My "best" computer is starting to melt down and it is getting a little old now.

So I was look for something around 600-750 range. How does this one look?
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=83-102-612&DEPA=0

well, you'll want to add another 512 of ram and that video card is rather underpowered...if you already have a superior video card, may as well drop the card on it and save a hundred bucks. Other than that...looks groovy.

If you're not a DIYer, then I'm with Aidon. The video board it has sucks. I'm fairly sure it's not even a DX9 board. And that will make a huge difference in how any game you have plays.

But, on the RAM, 512 is ok. you'd get a small boost in game performance (mostly zoning) by going to 1GB, but everything should be fairly snappy at 512.

I have a Radeon 9800 something or other, I can just plop it into this machine. Assuming the Radeon is better. I'm just playing City of Heroes right now, not EQ2 so I don't really need top end Video. I might just take that video card anyway, it's probably better than what I have in my other machine.

Hehe, that's the same video card as my laptop. Eww.

Definitely plop the 9800 in, it should be *way* faster.

Looks pretty solid.

Looks like a good budget system, if you put in a decent video card.

Yep. The 3 things I would consider upgrading would be the RAM, the Vid Card and possibly throwing a DVD burner in it seeing as they are down under $100 now.

EDIT:

Just noticed thats a 300W power supply. If its a high quality supply from a well known manufacturer they you might be ok with that. If not, I would add it to my list of possible upgrades needed.

Hey Panamah, I'm new here, so nice to meet ya. Anyway, I've been very happy with http://www.cyberpowerinc.com

Use their AMD configurator and you can customize a system to your heart's content. The pricing is normally very good and is competitive if not better than newegg. Good luck with your PC purchase.

Thanks Logain! Have you ever had to return anything? Is their return policy decent?

Here's what I think I might get: http://www.cyberpowersystem.com/highendsystem/ultra6000.asp?v=d#configurator_top

Actually... it looked really good, so I ordered it. :p Thanks for the tip!

Cool! Hope you enjoy it!

Order me one!

Me too! Choose the "canoe" shipping option :D

Did you make any mods to the spec?

Not much, just chose a blue case and blue mouse. It'll really stand out in the sea of beige and silver that is my current assortment of PCs. Of course, I blew my budget by 100 or so bucks, but oh well!

I also think this is a pretty darn nice machine except for the Vid card.

The FX5200 is not a very good card. Not sure about for CoH but for EQ its lacking. I have one in my second box.

I have a Radeon 9800 something or other, I can just plop it into this machine. Assuming the Radeon is better. I'm just playing City of Heroes right now, not EQ2 so I don't really need top end Video. I might just take that video card anyway, it's probably better than what I have in my other machine. Are you still playing on the virtue server Panamah? I recently reactivated my CoH account for a month to stave off burnout in EQ2 (playing it way too much).

Let us know how it turns out =)

No, I've never been on Virtue. I'm on Freedom!

I'll let you know how the system is!

Question for you all, my new system is going to have a writeable optical drive that supports these formats for writing:

Transfer Rates: Write CD-RW: 24x, 16x, 10x, 8x, 4x
CD-R: 40x , 32x, 24x, 16x, 8x, 4x
DVD+R: 16x, 8x, 4x, 2.4x, DVD+RW: 4x, 2.4x
DVD-R: 8x, 4x, 2x, DVD-RW: 4x, 2x, 1x
DVD-RAM: 5x, 3x, 2x

Which format and what sort of media would be the best (cheapest, highest density) for doing backups?

Hey Panamah, it's me again. I'm glad I could help you find a new PC! I don't have an opinion on backup media but I do have a site to use in order to find compatible media for your home DVD player(s).

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers

which, though a little cluttered, can give you good info on what media works best on a particular DVD player.

The DVD +/- battle reminds me a little of the VHS/Betamax days.

Good Luck!

Thanks again, Logain! You're definitely the man (I'm assuming) with all the good links!

-R seems to be the norm for backups

Panamah, your current Ati 9800 is much better than an FX5200.

The newly spec'd system, from the web site Logain provided, has a "NVIDIA Geforce 6600 256MB 16X PCI EXPRESS VIDEO CARD ". How's that compare?

Well 6600 is better, not for a HUGE gap but it is better. I would go for it if you have the money.

Oh yea and you have a PCI Express board, so yea you can't really use your 9800 on it :(
6600 is fine, but if you happen to find any Geforce 6800 "plain or vanilla" (as in non-GT nor pro) in stock, that would be a better buy than a 6600 and will last a bit longer. But they are almost impossible to find and most sites have them out of stock.... so anyway a 6600 is good enough :)

The newly spec'd system, from the web site Logain provided, has a "NVIDIA Geforce 6600 256MB 16X PCI EXPRESS VIDEO CARD ". How's that compare?

