AMD 2400?

[yannickvw]

[font color="navy" size="2" face="arial"]
Hello all!

I'm thinking of getting a better pc, but I'm still a student,
and don't have that much money on my account. I know it's not
really audio and video related, but still hardware so I taught
that this would be the best place to post it.

Ok, here's the deal, I met a guy who sells his 10 month old pc,
here are the specs:

shuttle SK41G
amd xp 2400
512 ddr pc 2700 twinmoss
60 gb hard disc 7200 rpm western digital
geforce 4
cd writer liteon 48 x 24 x 40
1x AGP , 1x PCI
6x USB 2.0
6-channel-Audio oa 5.1 dolby surround, LAN, FireWire

He suggested a price from about 450 dollars.
(but I will try to buy him for less than that)
What do you guys say about this one? Should this
pc be able to run FS9 quite smoothly with settings
to medium/max? And wich price do you guys suggest?

Yannickvw@hotmail.com[/font]

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/Use...7a450e189e.jpg

[FatTulip]

Looks good to me, and works out at just under £300 UK price, you can't get that much at that price in my local classified ads!

Obviously as it's a shuttle with only 1 PCI slot you have to be content with lack of add-on potential but that wouldn't worry me.

[ahmedmumeni]

I personally, would take the money, buy new parts, and build a new system! You can probably get the parts for that system at a cheap price.

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ BARTON 333FSB Processor $130.00 (Canadian $$)
Asus A7N8X-X NF2 SocketA Mainboard w/Audio/LAN $108.00 (Canadian $$)
512 MB PC2700 DDR Memory (BRAND NAME) $105.00 (Canadian $$)
Maxtor 80GB DiamondMax Plus 9 7200RPM 2MB ATA133 $99.00 (Canadian $$)
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB 8X Video Card $249 (Canadian $$)
LG Electronics 52x32x52x CD-RW Drive BLACK $50.00 (Canadian $$)

Prices from www.shopbc.com/ca (Local store in Ottawa, Ontario)

Total $741 (Canadian $$) or $566.08 USD http://finance.yahoo.com/m5?a=741&s=CAD&t=USD

I tell you to build the system yourself because you know the parts that are in the system, and you obviously trust yourself; brand new parts --> reliable. If you really want to buy that system off of your friend, just make that everything is in good working condition, and he is not selling the system because there is something wrong with it. Also ... if you want to use FS9 on the system, the above system that I recommended should run it well. Especially with that Radeon 9600 Pro card running in the system. The system that your friend is selling ... what kind of Geforce4 is it? Make sure its in a MX version because those cards are geared more towards office applications!

Good luck with your decision!

[yannickvw]

[font color="navy" size="2" face="arial"]Thanks Ahmed!! Well, after some good thinking, I think that's indeed the best way to do. I asked a friend if he could make me a good system and what it would cost me (I have no experience with building my own pc so...) and he came up with this:

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/Use...a9371b8eb7.jpg

I think about as heavy as the system you proposed.

When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk
the earth with your eyes
turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.

yannickvw@hotmail.com[/font]

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/Use...7a450e189e.jpg

[ahmedmumeni]

Good choice of parts Yannick. I assume you speak German, so I dug this up from www.tomshardware.com : http://www.de.tomshardware.com/graph...105/index.html

Have u ordered the parts yet?

[gosta2]

Hi Yannick,

it looks like a nice system, just a couple of things:

You'll get the best performance if you run your CPU and RAM at the same FSB. So, if you intend to run your CPU at clock speed, buying PC3200 RAM would be a waste of money, as you'd get the best performance when you run it at 333MHz (CPU FSB), so PC 2700 RAM would do. Having said that, the XP2500 overclocks very nicely, so if you're thinking about getting a bit of extra speed out of your system, I would stick with the PC3200 RAM, as increasing FSB as opposed to core clock speed will give you extra bandwidth and thus improved performance. However, inthat case I would recommend buying a better CPU fan/heatsink, as the AMDs run quite hot, and the stock cooling isn't all that good.

The other thing is the power supply. If you get 300W true power, then you're OK, but most power supplies are rated by apparent power (which should be VA, rather than W), and some even have the cheek to rate in peak voltage or even peak-to-peak, whereas the supplied voltage that comes out of your socket is RMS. So, worst-case scenario would be:

(300W x .707) : 2 = 106W

And even that may not be Watts, but VA (which won't really affect your computer, but the efficiency of the PS, i.e. you're paying for electricity that is just dissipated without use). So I would strongly recommend investing in a good power supply, such as Enermax or Antec. Your system will run a lot more stable.

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

Gosta.

[FatTulip]

If you can master the cooling on most current AMDs you can fool them into thinking they're the next chip up in the range.

For example, If you had an XP2400+ on a 266 bus, increase the bus in the BIOS from 133 to 145 (that's 9% so you'll need the cooling) and it will think it's an XP2600+. It basically increases the frequency from 2Ghz to 2.2Ghz but performs **in the region of** a P4 2.6!!!

The beauty here is that the chip will take the heat as long as it doesn't wobble your system.