Buying PC?

Status
Not open for further replies.

cooler

Posts: 6   +0
I' m wondering if I should buy this PC:

Athlon XP 1800+
Elitegroup K755A Mainboard (266 FSB)
256 MB Infineon DDR RAM
60 GB IBM HD UDMA-100 7200U
16x40 DVD-Rom
32x12x40 CDRW Burn Proof
NVIDEA Geforce 4 MX 64 MB DDR TV (if I buy the PC I will replace it with a Geforce 3 Ti 500 or a Geforce 4 Ti 4200)

1. I ran 3Dmark 2001 in the shop and it only got 5300 points.
Is this only due to the crummy video card or is there something
wrong with the whole system?

2. Can I use the PC 133 memory of my old PC in the new one?
 
Originally posted by cooler
I' m wondering if I should buy this PC:

Athlon XP 1800+
Elitegroup K755A Mainboard (266 FSB)
256 MB Infineon DDR RAM
60 GB IBM HD UDMA-100 7200U
16x40 DVD-Rom
32x12x40 CDRW Burn Proof
NVIDEA Geforce 4 MX 64 MB DDR TV (if I buy the PC I will replace it with a Geforce 3 Ti 500 or a Geforce 4 Ti 4200)

1. I ran 3Dmark 2001 in the shop and it only got 5300 points.
Is this only due to the crummy video card or is there something
wrong with the whole system?

2. Can I use the PC 133 memory of my old PC in the new one?

Obviously whether you buy this machine depends on how much you are going to pay for it... The spec looks OK to me although I don't know anything about Elitegroup motherboards.

If you are benchmarking the system, it is a good idea to make sure that all the latest drivers are installed in the machine (I doubt they will be if it's shop built) to make the most of it... although the GFX card might be the limiting factor there (More memory might help too).

If the Motherboard is DDR, you will not be able to use your old pc133 sdram (U can send it to me if you want....) Why would you want to do this anyway? - you have DDR in the new system.

Hope this helps, I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong....

p.s. Just noticed that this is my 300th post.....Yippee!!
 
The video card is the most likely culprit as 3dmark pixel and vertex shading tests will not have run. My 1.5Ghz Athlon @ 143fsb, 256mb DDR ram gets about 6500 with a standard GF3 so its not that shoddy a score.

Unless you buy a PC with a motherboard that has both slots for SDRam and DDRRam then it will only take one type. DDR modules and SDram modules are actually physically different and it is not possible (without chopping bits off the stick) to put SDram in DDR ram slots.

Also this video card chart from Tomshardware is a good source to compare how cards scores in different benchmarks including 3dmark2001. As you can see the speed at which the memory and core of the GF4MX runs at gives it a score not that far behind the GF3 cards.

System benchmarks were run on:
AMD AthlonXP 2000+
ASUS A7V266-E
VIA KT266A
133 MHz FSB
256MB PC-266 MHz RAM CL2 (2x128MB)
 
The ECS K7S5a has DIMM slots for both SDRam & DDRam but you cannot mix both. It allready has DDRam on it so your best option would probably be buying another 256mb PC2100 module. It can support a maximum of 1GB ( 2 * 512 ) in SDRam or DDRam. Performance wise that board is a bit under KT266a boards.

http://www.ecs.com.tw/products/k7s5a.htm

s-k7s5a.jpg
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back