The best place to look at hardware performance is Tom's Hardware.
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041222/vga_charts-03.html

The above is a posting on performance charateristics of vid cards. I used to buy the cheapest possible card and upgrade it every 6 months. For the same cost I could have bought a top end vid card. One option is to take your old vid card and reuse it in your new system. If you do - do that you need to verify that your mo bo can take your current vid card. This may limit your future choices in vid cards such as PCI express.

I recently posted that I rebuilt my machine. The machine I had before was purchased from cypberpower. I thought they gave the best price relative to all/most other computer vendors. I never returned a part but I did call for technical assistance. When I called, the phone operator spoke a butchered oriental-english. This dissuaded me from purchasing anything more from cp.

Recently, I replaced parts out of this machine and added parts from newegg. I thought newegg offered a very professional experience.

For a game machine, I would go with 1 gig of memory speced for that board. That is slower memory speed can be placed in a faster mo bo but I would not. I would buy the fastest memory for that mo bo.

If you play intense 3d vid games, you need the fastest vid card you can afford and I would tend toward a card with greater memory. I have a FX5500 with 256meg or memory. I stoped playing the intense 3d games and have started playing strategy games. My card is sufficient for what I use it for but video intense games require a better vid card.

when I look for parts or systems, I start on cnet.
http://reviews.cnet.com/Desktops/4502-3118_7-0.html?tag=dir.ath64&orderby=&qt=&100021id=&1000036id=&500039id=&500035id=11894&500040id=&500053id=&500076id=&500016id=&500140id=

I wanted to add some thoughts about dvd and cd's.

CD's can be copied for personal back-up copies. -> in the US. Technology seems to be moving away from CDs and toward DVD. DVD offers a more dense storage format.

DVD's can not be copied without violating a patented software program which is used to prevent copying. This sofware program looks for blank data "bad sectors" on the DVD. The instructions to use the data are written into this program and to access information such as start and stop points and skip points.

There is a new DVD tech being developed which is supposed to be more secure but this who offer DVD decoders say that there is no way to prevent copying through software alone. This may bring about hardware protections but that would require gov't interference to have work.

When looking for a dvd/cd burner, look at the dvd write/rewrite speeds. This is where the expense will come in. If what you want is a back up of data, I would look at dvd write media. Rewrite media works on a different principal and can go bad over time.

The newly spec'd system, from the web site Logain provided, has a "NVIDIA Geforce 6600 256MB 16X PCI EXPRESS VIDEO CARD ". How's that compare?I doubt a 9800 -> 6600 "upgrade" is worth it. If you're going to upgrade, the 6800GT (not plain, not Ultra) is your best bet. PCI-E versions of it will be about $50 more than AGP verions.

On the DVD writer, it really doesn't matter how you write since virtually every drive will read both. I use -R.

Thanks guys, but upgrades like that would blow my budget out of the water! I'm not really upgrading my 9800, just want a card that isn't significantly worse than it is. I'll probably stick the 9800 in another machine. And stick it's card in yet another machine... god, I have to many has-been computers!

My new system arrived! I set it up and it is a VAST improvement over the old one on CoH. I'm not sure why. The old one was also a 1.8ghz chip has a Radeon 9800 ATI video. Granted the new one is a 64b processor, but I doubt the game runs in 64bit mode. Same amount of RAM.

Hmmm...

And the case is really funky looking. :D

If you're old 1.8Ghz chip was intel, I would expect to see a vast improvement especially in games. AMD has been better at games than intel for a long time. If you got an AMD 64 3000+, you should be expecting similar to better performance than you would see on an intel 3Ghz PC. The chip in your system also has the memory controller on the CPU itself, so it handles RAM much faster than your old PC on top of the fact that your new RAM is faster.

As for the 64bit thing, You are probably not using that feature at the moment. To benefit from that part you would need a 64-bit OS and apps written for it. Windows XP 64bit edition is due out soon, but, its driver support is still weak at the moment and there are only a handful of games that have or are working on a 64-bit edition at the moment. It will be a while before you see any real benefits on that front. But, you'll be ready for it.

Enjoy your new PC. The 3000+ is a great chip I have one in my media center and it rocks.

I'm an AMD girl! But yeah, my old system was probably 2 years old which is like 100 years in human years. :D Let me tell you, the old system was running about as fast as someone 100 years old...