Upgrading Your System for MxO

[Anonymous]

PC Upgrade Guide

This guide is broken up into three distinct sections: Cheap/upgrade solutions, mid-range solution, and high-end solution.  The distinction is made on how much money you plan to spend to get yourself up and running for the application, and most other games that are being launched this year.

Currently the updated minimum specs are:
•   OS – WinMe, WinXP or above.
•   RAM – 512 MB of RAM.
•   Video card – programmable shader hardware (Radeon 8xxx, 9xxx and above ; GeForce 3 Ti, 4 Ti and above); 64 MB VRAM.
•   CPU – 1.4 gHz.
•   Sound card – DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card.
•   Delivery footprint – 3 compact discs.
•   Hard drive install – 4 to 8 GB.
•   Hard drive speed – 5 MB / second dynamic load.
•   Bandwidth – Modem (56.6 k), DSL, or cable modem.

First things first:  These specs are extremely low, so if you don’t have at least this setup, you should be considering an upgrade anyway.  The first solution will cover each of the bullet points, making the cheapest possible suggestion for each aspect, and those components will be lumped together in the end to give you a price point were you to buy a set of this caliber brand new.

CPU – While both AMD and Intel are good companies, I like to go with the latter simply because they’re from my hometown, and the company has consistently churned out a good product for well over a decade now.  While you can purchase a Pentium III chipset that meets the requirement of 1.4GHz, I would advise against it because investing in anything but a 478P socket motherboard is a waste of money, as the Pentium IV family has been out for some time now and offers plenty of room to upgrade down the road.

Pentium 4 1.5GHz, socket 478P - $79 on Mwave.com (Mwave part#BA19913).  This solution operates on a 400MHz FSB, with AGP, and DDR memory slots.  Onboard NIC (Ethernet) and SATA connection also come standard.  This board is made by Asus, and has all the right support you need.

RAM – Really, I advise the PC3200 RAM I mentioned elsewhere, it’s only $130 and works perfectly with the clock cycles of the CPU, able to offer data once per clock cycle and gives you 1GB of workspace to swap out files during game play.

Video – On the advice of one of our more PC inclined members, I updated this section to include the ATI RADEON 9600PRO Video Card, with 128MB DDR, 128-bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP that comes at a price point around $140.00.  It is important to remember that this card includes DX 9 features, which MxO will be incorporating.

Nvidia equivalents and other upgrades can be found below in Likwidtek's comments.  Thanks for the update Likwid.

Sound – You can pick up a Sound Blaster Live! Platinum for $7 on priceline.com, enough said.

Storage – Hard Drives sell for less than $1 a gig, choose accordingly.

OS – You should have XP, if you don’t find a freebie from a friend

Assuming you started from scratch, let me itemize what you would be paying:

CPU/Chipset/RAM - $350

Video – $129

Sound -- $7

Storage -- $30 (for 40GB Ultra ATA)

Monitor -- $100 (Smaller, but you’re on a budget)

CD Drive -- $20 (get a generic, the price point is so small that if it ever
breaks down, you won’t mind dropping another $20)

Speakers -- $20, the cheaper the better

ATX Form Factor Case -- $100 (you can get really low here, depends on which case and power supply you go with, 350Watts of power should cover you)

Mouse & Keyboard -- $20


So you can have the following specs:
1.5GHz Pentium 4 478P, 400 FSB
1GB of Double Data Rate PC3200 RAM
40GB Hard Drive, 7200 RPM
128MB GeForce 4 ti4800 8x AGP
Sound Blaster Live! Platinum
15” CRT Monitor
Total Price  $776 w/o shipping



This is a good set up, and you can likely aim a little lower on the RAM by cutting it to 512MB, and doing some bargain hunting on the case and power supply.  Keep in mind that by going with the motherboard chosen above, you can later upgrade to a 2.4GHz Pentium IV processor, Serial ATA hard drives, and a any of the brand new video cards from ATI and Nvidia.


I did some comparisons to the big name dealer Dell, just to make sure this is price worthy.  Here’s what I found:

Dimension 2400
As Advertised
 
Pentium® 4 Processor at 2.66GHz with 533MHz front side bus
 
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
 
1 Year Limited Warranty plus 1 Year At-Home Service
 
40GB Ultra ATA/100 7200RPM Hard Drive
 
FREE Shipping - Online Only!
 
FREE 15” Flat Panel Upgrade! (skip this, flat panel/LCD displays have not yet been developed to the point of handling the frame rates available in games)


Points of interest:

.:Yes the CPU is much faster, as is the bus

.:There is only integraded video, with no AGP slot from the information provided

.:There is only 128MB of RAM, and it runs at a slower clock cycle than the set up above; read: not as efficient

There is a similar solution available at Gateway, but these types of systems will not work because of the lack of an AGP slot.  They look good at first glance, but overall, the deal is far different than what a gamer is looking for.

I use Mwave.com as mentioned above.  Every time they have shipped to me, the product has reached my home before the charge cleared my bank.  If you end up with something you don't want, or want to get rid of some stuff to cover the cost of upgrades, ebay.com is a place where people buy anything.

I’ll be updating this later on with a mid range system, as well as answer questions.  If anyone knows better than I do if there are any conflicts above or if you know of better deals, then by all means feel free to comment.  You'll likely be able to find a similar deal at a local computer shop, but I feel this is a pretty good system that meets and exceeds the minimum MxO requirements.

