SUPER Budget PC, Comments needed!

[Selphie]

I thought I'm techie enough, but here's a PC I have been planning for a while with whatever cash I have been able to save up and I need some insight from all of you o silicon masters.

AMD XP 2200+ Throughbred A, 75 Euro
512 Infineon DDR400 RAM CL3, 92 Euro
MSI CDRW Burner, 24x 52x 52x, 43 Euro
1.44 Floppy drive, 11 Euro
350W Miditower Casing, 68 Euro
MSI GeForce Ti 4200 64MB, 85 Euro
Epox 8rda3+ Nforce2 400 Motherboard, 95 Euro
Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Combo, 30 Euro
Iiyama 17-inch Monitor, 98 Euro
Creative 4.1 Speakers, 40 Euro
Total = 634 Euro (including the stupid 18% sales tax)

There, hope I didn't miss anything out.
The sound is onboard, it's great with 6 channel outputs, just a little short of Dolby quality. I excluded modem from this list, because I have yet decided on what connection to get.
I plan to use this PC for all the older games, up to Doom3 and Half-Life 2. I am hoping that the Ti4200 could pump up 40 fps on those two games in 800x640 resolution without AF. Is it possible?

Assuming that 650 Euro is my spending ceiling, I need recommendations on what else I should trade off for something better. Please keep it in the budget though.

[woodbutcher]

Sounds good though you might want to bump the CPU up to a Barton 2500 for a few dollars more.
IMO the floppy drive seems a tad expensive, IMO not really needed with a burner on-board.
No mention of RAM either.
Other then that, sounds pretty nice for a budget box.

WB

[Selphie]

AMD XP 2500+ Barton, 88 Euro
Assuming I accept your suggestion, the cost increases to 647 Euro (limit = 650).

But is it worth it? I have heard that most games don't need anything above XP 1500+ to run smoothly, that if anything it's the graphics card which determines the final fps.

The floppy drive is for swapping data with some of my old mateys, yeah it's outdated but I still have uses for it here and there. I can get the drive somewhere else for 9 Euro, but that's another shop... is it worth the inconvenience of buying it somewhere else just to save 2 bucks?

AMD XP 1900+ costs just 53 Euro, hmmm tempting, but I know downgrading means regretting some point in the future...

[agathodaimon]

na... just pay the 11 and get it all at one place... It's easier.

About the ram... You don't necessarily need DDR400 unless you're gonna do some decent overclocking... DDR333 would be good and probably cost a bit less.
Just something to look into.


One more thing... Do you have a hard drive?

[wju425]

Welcome to TechIMO.

Do get the barton so you'll have 333 fsb instead of 266 fsb. It'll make your video card run sweeter. Also it'll run any applications better. The floppy drive does come in handy sometimes so it doesn't hurt to have one. I'm required to have mine as I work on older systems and sometimes they don't have a cd-rom.

\o/ Billy

[Starfury_2260]

You dont need pc3200 (ddr400) for a budget pc, go with pc2700 (ddr333), like agathodaimon (where did that name come from? LOL) said

My only comment is that if you're planning for the future but want to stay on a budget, look into the ATi Radeon 9600 Pro instead of the GF4. The Radeon supports DirectX 9. The GeForce does not. They are fairly comparable for price vs performance. I think the Radeon may cost a few pennies more.

I have no idea whether the Ti4200 will push 40FPS in DoomIII. Mine did just fine with Unreal2 though on an XP2100+ though, so possibly.

[elmers]

Get fsb as high as you can. Get an ATi video card. The on board sound sux. If you get an AMD and dont overclock it your a wuss

[Selphie]

Adathodaimon,

Infineon (original) DIMM 512 MB für PC PC2700 CL2,5 (DDR333), 90 Euro
Infineon (original) DIMM 512 MB für PC PC3200 CL3 (DDR400), 92 Euro

How much difference could be performance be anyway? Is it really so insignificant that I ought to take the DDR333 and save the 2 Euro? What can the DDR400 do that the DDR333 can't?

And I have a hard drive already. It's the only thing I have right now.


wju425,
How does 333fsb and 266fsb affects your video card performance? Will an Athlon 2500+ Barton perform better than an Athlon 2600+ Thunderbird (doesn't exists, but let's assume it does)?


Whir,
Cheapest 9600 Pro I could find is 134 Euro (Club 3D). That's 134-85=49 Euro more expensive that the Ti4200. I will have to cut back somewhere... Where should I start then?
I want to note that I don't really care about performance with Anisotrophic Filtering; I am willing to live without it. So any card which could pump pixels easily without AF is good enough, which is why I chose Ti4200. Or are there better cards for that, taking price into consideration? Can I go 40 fps without AF on HL2 and Doom3?

I'm also wondering whether the Epox 8rda3+ motherboard is worth the 95 Euro. Any suggestions on better motherboards, perhaps even cheaper ones?

[wju425]

QUOTE:
wju425,
How does 333fsb and 266fsb affects your video card performance? Will an Athlon 2500+ Barton perform better than an Athlon 2600+ Thunderbird (doesn't exists, but assumes it does)?
QUOTE:

I only can tell from experience. I had a 1gig duron when I bought an nvidia tnt2 32meg video card. Once in a while I have a split second freezes in my games. When I upgraded to xp1700 the freezes stopped so it seems that a faster fsb and/or faster cpu stepped up the frame rates. It should make sense that it does.

\o/ Billy