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Upgrades AMD Entertainment Games

The Athlon 64 3000+, A Budget Gamer's Perspective 333

Posted by timothy from the enjoy-the-las-vegas-effect dept.
VL contributes a link to Viperlair's budget-conscious and game-oriented review of an AMD processor that's not on the bleeding edge, but makes a good showing for the money: "For the price of the Socket-939, you can pick up an A64 3000+, K8T800 based motherboard, and a decent mid-range video card. For gamers on a budget, I think the choice is obvious."
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The Athlon 64 3000+, A Budget Gamer's Perspective More

The Athlon 64 3000+, A Budget Gamer's Perspective

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  • YES! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kjuib ( 584451 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @01:19PM (#9858600) Homepage Journal
    now and I can aford 3 or 4 and make my super computer... all I need is some homemade duct-tape.

  • Yes but it how does it perform (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01, 2004 @01:19PM (#9858603)
    ....in Police Quest IV?

  • Just what I was looking for... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Necromancyr ( 602950 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @01:20PM (#9858606)
    Trying to put together a new system but I can't see dropping thousands and thousands on it. A similar combo was also recommended by Anandtech in their recent mid-level system guide.

    And it's a 64! :)

    • I don't even know how intel stays in the retail processor business. For as long as I've been building PCs (4 years, I think), Athlons have been considerably cheaper.
      • Cheaper isn't always better.
        I once was an Athlon fan. I owned a few. But I had to make the switch. Why? Not because of anything that AMD ever did, but because I got *really* tired of unstable VIA chipsets.
        If I had a dime for every time I had a peice of hardware or software be just wildly incompatible on my Asus Via Athlon PC I could buy you lunch.
        Magically when I moved over to an Asus Intel P4 platform everything worked. Perfectly. The first time.

        Yes, I'm paying more. But it *works*

        • Re:Just what I was looking for... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Slack3r78 ( 596506 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @02:00PM (#9858825) Homepage
          In the past, I'd agree with you - chipsets were the sticking point for AMD, but nForce2 is coming up on 2 years old this winter, and that was the turning point. Outside of one odd implementation (an MSI board that doesn't even use the standard drivers, but I dislike MSI anyway), I have yet to see an nForce2 machine with stability problems.

          Of the 3 nForce2 based machines I own and all the ones I've built for other people, I've yet to come across a piece of hardware that didn't just work. Time to bring your notions about AMD out of 2001. :-)

          • I have built many nForce2 PC for myself and friends too and it is fairly stable... in Windows XP. In Linux it's a different story... nForce2 chipset powered motherboards have been plagued with APIC related problems. Do a Google on "nForec2 APIC problems" and you will see what I mean. This problem basically causes the PC to lock up intermittently... a work around is to add "nolapic noapic" on the bootloader which minimizes but not entirely eliminates the lockup problems.

            Some motherboard manufacturers have

            • I'd heard about trouble in particular with Asus nForce boards, but I'm not going to deny there may be problems either. I just know that my experience has been that the (Biostar) nForce boards I've got running Linux have been running flawlessly from day one. Slackware 9/10 with 2.6 kernels.
              • I just had some caps pop on my Epox 8RDA+ nforce2 based board. That's not really a sign of a problem with Nforce2 chipsets as much as Epox's bad luck selecting compenent suppliers. Anyway, hopefully my replacement board will get here from NewEgg soon.
            • I'm running an Athlon XP 3000+ on a NForce2 chipset right now and the ACPI issue was pretty simple to completely overcome simply by not compiling ACPI in the kernel.

              Best bang for my buck by far.
        • I once was an Athlon fan. I owned a few. But I had to make the switch. Why? Not because of anything that AMD ever did, but because I got *really* tired of unstable VIA chipsets.

          Just for shit and giggles, I highlighted that and used the "search web for" function in Firefox. 839 hits...please don't trash the AMD platform just because of one shoddy chipset manufacturer...
        • Agreed.