[Anonymous]

Ive got one thing to add about video: Since their going to be supporting ATI mainly, you can get an ATI Radeon 9600SE 128 MB, 8x AGP for the same price.

and if you want to get a basic system to upgrade, the best mainstream systems in my experiance are e Machines. Gives you an agp slot, AMD Athlon processors(which ive found they seem to work slightly better on games) ranging from 2400+ to 64 FX. And it all only costs 400-600 for a system where the video cardis the only real problem.

I got mine for 500, AMD Athlon 64 FX, 512 RAM(planning to upgrade), a very, very crappy ProSavage 32 mb card(just replace), and a 17' screen for about 530. With the video card(mentioned above) it cost 660. Not bad for a near top of the line gaming machine. If youre going for an all around comp,  Asha's ideas are probably a better fit. If you want a mid level gaming computer(basically, it cant play FarCry at the maxed out settings, almost nothing can), i find my system to work really well for FF XI, UT 2004, and just about any other game.

Just thought id give my ideas. Your local best buy should have a system similar. Of course, i somehow got all the rebates to go through(read:almost impossible to do anymore, damn technicalities), so in actuality, it may come up to 900.

[Anonymous]

In the past, I've probably been the last person to advise getting an e-Machine, until now.

Gateway bought the company, and Gateway's customer support has been by far my favorite to deal with.  I've fried video cards, busted speakers, and they've shipped replacements to me brand new, with no charge.  If this is indicitive of what could be true for e-Machine, I might feel comfortable suggesting them to folks.

[Anonymous]

I think you did a great job with that post. I know of a lot of people that would like to build thier own system but are not sure what direction to go in.

I'd like to make a suggestion on the case part, more so the power supply. I have seen from past problems that going to low price wise is a bad thing. One of the many problems I've seen was a computer would not boot when plugged dircetly into a wall socket. The customers apartment was in an old building, The wireing was so old it did not have enough power to boot an AMD XP system with a cheap 400 watt power supply. The only way to make it boot was with a UPS.

For staying under the price range you have listed above you can get an Antec Case and 350 watt power supply. Although not the best obviously, Still a great product for the money. The power supplies are worth it for the money. I have seen them on newegg for around $80 shipped.

Also if you'd like to figure out how many watts you would need on a specific set up just check out the power requirements on the product. look at the +5 and the +12 requirements. For example if it has a +5V 0.65A and +12V 0.40A, just multiply the volts and amps of each rail. (5 x .65) + (12 x .40) = 8.05 watts. At least you will know if you need more power or less. Hope this helped

[Anonymous]

how do i find out what frequency and make the RAM in my computer is or does that matter if i wanna get another 512 PC3200 DDR Ram.

[Anonymous]

you can check in the bios or when the computer does it's POST. There are also programs that can tell you, along with websites. For instance www.crucial.com has an easy way to help identify what you need. Let me know if these helped

[Anonymous]

that was a great help thanks that crucial.com. I now know that i can buy some PC3200 ram no problem as long as i can get the $111 to pay for it.

Whats that in pounds around btw?

[Anonymous]

http://www.xe.com/ucc/

[Anonymous]

thanks again

it gonna cost £62 to get up to 1gb RAM, seems very worthit

[likwidtek]

I don't agree on your choice of video card.  The game will be a direct x 9 game.  And your card choice is not direct x 9.  It's 8.  I think getting them a ATI RADEON 9600PRO Video Card, 128MB DDR, 128-bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP that only costs $139.00 from newegg.com would be much better.  The step up from that would be  ATI RADEON 9800 PRO Video Card, 128MB DDR, 256-bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP.  This card sells for $210 bucks.

This is much more forward thinking and you will see a DRAMATIC improvement with these cards as opposed to the older TI card.

I am not a big fan of ATI personally so here are some NVIDIA equivalents:

Newegg has :
ASUS nVIDIA GeForce FX5900 Video Card, 128MB DDR, 256-bit, DVI/VIVO, 8X AGP for $210
eVGA nVIDIA GeForce FX5900SE, 128MB DDR, 256-bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP for $189
eVGA nVIDIA GeForce FX5700 Video Card, 128MB DDR, 128-bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP  $138

Hope these help.

[Anonymous]

That was the area I wasn't sure with, and I tend to agree with everything you said.  I tried to find what I knew to be a good card, with a good price, and advise accordingly.  Thanks for the input, keep it coming.

[Anonymous]

It has been very helpful.  I will now have a head start as I try to upgrade during the summer.

[Anonymous]

If you are looking to spend a bit more, around 1500-1800 you can really get an awesome computer. For my dell i paid around 1700. Its made for gaming tho. The upgrades are easy and cheap with dell. In my system i got 3.06ghz HT, 120 7200 rpm hard drive, 2gig ram, radeon 9800pro (128) and a sound blaster audigy2 and a 19" flatscreen. I have just recently gotten my pc and so far i have done nothing but love it. Im able to run an install on galaxies and play Lineage2 at the same time. My old pc had trouble running Teamspeak and Lineage2 at the same time.
For those of you with a pc over two years old id suggest buying a dell. Im happy with my decision

[Anonymous]

man this is gonna be expensive but thx

[Anonymous]

I think dell is an ok product. They are easy to work on and have some decent parts. My biggest problem with them lately is lowering the FSB to run cheap ram in it. I'm not quite sure how they do it and not effect the chip speed.Maybe they are just tweaking the voltage to the ram only. But I have seen two new systems like that. I even took the cpu's out and installed them on another box and they were correct.

The bad part is it's just an average person who doesn't do much more then email and internet, so they would never really know it's turn down a bit. Anyone else seen this?