Wrong processor?

ComplexP

spakkker wrote: »

Hi bevan , I see you've ended up ordering just about what I suggested in post #66.
You could have kept using your old hard/drive but you would have to reinstall windows because the cpu and m/board chipsets are so different.
Novatech are being very cagey about the m/board- doesn't say what the onboard graphics are or the make - you need gma 3*** type or better ,which it probably has.
You may need a couple of sata cables -try and find out if the case includes any -they usually come with the m/b - to connect dvd and h/drive.
That graphics card is hardly better than onboard graphics - I've got one as you can see on the link below, I bought a hd4670 from novatech early this year for 50 odd quid. Much better but I don't game and my son-in law has it, see this chart
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2118-7.html
Also this is my best o/clock -you'll see I have 8400 card not much better than 9200 in the chart , I run mine at 3.6 24/7 it's normal is 2.5 http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=553406
Don't worry about 64 bit- a lot of stuff won't work and the fact that it can read more memory is no big deal.
Modern intel cpu work different to old ~4yr~cpu which had gone down a dead-end route ,a p4 3ghz would be left for dead by a 1.6 dual core ,which is obsolete already, this new celeron is just a bonus ,better performance ,same old price,or cheaper.
Google is your friend!

Looking at that graphics card chart, it appears that the Geforce 7800 GTX is still several places above the 8400GS even though it's now over 3 years old. I used to own a 7800 GTX before buying a new machine a few months back and it was really very good, quite capable of running Doom 3 in high settings at constant 60fps.



I've seen these cards second hand on ebay for about £30. Worth thinking about or do you reckon it's going to struggle with the later version of Direct X and such?

bevan840

Hi spakkker and complex

I haven't gone for an expensive graphics card as I was budgetting for £200 for the whole thing, I will be upgrading the graphics card eventually, but only when I can afford it, at the moment all I need is the components to make it work. Even those components I have already purchased took me over the £200 budget but luckily I did underbudget

With this being my first computer I am hoping one day to build my ultimate pc, with excellent everything But I'm going to start small and then build up to it, maybe this could be my starting block and I just upgrade this as I go Is it easy to move things from case to case? Just in case I want to get a nice flashy one when I can afford it, would I be able to move the components from that case to the newer one?

I hope you've recovered from choking complex What sort of computer do you have? and how much did it cost?

JasX

bevan840 wrote: »

I'm looking at Windows 7, compared to when I had to buy XP because the copy the neighbour put on mine kept crashing, I bought XP for £120-£150 I think, and Windows 7 is £80 on novatech and £90 on ebuyer!! And I can get cashback from both!! :rotfl:

what? you have to tell me who'ss still doing cashback ofrom ebuyer I get heaps of stuff from there :mad:

ebuyer do the home premium 'upgrade' version for £65 and initial reports are this is fine for installation on a blank drive as the vista loophole still works among with a new one thats even quicker:

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp

*PS will be trying this myself over the weekend so will report back how well it works

ComplexP wrote: »

Looking at that graphics card chart, it appears that the Geforce 7800 GTX is still several places above the 8400GS even though it's now over 3 years old. I used to own a 7800 GTX before buying a new machine a few months back and it was really very good, quite capable of running Doom 3 in high settings at constant 60fps.

I used to own a GTX7800 too and it was indeed an excellent card -don't buy 2nd hand cards that are too old tho... they do die eventually

ComplexP

Hi Bevan

I completely understand why you've gone for the card you have, I was just interested that a 3 year old card can still way outperform a new one and cost about the same second hand.

You can move everything to a flashy new case as long as it's at least the same size as the old one.

I bought my computer about 6 months ago and it cost me just over £1000. But this didn't include a monitor because I already had one. This is what I got:

Antec Three Hundred Mini Tower Case
ASUS P6T Motherboard
Intel Core i7 920 (overclocked to 3.7GHz)
6GB DDR3 RAM
1TB HDD (2 x Western Digital 500GB drives)
ATI Radeon HD 4870x2 Graphics Card
DVD Re-Writer
TV Card

I installed Vista Ultimate (64 bit) but I already owned that so it didn't factor into the cost.

This machine is seriously fast and you probably couldn't buy it from a normal shop. A custom build online store like Alienware would probably charge around £2000 for a similar setup.

ComplexP

JasX wrote: »

I used to own a GTX7800 too and it was indeed an excellent card -don't buy 2nd hand cards that are too old tho... they do die eventually

More's the pity because some of those older cards are still capable of leaving the modern budget models in the dust when it comes to gaming performance.

It's a bit like buying an old supercar, it may be fun but you'll spend most of your time at the side of the road in a cloud of steam :rotfl:

bevan840

JasX wrote: »

what? you have to tell me who'ss still doing cashback ofrom ebuyer I get heaps of stuff from there :mad:

*PS will be trying this myself over the weekend so will report back how well it works

It was working on topcashback, but I've just checked and they've stopped it now, !!!!!!, used to use them for RAM but now that I've found novatech things are a little cheaper there at the moment

I am interested in what happens with the install, but I think I would have to buy the full package as I don't have the XP disc

Is overclocking difficult? I keep hearing (reading) about it

davetrousers

No need to overclock.

ComplexP

bevan840 wrote: »

Is overclocking difficult? I keep hearing (reading) about it

It basically means going into the bios and changing the frequency that your processor runs at. You then need to adjust the voltage of your processor to account for the faster speeds. This is usually a trial and error thing.

Your processor will have a maximum rated voltage that it can handle without getting too hot and cheaper processors don't have much room improvement.

The whole process can be very fiddly and quite dangerous if you don't know what you're doing as you could end physically damaging the processor.

To be honest it's really only something that should be done on high end machines that are pushing the boundaries of performance. On anything less you wouldn't see much of a difference for a lot of hard work and risk.

Best to avoid for now I think

bevan840

Definitely!!!! I'll definitely leave that part to the experts!

ComplexP

The machine I bought has an i7 920 processor in it and these are brilliant for overclocking but they're also quite expensive. But even I didn't do the overclocking myself; I got my brother to do it for me because he's done it a few times before and even then it took us several hours to find the perfect balance of speed and stability.

Get the voltage slightly wrong and your computer will blue screen and it's back to the drawing board

When you finally build your dream machine many moons from now we will talk more of overclocking my young padawan