          Once upon a time I ran a Pentium-MMX 233 on an Ali chipset. I never knew how much stability I could have had until I upgraded to a PIII-800 on a BX chipset. It was rock solid. Now I'm running a P4-3GHz on i865 - every bit as stable as my last.
          In short, I've come to believe the best way to go is with a CPU and chipset from the same manufacturer.
          Why doesn't AMD make their own chipsets? Who is going to know their CPUs better than them?
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I think that this has something to do with the larger availability of cheap, integrated-everything motherboards for Intel chips.

        A cheap AMD cpu isn't so cheap once you add in the cost of a more costly motherboard and a seperate video card.

        (I know, that's not really a problem now, but it wasn't always.)

      • Re:Just what I was looking for... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @02:08PM (#9858860) Homepage Journal
        The last time I assembled a computer, the difference was $0. Granted, this was at a local shop. The chips weren't all that different in cost. This was pricing out the best board and the cheapest chip for each brand CPU.

        The kicker at the time was that the Intel chipset board included sound, a couple Firewire ports and a network jack all onboard. Even the shop's best Athlon boards didn't have all three, so it would have been just as much money to buy the extra cards, and then two of precious open slots would be taken.

        Those slots were important. I didn't assemble the replacement system (a used Xeon), but seriously, it has six PCI slots (four PCI 33/32 and two PCI 66/64) and I have a card in every slot.

        • Re:Just what I was looking for... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by sunspot42 ( 455706 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @03:01PM (#9859095)
          >Granted, this was at a local shop.

          Well, there's half of your problem right there. If you don't price compare online, you're going to have no idea if the local shop is ripping you off or not. That simply wasn't a valid sample of prices.

          >The kicker at the time was that the Intel chipset
          >board included sound, a couple Firewire ports and
          >a network jack all onboard. Even the shop's best
          >Athlon boards didn't have all three

          Then this was either a couple of years or more ago, or the shop's "best" Athlon boards were crap. A quick search at newegg.com reveals a slew of high-end Athlon boards that support all three, along with Serial ATA and a host of additional features.

          Sounds like less of a problem with the Athlon platform and more of a problem with your local shop.
          • Then this was either a couple of years or more ago,

            This was about two years ago. I did say "the last time".. and that doesn't necessarily mean last month. Not everyone upgrades every six months or whatever.

            They aren't necessarily trying to rip people off even if the price is a bit higher. It costs money to run a storefront, and there are benefits to the customer too. I wanted to support a shop that has replacement parts I can get *that* day rather than waiting for a shipment.

            Besides, the two forms
            • >This was about two years ago. I did say "the last time"..
              >and that doesn't necessarily mean last month.

              That's fine, but "the last time" could mean anywhere from a minute ago to 1999. And yes, two years ago a lot of Athlon motherboards did kinda suck, though I think if you'd shopped online you could have found a board that came with Firewire. My old Compaq (ugh) Athlon 600 system from 1999 had a network connection and onboard Firewire, though the audio was still on a card at that time, IIRC. Board
        • Local shops, from what I have seen, inflate prices artificially to levels that they believe they can get away with. In this case they make the price the same and then let the AMD fans buy the AMD at a higher price and pitch Intel at the clueless people.

          Why do they do this? Why does a 20oz bottle of soda and a 67oz (2 litre) bottle of soda both cost 99 cents? Because people will pay it.

    • Doom 3 (Score:2)

      by mfh ( 56 )
      > Trying to put together a new system

      Heh, you and everyone else now that Doom 3 is out! I'm considering going with a Mac, as I'm a developer, but I may stick with a PC. Anyone know the differences between the top Mac vs top PC with Doom 3? The recent /.'d article didn't go into any depth between Mac or PC... just cardies.
      • Heh, well the stock config on a g5 has a terrible video card(alas I have one) FX 5200 with a whopping 64 megs of video ram. You can upgrade it, but it won't be cheap, and you really only have 3 different cards to choose from, an 9600 XT 128, a 9800 pro 128, or a 6800 Ultra which will run you about $450 or 500 or so as a built to order option, $600 if purchased seperately.
        The new iMac, which is supposed to be the consumer machine, will be announced later this month. Whether or not they will have a respe
    • Same here, but I went low budget. I got a socket 754 Athlon64 2800. The CPU was $150, the motherboard (ASUS K8V SE Deluxe, with firewire, usb2.0, SATA RAID, and gigabit ethernet) was $105.

