New Rig: Need Opinions

[acookson]

New Rig: Need Opinions

I'm looking at getting a new rig so that I can actually play some The Witcher. Being a spendthrift university student, I'm on a tight budget, so I'm opting for a Dell. I had a few questions about some of the specsROCESSOR Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E4500 (2.20GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 800FSB)OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® XP Home,EnglishMEMORY 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz - 4DIMMsHARD DRIVE 80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst CacheSOUND CARD Integrated 7.1 Channel AudioVIDEO CARD 256MB ATI Radeon 2400 ProOPTICAL DRIVE Single Drive: 16X DVD-ROM Drive Specifically, I was wondering about the sound card (Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio), as to whether or not it's DirectX 9.0c compatible (since that's a requirement for The Witcher). I'm also curious about the difference between the two video cards I'm able to choose from (256MB ATI Radeon 2400 Pro and 256MB ATI Radeon 2400 XT) and which one is more suitable for gaming.Of course, any general comments are welcome, too.Thanks!

 

[username_2067007]

Neither of the 2400 cards are game quality. Both are for business graphics only. You need a video card with "600" level performance (or better) shown in its name, not merely "400" level. Integrated audio is usually entirely suitable for a gamers' use, unless the CPU is already a borderline choice.

 

[acookson]

Thanks for the quick reply, Kiwi. It's at least good to know that the sound card is okay lol. For the two 400-level video cards, though, would they be able to run the game at low- to mid-level graphics settings? I know that the above specs definitely aren't ideal for gaming but are they "good enough"?

 

[username_2067007]

The better of the two 2400s is only marginally less of a junker from a gaming point of view. Both have only a 64 Bit memory system, which is totally inadequate. The minimum, a four year old 9800 Pro card, is better, and will run the game slowly, so in your case, you are looking at a slide show unless or until you set the resolution quite low and coarse, such as 800 by 600 pixels.Take a look: http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=524&card2=32Now, for a benchmark in a game of Prey, compared to a card of generally similar performance to that 9800, the 2400 gets up to walking speed (14 FPS), about half of what the X1600 can do. http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=859&model2=736&chart=300If you "like" grainy graphics and slow animation, pinch the pennies and suffer with that thing. I'd choose to toss it out (give the 2400 crap away to a nongamer type) and use a relic that is in the spares pile, like an X800 GTO or something like that (it wasn't so bad once, or I'd have gotten rid of it). Folks at AnandTech sell stuff like that regularly for maybe a third of what it cost new when it's three years old, like the X800s are.

 

[mathmage]

Hi acookson,Windows XP cannot effectivly use 4 gigs of memory so unless you are planning to go Vista you may as well do 2 gigs and use the extra money to upgrade the graphics card.

 

[acookson]

Okay, so the 2400 is crap lol. If I were to go down to 2GB of RAM, since that's XP's limit, just get the worst option for a video card (Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100), and then swap it out for a good card to put in on my own, what would be a good card to go with? I'm not averse to spending a little money, but I have no idea what would be "suitable" for the specs I've got (i.e., I wouldn't want to pay for a good VGA, but then have a lot of its power go to waste on only a decent machine).

 

[xhan]

Both NVidias and ATI midrange offerings right now would run the game very well; IE 8800 GT/GTS or ATI's 3870. The bets bang for the buck range is for the 512 meg 8800GTS.

 

[ifandbut]

How much are you looking to spend on a new rig if you dont mind me asking? I just build a new one with top of the line parts for 1.6k and it has room to upgrade (mother bord can use DDR3 1800 MHz and PCIe 2.0). It can run Crysis and BioShock at maxed settings and currently no issues with Witcher besides the odd CTD. I'd be happy to post my exact specs if your interested.As for opinions about your current buildrocresser looks ok. I dont know about that spicific procresser but only 2MB of L2 could hurt, 4MB is preferred if available. Dual core are becoming standard and games dont yet take full advantage of quad cores. Also, witcher appears to only really run on one core.It's best to stick with windows XP for now. Vista has alot of problems with compatibility (both drivers and software) and the only thing it really offers for gaming is DirectX 10 and I have not been impressed with it so far (most games suffer FPS problems under DX10).Windows XP is technically able to use 3GB of ram (need to add a switch to the boot.ini file) but, as I understand it, programs might not be able to address that much. You really should not need more then 2GB of ram atm unless you want to do some 3D design.Hard Drive: Only 80Gig? I guess that would be ok if you dont download alot of stuff. Does it say how big the cache is on the HDD. If it's only 4MB your loading times are gona be really high. I'd recomend getting a Western Digital Raptor HDD, they are most likely the fastest HDDs on the market atm (10,000 RPM w/ 16MB cache).Sound Card: I'v never had any problems with integrated sound not being compatible with DirectX and unless you have really good ears or plan on connecting it to a surround sound system you should not notice a quality difference.I dont know much about ATI's cards but I do agree with XHAN that the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT is the best bang for the buck but get at least the 512MB version.Optical Drive: I'm surprised DvD burners are not standard yet, but they are cheap and easy to install if you really want a burner.I'v been building computers since I was 10 (currently 22) and in the past few years I'v found that I can build a better computer for cheaper then Dell or someone would. Then again if something get messed up it was my fault. I dont know what your experience with the insides of a computer is but most of the parts only go toegther one way amd there are a lot of guides on the net on how to build one from the ground up.