Good deal or not?

I am getting this system to mainly run N99 and GPL and eventually N2000. I am pretty cpu illiterate and would like to know if this is a good deal for the most part..... AMD K6-2 350 3DNOW, Pentium Motherboard-ATX, 1 MB Pipeline Cache, 128 MB Ram, 8.4 GB HD, 8MB ATI RAGE PRO AGP VID CARD, 56.6 FAX/MODEM, and 36X CD Rom Drive for........$1,450. And I realize that I am probably going to get a 3D Card and that'll up the price some but is this a good deal and will it be able to run my new toys? :) BTW, I read this board often and was wondering what any of you would suggest I go with for the 3D Card. I really don't want a rendition based card and want the best I can afford. I would be willing to spend about $250 more for the 3D Card. Suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks, Ricky Whittenburg

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> I am getting this system to mainly run N99 and GPL and eventually N2000. > I am pretty cpu illiterate and would like to know if this is a good deal > for the most part..... > AMD K6-2 350 3DNOW, Pentium Motherboard-ATX, 1 MB Pipeline Cache, 128 MB > Ram, 8.4 GB HD, 8MB ATI RAGE PRO AGP VID CARD, 56.6 FAX/MODEM, and 36X > CD Rom Drive for........$1,450. > And I realize that I am probably going to get a 3D Card and that'll up > the price some but is this a good deal and will it be able to run my new > toys? :) > BTW, I read this board often and was wondering what any of you would > suggest I go with for the 3D Card. I really don't want a rendition based > card and want the best I can afford. I would be willing to spend about > $250 more for the 3D Card. Suggestions would be appreciated. > Thanks, > Ricky Whittenburg

By far the most power for the money is to be had in a custom computer with an Abit bh6 motherboard, an Intel Celeron 300a cpu overclocked to 374-450 and a Hercules Thriller 8 meg pci video card. Go to several local computer stores and get one that gaurantees their work. You should be able to get a system like that with 128 ram and a 17"monitor for less than the system you quoted. FYI papy sims including GPL were originally written with their code optimized for rendition video chips and 3dfx support was added after the fact, therefore if gpl and n2000 are your primary interests get the thriller, if however you wish future compatibility with the most games possible go for the 3dfx. A single 8 meg thriller will outperform two 3dfx 12 megs in sli, especially on systems under 400mhz. JM

>I am getting this system to mainly run N99 and GPL and eventually N2000. For these games, you almost absolutely need a Voodoo-based 3D card. More on this later... I might have suggested a Celeron 300a and overclocking it to 450 MHz. But not all can be overclocked, and it does take some confidence and CPU literacy to deal with it. I tend to think that getting a "Pentium MB", which I assume means a socket-7, presumably "super-socket-7" (for the 100 MHz bus) is a bit of a dead end. That's one of the reasons I might say Celeron with ABit BH6 MB (which could later take a Katmai). Otherwise, I think the AMD is a reasonable and inexpensive way to go, though I've never had one of their chips. I assume it comes with a 17" monitor at the price? Otherwise it strikes me as very high. Make sure the modem is not a "winmodem" which uses some of the windows features as a crutch (less done in hardware, or so I'm told). You might want to consider a DVD instead of a CD-rom. Though DVD has yet to take off in the computer world. Actually, if you aren't into movies, stick with the CD. BTW, DVD, for movies, requieres MPEG2 decoding. I think the ATI card does it. Otherwise you have two choices: a dedicated card (~$100) or software playback (which consumes most of your CPU). Note that most of the high speed CD drives "spin down" (ie, stop) after a while to conserve life. This can be annoying if the game then has to wait on it to spin up again. The reason I *still* have a 4x drive! But since most games only go to the CD for video scenes, not a big issue. The Rage Pro is a standard OEM vid card that often comes with computers, which doesn't mean it is a bad one. Just that there are a lot better that are *** oriented. I'd try to negotiate on getting it with any TNT-based card, or especially for you, a Banshee-based card. Both are 16MB, but more importantly, have fast 3D cores. Since N99 and GPL run best with 3dfx, you NEED a 3dfx-based card that supports GLide (3dfx's API). That means Voodoo2 (3D-only) or Banshee. If you stick with the ATI, get any 12MB Voodoo2 card (CL, Diamond, STB, Metabyte, Guillemot, Canopus, many others). They all more or less perform the same. Should be about $120 or so. If you go Banshee (pretty much the same companies have one), expect to pay about $100. Not bad, huh! If you get a TNT-based card, you'll still need a Voodoo2. If you really want to go balls-out, you can hook two Voodoo2's together in "SLI" (scan line interleave) mode for even faster performance. But I'd say you don't need it. Hope this helps!

> By far the most power for the money is to be had in a custom computer with >an Abit bh6 motherboard, an Intel Celeron 300a cpu overclocked to 374-450 >and a Hercules Thriller 8 meg pci video card. Go to several local computer >stores and get one that gaurantees their work. You should be able to get a >system like that with 128 ram and a 17"monitor for less than the system you >quoted. I agree with all the above, though as mentioned previously, I'd get a different video card. Well, in the case of GPL, 3dfx was included with the initial release. May have been "after the fact" but one shouldn't infer it was an afterthought or after release. N99 only supports 3dfx, not Rendition, not D3D, in Windows. This may be due to it running just fine with Rendition in DOS. But to me it indicates potentially no Rendition support for n2000. This is admittedly just my extrapolation, does anyone have real info? Agreed. And if one extrapolates further into the future, 3dfx's Glide may become obsolete too, leaving perhaps just D3D and OpenGL. I assume you meant in GPL against its Rendition support. In any D3D title, I think your statement would not nearly apply.

A few comments: 1. Make SURE the modem is not a WinModem. Trust me, you don't want one! 2. I use P2's, but I don't know enough about this processor to make any judgements here. 3. RAM is fine, HYD size is fine, CD-ROM is fine. Make sure they are UDMA. 4. Wait and see if you can get the ATI Rage Fury. Current reports have it looking pretty sweet. 5. If the above pans out, you won't _need_ another 3D board :) 6. If you do need 3dfx, the VooDoo II will do nicely. 7. Make sure the manufacturer has left you empty PCI slots for current and future needs. I personally feel that 4, plus AGP is the bare minimum these days. -Larry

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> I am getting this system to mainly run N99 and GPL and eventually N2000. > I am pretty cpu illiterate and would like to know if this is a good deal > for the most part..... > AMD K6-2 350 3DNOW, Pentium Motherboard-ATX, 1 MB Pipeline Cache, 128 MB > Ram, 8.4 GB HD, 8MB ATI RAGE PRO AGP VID CARD, 56.6 FAX/MODEM, and 36X > CD Rom Drive for........$1,450. > And I realize that I am probably going to get a 3D Card and that'll up > the price some but is this a good deal and will it be able to run my new > toys? :) > BTW, I read this board often and was wondering what any of you would > suggest I go with for the 3D Card. I really don't want a rendition based > card and want the best I can afford. I would be willing to spend about > $250 more for the 3D Card. Suggestions would be appreciated. > Thanks, > Ricky Whittenburg

Well, it _is_ great for movies if properly equipped, and this is a good question to ask. Does it have the required decoder card? This may be part of the ATI board, as ATI does neat things like this. -Larry > You might want to consider a DVD instead of a CD-rom. Though DVD has yet to > take off in the computer world.