Kev's new pc?
-
Andy
- Water Cooling Guru
- Posts: 824
- Joined: Mon Jun 16, 2003 9:56 am
- Location: The Sphincter of Somerset
Just strip XP to the bare essentials then Mix, I did aaaaages ago and don't have any problems at all with XP Pro.
To elaborate further on the mentioning of PCI Express, there is little point in bothering to go down that road yet, as it's still in its infancy and there's not a great deal of hardware that makes full use of it yet anyway.
That system you specced sounds fine, except go for the Radeon 9800 Pro as it's as cheaper than an Essex hooker on half price day at the moment, and is a bloody good card.
Personally, I'm avoiding getting a sound card (you honestly only need one if you have the room for at least a 5.1 surround set up through some decent PC speakers (not cheap) as the new nForce 4 motherboards are due out soon, which feature the new SoundStorm 2 chip (the sucessor to the rather good SoundStorm chip featuring on 2 of my mobos and indeed on Ed's (cept he dont use it as he's Mr Cash with his spangly sound card and speakers ;-) ) and I'm intedning to go get me a new system built by the end of the year.
If you do decide to invest in a sound card, get a Creative one, as they are the besterest.
To elaborate further on the mentioning of PCI Express, there is little point in bothering to go down that road yet, as it's still in its infancy and there's not a great deal of hardware that makes full use of it yet anyway.
That system you specced sounds fine, except go for the Radeon 9800 Pro as it's as cheaper than an Essex hooker on half price day at the moment, and is a bloody good card.
Personally, I'm avoiding getting a sound card (you honestly only need one if you have the room for at least a 5.1 surround set up through some decent PC speakers (not cheap) as the new nForce 4 motherboards are due out soon, which feature the new SoundStorm 2 chip (the sucessor to the rather good SoundStorm chip featuring on 2 of my mobos and indeed on Ed's (cept he dont use it as he's Mr Cash with his spangly sound card and speakers ;-) ) and I'm intedning to go get me a new system built by the end of the year.
If you do decide to invest in a sound card, get a Creative one, as they are the besterest.
i would get a soundcard if you want to get the most our of games, especially a new creative with advanced effects support such as EAX 4 etc. the difference in sound quality with my Audigy ZS is amazing. Oh and deffo get a 5.1 speaker set up for games, makes so much difference especially in shooters when you can hear the enemy walking up behind you 
all depends if gaming is your thing or not and as andy rightly says, if you have enough room for all the speakers.
with regard to pci express i wasn?t suggesting getting it now, more that it may be better to wait a while until it gains more popularity if future proofing a pc is of concern or a motherboard change will be on the cards sooner than you would think
all depends if gaming is your thing or not and as andy rightly says, if you have enough room for all the speakers.with regard to pci express i wasn?t suggesting getting it now, more that it may be better to wait a while until it gains more popularity if future proofing a pc is of concern or a motherboard change will be on the cards sooner than you would think
