Spring RTS Engine

I want:
Anything, and i mean anything which is better than a GeForce FX5200
Budget 80-110 GBP would be nice (inc VAT of course)

I have a Dell Dimension 4600:

with
P4 3Ghz HT processor
1 GB DDR RAM (i think its DDR2 or something)
120 GB HD
17" Screen (60 FPS limit IIRC and the resolution is 1024*768)
Some shitty sound card (not like i have surround sound lol)
GeForce FX5600

Now...
for starters: Is this processor fast enough? Pentium D is pretty damn cheap atm!
Can i get another cheap gig or so of RAM for supcom? cheap! cheap!!!
What sort of card should i get? PCI? AGP? Got both slots btw
WTF is a mobo and is mine good enough?
And...is it worth upgrading rather than getting a new PC?

Just thought i'd post it here coz the spring community is full of Genii :)

Oh and i know my PC is like 3 years old :D Still think that its good enough IMO though

Your processor is fine, it's the same kind I've got. You can probably overclock it by about 10-20% if you have the side of your case off. 100% stability, at least for me. But you WILL need the side of the case off, since these Penium 4 3+ ghz buggers practically melt down when idling at their stock speeds when you've got the case on.

You've got plenty of RAM, Supcom won't possibly demand more than that since it would prevent a large amount of the player base from using it.

120 GB is plenty for virtually anything, although a backup/archive hard drive is always an asset.

You won't get a better monitor in your price range.

You could get a better sound card, but why?

GeForce FX 5600, however, is a load of crap and you can easily do better for 110 GBP. If you want, I can search around for the specific model, but many Geforce 6 cards have the same board, chips, and circuits and everything, but with some features disabled in their firmware. This can be easily circumvented, making a 100 GBP card perform like a 200 GBP card.

Do NOT buy any product from the FX line of cards. They are not anywhere near nvidia's usual standard of quality.

When looking for your new graphics card, or getting someone to find you a good one, make sure that it is one of these cards that can be upgraded through firmware updating, as you'll save a lot of money. Also, try different brand names. BFG cards, for instance, are well-known to be very overclockable. I don't remember what the stock specifications are for my 7800 GS, but I think they're something like 400 mhz GPU, 1000 mhz RAM. Because it's a BFG though, I've been able to overclock it to 470 mhz GPU @ 1375 mhz RAM! The performance boost is *very* noticable, not just maybe 2 frames per second better like you might get through unofficial drivers or something, but more like 30 FPS in some games. HL2, with EVERYTHING enabled and maxed, runs like silk with my 7800 GS @ 1280x1024.

Another thing to consider is planning ahead... do you really want to spend money on an obsolete format? AGP is basically "old technology" now, PCI-Express (not to be confused with just "PCI"!!!!) is the standard and there will soon be PCI-Express II cards which have double the data transfer speed as PCI-E. IMHO, you won't even see a difference in performance between the two standards, but what you WILL see is a decrease in price for standard PCI-E cards and motherboards!

Dual-core "Conroe" chips from Intel seem to be the king of the hill right now. What worries me is that AMD doesn't seem to have anything in the immediate future planned to combat this except for price drops. Intel has also announced that in Q1 2007 there will be quad-core CPUs available, and all cpu prices are going to be coming down dramatically according to Intel and AMD press releases. So what you pay right now for a single-core CPU could be more than you'll pay 2 months from now for a dual-core or even quad-core CPU.

Like I've been preaching since May or so, this is NOT the time to be buying expensive computer equipment. I caved in and bought my 7800 because my old one just didn't cut and I had a fair bit of cash to spare that month, AND I got a spectacular deal on eBay. The only way I could justify it to myself was that the 7800 GS is the very fastest AGP card in existence and probably always will be. (since few, if any, new cards use this format)

...Which brings me to my next topic. For the love of god, DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM A RETAIL LOCATION. Storefronts are only for the ignorant and those helpless around computers. The moment you walk through the door they already know that a) you have cash to spend, b) you think your computer sucks, c) you want an upgrade, d) you have no idea what to upgrade to, e) they can therefore sell you crap in a bag labelled as "CPU" and find a way to make it sound like they're making you a great deal. Find a reputable online source for your computer goods, and you will save as much as 25%, EASILY.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/ ... Cards.html
Min3mat go forth and join the select group of us that have computers

Ooh! I could use some help too!

I need to upgrade this peice of crap to supcom, and i think i MIGHT be able to scrape together 100-200 Euros.

Now, i got this currently.

so... what should i buy if i have 200?

I'd definately say CPU kix

Caydr
I have no idea how to overclock stuff, is this something you do IRL taking it to a specialised store? or do it yourself? or do it with software?
back when i used to go to PC stores i noticed that some g-cards had a 'overclocking kit' however that was a good while ago!
I'm not comfortable with overclocking my CPU at any rate, if 3 Ghz is enough its enough, as the case isn't all that great anyway it already occasionally makes some...disturbing noises. I would say that i don't do the idiot routine and give it a good boot...but um i do! xD
Yeah i know about the sound, just had to ask hehe. Come on it might actually be worth it for supcom :D
And could you be specific about graphics cards, its not like im buying hardcore computer stuff, because i really don't plan on ever doing that, just want something that can play supcom, and if it could be on about medium specs that would be <3 <3 <3 owh. and im poor, even with a job ;.;
e: sorry for the damn lie, just noticed i clicked a link in your message. Much love and thanks Caydr
e2:
sorry i meant thanks oh random person with the knowledge of doom

I saw a 6200 li for £24 in pc world

Min3mat, get the BFG GeForce 7600 GS OC 512MB... reasonable price and it's a watered-down version of mine, but even so it *should* be enough to run anything for a year or two at medium-high specs.

