PCA Forums

Hi guys,

I've been out of the game (literally, I'm still playing Quake 3 ) for quite a while. Yesterday my
backup system gave up on me, won¡'t boot anymore, I guess the motherboard is fried. So I'm looking for a replacement that's good enough to play some LAN gaming but doesn't have to be the absolute top spec.

I get a pretty good deal for the following base spec, I guess I mainly wonder whether the gfx card will hack it with Doom 3 and Halflife 2 and the likes:

1) Athlon 3.2 Ghz 64 bit processor
2) AMD Asus K8V-X S754 K8T800 board
3) Gerforce 5 FX5700 256 DDR
4) 1gig Kingston PC3200 ram

Will this do to play modern games with decent quality?
Is the video card OK or is this a budget card which will bottleneck?
Am I better off with a 1 gig ram stick or 2x512MB?
Does it make sense to buy a 654 bit processor?

Thanks for any tips and feedback. Good to see that some of the old crowd are still active here!

All the best

KC

think you need to upgrade the vid somewhat - the 5700x are slow - at least a ati 9600/9700 or i guess a nv 6600

what you have is a very capable rig otherwise that will handle any current game without a problem

as long as you are spending the money make sure that the vid card is direct x 9 fully capable

Thanks vw

Yeah, I did a lot of reading this afternoon and I guess the FX5700 won't do. Does anyone have any specific vid card/chip models they would recommend which can handle current games relatively at ease but are not the high end models which will cost me as much as the rest of the rig?

Cheers, I'm looking up ati 9600/9700 and nv 6600 now.

KC

Well, 9800 Pros can often be found for under $100.. That's what I'd get if I was going to be getting another one.

eGo

You can play just about any game with a lower end PC, ask your self how far you want to see/how much quality you want to see in the ground/how long you want to sit for load times. Mostly games depend on your video card for how they look.
For an internet and games rig get the best video card and about a 2gig CPU with 512 ram(cas2)
For CAD/adobe/folding get the fastest cpu you can afford 512/1gig ram and affordable video card

skip the 9X00 ati's and go with the x600 or x800

Im on 2gig athlon 512ram(both 400fsb) and a 9600xt and play battlefield 2, farcry,HL2 without any problems and with some of the settings at high(excluding farcry because it has higher requirments)

i would recommend a 6600 or up
or x800 to backup that nice cpu

ati. drivers are Much better.

Greg