I bought a new computer for my son yesterday. it was kind of a knee-jerk.. impulse.. thing.

it was a pre-assembled (cash and carry) system

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
1024MB PC4200 DDR2
250GB Seagate SATA II
16x Ben-Q DVD-R
ASUS M2NPV-VM mobo*

*mini atx; nForce chipset; built in "Geforce-6" video (now disabled)

$715


+  Antec Truepower 480watt PSU - installed myself
$110

+  ASUS EN 7900GTX 512MB ("king kong" edition) - installed myself
$585

total was $1495 (after tax).

-==========-

I haven't bought a pre-built system since the "P3-600mhz with RDRAM" days.
I've built our last 4 computers (all AMD).
my son's old machine was a nforce1 motherboard with athlon 2400+, 512MG, geforce5900.
I built it about 3 years ago and then just kept upgrading with graphics cards.  

but they don't build new graphics cards in AGP anymore..
..so it couldn't really be upgraded past a certain point.

(*cough* even with Xbox hijacking moore's law and ensuring that I'll never have a software-reason to upgrade.. it was only a matter of time thanks to the marketting genious behind PCI-E, and SATA: if all else fails..  introduce a new form factor! that'll MAKE them buy new hardware! mwahaha!  erm.. *cough*)

--> I've been meaning to build a new rig for him for months now but I finally took the easy way out and bought a pre-build instead

*shrug*

(my inner geek was napping)

Quote

but they don't build new graphics cards in AGP anymore..

What is the reason behind this, is PCI express better.

fatter bandwidth.  

in theory, AGP cards can't access the system RAM fast enough to keep up with modern games.

in practice, video cards have too much onboard RAM to ever worry about it. so its a moot point.

(unless you're playing Doom3, with textures on "ultra", then you'll never have to worry about it_
(and even then.. you just need 512MB on the card and you're fine. the textures in DOOM3 take ~500megs)

*shrug*

Thank you.

Quote (Cobalt60 @ Sep. 16 2006, 11:44 am)

+  ASUS EN 7900GTX 512MB ("king kong" edition) - installed myself $585

$465 at newegg but no King Kong, whatever that means.  

did I forget to specify canadian dollars again?  yeah.  my bad.

(its got a Peter Jackson billboard on the heatsink/fan and a copy of "King Kong: the game")

the place I bought it from has an online store too.  and 'brick&mortar' locations in hong kong (my guess: they ship worldwide)

the system I bought is the first one on this page.
http://www.bcomcomputer.net/home.php?cat=494
(they seem to have raised the specs because I got a 250GB HDD with mine)

here's the video card
http://www.bcomcomputer.net/product....&page=6

and the power supply
http://www.bcomcomputer.net/product....&page=6

Looks cool.

And yeah, the whole PCI-E thing is a bit annoying.
Needing a new video card means needing a new mobo, which means needing a new processor and new RAM, a new PS and quite possibly a new HD.

What kind of case setup came with that premade system?
I've kind of been considering doing a similar thing whenever I finally get around to getting a new comp (which won't be for awhile at this point).

the case is an "Antec" SLK2650 w/ 350watt Antec 'Smartpower' PSU.  
http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=92650 <-- this one right here

Can I have your old one?