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Of course, I'm the silly bugger who spent a full minute in Morrowind walking around a freshly dead alit trying to figure out where the eyes were. And realising that, during battle, I had been looking the beast straight in the nostril.
Quake2Evolved: http://www.quake2evolved.com/files.htm
Make sure to also get Open AL Audio Files which are downloadable from that same page as they are required for sound. Covered in blood? Situated just above their mouth?
Ah - no. Those are "stabby things", not "listeny things". 3 year old PCs suck. So here's what I'm planning on getting, without overclocking anything. I'm on a budget,around $1,000.00 ~ $1,200.00.
ANY advice/comments that could help me out tweaking parts and stuff is appreciated! It's possible to drop the HDD, I have an 80GB Ultra ATA-100 already, but getting low on space right now, and just wanted more. It might also be possible to drop the monitor, I'm not sure. Once I have the following built, I'm planning on donating my current one to my mom/sister. OK, here's what I'm checking out for my PC so far: CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice - $154.00 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103535 MOBO: ASUS A8N5X Socket 939 - $79.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131569 MEMORY: Corsair XMS 1GB(2x 512MB) DDR SDRAM - $95.00 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145449 CASE: Antec LifeStyle SONATA II Piano Black, 450 Watts - $89.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129155 GPU: Sapphire X1800XT 512 MB PCI-Express x16 - $309.00 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102697 HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200 200GB IDE ULTRA ATA-100 - $119.00 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148036 SOUND: Cannibalize my current sound card. MONITOR: SONY WHITE 17" (16" VIEWABLE) 1600x1200 CRT - $120.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824006007 Total: $967.97 (Unless I suck at math) Any sagely advice? Looks pretty good, however I have a few questions:
1) Why are you going with ATI over NVIDIA? I am pretty sure most in #tf would argue that overall, NVIDIA is the better choice. 2) Why IDE and not SATA? 3) You don't specifically mention CPU cooling, are you going with stock AMD HSF? If so, spend 6$ on a Zalman Fanmate (for manually adjusting CPU fan speed) and it have have a great impact on your sanity. 1.) I actually prefer ATI over NVIDIA. Besides, X1900XTX's, from what I read, are the best cards out now, and X1800XTs aren't too bad either. Does NVIDIA's cards still come with that huge fan that takes up an extra slot?
2.) You may have noticed the mobo is $79.99. That has something to do with it. I could up the mobo to something that supports SATA, but it'd prolly cost more. 3.) Yeah my current CPU-fan has a dial to adjust the speed, it's really nifty. I'll look into it. As your estimated spend is less than your budget, and everyone knows that you should never, ever come in under budget(!), I would recommend looking at the latest LCD screens. The recent improvements are dramatic and the CRT over LCD argument is losing ground fast.
I have a 4ms response 19" 4:3 LCD and have no problems with games when I play at the default resolution of 1280 x 1024. I could have bought a 2ms response screen for an extra $50 but I am just too tight fisted. The extra screen size is such an advantage whether you are using spreadsheets, mapping, surfin' the net or whatever. And the extra desktop space means more room for coffee, beer, books, magazines, DVDs etc; in fact the extra room means space for a dual monitor system using the old CRT as a second screen :-). So I have Maya open on the LCD and Maya tutorials open on the CRT. Nice. But I am still useless at modelling. Monitor size: whether you do CRT or LCD, 17" is really small. consider getting a 19" or 20". the extra viewing area is really awesome when you're mapping or really doing anything where you need to have tools open and such. it makes using 1280x1024 or 16x12 a lot easier on the eyes too in windows because text and such will be bigger (although you *can* up the font size manually).
Ram: Consider getting 2GB? i have 1gb, and i run out of ram *all* the time. :\ having tons of ram really helps when you're working on a project where you need many different applications open at once. getting 2 1gb sticks could be expensive though, so if you can't get the ram and monitor, get the monitor. I agree with necros. My 4:3 19" LCD gives a 15" x 12" viewing screen. My 17" 4:3 CRT gives a 11" x 8.25" viewing screen.
In practical terms that means the Func_MsgBoard Forum page shows down to the Quake Anniversary thread on the 17" CRT (@ 1024)but down to Event Horizonon the 19" CRT (@ 1280); with text set to 'normal' scale. Being able to get more tools on screen for applications is a real boon. This screen dump taken a couple of minutes ago may give an indication (on the other hand it might not!) http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/646/19lcd0fo.jpg I guess I'm saying, go 19", you will appreciate the difference. is always something to look forward too. I notice you use the default Windows XP display design. When I got my new machine, the first thing I did was switch it to a Windows 98 appearance (for now). I really dislike the XP style because it has a certain toyish quality like the VW Beetle.
I want a display design worthy of a SuperVillian, not a too hip Japanese teen girl. I am using an AsRock 939Dual-SATA2 motherboard myself. It costs LESS than 79,99$ AND it supports both IDE and SATA... AND it supports both AGP and PCI-E videocards. Look into it.
I hate everyting that has to do with anything. Even MS Paint has a more user friendly UI, you bearded fatlumps.
rofl Yeah, I'd say go 19" LCD or 20" CRT (about equivalent screen space I think) if you can. I definitely prefer LCD these days, as long as the response time is very good.
Also, try using your motherboard's onboard sound - you may find it is more than adequete for your needs and you don't need to bother using your old sound card (unless its some spanky one you paid big bucks for, in which case ignore what I said). BTW while SATA is theoretically, potentially, faster than IDE, the sad reality is we're limited by current HDD technology rater than available bandwith - so SATA is not substantially faster, if at all. Having said that the cables are smaller and there's no channel sharing, so its a tiny bit "nicer" if nothing else. Hardly necessary, though. The new system I built just over a month ago is actually based on the Asus A85NX you were looking at. Overall it's a very good board for the price, especially since most of the more expensive boards I looked at didn't have any extra features that were useful to me. It actually DOES have 4 SATA connectors if you wanted to go that way with your storage. As Fribbles said though, SATA doesn't gain you much at the moment since the actual drives aren't any faster... However, if you're going to be brave and do a striped RAID array or something then there's potential for a more noticable speedup. Obviously you need to cough up for two SATA HDDs for that though. I haven't bothered.
The onboard sound is basically AC97, which is OK but unspectacular, and doesn't really get on well with some games - notably Dawn of War and Quake 4. Unless your existing card is old enough that it doesn't do 5.1/7.1/whatever it will probably be better than the onboard. Personally, I'm going to be ordering an Audigy 2 or something now that the credit card bill for upgrade phase one is paid off. NewEgg has AsRock 939Dual-SATA2 for 66,99$: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813157081 It has both SATA and IDE, both AGP and PCI-E, 4 slots for RAM and a passively cooled northbridge.
I got a used 19'' Sony CRT, people change to "hip" LCD:s and you can get one quite cheap. It's very good for mapping to have a bigger screen. It's not as sharp as an LCD but it's pretty good, if you don't try to have too high resolution. Anyway, if you get a CRT, don't get a shadow mask one, but a trinitron/diamondtron grille thingy.
It's also physically big. Do you have a lot of space on your desk / in the computer room? That might make the decision.
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