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Is This A Good Deal (Major PC Upgrade)
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View this Thread in Original format
| Coup |
Hi all,
I have a PII 350 192 SDRAM now, and things are starting to slow with newer apps and games demanding more, i need a new soundcard coz this ones had it, the guy in a computer shop said for £170, he would upgrade the whole lot! changing the motherboard, case, fan/power transformer, and cpu! to a AMD Duron 1000 Hrtz! Ive been told that equates to a P4 1400 Hrtz, now is this a good deal or am i being ripped off? i dont no about ram at this point, i take it new motherboards can run both SD and DDR ram? coz i have 192 in at the mo, which is minor issues to upgrade ram tho! i need a faster pc as new games and newer apps i cant play no more, this motherboard comes with a sound card and a graphics card solded onto it! so what u think?
£170 =
American Dollers = $244
Candian Dollers = £386
Euro = E277
Any other curreny u need, goto [[ LINK REMOVED ]]
Coz if this was a good deal, it would kinda be a whole new pc for £170, coz a monitor, mouse, keyboard, ROM & Writer would be changed over along with hardrive, so opions?
-coup! |
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| sothis |
depends on if you want super good sound or video etc...
stuff that comes on the motherboard (built in sound card, etc) is generally average but thats all it is.. average. if you want something good, youll need to get the seperate card.
especially if you will be using it for gaming purposes or other related things.
1000 mhz really is fine.. dont listen to the people who will respond to this thread and talk about how you need the brand new athlon xp 1800 chip or something.. its excessive and odds are you wont be able to tell the difference with anything you do anyways. 1000 is just fine. |
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| ABTsportsline |
i wouldn't say its a steal, but its not a ripoff... its about fair price, i'd do it....
the Duron line is like the intel Celeron - not as nice and fancy as the flagship line, but still AMD is better than intel... and like sothis said, usually the "built in" stuff is crappy at best.... granted its still probably better than you have now, but you'll want to upgrade at one point, especially since you do a lot of gaming.
You'll want to go out and buy more RAM at one point though... you need at least 250 MB in this day and age...
i built an entire computer for around 200 pounds..... its not that expensive nowadays.
Cheers
-ABT- |
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| SmellsExcellent |
Hey... This, IMO, is not a good deal.. go to www.pricewatch.com and look up full systems. You can find XP 2000+ systems with 256-512MB PC2100 and good video, HDD, SOund, etc.. basically what you will not get is the *really* top of the line . Itll be about a month or so outdated, but for such little money itll be way better than updating. Also, as far as replacing MOBO and updating individual pieces, i find it much more convinient and efficient to actually upgrade the whole thing. After that you can sell or donate or do hatever with yer old system and not have old parts that some guy will prolly turn around and sell anyways.
If you know how to build, use pricewatch to find parts, and if you can sellt for maybe 1-2 month old stuff you could really get a GREAT system for very little money...
Heres the bottom line, if u wanna do some searching and resarch, go to www.pricewatch.com.. if not then just go with this deal, its not terrible I guess, but then again, you can get way better for the same amount of money.
Also, this is just advice, so if you think this is a bunch of then dont listen to it. ;)
-Marc |
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| Coup |
well im not an addictive gamer, i do like gaming, just say in 2 weeks time there is a game relased that looks really good and i wana buy it, in these times there's a good chance my current pc specs wont be able to cope, and with apps like Adobe Photoshop 7, i need a bit more power to run them! Yeah i agree with the bog-standard sound and video, my current sound card is a little tiny one (about 3cm x 3cm) solered onto my board, and its been at it for about 4 years and starting to die, so decent sound and video would be a PCI plug in card job, but im not worried about that, sound would be cheep enough anyway, i can get SoundBlaster 128 for £25 (use link above to convert)!
Is the AMD Duron equate to the Pentium 4 1400 Hrtz? could someone say a little more on the AMD process that guy wants to sell me plz?
