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[FoneBone]

Based on what I can afford to spend, I have to choose between a 3GHz P4 and a 256 MB Radeon X800 XT, or a 3.4 GHz P4 and a 128 MB Radeon X800 SE. Advice?

 

[Bregor]

Get a 3 GHz P4 (or AMD alternative) and a 9800 Pro. The money you save will allow you to get your next upgrade sooner. More frequent, sensible upgrades will keep your PC more up to date than spending money buying the 'bleeding edge' components.

 

[levious]

hope you don't mind me posting a question here as well...

I have a P4 2Ghz with 1gig of ram... is it worth it to get a top graphics card or would I be better off getting a much cheaper one? I'm pretty clueless about PC stuff. Are the Xt's out now?

 

[Doth Togo]

hope you don't mind me posting a question here as well...

I have a P4 2Ghz with 1gig of ram... is it worth it to get a top graphics card or would I be better off getting a much cheaper one? I'm pretty clueless about PC stuff. Are the Xt's out now?

Same answer. Get a 9800 Pro and save your money for other upgrades, as needed.

 

[dem]

Why wait to upgrade the videocard? x800 provides significant performance increases over a 9800. Hell... I'd lower the CPU specs before the video card. You'll see more gaming performance out of it.

 

[AntoneM]

get the 3Ghz P4 and a Geforce 6800 GT, it's about equal with x800 Pro in DX9 games and smokes it in Open GL (Doom 3).

 

[dem]

Yes.. get the 6800 over the x800

 

[FoneBone]

Yes.. get the 6800 over the x800

Not really an option; I have to go with what Dell offers me. Yes, I know it would be cheaper to assemble it myself, but I don't have the time to find someone to do it, and I need a decent warranty.

Another question -- given that I can't afford anything more than a basic 2-speaker setup, how much of a performance hit will integrated audio result in?

 

[Slo]

If you were building it yourself I'd agree with the rest and say just buy what gives you the best price/performance ratio right now, but if you're getting a premade from Dell I'd recommend the videocard over the extra 400 mhz of processor speed.

 

[DonasaurusRex]

Depends on the chipset Dell uses. I would say get the slower cpu and the faster graphics card now, the x800XT is an awesome card and you wont have to worry about upgrading for quite some time. Either way everything today is outdated tomorrow.

 

[Mrbob]

Based on what I can afford to spend, I have to choose between a 3GHz P4 and a 256 MB Radeon X800 XT, or a 3.4 GHz P4 and a 128 MB Radeon X800 SE. Advice?

Between these two choices, I would definitely suggest the 3GHZ P4 and 256MB X800XT. The performance difference between the XT and SE is much bigger than the difference between the 3ghz and 3.4 ghz P4. The X800SE actually doesn't look that impressive. A slightly beefed up 9800PRO.

hope you don't mind me posting a question here as well...

I have a P4 2Ghz with 1gig of ram... is it worth it to get a top graphics card or would I be better off getting a much cheaper one? I'm pretty clueless about PC stuff. Are the Xt's out now?

In your case I would get a 9800PRO. Unless you plan on upgrading your CPU soon. If you bought an X800PRO or X800XT it would be extremely cpu limited. Take a look at this firingsquad guide:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/x800_pro_pentium4/

 

[Slo]

Nice article.

 

[FoneBone]

Well, the consensus seems pretty clear on the CPU/graphics card issue -- thanks. Could someone answer the audio question, though?

 

[DaCocoBrova]

Why wait to upgrade the videocard? x800 provides significant performance increases over a 9800.

Not nearly enough to justify the price.

The day I get a new grfx card is the day I can't get 60fps @ 1024x768 stable (no filters) for most games.

 

[SKluck]

What? The 6800/x800 are the biggest leap from gen to gen in a long time.

 

[Diablos]

GPU upgrade >>> CPU upgrade in your situation.

I only have a POS 2400+ athlon XP with a 266MHz FSB and 256k of L2 cache and a Radeon 9800 Pro. My cousin has a 2.53GHz P4 with a 533MHz FSB and Intel Extreme Graphics 2. Guess whose machine runs games better? Not his!