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Gaming System for £350?

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>HyperlogiK<

>HyperlogiK<

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Joined
Nov 10, 2004
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I gather that this means a complete system and not just a tower?

How about going largely second had from classifieds or ebay sellers with good feedback

A Radeon 9500 (non pro) ~£35 Download the softmod drivers and it runs as a 9700 with a pretty good success rate.
DL here: http://www.techpowerup.com/softmod/
Alternatively I would suggest a Geforce 5900 standard, and flashing the BIOS with one from the 5950 Ultra, or if you must play it safe then get a Radeon 9600 Pro.

Athlon 64 3000 Retail (939) ~£85
Abit AV8 ~£40
2X 512MB value PC3200 ~£45
Hitachi 80GB HDD ~£27

NEC ND 2500A DVD+RW ~£19 With a special firmware update these can be turned into better spec dual layer writers.
DL here: http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=25904

A cheap tower case ~£10
Enermax Noisetaker 370W ~£35
Dell 17" Flat CRT ~£20
2.1 Speakers ~£20
Microsoft Intellimouse Optical £9 (best budget gaming mouse)
Microsoft PS/2 Keyboard £5

£350 on the nubbin unless my maths hasn't worked. If the guy wants new bits then tell him to buy a modded xbox 360 as you simply won't have a new machine that plays games for £350, you could get a decent office system for that though.
 
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Yeah thats a gd start, surely tho there is cheaper CPU's out there i know thats a very gd basis for one tho. I mean wat about a sempron? cheaper and overclock pretty well. I not sure about graphics either, i am sure you can get 6200 non-tc cards for near that cheap, i got one for £50 ages ago.
 
Is this a front page discussion? This forum section is for discussions to front page articles only.
 
yes it is an fp discussion

the 9500 will kill the 6200 even at stock speeds/pipes with a softmod to 9700 it should about equal the 128MB 6600.
 
>HyperlogiK< said:
yes it is an fp discussion

the 9500 will kill the 6200 even at stock speeds/pipes with a softmod to 9700 it should about equal the 128MB 6600.
Click to expand...

Oh right i have just seen some really gd scores with these agp 6200, i have seem them go faster than my old 9800xt thats all, i have never really un locked it thats all.
 
Can you post these scores? Were they heavily overclocked vs stock on the 9800XT?

It's hard to find any relevant comparisons, the 9500/9700 series card reviews are pre 3Dmark 05/Doom 3/HL2 etc. I remember a little while ago the debate about whether the 6600 was as good as the 9800XT, the 9800XT seemed to be considered quite a lot better, but not as good as the 6600GT. Now since the 6200 is a 6600 with half the pipes and slow memory, I can't see it beating the 9800XT in anything other than maybe a totally PS3.0 benchmark. Now the 9700 Pro wasn't all that much slower than the 9800XT, which should put it at about the level of the 6600.

I personally have owned a 6600 and a 6600GT, and a 9500 which was softmodded and overclocked to a 9700 Pro, and a 9800SE that was softmodded and overclocked to a 9800XT and while I have never run a benchmark in my life (except for playing with sandra) the 6600 didn't feel faster (or not much) than the 9700 Pro. Only worry would be that 9500 cards are getting on a bit (although my old one is still running HL2 very well) and reliability is questionable.
 
i will try and find them, exactly with games wanting all these new things the 6200 just seems to have a bit more.
 
I emailed Ed on this yesterday however in the UK £350 will not get you a fantastic gaming rig from scratch, as an upgrade you might manage it or from used components but with new bits you'd struggle.

Anyway I'm not a big games player but why not go straight for a 9800pro which retail around the £80 mark? coupled with a A64 3200+ (£110), a low/mid price skt 939 mobo (£50), a standard IDE hardrive (£35) & 512mb ram (£30) you can form the 'guts' of a relatively cheap gaming system for around the £310 mark. Add in a case, PSU and DVD Rom for about £40 then your looking at £350 for a reasonable system.
Keyboards, mice, CRT monitors, speakers etc can be picked up off ebay for literally nothing so I never factored them in.

BTW I took the prices off www.ebuyer.co.uk which I've found to be as cheap as anywhere.
 
Definitely on the gig of ram.

I agree the 9800 Pro would be a great choice, or you often find 9800SEs on ebay that are guaranteed to softmod artifact free to 9800 Pro/XT.

But you also want decent crt not a nasty 60hz curvy tube.
 
Exactly ram is cheap for the cheap stuff that is, i have just seen so many gd results with 6200 with unlocked piplines, they are basically 6600GT's after the overclock.
abe08 got 7855 3DMark03 points with a 6200 and that beats my old 9800XT and any 9700 there, i know this could be a extreme case of overclocking but i have seen loads produce this sort of standard, and then it has the extra of pixel shader 3.

*Edit*

Found 2 more results

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=913402

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1124129

Both these beat my 9800XT :rolleyes:
 
'Gaming System for £350? The son of one of our English readers wants to build a gaming PC for £350 - as I am not familiar with the English PC market, I thought perhaps some of our English readers might be willing to render an opinion on...' Ed
from the very frontestest pages on the site :)

I agree that the 6200s are awesome when unlocked, but I thought that almost all of the recent cards failed to do so. I think the earlier 6200s were cut down NV43s and the more recent ones including the unmoddable 6200 TCs are NV44s. On the other hand a lot of people sell cards in the classifieds and on ebay explicitly stating that they softmod ok, so looking for one of those could be a good option.
 
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Yeah well i know how hard it is in the UK, i have had a few 6200 and all the agp ones have been fine, its just the Pci-e ones i had trouble, (they are arwfull = NV44).

So i think in general the AGP one versions should be ok.
 
not bad price but, pretty slow components really, i mean wat HD is it going to be? and the chances are the mobo will be really cheap. I think you could build a AMD system for the same price too.
 
350 Pounds = 723 Dollars Canadian

1x AMD 3200+ S939 $204.41
1x ASUS A8N-VM/CSM $104.08
1x Antec SLK3000B Case $64.88
2x Samsung PC3200 512MB DDR400 $57.99/each $115.98
1x Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB SATA $135.55
1x Thermaltake TR2 W0062 420W PSU $69.66

Total $694.55


694.55 Can Dollars = 336.07 UK Pounds

Buy a used monitor and speakers. It will play any game you want. When you want better graphics save up and buy a PCI-E Gfx card. :santa:
 
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