Im going to shop around, have a look at some other comp shops and see what they would offer in the same kinda thing, see what other deals are out there, hope u guys can help point in the right direction :)
coup :) |
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| Coup |
Its a good idea smellsexcellent, thanks, but a whole new unit (im not clever enough to custom build, i no enough to get buy tho) would still be around £100-£200 more than an upgrade, and i would effectivly be getting a new pc with this upgrade, coz monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, cd-rom, cd-writer are all transferable, so there's massive savings compaired to a new pc. only things with pc that really go out of date, are cpu's, memory and video. if i got a cheep one from pricewatch, i'd still have to buy decent sound and video cards, so personally i think it would be a more expensive solution as im paying for things which are already perfectly fine, in this case im paying for what i need! not meaning to shoot u down or out tho! and i need someone to fit it, i can hardly get cheeper parts and ask them to fit it :D
thanks anyway tho! if im wrong, say "look, coup ur a twat, this is what i ment" :p |
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| dvd |
| umm whoever told you that Duron is faster than P4..then uhh goto another store. That is a joke. AMD Athlon is more equal to a p4. Duron isnt for games i heard and there is like no L2 cache. If you want gaming dont get builtin soundcard ..video..all that. |
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| Coup |
dvd i wouldnt use my built'in anyway, well i wouldnt take them off but id plug in some better ones obviously! sound isnt really an issue, is the supplied sound card is really rubbish, £25 for SoundBlaster 128 is more than enough, sound doesnt really increase with demand of games anyway! i would need a new video card reguardless if i had an upgrade or new one!
(could someone PLEASE explain all this Catche'ing stuff? i hear it all the time on the net and u just said it above, havent a clue about it! im gona get another quote from another shop tomorrow, so i'll post their details tomoz nite, see whos got the best deals around :) ) |
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| jonsimmonds |
coup - this site searches hte prices of major uk online computer stores and shows u the cheepest
http://www.pcindex.co.uk/
look there for prices of chips etc to see if its a good price
Jon |
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| SmellsExcellent |
| quote: | Originally posted by Coup
Is the AMD Duron equate to the Pentium 4 1400 Hrtz? could someone say a little more on the AMD process that guy wants to sell me plz?
coup :) |
The Duron is an equivalent to the Celeron, which basically means 33% less performance (someone correct me if im wrong, but im pretty sure thats the %) and like what was said below, no L2 cache...
Cache on a processor is similar to RAM, but onboard. It just lets things happen faster and more efficient.
And about your comment , the last one, its no problem, thats just what i would do. if i upgrade i wanna upgrade everything (except monitor usually.) Anyways, like i said, no worries, just offering a solution. ;)
-Marc |
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| Coup |
so why is this guy trying to sell me a processer 33% weaker before i even buy it? grrr!!! well i'll ask him what other processers he could do it for, and im going to get one possiably two more quotes from pc shops today, see what they have to offer!
As im prob upgrading, what processer would you recommend? Something to keep with the times and not be out of date in a while, so it has to be in the either P4 series or equivlent to that! coz instead of being told by salesman what i can have, i want to tell them what i want, and nothing thats obviously going to spire the cost out of the window! lol! |
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| drizzt81 |
| quote: | Originally posted by SmellsExcellent
Hey... This, IMO, is not a good deal.. go to www.pricewatch.com and look up full systems. You can find XP 2000+ systems with 256-512MB PC2100 and good video, HDD, SOund, etc.. basically what you will not get is the *really* top of the line . Itll be about a month or so outdated, but for such little money itll be way better than updating. Also, as far as replacing MOBO and updating individual pieces, i find it much more convinient and efficient to actually upgrade the whole thing. After that you can sell or donate or do hatever with yer old system and not have old parts that some guy will prolly turn around and sell anyways.
If you know how to build, use pricewatch to find parts, and if you can sellt for maybe 1-2 month old stuff you could really get a GREAT system for very little money...
Heres the bottom line, if u wanna do some searching and resarch, go to www.pricewatch.com.. if not then just go with this deal, its not terrible I guess, but then again, you can get way better for the same amount of money.
Also, this is just advice, so if you think this is a bunch of then dont listen to it. ;)
-Marc |
i completely agree.. you should try to find the best 'bong/buck' ratio and the duron 1GHz isn't exactly that.. you can get the Athlon XP1800 right now for best price/ peformance ratio..
next: you did not mention what mobo you are getting. He might give you a piece or garbage, while you can get a nice, stable ECS K7S5A (I have one of these and love it) for ~ 60-70 US$
etc. take a look around pricewatch, if you live in the USA. If not, I am sure that there is an equivalent site in the UK, but i do not have specifics on that, sorry.. maybe try the Hardforum (www.hardforum.com), there are plenty of geeks there, some from the UK as well, i can imagine, that can help you out :) |
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