      So I was able to upgrade my system to 64bit for $255, and was able to reuse my DDR333 ram.

      True, the socket 754 is on the endangered species list, but I don't care. I have never upgraded my CPU without also upgrading my motherboard.

  • Summary - 1-10% faster (Score:2, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 )
    Short version: the A64 3200+ is maybe 1-10% faster than an A64 3000+.

    Yawn.

  • already outdated (Score:5, Interesting)

    by _|()|\| ( 159991 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @01:34PM (#9858683)
    This review claims that the cheapest socket 939 processor is $450. With the recent price drops, you can get a retail 3500+ for about $350, compared to $220 for a 3200+ or $175 for 3000+. Also, the review would have been much more useful had it shown results for both versions of the 3200+, so that you can compare the impact of clock speed and cache.

    • Re:already outdated (Score:5, Informative)

      by Judg3 ( 88435 ) <jeremy@@@pavleck...com> on Sunday August 01, 2004 @01:40PM (#9858720) Homepage Journal
      Yup, I was pricing a system recently and Newegg [newegg.com] has the socket 939 3500+ at 352$. The next step up, the 3800+, is almost double the price at 643$ - I figure when I'm ready to buy in a few months the price will drop enough to be worthwhile.

      And the ability to upgrade without needing to buy a new motherboard definately makes it worth my wait right now!

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @01:42PM (#9858732)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:already outdated (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Slack3r78 ( 596506 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @01:55PM (#9858808) Homepage
        Except AMD's roadmaps has shown that they'll continue supporting Socket 754 for the immediate future. By time it's discontinued, you'd probably be looking at a new motherboard to keep up with "modern" features anyway.

        And really, since nVidia stepped in with the nForce series of chips, bringing the unified driver system from their video cards over, upgrading isn't much of an issue anymore. A friend of mine recently upgraded from an nForce2 based Athlon system to an nForce3 based Athlon 64 and it didn't require so much as a reload. Swapped the board and CPU, plugged in his drives and that was it.

        That's my perspective on it anyway. Right now the price differential between Socket 754 and 939 just isn't worth it, especially given that once 939 becomes the normal commodity part, you'd probably be able to upgrade the CPU and mainboard for *less* than the price differential you'd pay now, and come out with more modern equipment.

      • Re:already outdated (Score:5, Insightful)

        by prockcore ( 543967 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @02:39PM (#9858999)
        And, of course, getting the 939 helps your computer be more future-proof. It's always nice to just be able to drop in a new processor rather than having to buy a new motherboard and transfer everything over.

        I used to think that way, but not anymore.

        Think back to 3 years ago, when I bought my previous motherboard and cpu. My motherboard doesn't have SATA, or USB 2.0, or firewire. It doesn't have gigabit ethernet. I just bought a motherboard last week that has all of that for $105.

        Spending more than $100 extra to be "future proof" doesn't make sense to me because by the time I want to upgrade my cpu, a new motherboard with all the bells and whistles that weren't available 3 years ago can be had for a pittance.

        If I bought a new CPU every year, then it might be worth it, but I wait 2-3 years between upgrades.
      • Just ask all those people that bought slot Athlons how much they wish they would have gotten socket!

        I was told that issue could be blamed on AMD. Supposedly they didn't allow slocket converters like those that were available for Intel systems.
        • I don't think it's that they didn't allow them, it's that the thunderbirds used different signalling than the original Athlons. Motherboards based on the AMD-750 (Irongate) chipset did work reliably with thunderbirds, but it was hit or miss with the Via KX133 (an otherwise better, faster chipset). There is some info on that here [iamnotageek.com],

          I don't know if the rest of the pinout was compatible enough to allow it either.
      • Actually I liked my slot athlon :P. Too bad it burned out and I replaced it with dual pentium 3s.
    • I'll take my 80 dollar XP2500+.....

      • I'll take my 80 dollar XP2500+.....

