Building a gaming PC...

S

Sorcerxo

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 17, 2004
Messages
98
Well, yes, I decided to take the big step. :eek:

I'll get to the point: My budget is around $450-500.
I'm building a gaming PC.
I need help.

I think I figured out a decent video card, the Radeon 9600 Pro 256MB for $119. I was wondering if anyone has/had this card and I was wondering how it performed.

Also, with my budget, maybe you could point out a good motherboard and CPU.

Thanks.
 
yeah, i used that one (9600 Pro) for about a year. it's a pretty solid little card. it should perform adequately (not stunningly) on the newest few games that are/coming out. it doesn't hold a lot of surprises (nothing it's supremely good at). you'll find it can give you a solid 99.9fps in Counter-Strike, 15-20fps in KotOR, 10-30fps in X2: The Threat. Nothing spectacular but it runs just fine.
 
Since ur range is 450-500, and 119 is already spent on the 9600 (which for ur budget is a perfectly fine card), I would reccomend an Amd Athlon 3000 or at the most a 3200. Those go from price ranges of 150-250 on NewEgg, give or take. From there, you would roughly have about 150-300 dollars left over give or take, and that should be enuff to get a proper motherboard, NForce3 or anything else you find fancier. The problem comes with the memory cards, if u had a 256 or 512 before u could maybe transfer it into your new computer and just buy one more to add the memory.

Conclusion: 450-500 is pretty hard to get a good gaming computer these days (Default 1 gb memory, Athlon 64, Radeon or Nvidia, motherboard, not to menton a case etc.). You could always drop the processor even down to a 2800, but it's nice to have something that would last a while.

I hope this helped at all.
 
I will sell you my 9800 pro for $125! Just upgraded to an X800. The 9800 is just sitting on a shelf. The 9800pro is a much better card than any of the 9600 series. Then I would look into an Asus/ AMD Athlon XP 3200+ combo. you should be able to find the combo for a little over 3 hundred. Contact me at [email protected] about the 9800pro card. Its a great card never had a problem with it, 4 months old.
 
Thank you for all your suggestions.

Um, Nerkanistic, yea, but all I'm looking for is a decent one... well... better one than I have now. On America's Army, I get an ave. FPS of, like around, 15... but on some I only get around 5-10. That sucks. And guess what. I die. Alot.

Anyways, I think I'm gonna go for the 3200 as is 2.2 GHz is better than my 1.6 now.
(See? I like comparing it to my "computer" which it barely gets that title...)

I might take a 256MB RAM chip out of this one, put it in the new one, and buy a Kingston 512MB so that I have, um, 700 somethin' MB's of RAM (it's late). Is Kingston a good brand?

Besides those, everything else I need is pretty cheap.

You may see this thread pop up later 'cause I'm sure I'll have more questions!

Thanks again!
 
9800se type 2 with 256 bit ram b/w for 122 at gameve.com will be the best you can buy for the price (see sig). I hear it does about a 9600xt speeds at stock.

~Adam
 
if you feel safe with overclocking, you can get an athlon mobile and good enough cooling for less than 150 and run it at 3200+ speeds

But it won't really be possible to build a decent rig at that budget (if you're factoring in cpu, mobo, case+psu, hdd, optical drive, memory). But I'm assuming you're using parts from an older machine?
 
Built a machine for a friend...
XP2600
Asus A7N8X-X Mobo
512 PC2700 Kingston (i know, needs more)
9600xt
Coolermaster Case
WD 80GBSE HD

just under 580 bucks... it runs stuff pretty damn good. NFSU, UT2004, D3, run pretty smooth with some decent eye candy on. FS2004 is really smooth.

Just to let you know.... you can get something usable and decent with 500 bucks. It won't be "latest generation" but you can still have fun.

Good luck!
 
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