What Graphics Card?

Thanks for the Reply everyone. <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>

I think I’ll be sticking to whats in the list.
Instead of 160GB HardDrive, It’ll be 250GB.
Should have it by friday week. So hopefuly, no more crashes, alot fewer anyway and abit more speed alround.

James

Hi all,

I have to get a new system. The one I’m using now which I bought about 4yrs ago is really stressing me out. I dont see much point in sitting in front of a computer for hours on end and not get much work done,any more <!– s:x –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_mad.gif" alt=":x" title="Mad" /><!– s:x –> <!– s:( –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_sad.gif" alt="" title="Sad" /><!– s:( –> I’ll be getting a new one in about 2-3 weeks <!– s:D –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!– s:D –> <!– s:D –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!– s:D –> and I just want to ask someone for there opinion.

The base will be: Dimension 8400 P4 processor
550 with HT technolog
(3.40GHz,800fsb, 1MB cache)
160GB ATA Hard Drive

Memory: 1024MB PC-4200 Dual Channel
DDR2 533MHz[2×512]

Operating System:Microsoft Windows XP
Professional SP2.

Video Card: 256MB PCI Express x16ATI Radion
X800 XT

Is the graphics Card a good choice?
And is Windows XP Professional SP2 a good choice?

Thanks

James

[BLOCKQUOTE class=’ip-ubbcode-quote’][font size=’-1′]quote:[/font][HR] I have to get a new system. [HR][/BLOCKQUOTE]
<!– s:D –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!– s:D –>

I’d settle for this…I think this is the latest card from ATI and I haven’t seen any bad reports. I only have 128megs on my Radeon 9800 Pro card and I don’t have any problems to speak of.

I’ve been using SP2 for about 10 days now without any problems.

If I were getting a new system I would go for an AMD Athlon 64 bit processor but that’s not to say a P4 won’t do the job.

Bazza

I think the hard disk is probably the slowest part of your planned system. Have you considered SATA instead of ATA? Also, you could get a pair of smaller SATA disks and RAID stripe them for a bit more speed, or mirror them for reliability.

The rest of the system sounds pretty good <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>

It all looks pretty good. Costwise you may find that an AMD 64 processor (Preferably socket 939) may be less and offer the same or better performance, but if money is not a problem then the P4 is a good processor.

I have a Radeon X800 Pro and couldn’t be happier with it. I went for a card that offered good performance and price when I bought just over a month ago. However, that being said the Nvida 6800 GT is now around the same price as the X800 Pro and offers shader 3.0 support with more pixel pipelines, but with similar performance. The X800 XT is certainly a fine card. <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>

I have a 6800GT 256 – it has it’s own huge cooling fan and requires an extra power cable to run it… all adds to the noise.

(Mine was already a noisy system to start with)

I’ve just setup a similar system to mine for a friend but with an AMD Athlon 64 bit processor and it’s much quiter than my Athlon 32 bit processor.

Bazza

Sounds good to me. ATI says the video chip includes DirectX 9 shader support which I assume means full support for DirectX 9. That’s really good for a notebook computer.

Richard