Laugh at these Specs - CSS 9fps FTW!

[GLeN]

Hey this being my first post I want to introduce myself, well I'm the stereotype of the budget gamer, never willing to let go of any money for new parts and likes to keep hardware till they fall to pieces. Well lately I got back into playing cs,css and dod and I relised how crap my pc is. Even with all the settings down I still lag with 9fps when playing CSS. This pc is PackardBell IMEDIA 1307. So I'm thinking off upgrading so I can play mods like Insurgency and games like BF2. Is it worth adding parts onto this, or better to build a whole new pc? I been looking at newegg.com but I am confused by all the options, is any one willing to explain to me some things?

 

[psychomage343]

no, not at all you'd be far better off just buying a completely new rig, welcome to the forums by the way

 

[panchoman]

no, not at all you'd be far better off just buying a completely new rig, welcome to the forums by the way

ditto.

welcome to the forums

 

[GLeN]

Hey thanks guys. So do you mean go into a store like pc world or completely start from scratch, oh and to stop me hassling yous Any up to date component guides?

 

[panchoman]

newegg.com

if you give us a budget and what you want the computer to be for, a lot of are good at building you a quick system on newegg in like 5 mins

 

[psychomage343]

well one of the best things you can do is read reviews on current hardware, there is no guide that says you should do and buy specific stuff, just get what you can and fit it into current butdget, such as intel chips are incredibly fast low priced and reliable, so read some reviews find a chip that fits your budget then get a motherboard, check out the other users on the forum or our casemod gallery and see what others are using, and just go from there, to put a decent up to date rig together try and put aside anywhere between 1000-1500 to build it that'll get you a decent rig, i've got a 4600x2 evga mainboard 2 gigs of corsair and an 8800gts that all cost me in total about 400 bucks from a friend, so with a grand you can do much better then that

 

[niko084]

Well what resolution are you playing in?

My little brother played CS:S on a 9200 128mb card and gets a nice smooth 40-50fps on low settings 1280x1024...

 

[GLeN]

Well what resolution are you playing in?

My little brother played CS:S on a 9200 128mb card and gets a nice smooth 40-50fps on low settings 1280x1024...

800x600 and 1024x784 around the same +/- a few fps's


Oh back to the comp, I'm sure your talking about 1000$ so thats 500£ Ill be using about 200-350£ because I'm saving money to go to Minnesota for 2 months in summer time , so thats 400-700 $. Im really looking for a base that I can build off and add to in the future, but I do want it to play some current games at more than 20fps, so it doesn't have to max settings crysis

Do you think that newegg posts to Northern Ireland

Thanks your all a great help

 

[rangerone766]

if all you want is bf2 and better css performance. you can just get a better gpu.

depending on your budget a radeon 9700 or 9800 will play those games decently well.

if your wanting to play any of this years games, unfortunatly you should just get a new system.

build it or buy it?

well that depends what you want. if you just want to surf the net and a little gameing here and there. it would probably be cheaper to buy a pre-built system and a mid grade graphix card.

if you want a high end machine, buy the parts and build it yourself. depending how much of your current rig's parts you can reuse that may be the best option.

 

[niko084]

Newegg does not ship to Europe

 

[GLeN]

if all you want is bf2 and better css performance. you can just get a better gpu.

depending on your budget a radeon 9700 or 9800 will play those games decently well.

if your wanting to play any of this years games, unfortunatly you should just get a new system.

build it or buy it?

well that depends what you want. if you just want to surf the net and a little gameing here and there. it would probably be cheaper to buy a pre-built system and a mid grade graphix card.

if you want a high end machine, buy the parts and build it yourself. depending how much of your current rig's parts you can reuse that may be the best option.

So you think a better gfx card and maybe some ram will let me play bf2 css and cod at good levels?

Oh one thing i forgot to mention, when i power it up in the morning, the computer doesnt go straight on, it sorta whistles lol then after a while it boots up and then crashes, it does this 3 times then loads up. it said chkdisk scanning for a lot of boots.