        I was running a 1 GHz Athlon on a KT133A board that died (of the dreaded capacitor goo). I replaced it with a KT266A board that died, at which point it became difficult to find anything that supports PC133. Somewhere in the process of diagnosing all of this, I cracked the CPU core. Faced with buying a new motherboard and new RAM, the cost of an Athlon 64 over an Athlon XP seemed worth it.

  • For those who are anti-Microsoft......!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @01:36PM (#9858691)
    From the article:

    Although there is no official 64-bit version of Windows, the chip can run 32-bit code natively. For those who are anti-Microsoft, there are some 64-bit versions of Linux, but if you're feeling adventurous, you can always pick up a beta of Windows XP 64-Bit Edition.

    Since when was running Linux an anti-Microsoft thing? This is the kind of crap the OSS community needs to stomp out in order to give Linux the reputation it deserves and broaden its adoption, especially on the desktop.

    On a more constructive note, since UT2003/4, Quake3, Doom3, and a handfull of other badass games are supported by Linux why isnt there a Linux-Gamers distro. Even if it were just a bootable knoppix CD that could take advantage of the Athlon 64 and play these games off your harddrive it would really help get linux on the desktop in the gamers croud. I can just hear the taunts coming from the LAN dude playing Doom3 on Linux in 64 bit, "You wanna piece of me, you cant handle my BFG! I got 64 bits with your name on it", etc...

    Or was it just me?
    • I think it's more like: "If you're anti-Microsoft, the only other 64-bit choices are Linux-based".

      Simmer down

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Yay! The obligatory "UNIX rocks Linux" troll.

        You know... The one that touts that people should stop pushing Linux on the desktop and loves to tout BSD on the workstation...

        You are the perfect cliche BSD user / oxymoron / walking contradiction, my friend. Congraduation!

        FYI: I use Linux (Slackware) as a desktop OS, and really enjoy it. I also use it for gaming, but I don't play City of Heroes or Counter-Strike (as you do). For real gaming, I have a Gamecube, Dreamcast, PSX, and a dozen other machines
        • "Linux's development model pales in comparison, stability-wise to FreeBSD's,"

          Trollbait.

          " Linux is a great starter if you want to learn unix."

          More Trollbait. Yep its a great "starter" OS but once you learn it you can move up to a real *nix like say *BSD...

          "That leaves us with linux. linux tries to do everything for everyone but does all of it at a level lower than all of the systems listed above."

          So Linux is Jack of all Trades Master of none?

          He does say Linux is good for some things to his credit but s
      • Offtopic, I know - but with OS X 10.3 you can either use UFS which is case sensitive, but not recommended, or you can use Case sensitive HFS+. The link here tells you how to do it. http://homepage.mac.com/lgw4/iblog/C675550648/E871 090033/ Someone might find this hint useful...

  • Buying an Intel (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @01:38PM (#9858708)
    used to be the lazy man's way to make sure you got a good mobo. You could always just buy an Intel branded board and you'd be good to go. With AMD, you had to navigate through several choices to avoid a crappy board (yes, I know those choices where there for Intel too, but they were so easy to avoid).

    Whelp, Nvidia came along and changed that. Now I recommend AMD/Nforce to everyone I talk too, if only for the kick-@$$ sound on the higher end boards :).

    • Re:Buying an Intel (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wobblie ( 191824 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @02:03PM (#9858840)
      uh, no. Asus, Abit and others have been making high quality motherboards for many years now, of generally better quality than intel.
    • Still is, depending on your definition. If by 'good' you mean stable and solid as basalt and the almost certain development target of most proprietary business software, the core Intel manufactured MB is still the way to go for me. It's all we spec at work. On the other hand, I'm picking up a 939 & 3500+ 64 for my gaming rig next Tuesday.

  • Low-budget is right (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01, 2004 @01:40PM (#9858723)
    While CPU speeds may not be going up as fast as they used to, prices just seem to keep falling. You can now build yourself a socket 752 system with a decent video card for $1000, minus monitor.

    My last build, a T-bird 1.4ghz, was in 2001. It cost $1200, yet the thing was built with a lot of the cheapest parts - the case, the mobo, the drives. It overheated constantly because of the poor airflow in thge case, which I eventually fixed through a crude expansion to the existing front intake in the bezel, and by moving the case fan from the side to the back.

