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[Truelize]

Hey guys/girls,
I am thinking about putting together a new PC. I haven't upgraded for about 5 years. Needless to say that my current pc just laughs at me when I think about Doom3 or Halflife2.
I know what video card I would like. But I don't know what the minimum I can get away with and still enjoy Doom3. I would love to get the Radeon X800 Pro, but it's $600 here in Canada. Is the 9800pro still an awesome card? I imagine it is, and I just can't see spending double the money just to be able to run the game with a couple more details turned on.
My next question is about processors. I have always been an Intel guy. But so many people constantly refer AMD over Intel for gaming machines. I would guess that this is due to price, but there has to be some other points as well. What are those points? I think I will get an AMD processor but I'm unsure on what their highest level is. Is it Barton or 64? Which one is best? Is an Athlon 64 3000+ w/ 512K Cache good enough that I will be able to run Doom3 really smoothly?
That's about it for my questions right now.
Please give me some input. Thanks in advance.

 

[Truelize]

No one on can help me? As if. Stop being so lazy people!

 

[Drexon]

Here goes:
Radeon 9800 Pro stills kicks ass.
Get a AMD64 CPU, not a Barton. AMD64 2800+ > AMD Barton 3200+, I firmly believe.
MSI K8T NEO-FIS2R is a kickass motherboard.
At least 1024 of PC3200 RAM.

As for the rest just go for whatever, you need a 300W PSU for that setup though.

 

[tenchir]

How much are you willing to spend? And since you are upgrading for both Doom3 and Halflife2, the Radeon 9800 Pro is good enough. As for Athlon 64 3000 w/ 512k, I have read that both Athlon64 3000 and 3200 are the same speed, except that the 3000 have half the cache. I would personally go with the 3200 just for the 1MB cache.

Edit: 300w is good enough, but I recommend 400w just to be on the safe side. Get nforce3 based mobo.

 

[Uncle Dukey]

Hi, I'm thinking about upgrading my computer.

I'm currently planning on getting a AMD Athlon 64 3200+ CPU, but was wondering if people had a preference regarding whether to choose the Newcastle or Clawhammer core. Also, does anyone have any recommendations on nforce3 based motherboards? I'd like to have IDE RAID if possible, but I suppose I can live without if necessary.. I've been poking around Newegg on my own, but if anyone has any recommendations regarding this stuff (or other similar items), please let me know.

 

[ZombieSupaStar]

my advice



config a pc to run the HL 2 engine well (namely D3d)


while doom 3 is nice its engine I do not see getting alot of mod action (in terms of what HL 2 would have)

 

[DaCocoBrova]

I need to upgrade my motherboard and CPU. I have no idea what I want to get mobo-wise. As much as I love my current Chaintech 7NJL1, it had some issues at first (northbridge fan was damn near dead, vibrating, stuck).

Nforce2 chipsets don't like external USB HDDs apparently. I'd love my shares to still be there after a reboot. That'd be cool.


What's new in the world of AMD motherboards (other than PCE).

 

[Truelize]

I picked up a ATI Radeon 9800pro today. I will get the rest of everything this weekend. Hopefully.

 

[Black Deatha]

Yeah, if you want a good PC to able to run those games decent, go for an Athlon 64, to save money I would suggest looking at the Socket 754's If your the kind of guy that waits 5 years to upgrade, I dont mean this as an insult, but you will probably wait quite a while again, so s939 would be a bit of a waste.

Like Drexon said, get a gig of PC3200. And I would suggest looking at an Asus nForce3.

And enjoy your new PC.

~Black Deatha

 

[ElyrionX]

As far as I know, there are some slight performance differences between the Newcastle and Clawhammer cores. However, I don't believe that such minor differences is actually worth the trouble of going out of your way to obtain one specific core over another.

As kickass as many people claim MSI motherboards are, I don't like them. I had a K7T Pro once, running a AMD Thunderbird 800 Mhz. It lasted me a grand total of 2 years before dying on me and it had many issues right from the start. I would recommend ASUS......

 

[Truelize]

The mobo I'm looking at is the Asus K8V SE Deluxe and the processor for now is teh AMD Athlon 64 3000+ w/512K cache

ANy comments there?