 

[niko084]

So you think a better gfx card and maybe some ram will let me play bf2 css and cod at good levels?

Oh one thing i forgot to mention, when i power it up in the morning, the computer doesnt go straight on, it sorta whistles lol then after a while it boots up and then crashes, it does this 3 times then loads up. it said chkdisk scanning for a lot of boots.

Sounds like you have a bad capacitor or fan... Probably either your mainboard or in your power supply... Doesn't sound too good, I would also strongly recommend re-setting up your system if its crashing, if its pretty messed up that could easily explain your complete lack of performance also...

 

[vega22]

try starting at scan.co.uk ot ebuyer or dabs, all uk and should deliver to N.I


keep your current harddrives and disk drives and get a new mobo, ram, cpu, case. power supply and gpu.

you could easy drop a grand on that but if your after a cheap sollution, somthing like this would do;

mobo £55
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=594521

cpu £55
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=632059

ram £45
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=255300

gpu £90
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=673540

psu £55
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=664337

£300 without a case, now what i like you may not and vice versa so...

then it would also give you the option to upgrade further in the future with a better cpu/gou and add more ram if you wanted

thats the cheap option, spend a bit more and get a e4xxx/e6xxx with a p35 mobo and some ballistix ram and you could even do some ocing for some free performance.

 

[Wile E]

800x600 and 1024x784 around the same +/- a few fps's


Oh back to the comp, I'm sure your talking about 1000$ so thats 500£ Ill be using about 200-350£ because I'm saving money to go to Minnesota for 2 months in summer time , so thats 400-700 $. Im really looking for a base that I can build off and add to in the future, but I do want it to play some current games at more than 20fps, so it doesn't have to max settings crysis

Do you think that newegg posts to Northern Ireland

Thanks your all a great help

How badly do you want to upgrade? Do you have to upgrade as soon as possible. If you wait until your 2mo visit to the States, your money would go much further over here.

 

[vega22]

How badly do you want to upgrade? Do you have to upgrade as soon as possible. If you wait until your 2mo visit to the States, your money would go much further over here.

thats a vgood point but you will lose you warrenty once the parts leave the states.

pro/con your choice.

 

[intel igent]

thats a vgood point but you will lose you warrenty once the parts leave the states.

pro/con your choice.

he would only lose the warranty from the seller? not the manufacturer?

could be wrong

good idea Wile E

 

[Basard]

Dude, I could tell you the whole story of my cheapness with upgrading my pc. And I will. It started out when my mom gave me the AthlonXP 2500+ 3 years ago. I never have enough money to upgrade my pc worth a damn, so I did it in small pieces. I searched for super deals at newegg basically, with good discounts and free shipping. This is a really slow process but it depends on your level of cheapness I guess. Look at my specs, man, this is a pretty crappy ass computer, relatively speaking, but I can still play oblivion and Half-Life 2 and Titan Quest, all at very playable framerates with almost maxed settings. No HDR