    My next one, to be ordered sometime this month, is going be smaller(using the Antec Aria and an m-ATX), faster(A64 2800+), quieter(better PSU, fans and heatsinks), and cheaper($950 including all-new cards and peripherals, unlike the previous one, which stripped whatever it could from the one that came before it).
    • Doesn't the Micro-ATX boards usually have like THE worst onboard video system? When you throw in the fact that a nice high end card won't fit in the case, doesn't that make it sort of useless for gaming?

  • Is that story summary "DUH" or what? (Score:4, Funny)

    by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @01:44PM (#9858744) Journal
    a link to [a] budget-conscious and game-oriented review of an AMD processor that's not on the bleeding edge, but makes a good showing for the money... "For gamers on a budget, I think the choice is obvious."

    So, if you're on a budget you shouldn't buy bleeding edge? Wow, thanks for that amazing bit of insight. I'll file it next to "the Pope might be Catholic" and "day is warmer than night" in my mental list of secret bits of info that might come in handy sometime.

    Seriously though, doesn't it seem like we're constantly being told this by Slashdot every six months? I wouldn't mind, but even if it wasn't so bloody obvious then it's the kind of thing that the average Slashdot reader would have learnt years ago.

  • How about sub-1000 (Score:4, Informative)

    by KenFury ( 55827 ) <kenfury&hotmail,com> on Sunday August 01, 2004 @01:49PM (#9858766) Journal
    XP 2500 ($80), FX5700 or Radeon 9800 ($200), SB Live 4.1 ($30), 1 gig DDR ($200), 160 gig Seagate SATA ($120), ASUS MATX MoBo ($100), CD-RW/DVD Combo drive ($75) and a nice case ($75).

    This comes in at just under $700. It's a very nice system that can play any game out there. Really who needs more than that for your current gaming needs? Sure you can shell out another grand for the bleeding edge but I would rather spend another 700 in two years and kick my old box down to the wife.
    • Geez I just built something like that, but your prices are way over inflated:

      XP 2500+ ($85)
      Shuttle AN35N ($70)
      1gb DDRAM 2x512 ($150)
      Case ($70) Nice one too
      FX5700 128mb ($130)
      Maxtor 160gb ATA-133 ($70)

      Total was $591 with tax (although there are some rebates there to bring it under $600).
    • Dude, you forgot to factor in the cost of the dual 20" LCD panel display into your price. Add $2000.
  • I mostly go for an optimum usefulness vs. cost ratio. That almost never translates to the latest, newest, fastest (too expensive for what you get). Nor does it translate to the cheapest available (cheap, but often low quality or lousy support). Although cheap, common, low-cost hardware can be a good choice. It might even mean second hand hardware, but from a useful/cost ratio perspective, that is not often a good choice.

    The sweet spot for me mostly lies around the bottom range of hardware that is sold new

  • Conclusion for the lazy (Score:4, Informative)

    by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @01:54PM (#9858794)
    Buy Athlon 64 3000+ rather than 3200+. Save $64. Get a socket 939 motherboard thats upgradable as socket 754 will be for AMD budget chips. Overclock the 3000+ and get better performance than the 3200+ not overclocked (duh), or leave it stock and stay within 10% on high resolution in most games.

    Interesting,

    Far Cry benchmarks at 1024:
    Athlon 64 3200+ - 36.26 FPS
    Athlon 64 3000+ - 33.21 FPS

     Quake 3 benchmarks at 1024 (why do they still bench it?):
    Athlon 64 3200+ - 322.7 FPS
    Athlon 64 3000+ - 321.8 FPS

    a 3 frame lead makes a difference when your only in the 30 FPS ballpark, nothing a few graphics settings cant fix, but when we talk about 322 vs 321 FPS I'm blown away that anyone would care.

  • Frequency scaling (Score:5, Informative)

    by T0t0r0_fan ( 658111 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @02:21PM (#9858918)
    They could have mentioned that, too. It's really nice to see my 3000+ stay below 30 degrees C(at 800MHz) most of the time I'm using it(and no case fans or anything, just what came in the box), and not even always going full-speed when gaming... Fairly quiet, too, even with my really cheap and quite loud case.

