[iag48]

For this xmas I plan on seriously upgrading 2year old Compaq. After searching many pc sites and ebay, I have decided that I will be looking for a barebone system for no more than $250.00. I cant pay more than 250 for the barebone system because I am also buying a Geforce 4 ti 4600 (128mb) or a ATI Raedon 9700 =).
What do you guys think of a barebone system with these specs: AMD athlon XP 2000 (1.6ghz), with 3 slots for DDR ram (amount of ram doesn’t matter because I will upgrade to its max) 5 PCI slots and other thingies i dont really know? I will be adding my current hard drive, CD drive, floppy drive and cd writer to the barebone system.
Im hoping that with the 1.6ghz XP, 128mb Geforce card and at least 1 gig of DDR ram, I wont have to upgrade for at least 2years in order to play the meanest games. BTW what are the specs for that anticipated card NVsomething something

What opinions, advice can you guys give me? Thanks ahead of time. Anyone in the custom built pc buisness?

 

[accord 4 me]

thats a good cpu..seems like a good price i suppose

personally i'd wait..get the 2400..get a good mobo and some good ram and overclock it to "2700 or 2800"

another alternative would be the p4 2.53..its a decent price and compares with the athlon 2600

ati 9700 is a very nice choice..even though its about 330 bucks

although..if you don't want to overclock or anything..it doesn't matter..and thats a good thing for you to buy <the barebones>

either way..i reccomend getting windows xp pro..and doing a clean install, which means formatting the hard drive <wiping completely clean> and installing the os

so in otherwords..it doesn't matter what you do..if you want true performance..you have to pay the price

peace

 

[jason4850]

do you have a 5400 rpm hard drive in you compaq? if so you can buy a 30 gig 7200 rpm for like 70 dollars

 

[accord 4 me]

do you have a 5400 rpm hard drive in you compaq? if so you can buy a 30 gig 7200 rpm for like 70 dollars

no no..get a 80 gig for 80 bucks..shop around!!! pm me man..i can give you the hookup

 

[iag48]

Guys i have a 10gig hard drive lol. i really dont mind this hard drive cuz in the 2 years i have had this comcrap i have never been out of memo. im just really into gaming, once i download my mp3 i burne them so 10 gigs is enough for gaming.
lets say a year from now i want to upgrade my cpu, how hard is it to upgrade it? i have read that you have to use thermal glue.etc...
im making sure that the motherboard supports better cpu for further down the road.
BTW which is hte best kind of ram for gaming?
i hear DDR is the best for now....

 

[jmcn R]

ati's new card is setting some mind blowing numbers for not much more dollars it seems than a ti....so check them out...or get ureself a 4200...save ure self quite a bit of money without too much of a performanc drop off.

 

[chewie10]

Sounds good!

 

[fathead]

shop best buy, they have really good deals but u usually have to mail in shit for the rebate. i got a 120gig 7200rpm HDD for 100$. it was 250$ with a mail in rebate for 150$!!!