Well, Heres My Latest Setup, on a 450 dollar budget :þ Options

[blame canada]

so heres what I have so far on a 450 bucks budget:

Nvdia Gforvce fx5200 (128mb RAM) :$50
dvd-rw: $50
AMD 64 3200+ : $170
JETWAY 939AGP-P mobo : $70
some old monitor, a keyboard mouse, 160gb WD, 80gb external WD: mine already

soooo.....that leaves me with about 100 bucks (maybe more ) for a case and RAM. any suggestions?
just looking for some feebback on what I should/could have done.

please dont flame, im not old enough to get a job (im only 15) or at least one that isnt degrading lol. so thats pretty much misc. savings + xmas $$$

BTW: my setup isnt close to -danny-'s

This post has been edited by blame canada: Jan 5 2006, 04:42 AM

[BrutalDrew]

First, what is this PC used for? Are you overclocking?

You wasted your money on the FX5200. It is complete garbage and even a 6200 TC would of been much better and around the same price. The 6200 TC is at least a 'passable' card. I have seen SDRAM based FX5200 cards which are so painfully slow that an old GF2MX would make them look silly. Even then, you wouldn't want to game on either of them. The X700 is really the bare minimum you'd want for any kind of serious 3D gaming.

The NEC 3550A is $40. If your on such a strict budget, drop down to a 3000+ or even lower depending on what the Pc is used for (Sempron 64?). For the motherboard, considering ytou bought such a crappy video card I am assuming you are not doing any gaming. If that is the case, get a Biostar GeForce 6100-M9. It is $59 and even its onboard video would run circles around that FX5200. Another option would be the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2.

For the case and PSU, given your budget, it would probably be best to buy a case w/ a PSU. You can look at In-Win or Antec. Any other PSU's would be garbage. If you don't like that route just pick a cheap case that you like and buy a cheap 350w Fortron PSU or something.

For the RAM, just buy the cheapest you can find from areputable manufacturer. Something like Corsair VS is fine. The performance gain when going with expensive RAM is negligible with K8 CPU's.

[blame canada]

To clear things up, I'm not a hard-core computer gamer but I am building this to at least get my games to actually work enough to where I can see what I'm playing. And yes, I will most likely be overclocking so any good tips on that matter?

Ill probably return the video card. Ive already ordered my mobo/cpu so I cant go back on that (they both came today actually, good ol' newegg). Anywyas, got any advice on a new video card for what Im looking at? I've got a good 250 bucks (after the video card return) now for a case/ram/vid card but I've got my case almost picked out and RAM is not an issue. I'm figuring about 100 bucks ish for the case/ram (doing 512mb ram for now, I will upgrade in the future though). The main focus is on a video card for an agp slot 4x/8x mobo so any good agp 4x/8x cards that are decent but are in the 150 tops range, a link is much appreciated . I will do some researching on a video card but I would like some opinions before buying one.
thanx in advaced


Don't think im ignoring your post either Brutal, the cards you suggested were all pci express, which I can't use

This post has been edited by blame canada: Jan 7 2006, 04:27 AM

[blame canada]

wel, rather than returning the fx5200 card, I installed it in my moms dell dimension 4300 so that I can at least play some of my games that didnt work on my current p3 dell . Anyways, the grafix weren't terrible, and when I played the suffering: ties that bind, I couldn't get very close to maxing out the grafix setting. Even at a high setting, it was laggy (good thing Im buying a different vid card). So, I wanted to get the most out of this card that I could, so I pushed it; I pushed it a bit to far though . I overclocked it from 250/400 to 303/498(I even tested the overclock with RivaTuner before I played anything), and well, with only heatsink, it overheated (fairly quick too I might add). after a few unexpected reboots and a cooldown, it works fine now. I probably wont overclock it again, but overall, its not a bad card. If you could get some way to cool it down very nicely, and overclock it (its extremely easy to overclock) to a decent speed, its a good very low budget card.

Aside that, I'm still looking at some video cards, and I Think im going to go with a ASUS geforce 6600 here. If anyone has used this card before, some feedback would be much appreciated

any feedback other than that video card is also welcomed

btw, one review on newegg talked about how much better that card was than the fx5200 I installed in my moms dell

[BrutalDrew]

You don't have to be a hardcore gamer to at least spend your money wisely. The FX5200 is not money spent wisely. A 6200 TC would be much better and the same price. For a new video card I would suggest something like a 6600GT.

For overclocking this should help:
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=398013