    Wouldn't help much in comparison with 3200+, but it's still a nice bonus on all Athlon64s, especially when over half of your time is spent on normal workstation tasks, with the rest being gaming :)
    • Does it matter what the internal temp of the system or CPU is as long as its within normal operating parameters?

      I have a P4-3.2 and at Web browsing levels its at 29C, and when rendering in TMPGEnc its around 40. BFD. Motherboard temp goes up around 4 degrees C.

      I hear people talk about this like it matters. Maybe if you were calculating cooling on a room with hundreds of systems, but for Joe Jackoff and his home PC, who cares?

      I priced out A64 3200+ when I bought my system; I read through a bunch of web
  • On a more constructive note, since UT2003/4, Quake3, Doom3, and a handfull of other badass games are supported by Linux why isnt there a Linux-Gamers distro. Even if it were just a bootable knoppix CD that could take advantage of the Athlon 64 and play these games off your harddrive it would really help get linux on the desktop in the gamers croud.

    Someone is already working on that, its called Linux Live Game Project, a live CD that is orientated around gaming, the home page is at http://tuxgamers.alterv

  • Gaming? Windows? 64-bit? NOT. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fire-eyes ( 522894 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @03:16PM (#9859169) Homepage
    Heh. When I think gaming people I think windows. But, in this case, it's pointless: there's no stable 64-bit version of windows.

    Now, if we start talking linux, then yes, this is great. At least with an nvidia card (note: ATI still has not come out with 64 bit drivers for linux).

    And no, I didn't RTFA.

  • Poor student eh? (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by edunbar93 ( 141167 )
    Being a poor student on a budget, that doesn't mean I want a substandard CPU for my gaming needs.

    (prices are today's, not "as of writing", thanks to newegg.com)
    MSI K8T Neo-FIS2R $83
    Athlon 64 3000+ (10x200: 2GHz) $175
    2 x 512MB Kingston HyperX PC4000 $168 (substituted Kingston 512MB Pc3200)
    HIS Radeon 9600 XT $385
    80GB Western Digital SE 8MB Cache $59
    Windows XP SP1 $0
    VIA Hyperion 4in1 drivers 4.51 $0
    ATI Catalyst 4.7. $0

    Total: $870

    Now, while that's not bad - especially

  • Maybe I'll be able to play Doom 3 now! (Score:3, Funny)

    by jZnat ( 793348 ) on Sunday August 01, 2004 @03:55PM (#9859359) Homepage Journal
    With Doom 3 coming out in, oh, 2 days, maybe I'll be able to run it on 640x480 (with an nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra) with all settings on low, but it's definitely a big maybe. Anyone got some deals on 2 GB packs of Corsair DDR400 RAM? Or perhaps my own personal Japanese guy to tweak my computer to run Doom 3 a little higher?
  • Yeah, OR, you could just buy an XP 2500+ (which cost next to nothing nowadays) and overclock it to XP 3200+. Seriously, with a plain Tt Volcano 9 it runs very well. Hell, during winter I even ran it with the original OEM fan.
  • I just spent $850 on a similar setup.

    AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (1MB Cache)
    512MB PC2700 DDR333 Corsair memory (Add to the 1GB of identical memory I already had, totaling 1.5GB PC2700 DDR333)
    nForce 3 chipset board
    ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB/256-bit VIVO

    Not too shabby.

  • Depends on your budget size ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dougmc ( 70836 ) <dougmc+slashdot@frenzied.us> on Sunday August 01, 2004 @05:38PM (#9859818) Homepage
    After all, even Bill Gates has a budget when he buys a new computer. It's just bigger than mine probably is.

    When I want a new computer, I see what Fry's has. They usually have a decent Athlon cpu + cheap MB for $80-$100 at any given time. Lately it's been Athlon XP 2700 or 2800's -- which are really quite fast. The MB is cheap, but I've had generally good results with them.

    You could get a system that will play Doom reasonably well for something like $400. If you have $1000 to spend, sure, you can get something that's a bit better, but not that much better.

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