Custom PC

Originally Posted by Wayne A

It requires one heck of a system to play.

Anyway ive gone for this mobo: AMD Athlonââ€Ã⠀¦Ã‚¾Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¢ 64 FX Processor

Yea sure, go pay approx £400-500 for the CPU it's self then

[MadGamer]

What about this card from www.savastore.co.uk : 256MB ATi Radeon 9250 AGP 8X CRT/DVI/TVo Graphics

Originally Posted by Wayne A

What about this card from www.savastore.co.uk : 256MB ATi Radeon 9250 AGP 8X CRT/DVI/TVo Graphics

you may want to research your subject a little more, Wayne

[MovedGoalPosts]

You seem to be aiming very high with the graphics card, especially it's onboard RAM, yet the CPU itself as a 3200XP is comparatively entry level. Seems an odd combination to me.

How about an alternative approach to speccing the system. Look at prebuilt systems from the likes of Mesh, Evesham, Dell , and even some of the smaller perhaps more specialist suppliers like poweroid, overclockers, etc. Have a look at the specifications offered for the money. That gives you a clue about the basic balance of a system. Once you have that then you can start to look at tweaking individual components to suit your "specialist" needs. i.e. smaller HD (you can always add another later on) might give you money for more RAM or a better DVD drive now.

If SIMS 2 is anything like SimCity in it''s demands it is infact not so much about a big powered graphics card as the PC itself having sufficient power and memory to handle the increasing data of your ever larger simulation. But if you are building a gaming PC, you don't want to be one game specific. It wants to be balanced for all you can throw at it. Today I'd aim at at least an Athlon 4000+ chip socket 939 type (higher if I had the money), 1GB PC3200 RAM (again can always be easily added to later), SATA hard disks (access time is noticeably faster - ask the clan how quickly I'm usually ready to go on the next maps in COD), and a reasonable graphics card, but a 128MB onboard RAM on something like a 9800 card could be failry well balance for that sort of system.

I'm comforably running MOH, COD and now Battlefield 2 on a system that has slightly lesser specs than that. Move much higher and your into cutting edge and thus high priced technology that your current gaming expectations will not really show value for money.

[punky]

Originally Posted by Wayne A

What about this card from www.savastore.co.uk : 256MB ATi Radeon 9250 AGP 8X CRT/DVI/TVo Graphics

That's a bit of a step down from a x800. That processor is a bit high for a card like the 9250. Bare minimum you should get is a 9800 pro.

[Tezcatlipoca]

Wayne.... maybe it would be easier if you simply bought a pre-built system, & gave up on the idea of having a custom one built?

[Richard M]

I had no problem running Sims 2 at 1280x1024 with 4xAA & 8xAF on a Radeon 9800 Pro.
I may have been running an Athlon FX with 1GB RAM but an XP 3200 would do the job just as well, it's still a very fast CPU.

[chambece]

I Built my wife a PC for sims 2 - spent prolly under £300!

I think hers is a Sempron 2600, in a Asus Terminator barbone, 512Mb RAM and a top-end-ish GF4, runs with a little bin of slow-down on some of the cut scenes, but hardly noticable.....

[jtwn]

OK, I am going to cut to the chase as some people are going WAY TOO overboard here for his needs.

Don't rate graphics cards on how much memory they have.

Don't get an x800 or any of the equivalent or above to play the sims 2; 9600XT to 9800 Pro will suffice.

Might aswell get 1gb ram with it being so cheap - timings - forget about them, just look for a stick of PC3200.

Don't bother buying a separate heatsink/fan - you obviously are not going to overclock it to some juggernaut - it isn't needed; there is one in the retail box.

You aren't a pirate, you don't need a 'top of the line' DVDRW, just get a 16x DL established drive manufacturers' job and you are done.

AMD 3200+ PR rated processor or Intel 3.0ghz is good enough for your needs.

Any reputable 7200rpm IDE drive with 2mb cache or more is fine.

The Sims 2 will run on any bottom of the line POS. If you don't have horizons beyond that game there is no need to go higher.

[Richard M]

Well it needs to run Call Of Duty as well, right Wayne?

[AndrewJ]

I would offer advice but whats his budget? what will it do? what does he prefer it to excel like?

Originally Posted by chambece

I Built my wife a PC for sims 2 - spent prolly under £300!

I think hers is a Sempron 2600, in a Asus Terminator barbone, 512Mb RAM and a top-end-ish GF4, runs with a little bin of slow-down on some of the cut scenes, but hardly noticable.....

The top end GF4 was the 4600 ti (which I had)
then the 4800 ti which came out when agp 8 first reared but was not as powerful as the 4600,then comes the 4200 ti nice mid card of the day then the lowely 440 and the ilk

[chambece]

That's the one in her's a 4600ti...

I have a 32Mb GF2 MX400 in mine - suits me fine!!

I really just don't see the point in spending a fortune on them unless you really want it for playing high end games, and then you're probably looking around the 3 grand price mark!!!

I'm building myself a new PC at the mo, asus T2-P deluxe (£100), second hand P4 2.4GHz (£25), 1GB 3200 RAM (£60) 160GB HD (~£60), NEC 16x DVD (£30). Sticking with the onboard video as I don't play games on it, but from what I believe it would be up to playing sims 2....

Originally Posted by Richard M

Well it needs to run Call Of Duty as well, right Wayne?

Well he doesn't need such a powerful graphics card then, I play fine with my Radeon 8500LE and Athlon 2400+

[MadGamer]

Originally Posted by punky

That's a bit of a step down from a x800. That processor is a bit high for a card like the 9250. Bare minimum you should get is a 9800 pro.

What are the 9800 pro cards like?