Bought this new system is it good?

M

Moiee

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 16, 2005
Messages
101
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz Clock Speed x4

ASROCK SKT-775 4COREDUAL-VSTA S/L 1066FSB Motherboard

1066MHz Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache 2x4MB Processor

2GB of RAM DDR2, Genuine Kingston 667Mhz

500GB SATA II Hard Drive's 16MB Cache

Sony 18X DVD+-RW Dual layer Drive

Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio Sound card

Network Socket and USB (USB front and 4 Back)

Plus gigabyte LAN (Internet ready)

Dedicated Nvidia GeForce GS7200 256/512MB Turbocache graphics card with DVI, TV and VGA output

Win XP Pro with SP2 for now

I dont play games heavily but would like to play the latest games that come out at a decent performance with most settings on high.
Is my pc lacking in any way with the graphics card? I was thinking of telling him to maybe change the video card if it underperforms compared to my processor? I need some advice on this. Shall I just keep this video card or tell him to change it to a better one and if so which one?

Also how is the quad core intel processor I chose? Does it make a big difference?
Currently I have a 2.4 intel proccessor with 1gb ram and a ayi 128mb card so this is a pretty big upgrade. Havent changed for 5 years :p
 
What PSU have you got?

I would upgrade the video card for more modern games.
 
I'm not sure about the PSU i emailed him to ask.
Yeah I was thinking of changing the video card but to what though?
I dont want top of the range stuff just a 512mb card?
 
why would you want 512 card. most 512 mb cards ive seen are just a lotta memory making up for a crappy core etc.

what do you mean by the latest games coming out? do you mean games like crysis or games that have been just recently released or released in the last couple months ?
 
Holy hell dude... $300 proc on a $50 budget board with a Via chipset? 7200GS:eek: Who is "him" and why is he selling you a $300 proc with a $50 mobo and $40 vid card?
 
Moiee said:
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio Sound card
Click to expand...

Oh....wow. I could almost cry. Why would you buy this?
ugh.gif


The XtremeAudio sound card doesn't even have a true X-Fi chip like the higher quality models. It's actually using a live! 24bit chip based off of the old Audigy line, and handles most functions through software emulation rather than true hardware support. This means that you won't get anywhere near the true X-Fi performance in games, won't be able to use any of the hardware audio options, and the sound won't really be any better than good on board sound.
blech.gif



If I were you I would first ask myself if I really even needed a sound card at all. What kind of audio equipment do you have? Are you using inexpensive 2.1 speakers and cheap headphones that you bought from best buy? If you are then getting a sound card won't really help you much. All that a soundcard will do for you in this situation is allow you to enable some of the hardware options in games (which won't help much if you don't have good speakers/headphones) and give you a few more frames per second.

On the other hand, if you do really need a sound card, I would Xtremely :)D) advise you to return that piece of junk and get yourself either an X-Fi XtremeMusic, or an X-Fi Fatal1ty Professional. Of those two the XtremeMusic is preferred since it's the same thing as the Fatal1ty only without the useless X-RAM attached. If you can't find one though (since that card is discontinued) then your next best bet would be the Fatal1ty Pro.

Stay away from the regular XtremeGamer and the XtremeAudio. Both are manufactured with inferior parts compared to the rest of the X-Fi lineup.
 
I mean games that have come out in the last couple of months or in the next year or so. Games like Crysis are an exception i guess as that will need a beast of a machine to run regardless.
Anyway what video card shall i choose guys?
I dont want the latest and greatest one but one that is regarded as a good card.
What wrong with the mobo? its not that bad is it?
As for the sound card i have a Xfi xtreme audio card in my current pc and can easily notice the difference in sound quality between this one and the old creative live! one i used to have so i dont know if a xtreme music one would really make any difference.
Also I listen to music on the pc a lot more than playing games too.
 
Get a P35 based motherboard. Abit IP35 or Gigabyte P35-DS3R. The board you have selected truly is /that/ bad.

Minimum to run games on high settings for the next few months is going to be a Geforce 8800 GTS 320MB which will run around $250 if you look around for a deal on it. There's really no way around this. The only other real option is a DX9 card, not DX10, but still far far better than what you currently have selected, and would be a Radeon X1950 Pro or XT for somewhere between $100 and $150. Anything less than that will almost certainly prove a big disappointment at some point. The 7200GS you have currently won't even play games released 6+ months ago on high settings, it is a truly terrible card for any kind of gaming. Whoever helped you set that machine up either has no idea what they're doing or is trying to rip you off big time. The amount of RAM onboard is not near so important as the core used on the card.

I'd suggest DDR2-800 over DDR2-667. The cost shouldn't be much different, $20 or less, and it will allow you to overclock should you ever decide to.

As others have said, drop the X-Fi and use the money to get a good motherboard like those I suggested at the beginning of this post. It's money wasted.

What kind of PSU did you get? What manufacturer, model, and wattage rating? How many amps available on the 12v rail?
 
