MithraPride

My dad is set on getting me a new computer. Hes dead set on a Dell, think its the xps or the 4600.. i dunno. Anywho it comes with a Geforce 5200 FX i think is that good enuf to run FFXI. Or should i opt for the radeon 9800 xt(i think thats it).. would the radeon be the better choice. Or should i just tell him to buy me a seperate video card?

thx

meow

Get teh Radeon! Dear god get the Radeon! Hell, it's bad enought that you're getting a Dell but get something to show for your pain.

yeah, don't get the geforce... the dell is okay... it's what i'm stuck using... thankfully it's not mine, i'm hoping that after my dad gets his airplane payed off (i know sounds crazy, but it's an "experimental" so it's waaaay cheap, and he's doing the labor himself, etc etc...) i can con him into the 1.5k i'd need for a really sweet desktop to be built for me

yeah i know getting the dell is bad, but hes dead set on it though. So i'll get the radeon 9800 xt. As long as i can play FFXI i dont care. It was gonna be hell waiting for my PS2 copy, free or not i dont know if i could wait till march ...

umm..I have a Dell with the FX video card & my game runs well on it, so I don't know why your all complaining about it. =p I also have mine system upgraded a lot. my parents gave me some money for my b-day & i put up my own money to get a way better one. My computer cost around $1800. (I worked a ton of overhours at work X.X)

well i got most of the specs(i think). I wasnt putting the Dell down i thought for the amount of money he wants to spend(close to 2K) i thought we could get a better system other then dell. Ok i hope this will run FFXI fine thought.

pentuim 4 3gig(i think it was a 3gig)
1 gig memory(not sure on speed)
80 gig HD
radeon 9800 xt

thinks thats most of it though. I have no clue on what else to look for in a good pc tho...



meow

*cries* A P4, does your father hate you?! You should have asked me! I could have built you a custom machine and shipped it FREE.

Kopopo wrote:*cries* A P4, does your father hate you?!

AMD+Radeon= goodness. Pentium+Nvidia=Bad.Bad.Bad

Toren, see if you can get permision to format the machine upon arrival. Dell and other OEM companies load their systems up w/ gigs of worthless resource hogging software that you don't want on the computer. Easiest to wipe the HDD and get just the OS and the programs you actually want on the machine.

Ugh... can someone ever ask for computer advice and not get 20 replies of only someone's personal company preference? If it's bad, say why. If it's good, say why. "AMD+Radeon == Good" isn't helpful to anyone.

My personal experience: I've run FFXI on an AMD Athlon 2400+ and a P4 1.8Gz. Both with nVidia cards, so no comparison for you there. The AMD runs better, but it's also a faster chip, so that's expected. There isn't any major difference in how XI runs. However, some days I wish my desktop (AMD) was as quiet as the work's desktop (P4). That's something to remember if you share a computer room/space.

The FX 5200 is not a good chipset. It scores very low in FutureMark's benchmarking scores (my GeForce4 4600 just kills it). If you are getting an FX series, it has to be 5600 or higher, and I believe Ultra versions if availible. Sonce you only gave the choice of the ATI card as your upgrade, then you should definately go with that over the FX.

If you want to save some money, a decent video card for XI shouldn't be more than $200. I actually got my Ge4 as a refurb for only $100 (w/ warranty). This is your best option, if you can do it.

FFXI Benchmarks: [high]
Home (AMD 2400+ / Geforce4 4600) : 3328
Other (P4 1.8 / Geforce4 4200) : 2830

Both are well above acceptable levels for FFXI. Hope that helps.

well my father just told me the sky was the limit but i have to get a dell.(hes getting invoiced at his job, hes such a con-man hehe)

I have a few more questions

1)difference in the P4 and P4 extreme

2)diffrence in serial ata and eide, should i opt for the serial ata

3)will i see a big difference in 1 gig memory and 2 gig?

thanx

meow

I don't know much about serial ATA, but if you plan on doing video editing/3-D rendering get 2 gigs of RAM. If all you do is light gaming, schoolwork, etc etc then you won't see much of a diff between 1 gig and 2 gigs. Although, 2 gigs will save you the hassle of upgrading RAM later on.

1) Did you mean difference between P4 and AMD extreames?

2) Dunno

3) The extra gig of RAM will only be noticable if you do very high capactity rendering or editing (very large Bryce, Photoshop, or Premiere files for example).

no they have an option for a 3.20 gig P4 and a 3.20 gig P4 xtreme. Like a 700 dollar difference i think. I wanted to know the difference between those 2.



meow

Ok then ill explain.
AMD is better than Pentium due to the fact that the speed/price ratio is better. Sure pentiums have faster core clock speeds but they have a higher price tag.
Radeon is better than Nvidia for the driver support and the fact radeon doesn't embed/hide as many worthless files that restrict other manufactures hardware/software. That and Nvidia cheated on bench marks just a bit more than Radeon did and denied, then admitted it.
ANY computer bought "out of the box" is a bad move. From overly high prices to hd cluttering software.
Some of this high dollar crap is a waste. I mean why have a processor that says its 4.0, core clocks at 2.5 and you can only pipe 2.0 anyway?? And you shouldn't need more than 2 gig of ram unless you doing some sort of studio work(audio/video). But hey it's cheap. Buy all u can hold if ya want.
That explain a little bit?