First you get yourself a GOOD, NAME BRAND, power supply, about 550-650 Watts, whatever you can afford. Get one with all the cables required for future upgrades and the like. Second (you can do this first if you want) get a nice cheap case, the RC-690 from Coolermaster is a pretty snazzy case for the money, 65 bucks I think. You can cram about 6 120mm fans in it, and it looks pretty cool, no window on the side panel, so people cant see your cheapness, and lack of cable management (cheap people are messy or is that just potheads?) either, I like that. You can probably just use your old hard drive in your new computer, so we'll skip that. Maybe keep the CD-ROMs, if they don't look too "packard bell-ish". When you said "packard bell" I just had to help you out dude. Now that you have a power supply, and case, you probrbly have your old packard-bell crap all hooked up in there and you want to get it out of there, so you need to get a nice spankin new PCI-E motherboard, with Socket AM2, cuz us cheap asses love hell out of AMD, right? amen. Pretty much any cheap NAME BRAND motherboard will do, cuz these guys usually have good warranties that go past neweggs warrantys. And if your cheap, ya. Try to get a motherboard with a new chipset so it will support the new phenoms, so you can buy one of them in 2 years when prices come down enough for us to afford, lol. If you need good cheap ram, get WINTEC AMPO, I heard somwhere that that is pretty good ram, and its damn cheap. If you don't wanna stoop that low for ram, get some decently timed G.skill for like 85 bucks on sale at newegg maybe. As for video cards, it really does pay to do a LOT of research before you buy one, you could pay almost twice as much for a card that "looks" like its supposed to be better, they (dell, packard bell.... etc) try to trick us with the cool sounding "Geforce 7300LE" BLAZING FAST!!! lol... or even worse "Geforce 6150" ooooo! that sounds good! But if you don't know a lot about video cards... yeah its confusing as hell, and by the way those chipsets suck. Cheap gamers like video cards that are something like 100-150 bucks, right? So get yourself an 8600GT, for 100 bucks, on sale of course, with free shipping, or an 8600GTS, I love AMD, but I'm sorry, the 2400, and 2600's suck really bad ass-turn eye candy on (4xAA, High Res) and watch your computer explode... and, despite my best prayers, no drivers will save them. Ive seen the 8600GT in action on an X2 3800+, its pretty slick. Also I've seen a 7950 on the same CPU and it is even better. You can get a 7950GT probably for 150 bucks now, but no DX10, and that doesn't help us perpetuate this long cycle of cheap ass upgrading that can go on forever. Where am I? I think that is it. Well, the CPU of course, whatever you can afford. The 5200+ and up all have 2MB of total L2 Cache. I've seen this CPU run "Two Worlds" on a 7950GT OC, godly. But you can get a 4000+ for 60 bucks, free shipping, the 5200+ runs 129, compare this to anything intel offers for 129 bucks.... The E4400, lol. wow. Unless your a SERIOUS overclocker, they aren't worth it, besides good coolers cost money, and we don't have that crap. Then you've gotta get a mobo with good overclocking options... and, well, those are about 150 bucks or 250 bucks sometimes. A good NON-sli motherboard for overclocking, is the Biostar Teforce 550, I almost cried when I saw this thing on newegg, OPEN BOX for 47 FRIGGAN DOLLARS man. But I don't have 47 bucks its rent week. WOW, what a bitchin deal. ITS STILL THERE BUY IT NOWWWWWWW!!! its 39 bucks... http://forums.techpowerup.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=511557
Wow. Dude this motherboard will take a brisbane 4000+ to like 2.6 Ghz on stock cooling easy. Thats like buying a 5000+ man, what are you waiting for?

If you want to be a cheap ass like me, you've gotta put forth a lot of effort in your search for the following: name brand stuff, future upgradeability, discounts, free shipping, combo deals... etc. It takes a lot of looking around but you find the deals and get em with free shipping, you can perpetuate this string of upgrades forever and your wallet never really feels it, do it in $100 chunks or something.

 

[FatForester]

Man... when I saw how long that comment was, I didn't even bother reading. But yea, Willie E had a good point, just wait til you come to the states. When you get here the parts will be cheaper, AND there should be plenty of goodies out in 2 months that aren't right now. Regardless if you were visiting the US or not I'd suggest waiting, so that seems like a pretty good plan.

 

[GLeN]

This forum has got it all, great responses with no one saying "GET IT CAUSE IT LOOKS COOL!!" You are all legends!! Especially Basard who is more enthusiastic than me about stretching money .

I'll give it a thought whether to upgrade now or wait till I come to the US, Wile E that idea is great, I'm wondering is it worth the wait how much cheaper would it be? Or maybe for Christmas I could buy stuff of newegg and get it delivered to my families house in the us and their present to me is to post it over !!

Marsey99 thanks for the full kit option, i love how its future upgradeable(imo best feature of any computer)

So ill give it a think, maybe put the money to the side before I go looking for stuff, and by the time i get the money the hardware would most likely depreciated in price YAY!!

So how much money do you think I should put aside before considering upgrading?

Sorry for dragging this topic on guys