Building minumum PC for gaming

B

b18turbo

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 14, 2005
Messages
247
Hi, I am going to beef up my sons computer enough so that it can play COD2, BF2 and NFSMW at at least minumim settings. Now it won't even load COD2 (not compatible with video card). Right now it is a 1.8 pentium with 384 of ram (speed??), 20 gig hard drive and ATI radeon 7500. I am hoping that a new video card and some more ram will be enough, so my main question is which video card to get for cheap?
 
It would be helpful to know the make and model of the motherboard
 
Where on the mobo does it say the model or do I look in the startup menu?
 
Upgrade it to 1 GB of RAM, overclock the CPU to at least 2.2Ghz, and get a NVIDIA 6600GT for about $100. My Pentium 4 1.6Ghz overclocked to 2.4Ghz on air with no problems for the past 4 years. So you should be able to get 2.2 easy.
 
Yep I tend to suggest the 6600 reg for best value at the cheap end. I haven't seen GT's near $100^^^. That's usually for pcie I suggest the 6600(~$85 on newegg). For AGP'ers I often recommend the 9800pro, so do that if 6600's are too much or hard to find.

Sounds like you know what you are doing. I hope the cpu can get a long though. Find out the board because you'll definitely need memory. Hell, cpu-z could do the trick. Be nice to know what kind of pentium it is as well (willie, northwood).
 
Hmm... did willie's stop at 1.7GHz? Either way, cpu-z will have all the goodies and if northwood, we'll know the bus too.
 
Depends exactly how much you want to spend....

In all likelyhood, a new motherboard would probably be an advantage. If you wanted to keep your P4 1.8 and overclock, you could go for the Asus P4P800-E Deluxe which is socket 478. I think those are going for around $110 if you can get hold of one. (I used to have the same motherboard and can recommend it.)

The best graphics card to use AGP would probably be the X850 GTO at the moment (about $210) although apparently the 7800GT is going to be released as AGP which would probably be the best performing graphics card running AGP (I think, please correct me if I'm wrong).

Also, for the memory, a friend of mine picked up 1Gb Corsair TwinXMS Pro 3200 (2x512) off Ebay for £130.00 (around $230.00). I have the same memory and it has never let me down...

If you could get a good deal on the above, ie maybe $500.00 for the lot, then it could be worth doing.



NB: It would probably also be worth upgrading your HD as the very most I can see it running at is 5400 with a 2Mb cache. Pick up an 80Gb Western Digital SATA drive with running at 7200 with 8Mb cache. Besides, extra storage space is always a bonus.
 
b18turbo said:
Would a regular 6600 work? Or a used ATI 9800 regular my friend has?
Click to expand...

I just sold my old 9800 and it was a pretty good card for me at the time. It can play F.E.A.R at the lower settings at a playable frame rate so if you could get it on the cheap (or for free) then could be a good move:)
 
6800>6600GT>9800pro>6600 plain. The 9800 pro your friend has will do just fine. It's great little card.

EDIT: Didn't see that it was a 9800 reg. I don't quite recall, but I think you can flash it to a pro very easily.
 
I'm pretty sure it's not the 7800GT being released but the 7800GS. What the difference is, I don't know, but it should be today I think.
 
To be honest this a very old platform to be investing any money in AGP and RAMBUS RAM.

You can go through an upgrade cycle with this hardware, but especially AGP just holds you back.
 
If it has Rambus then I would not upgrade the RAM. I would replace the motherboard with ones that supports DDR and get 1GB of DDR RAM. You can get a motherboard plus 1 GB of DDR RAM for less than 512MB of Rambus. 512 wouldn't even get you at 1GB total either. Note that upgrading your graphics card will not be enough to play those games. Your low amount of RAM is going to create a bottleneck.
 
You can go through an upgrade cycle with this hardware, but especially AGP just holds you back.
Click to expand...


Wow, why are people so anti-agp? Trust me, agp is not holding back a 1.8ghz p4..
 
My computer is a AMD 64 3200, 1 gig corsair XMS 3200, 74 gig raptor (on the way), EVGA 6800 (upgrading to the 7800gs).

The computer I am talking about is for my son who doesn't care about graphics. He just wants to be able to play the games. I don't want to spend extra money when he won't notice the difference. I will overclock the processor and probably the video card but I don't want to replace the mobo and processor. Later when I switch to DDR2 and PCIx I will give him my old system and he will be fine.

