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jbg_1981
regular
Reg'd: Mon
Posts: 25
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Hi, im looking to buy an ok pc tower with a budget of £200 mainly for gaming and music etc. Looking at dual cores but cant decide whats better i.e. pentium 4 dual core, amd 4000+ dual core, amd 4400 dual core, intel core 2 duo, athlon am2 x2 3600+...
Could anyone advise a good pc tower for my budget? i know i'll need a good graphics card as well and some i've been looking at do have them, but mainly after a tower thats gonna run well with todays games.
Thanks...
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TheFatControlleR
Forum Admin
Reg'd: Fri
Posts: 6650
Loc: Megatripolis
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Someone might know someone who knows someone, but all I can say is, good luck getting what you want for only £200. I think you might be bing a tad ambitious. You may need to increase your budget, or lower your expectations - particularly for a viable gaming machine at that price, for current games (as opposed to older, less graphic/processor intensive games). 
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 TFC
'Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.' - Hunter S Thompson (1937-2005)
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jbg_1981
regular
Reg'd: Mon
Posts: 25
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i have been known to be an optimist...
been looking at a few towers on ebay and theres a few in my budget, like this :
Click here
looks like it will do the job but my query is hows does the amd 4000 dual core compare to a say intel pentium 4 dual core (or any of the others mentioned above)?
Edited by Hello_There (Tue Mar 18 2008 10:36 AM)
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BedstorfromAP
Necromancer
Reg'd: Thu
Posts: 4302
Loc: 32 Bus Stops West of Wigan UK
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Tip build your own as a project?
Look out for any AM2 Motherboard Bundles they can cope with The AMD Processors
I'm running a single Core AMD 4000 Chip and Its Fast...Dual core? PAH! All I Intend doing is to Double the RAM to 2Gb @ £25 expands I think to over 4 GB
Best brand ASUS Can use the Better Graphic cards too NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
Has built in sound chip so no cost there 
Needs a 550- 650 watt PSU and a Ventilated case to house it (Jeantech brand has many listed at £30 or less)
Total cost plus cannibalising some small bits from the old unit is about £250 including a brand new OEM copy Of XP Pro and a 160 GB SATA Hard Drive (The old 40 GB ATA drive is now in a Portable USB Hard drive
And ..as for games I am Running Crysis ,Farcry and also C+C (current version) and some other graphic Hungry games without any adjustment 
Good place to start working out the cost is get in touch with Novatech and ask for their catalogue (Updated regularly) www.novatech.co.uk
Maplins Does also do Good computer Motherboard bundle deals but they are Like Aldi (when they are gone they are gone) 
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History so far.. 9 years surfing & 28 Years Computing (First ZX81 1k)
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greysts
regular
Reg'd: Thu
Posts: 17948
Loc: Colchester
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If you want a gaming machine, that one will be worse than useless. It's got a slow processor, the on-board graphics uses shared memory and on it's got on-board sound. It doesn't have an operating system either. If you want a cheap tower, that's what you'll get - cheap. TFC is right, for £200 you'll get something cheap and nasty.
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Do you know that we're all in line for succession to the throne? Really?
Well, if forty-eight million, two hundred thousand, seven hundred and one people died I'd be Queen.
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BedstorfromAP
Necromancer
Reg'd: Thu
Posts: 4302
Loc: 32 Bus Stops West of Wigan UK
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Quote:
the on-board graphics uses shared memory and on it's got on-board sound.
Agreed onboard graphics are seriously greedy
As for the on-board sounds again some can be very poor with a Budget Motherboard 
My motherboard was a top spec board which had been marked dowmn Its an old 939 Socket (new boards have the AM2 socket)
The Good onboard "sound chips" are : Realtek AC'97 Audio have to look through the specs. Not there? then Think about fitting a Soundblaster Audacity Board Priced well under 20 Pounds. Old, but for the average computer user it works well
Big long article on the Subject and has clear Pics on what the Good spec Motherboards look like from the Socket side too (Tips on what does what too)
BTW those Red Socket are for external SATA Hard Drives All recent Motherboard are Going to be fitted with these.
Boards without them Pass on it. Price of these Drived is the Same or as the Older slower ATA drives
Final Item If you can find a 2xLAN socket Board cheap thats brilliant have to squint hard at the Numbers FireWire ? as well ASUS boards have this as standard
Other boards may be only a single LAN? and You'll have to purchase a LAN card too
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History so far.. 9 years surfing & 28 Years Computing (First ZX81 1k)
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BedstorfromAP
Necromancer
Reg'd: Thu
Posts: 4302
Loc: 32 Bus Stops West of Wigan UK
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Unknown why this link which should be in the above page is bouncing me back onto the topic www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/28 ...If the rest of that site has quality articles like this then the URL www.hardwaresecrets.com is worth saving for further viewing
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History so far.. 9 years surfing & 28 Years Computing (First ZX81 1k)
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jbg_1981
regular
Reg'd: Mon
Posts: 25
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ok so i am being slightly ambitious... time to start saving the pennys then!
But back to my first post:
'Looking at dual cores but cant decide whats better i.e. pentium 4 dual core, amd 4000+ dual core, amd 4400 dual core, intel core 2 duo, athlon am2 x2 3600+...'
When i have got more money saved which of the above would be better suited for gaming?
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BedstorfromAP
Necromancer
Reg'd: Thu
Posts: 4302
Loc: 32 Bus Stops West of Wigan UK
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AMD 4000+ dual core would be my choice (as its a good seller) but... Performance wise they are all very close
Another factor is the FSB ((Front Side Bus) Speeds) Intel chips run mostly at 533 Mhz ,but the AMD chips move data @ 1000 MHZ or More
Have you got the SETI/BOINC program running? I upgraded from a AMD Athlon XP 2000+ chip to this AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (New motherboard too) This was running on a 533 FSB M/B Chip rated real terms 1.7 Ghz (clock speed) Process the same size Seti workunit (10 hours to complete) as to My latest 4000+ (1200mhz FSB board ) Real speed 2.4 Ghz and you'd think the apparent "slow clock speed" will slow matters down
Well here are the results...
That same 10 hour unit is "seen" by the 4000+ chip and fast FSB Board as just 2 and a Half Hours Defo worth a  expression
Last word on these chips
You can tune them to get even more Performance But Who wants to go up that Path?
They Pedal fast enough for my purposes. Want more performance? I'd buy a New chip rather than risk a Burnout! They run Hot Hence the Ventilated case design(I have 2 Massive Fans on the Front and 5 internally)Noisewise not Nuch more than the old 4 fan setup.
Was it the Prescott core chip that was the Hottest running, and Case makers had to make provision for cooling that? 
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History so far.. 9 years surfing & 28 Years Computing (First ZX81 1k)
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jbg_1981
regular
Reg'd: Mon
Posts: 25
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thanks for all the info and recommendations everyone, i guess as far as dual cores go there all pretty close performance wise, to make a good gaming unit i take i need to good graphics card, plenty of ram and i large hard drive to store the games??? im not after a big spec gaming tower like most hardcore gamers as i'll only be doing a couple of hours a day every other day, just something that works well enough to play games like call of duty 4 and epic strategy games.
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