Toren wrote:1)difference in the P4 and P4 extreme

The P4 Extreme Edition has 2MB of Level 3 Cache added. It jacks up the price significantly, but can also provide a reasonable speed boost under certain cases. It's a bit difficult to quantify the effect that such a cache has, since if the CPU is routinely working with a block of memory larger than 128KB, yet smaller than 2MB, it's a huge win. Otherwise, the performance about the same as a standard P4. I tried looking for FFXI Benchmark-specific numbers, but although I found some Japanese pages, none of them compared non-EE. But there are benchmarks that compare other applications, benchmarks, and games, so I'd suggest you do some searches to see if the performance boost is worth it.

Toren wrote:2)diffrence in serial ata and eide, should i opt for the serial ata

Serial ATA is the wave of the future, but that future is still a bit slow in coming. Serial ATA eliminates the bulky ribbon cables and master/slave issues of EIDE-style "Parallel ATA" (or PATA) and replaces them with narrow wires which are capable of better throughput, can be longer to help reach devices, can be safely hot-swappable (removable with the power on) if the OS supports it, has a strict 1-to-1 connection between the motherboard and device, and which most BIOS can transparently make look like classic IDE controllers to the OS, thus requiring no new drivers. You can get adaptors to make HDs with PATA connectors work with SATA. I did this in my own system, since SATA drives of sufficient size to meet my needs weren't yet available, but I wanted the better cable reach and airflow SATA provided. However, it's good if the motherboard has PATA on it too to be safe (and most ones during this adoption period will), since I noticed my DVD drive didn't like being connected via one of those adaptors and I ended up eventually just wiring it with a PATA cable. In short, SATA will allow you to use a few current drives and others in the future which run faster than PATA ones, and which are much easier to wire and maintain, but until then, you may find yourself not using that capability, or simply using adaptors to take advantage of the cables without gaining any speed.

Toren wrote:3)will i see a big difference in 1 gig memory and 2 gig?

Depends on what you keep open at once. I have 1GB and am comfortable with that unless I start doing heavy photo-editing of large images. If you routinely work with multi-GB files, you know who you are, and can plan accordingly. Otherwise, I think 1GB should suffice for many years for the average consumer. (Unless of course, another 1GB of RAM is really cheap, in which case, you may want to splurge even on the rare chance that you might develop an interest in professional high-res photo editing.)

Oh, and a warning that Dell may not give you: Intel 875/865-based motherboards operate best with RAM DIMMs in pairs. If you only have one stick of RAM, you're effectively halving your memory throughput and crippling performance. So whatever you get, make sure it's divided evenly between an even number of sticks.

Toren wrote:3)will i see a big difference in 1 gig memory and 2 gig?

I only have 512 MB of dual channeled* DDR (400) RAM. The only time I've come within 100 MB of it was when I had two 1200 dpi PSD's open at once. I really doubt you'll see any difference.

* Dual channeling is something your motherboard has to support. I don't know much about which boards do what. I have the MSI K7N2-L Delta, where it was a very hyped feature :)

Syine wrote:Oh, and a warning that Dell may not give you: Intel 875/865-based motherboards operate best with RAM DIMMs in pairs. If you only have one stick of RAM, you're effectively halving your memory throughput and crippling performance. So whatever you get, make sure it's divided evenly between an even number of sticks.

Unless specifically stated, Dell will do what you tell them to do. If you want the ram divided, they will do it. I don't think they even charge for it... though ymmv.

well he decided to get all the bells and whistles, it wont be ready till the 1st week in Feb tho. So another wait

meow

You can still buy a copy of FFXI and read over and over the manuals :)

lol i already do. I read over the ps2 manual all the time and look at the opening movie lol

meow

Have you picked up the strat. guide yet? It's got pics of some of the emotions which werent available in the beta :)

the big problem with the strat. guide is that it doesn't have nearly enough of the missions or quests. Mostly because i'm sure they didn't have that info avalible at print time.

BradyGames sucks. Do not buy their strategy guides, they are a waste of money. Ever since FFVII came out (and probably before then too) they have been making half-assed, overpriced guides riddled with typos and innacuracies. Better to look up the info you need on the internet for free ;)

By the way, I stumbled upon a really great FFXI resource site. Somebody *nudges Golddess* should put this in the Links section:

http://somepage.com/ffxi/

Woo.. Thanks Ishe.. found some info there I've been working on and wanting to know.. like the levels list! nice! now I can complete more of my site therby making that other one obsolete!

Muahahahaha!

-Swipe