Opinions on gaming machine

[chimchim765]

tell me if this machine will run what I want effectively, Thanks

I want to get a new computer for the following games Day of Defeat, Battlefield series, Unreal Tournament 2003 and maybe Half Life 2. This is what I am going to buy for 200 bones; Soyo motherboard, Athlon XP 2800+, 512 MB PC2700 Ram. I already have a Geforce 4200 Ti. I don't want to run these games at full settings. I want medium settings and 800*600 resolution. Please tell me if this rig is good for games like the ones I mentioned. Thanks a bunch.

 

[Didou]

Day of Defeat ( being based on the original HalfLife engine ) would run smoothly on a 1GHZ machine & above ( especially with your card ). UT2003 will also run fine with that setup.

As for Battlefield, I believe Acid plays it a lot & has an AthlonXP 2600+ himself. He has a much better VGA card but since you say you do not want to play at the highest settings, you should be fine.

& lastly for HL2, no ones knows...

PS. Welcome to TechSpot. Hope you enjoy your stay.:wave:

 

[chimchim765]

Thanks buddy. Appreciate the info.

 

[Steg]

Try to ensure you buy a nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset motherboard, it is by far the best gaming platform for the Althon XP processors. Then also ensure u buy your 512 meg of ram in 2 256meg sticks - allowing the nf2 to use it dual channal memory controller - thus pushing the maxium performance from yout 2800+.
If you are into overclocking you could save some cash on the 2800+ and buy a 2500+, a decent cooling fan and some 3200 ram (the price difference from 2700 is very marginal) and just run the front side bus up to 200Mhz.
Only consider this an option if you are sure of what you are doing - there are alot of articles around the net about overclocking the nforce2 and the 2500+ so get you started if you are interested.
With a machine of that spec and a 4200 you will be able to run all the games you mentioned (except perhaps hl2) in 1024*768*32 with the details on high or even very high - dont underestimate the power of that rig.

Hope the helps

Steg

 

[chimchim765]

I want to get the Soyo motherboard bundle from TigerDirect. I don't think Soyo is better than Asus but I want to keep costs down and the bundle comes with a 20 dollar fan, an Athlon AMD 2800+ processor, Soyo motherboard and a stick of 512 RAM. All for 200 dollars. I don't really care about full settings or resolution, what is important to me is getting the game to run at 60 FPS. The lowest graphics on computers are better than any PS2 game, so I'm cool with low graphics settings. I want my rig to underachieve .

 

[SubKamran]

What? Are you implying that you do not care if you cannot run Half-Life [size=6]2[/size] at full settings? Are you implying that you do not care if you cannot experience the tasty high-rez-ness of Half-Life 2?

No no no my son, you must spend to accommodate Half-Life 2's uber high-rez-ness and high-quality-ness.

When you have the greenbacks, buy a good video card, like an ATI Radeon 9800 XT (or Pro). I spent $1200 on this computer just to make sure it would run Half-Life 2 at full-out uber settings.



That setup will run the games fine, good luck and have fun!

 

[agissi]

I have battle field, and play it at 800x600, settings on medium, it runs perfectly smooth and my rig is a

* AthlonXP 2100+
* 512MBs DDR
* Geforce4 Ti4200

So Im thinkin' you'll be smooth sailing by far. All those games, other then HL2 which we dotn know about, will run very well on that machine, with the settings you suggested.

 

[Steg]

Ah....this is a good thing
SubKamran has captured the full sprit of what PC gaming is about. SubKamran - u are considered one of the elite - the ones who throw off the shackels of PS2 and Xbox, and strive to push for the most powerful games platform - on the planet.
chimchim765 - take heed - u will not get better advice than this.
Happy system building

one last thing to remember (one of) the PC gamers catch phrase - "If it ain't overclocked, tweaked, modded or otherwise messed with, you ain't doing things right."

Steg

p.s. dear god - i really can spout some utter rubbish when im in the mood - ah well its 3 in the morning - im excussed