One of my customer had asked me to supply a games computer for his 14yr old son, as we hardly if ever built computers for games, I need some advice here.

The hardware I have in mind are :
Asus A7N8X-X
512MB Crucial PC2700
XP2600 Throughbreed
Usual CDRW/DVD drives
Seagate 120GB 7200rpm
Usual 56k Modem
8139 NIC
Windows XP Pro

Just wondering what would be the best 8X card to match the above, I know the system is not really that much of a top end, but my personal experience tells me it may be better to use the above and save half the cost for a new upgrade in 1-2 years time, I may also up the memory to 1GB if that will help the games a bit more.

Not sure what games he has in mind, but I would assume it will be around 0-24 months old ones, budget I have for the card is around £100-£150 , but as he already has XBox, PS2, and with games costing 30-40 a throw, chances are it will just be a few games he will play on this.

I were looking at
Gainward FX5700 Ulta PowerPack! Ultra/960 128MB £140
XFX GeForce FX5600XT AGP 8x 128MB DDR £75
XFX Geforce Fx5600 Ultra 128MB DDR AGP 8x £130

(ps. the reason why I picked these is because on eBuyer, they got more stars :) )

Any help on the subject would be grateful

Duffy

the radeon 9600XT can sometimes be found for around 149.00 US and its an excellent card.

of the three you listed the 5700 ultra would be the best choice. but nvidia cards do have problems with DX9.

Duffy, 9600xt 128 mb is the better choice, it is around the same price in the U.S. but dont know by you. If you were going to choose one of the above, I agree with iss. The 5700 would be best.

Thanks both, I am not limited to the above, I only picked them out as a guideline as I have no idea what I am looking at.

I would go with whatever you gentlemen recommend, looking at these cards is like looking under the hood of my car, I think I know what I am looking at, but the truth is, I havent a clue. :)

Duffy it might help if you told us how much they have to spend on the whole system :)

Dave, I have already the parts for the system as we built computers for companies, just lack of a card for games, which I am on a budget of between 100-150ukp, the screen will be max out at 1024x768 so thats why I were too concern about anything above 128MB, trouble is, neither them or me have a clue what games will be played or whats really needed.

Carlsberg dont do CDRG sigs, but if they did they would probably be the best ones in the world
Once you are drunk on Carlsberg, almost anything look better than CDRG

Is it agp, agp2? Did you want a lcd monitor with DVI?

Ok i would agree with van and iss, the 9600XT 128, is the card to have at the moment

I would say the 9800Se but i dont think it would be a good idea for you to try to softmod it as its for a customer

Not worth getting 256Mb as the ram will be slower, as the saying goes its not size that matters its how you use it

You can pick them up for £125 on the net, some even come with a HL2 voucher. like this one

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=55188

HTH

Duffy, definately the 9600XT. They hold up a lot better with Anti Aliasing etc enabled.

That's a pretty good system for gaming in it's own right, especially for "left over parts".

It should be able to play just about any game with great graphics.


Carlsberg also make cheese, which are pretty good too..

Gentlemen , Thank you all for your time, I guess the 9600XT is the chosen one without a doubt.

Inso, with 'left overs' , my workstation has 1.5GB of DDR and 720GB of HDD, sadly, as I do not play games, I am using a used GTS256 (Whatever that is ?) costing £10, but gets the job done :)

Thanks again all

Duffy i have to ask, what does anyone want with 720GB of storage?

Data storage, I keep backups of all customer data on this machine while we repair their computers, they do get turn into DVD soon after, but until the job is done, 2 copies of their backup will be stored on 2 separate HDD, after the job is completed, one copy will be deleted, the second copy will get delete after 7-14 days.

I know this sound very long winded, but as most of our customer's data are mission critical, its better to be safe than sorry.

sounds like a good system, indeed it is better to be safe then sorry :tup:

imho,
1=there arnt many games that rely on dx9 to justify saying nvidia have problems.
2=ati have renowned bad driver problems.
3=it may be better for a games m/c to have a full pro version of a card than a cut down even if it means dropping back to an older pro card for cost purposes.

1= Not yet, but there will be. Anyway, does it hurt?

2= They used to, but that was a while ago. Nvidia have had just as many problems.

3= For the task required, they perform adequately.

1-no it dont hurt, you can say ati also have problems.
2-it wasnt a while ago i was looking at the link on ebuyer, and several of the reported customers had problems EVEN with LATEST ati drivers.
3-a 14 year old gamer wants em to fly, and sometimes cannot understand why a brand new card aint hot.
ie, prince of persia optimised for ge4 ti 4200 up yet an mx440 wont touch it .( my point of view on all cut downs, from whoever).

aaronjon, suggest another card for £150 then

already been suggested, fx5700 ultra, fx5600 ultra.

Its close with the fx5700 and the 9600xt

but the 9600xt is better value because of the performance in and dominance of DirectX