Moiee said:
actually it does support PCI-E x16
http://www.xcase.co.uk/p/291162/asus-skt-775-p5b-e-plus-sl-1066fsb.html

Expansion Slots
1 x PCI Express x16
1 x PCI Express x4
1 x PCI Express x1
3 x 32-bit PCI 2.2

I didnt know there were different speeds for PCI-E slots too? I thought as long you had one thats the only thing that mattered?
Click to expand...

It's not clear from your link, but the 16x slot may be 8x or even 4x electrical. 16x may just refer to the length of the actual slot and the sorts of cards it will accept. It could be bandwidth limited due to limitations of the chipset used. I'm not very familiar with that particular board, but as it's a budget board it would not surprise me at all to find that is a 16x physical 8x electrical slot.
 
Moiee said:
As for the sound card i have a Xfi xtreme audio card in my current pc and can easily notice the difference in sound quality between this one and the old creative live! one i used to have so i dont know if a xtreme music one would really make any difference.
Also I listen to music on the pc a lot more than playing games too.
Click to expand...

The XtremeAudio is complete rubbish. Why pay that much for a card that isn't even true X-Fi? Especially one that emulates most of its functions through software rather than hardware (which is basically what on board sound does). Even if it is trash by todays standards, of course it will still sound better than a 10 year old Sound Blaster Live! card. :rolleyes:

Here is the XtremeAudio.
And this is the XtremeMusic.

Considering they're close to the same price, I don't see why the XtremeAudio is even a consideration. After all, there's a reason why the XtremeAudio and the XtremeGamer don't use the same reference design as the rest of the X-Fi lineup. Every other X-Fi card that Creative offers uses the gold plated, black PCB design with only minor changes between them. The two above though don't because they use inferior parts.

You don't have to take my word for it either. Take a look at This thread here, as well as this one from the guys over at head-fi, who know a whole lot more about audio than I do. :D

Not to mention all of the people on places like Newegg giving it bad reviews, as well as other people right here on [H]ardforums. Another thing to consider is that the XtremeMusic can be relatively easily modified with a little bit of soldering to provide sound quality on the same level as other high quality sound cards (such as the X-Meridian), while still retaining the X-Fi gaming performance.

If the XtremeAudio were $30, then I could see you considering getting it. However it's nearly the same price as other, higher quality X-Fi cards. If you believe you actually need a sound card, I see no reason to spend nearly the same amount of money on an inferior product.



There are other things in your build that I would recommend swapping out, however that's hard to do when we don't know what kind of budget you're working with. If you can tell us how much you've spent so far, and how much you're willing to spend then we can really start to recommend some good parts for you to get. To be honest if you are on a relatively tight budget, I would even strongly recommend dropping the sound card altogether, at least for a while, and spending that money on a much better motherboard. On board sound has come a long way, and while a good sound card is still better, you have to already own either some really good headphones or speakers to enjoy it. A sound card is always something that can easily be added later if you want or need it, a motherboard however is not.

In the end it's really up to you on what you want to spend your money on. However most of the people here, including myself, would not want to see a fellow enthusiast spend their hard earned money on bad parts for what could have been a great build. :D
 
I'm in the UK and although everything is more expensive here, I dont want to spend more than £600 on this build. So far I spent about £530.
I have Sony SRS-D313 2.1 Speakers which i got a couple of years ago they were £100 at the time.
I'm worried about that motherboard now as it might not be PCI-E 16x? What board would you guys recommend that is? One that isnt expensive either. How about the ASUS P5N-E SLI Motherboard ?
Thanks for your input guys.
 
What are you using the computer for?

Consider dropping down the processor to fund a better GPU and motherboard.
 
I use the computer mostly to surf the net and listen to music. I do play the latest game on it if it interests me, but im really a console gamer as i prefer the big lcd tv, 7.1 sound and simple controls couch and comfort :p I do want to play upcoming games on PC but theres probably only like 3 at the most im interested in this year. Compared to like 20 on consoles.

I decided to opt for the Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 which is cheaper and offers good performance i think. So now i just need a decent mobo. Getting the XtremeMusic card for sure too.
 
Moiee said:
actually it does support PCI-E x16
http://www.xcase.co.uk/p/291162/asus-skt-775-p5b-e-plus-sl-1066fsb.html

Expansion Slots
1 x PCI Express x16
1 x PCI Express x4
1 x PCI Express x1
3 x 32-bit PCI 2.2

I didnt know there were different speeds for PCI-E slots too? I thought as long you had one thats the only thing that mattered?
Click to expand...


Wrong board.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=4CoreDual-VSTA&s

thats the board he has, the website doesnt state it for some reason but do a google search and you'll find out it only supports a 4x PCI-e lane.
 
oops, my bad, i didnt fully read the specs, just saw the slot. so yeah. get a better p35 or 680i board.
 
Private_Ops said:
Uuuhhh...dude that board.. its only supports a 4x PCI-e.

The card would be so bottlenecked it aint funny.
Click to expand...