What about the 6200 or 7300 cards?
 
I'm sorry to tell you this, but with 384MB of RAM it doesn't matter what kind of vid card you put in there. It's going to be hitting the swap space hard and that is going to make performace take a hit. There will be all these pauses and hitches and it will not be fun. This isn't about how nice the graphics will look I'm talking about it being playable. Especially with NFSMW there are so many textures it has to load. With the low end vid cards you are looking at you are probably going to have to set the AGP apeture size to at least 128 MB and there goes a huge chunk of that tiny 384MB. In my P4 system I have to set it to 256MB with my 6800 or it has bad performance. After you do that, you are going to be left with almost nothing for the game itself to use. You are going to have to get some RAM if you want this to be a gaming system. If you are using Rambus, then that means you will have to replace the mobo and get 1GB of DDR RAM. It's cheaper to replace the mobo and buy 1GB of DDR400 than it is to buy a single stick of 512MB Rambus. I don't care what the minimum requirements say on those boxes, modern gaming rigs need 1GB of RAM.
 
What is Rambus? Is it determined by certain ram speeds? You mentioned that Rambus is expensive, but with it being so old couldn't I find it used for almost free?
 
b18turbo said:
My computer is a AMD 64 3200, 1 gig corsair XMS 3200, 74 gig raptor (on the way), EVGA 6800 (upgrading to the 7800gs).

The computer I am talking about is for my son who doesn't care about graphics. He just wants to be able to play the games. I don't want to spend extra money when he won't notice the difference. I will overclock the processor and probably the video card but I don't want to replace the mobo and processor. Later when I switch to DDR2 and PCIx I will give him my old system and he will be fine.

What about the 6200 or 7300 cards?
Click to expand...

7300 uses PCI express. Your motherboard is AGP so that won't work. I found a 6600GT for only $100 on Newegg, but again it was PCI express.

I think what you need to do is pick up a used 6800 on ebay for $100. I see you were considering a 7300 and they cost $100 at newegg so I assume that's your budget for the vid card. If you don't want to go with ebay, then you can get a 6600 at newegg for less than $100.
 
b18turbo said:
What is Rambus? Is it determined by certain ram speeds? You mentioned that Rambus is expensive, but with it being so old couldn't I find it used for almost free?
Click to expand...

You can find out if your motherboard uses Rambus by downloading CPUZ and running it. Then click on the memory tab and it will give you memory information. Print what it says under Modules Information here in the thread. For example, this POS Dell computer I use at work says Infineon DDR-SDRAM PC2300 - 256 MB.

The price never went down because Rambus still sells it for outrageous prices. If you go out on ebay you can find 1GB of Rambus for $200, which is about half of what a new stick of Rambus 512MB costs. However, you can still get a new motherboard and 1GB of DDR for $200 instead of taking your chances with the used Rambus.
 
I will find out tonight, I guess I need to cross my fingers that it doesn't have rambus.
 
Haven't there been X850s on sale for like $150? Try to find one of those... He'll need atleast a gig of ram.
 
b18turbo said:
For the video card I am asking what is the minumum to be able to play the games? Under $50

Like this one?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130200
Click to expand...
...No

There is a difference between not caring about graphics and actually being able to play the games without freezing up long enough to get your ass handed to you while you scream select words at the computer
Try this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814153012
Some more ram is a must. I'll bet you have DDR so...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231029
Cheap... OEM.... But it'll help.
 
For $50, it will be hard to find a video card that plays a new game well, even at lowest settings. COD2 WILL play on a Geforce 4 MX, but at lowest settings your son might be getting something like 10FPS (especially coupled with the processor). This will basically make the experience of playing the game bad for him.

But if you really can't spend more than $50, this is what I would suggest:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814129041

If you can spend a little more, then I would suggest:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102558

The above card is exactly what I have in my mom's computer, and she loves it. (Mostly got it to play Myst 4 and 5 without the video freaking out)
 
Can anyone see these images? I can't, they are imagestation. What other hosting site should I use?
f050d6b7.jpg


f050d6d2.jpg


f050d72c.jpg


f050d700.jpg
 
9800SE is a waste...it's basically 9600XT performance packaged in a different way. Best bet is a 9800Pro or 6600GT for anything resembling a gaming experience on modern games.
 
