once thread against yours running the same and lets see which passes the self test first?

Its like theinking the fx57 wont piddle over the 3700 running apps it would.Im not arguing you need to upgrade im arguing the benefits of the newer cpus.Also my main point in this thread is why pay a large amount of cash on a machine with a second best cpu in it when you can have the best for the same or less

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

i know i said no to MESH but i just priced this up from ebuyer parts (as best i could) and the MESH price came lower.

Ignore the PCPRO recommended by, the supplied machine had an X1950XTX in it, this one doesnt

http://www.meshcomputers.com/Default...UCT&KEY=130038

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

nice machine dude. The cpu is carrying a premium. Is that 2 xtx cards? for that price I cant see how componant costs are that high.Mind you the cpu carried a premium over the e6600

EDIT ok priced it up and the price is sound :)

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

hmm might just go for that

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

Zing,

if you look at it, the 2nd card is optional - at an extra £300 :(

But it does mean when the prices come down, you can fit one - result! :)

W&C - nice machine.

Re: About to buy a new machine
 

the next machine up does have two cards plus has twice the storage all for an extra £350

http://www.meshcomputers.com/Default...UCT&KEY=121615