The bottleneck only affects extremely high end graphics, not midrange cards. Oh, and NVIDIA cards would be bottlenecked, but not ATI cards. I can't find my main link for that info, though the Anand links hint at it.

silent-circuit said:
The board you have selected truly is /that/ bad.
Click to expand...

Its not /that/ bad of a board! Its a good budget board! However, with a Q6600, it does NOT look like a budget build, lol. Here are Anands reviews of the boards older brother:

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2810
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2813
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2814

Summary: The board is a good, budget stopgap solution for people who want to get more life out of their DDR and AGP stuff. DDR400 is still fine for today's applications, and only high end graphics cards will be affected by the 4x speed of the 16x sized pci-e slot, but not by much (only 10% performance hit).

Moiee, you don't seem to fall into the category that would most benefit from this board.

Moiee said:
What board would you guys recommend? One that isnt expensive either. How about the ASUS P5N-E SLI Motherboard ?
Click to expand...

Thats certainly a good option. There are cheaper alternatives though, and for the same price, I'd go for the GA-P35-DS3R instead of the P5N-E SLI. I agree with Silent-Circuit, go for a P35 board, like the P35-S3.

Moiee said:
I decided to opt for the Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 which is cheaper and offers good performance i think. So now i just need a decent mobo. Getting the XtremeMusic card for sure too.
Click to expand...

I also suggest dropping down to the E6750, as the E6850 seems a bit overpriced, even in the UK. These chips OC great, even on stock cooling. So, you could reach 3Ghz easily.

Also, if you're going with a P35 board, or the nForce 600 board, stick with onboard HD Audio instead of that soundcard.
 
The E6750 is only £10 cheaper so I'm gonna stick to this quad core

Anyway these are the changed im making

Asus P5K SE P35 Socket-775 or something equivalent but has to be have a P35 chipset. Replacing the ASROCK SKT-775 4COREDUAL-VSTA S/L 1066FSB Motherboard with this one

NVidia GeForce 7900GS 256M instead of Nvidia GeForce GS7200 256/512MB

500gb HDD

Creative Xtreme Music sound card instead of the Creative Xtreme Audio card that I previously wanted.

Any necessary adjustments to the PSU.
 
A 256MB Radeon X1950 XT should be considerably faster than the 7900GS and not cost any more. You don't need more than 256MB of VRAM unless you're running at resolutions above 1680x1050 or 1600x1200. The X1950 XT also comes in a 512MB version if you /must/ have 512MB, but it would be more expensive.
 
Moiee said:
The E6750 is only £10 cheaper so I'm gonna stick to this quad core

Asus P5K SE P35 Socket-775 or something equivalent but has to be have a P35 chipset.
Click to expand...

Where are you shopping at? The links I posted have these prices:
E6750: £100.59 (£118.19 Inc VAT)
E6850: £142.69 (£167.66 Inc VAT)
Q6600: £142.98 (£168.00 Inc VAT)

The Gigabyte GA P35-S3 I listed earlier is cheaper than the P5K SE, and has a similar featureset. Why pay more for the Asus? Asus support is terrible compared to Gigabyte.
 
ok cool
thanks for that silentcircuit and enginenurd

is the 256MB Radeon X1950 XT a good card to go with the Gigabyte GA P35-S3?

Im getting the build off this guy from ebay. but now after researching it a bit im gonna change a few things before i get it thanks to you guys.

this is the original purchase i made http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....MEWN:IT&viewitem=&item=160140712228&rd=1&rd=1

i contacted him said he will change any parts that i wanted to be replaced before building but said the E6750 would only save me £10 according to him.
 
I'm surprised the eBay dude will make the changes, but pleasantly so. Yes, the X1950 XT 256MB will work just fine with the motherboard enginurd recommended.
 
ebay!?! awe... i'm so sorry. good luck, i hope it runs great! The X1950Pro or GT are also good options, and should be significantly cheaper than the XT.
 
Ok guys i slightly changed what i was originally getting its now

Asus P5K motherboard
Ati HD2600 XT 256MB graphics card

What do you think?
 
The HD2600 is good for decoding HD video, and not really anything else. It's a very poor performing gaming card, actually significantly slower than an X1950XT, or Pro, or even GT.
 
I will be gaming but just nowhere near as much oon pc compared to consoles...probably like 3 games for pc this year so i didnt really need a really good graphics card. I'll upgrade the video card in about a years time if i need to. anyway this is what im getting now and have paid for it.
 
Moiee said:
I will be gaming but just nowhere near as much oon pc compared to consoles...probably like 3 games for pc this year so i didnt really need a really good graphics card. I'll upgrade the video card in about a years time if i need to. anyway this is what im getting now and have paid for it.
Click to expand...

In that case, thats fine. Enjoy!
 
I believe you'll be getting much better hardware with this new list of parts. Here's to hoping that everything arrives safely, and that you enjoy it for a long time to come. :D
 
So what kind of framerates can i expect from a game like STALKER using this new machine at a resolution of 1280x720
 
would i get an increase of an extra 20fps with something like the nvidia 8800gts?
 
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