If that is a P4 Northwood 1.8A (400 MHz FSB) you should easily be able to turn it into a 2.4B by setting the FSB to 133x4 (from 100x4).
 
imo the whole computer would be a waste to upgrade. the hard drive isnt big enough to store hardly anything on. the ram is old. the cpu is old. the power supply would probably crap out if you put a decent video card. i know people will disagree with me but you could get a whole new pc for under $500. i would get an emachine are hp/compaq with sempron for arond $300 or $400 then put a 6600 in it and call it a day. a 400 emacines would also include a monitor if bought with a bundle deal. it would have a 160gb hd, 3400+ sempron, dvd, 512mb ram, 300 watt psu. that would make a good cheap entry level gaming pc. something like that would offer a lot more usefulness than upgrading that dinosaur.
 
Get him the minimum requirement for those games, and one would be lucky if he isn't begging for another upgrade in under 6 months when the next popular games come out. My advice to you is to build him a new system-- doesn't have to be super high-end-- so you will not be where you started sooner than you think. Although I have not read much of anything above me, I am pretty sure some other peeps recommended an AMD motherboard, build from that.

Edit: I just read the post before mine, and he has the right idea. It would be a waste of $ to upgrade, on account of what I just wrote.
 
I am not going to build him a new machine, don't have the $. My wife is going to school full time and I have a house with two kids. The computer is playing COD1 fine now with a radeon7500 and I know that is an old game but if I overclock the processor, add 512 ram, and a 9800pro it should be enough to get by until I upgrade my computer to PCIx and give him my mobo, proc, ram, gpu. And all this will only cost $100. Thank you for the advice but I only asked which videocard would get me by.
 
b18turbo said:
I am not going to build him a new machine, don't have the $. My wife is going to school full time and I have a house with two kids. The computer is playing COD1 fine now with a radeon7500 and I know that is an old game but if I overclock the processor, add 512 ram, and a 9800pro it should be enough to get by until I upgrade my computer to PCIx and give him my mobo, proc, ram, gpu. And all this will only cost $100. Thank you for the advice but I only asked which videocard would get me by.
Click to expand...
well asking that question usually opens up a can of worms. you would have a "simple" answer if it was as easy as just sticking any video card in any system. by the way its PCIe not PCIx. PCIx is something totally different. ;)
 
One more thing about this computer, since I have posted that info from cpuz. What could be the reason the computer does not have any audio? I have tried installing audio drivers from SIS for the onboard audio with no help. I am going to reinstall windows when I upgrade the computer, maybe that will fix it. But untill then he has no audio. Any ideas?
 
mbmadness said:
Upgrade it to 1 GB of RAM, overclock the CPU to at least 2.2Ghz, and get a NVIDIA 6600GT for about $100. My Pentium 4 1.6Ghz overclocked to 2.4Ghz on air with no problems for the past 4 years. So you should be able to get 2.2 easy.
Click to expand...
Uh, fallacy? How can you say this without even knowing what core his P4 is using? :rolleyes:

I'd say you'd have to go for a 6600GT bare minimum...or get a 6600 to "tide you over," and save up for better stuff. Because really, you're not going to be satisfied for very long with a base system like that, your CPU and RAM are 2 generations behind...at the very least get a 2400+ Tbred B or something.
 
b18turbo said:
One more thing about this computer, since I have posted that info from cpuz. What could be the reason the computer does not have any audio? I have tried installing audio drivers from SIS for the onboard audio with no help. I am going to reinstall windows when I upgrade the computer, maybe that will fix it. But untill then he has no audio. Any ideas?
Click to expand...
ggg
 
The 9800 pro will be a great card for your son. It plays everything out there now fine. The 1.8 GHz pentium 4 isn't even bad. That system will be decent.
 
b18turbo said:
One more thing about this computer, since I have posted that info from cpuz. What could be the reason the computer does not have any audio? I have tried installing audio drivers from SIS for the onboard audio with no help. I am going to reinstall windows when I upgrade the computer, maybe that will fix it. But untill then he has no audio. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Onboard sound may be enable/disabled in the BIOS. Be very careful playing around with it, but when your booting your computer hit the Del key (Delete) before windows loads. There should be a menu about 'onboard components' or similar. If your audio is disabled in that menu, select it and hit enter, then save and exit (usually F10). If you dont see what your after, exit WITHOUT saving. Not sure how familiar you are with your BIOS but you dont want to change anything without knowing for sure what it is you are changing. I have found a lot of onboard components sometimes disable themselves on boot and this usually fixes it. Hope that helps.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top