Go for the 7800 if you really want to, but I'd say TBH you'd be better off waiting a little while before buying something top-of-the-line.

Overclocking a CPU is done in your BIOS settings. You go in, usually by pressing DEL while the computer is just first starting up (with brand-name computers sometimes it's a different key)... then there should be an option for your CPU multiplier. As it is now, it should say 200. You can safely increase this, and I mean 100% safe, no danger at all, to 220. Mine is running at 240 with no indicator whatsoever that it's overclocked. DO NOT ADJUST ANY OTHER SETTINGS UNLESS YOU'RE A L33T HAXX0R LIKE ME!!! :p

GPU overclocking is done in your drivers. You install the latest Forceware from Nvidia, then download a small, safe registry hack called "Coolbits". It's easy to find, just google it. Make sure to get it from a site that appears to be fairly well-known. This will open up some extra options in the Nvidia control panel, one called Frequency Adjustment or just plain Overclocking, maybe. Here there should be a button that says "Detect best speed" or something similar. Hit it. The process takes about 2 minutes at most and it will detect the highest speed your GPU can run, then back off from that by a small margin to ensure safety. Then say "use these settings on restart", hit OK, OK, OK, OK a few more times, and then reboot. Process complete and you're running about 25% faster than you were before. Combined with small CPU overclocking, this will give you all the speed you need for at least 1-2 years.

Kixxe wrote:Ooh! I could use some help too!

I need to upgrade this peice of crap to supcom, and i think i MIGHT be able to scrape together 100-200 Euros.

Now, i got this currently.

Code: Select all

      CPU Type                                          AMD Athlon XP, 1666 MHz (12.5 x 133) 2000+

      Motherboard Name                                  Syntax SV266A  (5 PCI, 1 AGP, 2 SDR DIMM, 2 DDR DIMM, Audio)

 System Memory                                     768 MB  (DDR SDRAM)
      Video Adapter                                     NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440  (64 MB

so... what should i buy if i have 200?

Good crap. If you have 200, spend 5 of it and have that thing removed from your house It's unsalvageable... maybe the RAM could be kept, but the rest is just too old.

Be fair, it could be a barebones Linux or Sun Unix box.

Yeah I guess I was being a bit harsh. Your computer is OK as long as your main use is just general computing stuff.... stealing, ahem, ripping, er, downloading... er.... legally obtaining, yeah that's it. Legally obtaining music, surfing the net, doing your taxes....

Aside from that, the MX440 isn't enough to run any commercial game made in the last 3 years at anything approaching medium detail. And the 1666 will make load times, startup times, and generally everything else quite a lot slower.

I might mention that it might make a nice FreeCiv/Civ II box.

Don't forget Pong!

i was running an athlon thunderbird with a geeforce II Ti before i got my sexy new comp ^^

it started out as a PIII 533mhz + TNT2 with 96mb PC100 til something blew up


...
...


And before that a Pentium Pro 166mhz!

386 sx 66, 4 megs of RAM. Top that.

Caydr wrote:And the 1666 will make load times, startup times, and generally everything else quite a lot slower.

Here we have why I'm planning to replace my Athlon XP 2000+ with a shiny new X2 4200.

Caydr wrote:386 sx 66, 4 megs of RAM. Top that.

Alright.

Atari 2600.

Caydr i fucking LOVE you
now go work on that AW mod ;D
e: sorry just read the rest of your post
yes i have forceware ^_^ i have a friend who moved away and plays CSS, love him to bits
im so getting that coolbits ^^
and by safe you mean? i thought that OCing CPU was done only if you take the casing off?
once you reply to this i think i shalt go forth and pimp my PC
btw the reason for the absurd amount of posts today was cos im not here for around 7 days. must ignore spring and do like 8-10 hrs work min a day :<

I did some reasearch trying to upgrade my FX5200 for as little money as I possibly could.


Geforce 6600GT is about the best bang for your budget card around.

If even that is too expensive try looking at a 9800Pro (Ati) or 9600XT (though neither of these are usefull for running anything new, but a big improvement over the 5200FX)



EDIT: Did more than read the title and skim through posts and I realised this isnt really answering his question

are you sure you got PCI-e

?

Hmm.. I remember a while ago I was going on and on about a certain graphics card, possibly the 6600 vanilla, which could be oc'd and unlocked to 6600 GT or possibly 6800 stats, I forget. Anyone remember what it was or feel like trying to dig up the thread?

By safe I mean, there is no danger of crashing your computer or damaging your CPU or making your computer stop starting. But yeah, taking the side off your case is the poor/cheap man's solution when you don't want to spend $100 on fancy cooling equipment. Works very well, just make sure you don't have kids around it or cats or otherwise anything that might touch the sensitive internal stuff.

~~~

Ok, looks like it's the 6800 vanilla. It is a watered-down 6800 GT with basically no differences except for 4 rendering pipelines being disabled. These can be re-enabled by some simple means, and save you about 50-100 GBP.

~~~~

http://www.ocia.net/articles/6800/page4.shtml <<< quick article on unlocking the 4 extra pipelines and an extra pixel shader. He also goes on to detail some overclocking, but doesn't have too much success with the particular brand he got.

nvidia 6600 if your power suply can handle it (my dell wouldn't)

or a 6200