After careful concideration.

[<DV8>mrbucket]

Re: After careful concideration.

Woah thanks but its kinda risky. but im ill give you a pm on aim now. thanks :)

and yeah i REAALY dont want to build a computer. To much time. to much effort and to scard :X

Jofaba is a stand up guy, at least from what I know of him, and have talked to him on PM. You should consider an offer such as this, call him on the phone. I can't think of why you would trust a large manufacturer over him. The people at Compaq or gateway or dell don't give a crap about you or your computer. At least Jofaba takes pride in what he does, hell anyone who builds custom PC's takes pride in what they do.

[Flanker]

Re: After careful concideration.

FYI: I didn't read the whole thread.

I can design a [brand new] computer under $600 that will play BF2 at High settings with 4xAA with 30-40FPS, if anyone cares enough for me to try.

Building a computer is one of the easiest things on the planet. Just takes patience.

I can also design you a PC over AIM (DarkFlanker), but I prefer to do it on here. You want me to? I don't want to waste my time.

[AlphexHunter]

Re: After careful concideration.

You are gonna inlude a Opteron am sure..But he dosen't know how to overlcock i think..

[Braheem]

Re: After careful concideration.

out of curiosity will a ati radeon mobility 9700 run bf2? just a question.

[QuikSilv3r47]

Re: After careful concideration.

Yes.

List of Supported Cards
Radeon X700 (PCIe)
Radeon X600 (PCIe)
GeForce 6600 (PCIe)
GeForce PCX 5900 (PCIe)
GeForce 5800 Series (AGP)
ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition
ATI Radeon X800 PRO
ATI Radeon 9800 Series
ATI Radeon 9600 Series
ATI Radeon 9550 (RV350LX)
ATI Radeon 9500 / 9700 Series
ATI Radeon 8500 Series
ATI Radeon X300 Series
NVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra
NVidia GeForce 6800 GT
NVidia GeForce 6800
NVidia GeForce FX 5950 Series
NVidia GeForce FX 5900 Series
NVidia GeForce FX 5700 Series

and of course the newest ones work also..

[Braheem]

Re: After careful concideration.

My laptop just broke. lol now im wondering if this laptop will work with bf2. i need a laptop for my school. ABS Mayhem G3 it sure looks good ill add a cooling fan also to it. worth it? ati radeon mobility 9700 :/ thanks.

[-[MDS]-Stormy]

Re: After careful concideration.

My laptop just broke. lol now im wondering if this laptop will work with bf2. i need a laptop for my school. ABS Mayhem G3 it sure looks good ill add a cooling fan also to it. worth it? ati radeon mobility 9700 :/ thanks.

The Mobility 9700 is about the equivalent of a 9600 Pro/XT, so the game should be playable on a mix of medium and low settings.

[firezip]

Re: After careful concideration.

Dude don't be scared, just go to new egg look for these basic parts

-Motherboard (should have cpu socket number)
-Cpu(look at socket number)
-RAM
-Video Card
-Hard Drive
-Case

you can add all the other features in later, but just look on newegg on those parts and post a pc that you would like and get C and C from the guys here on it.

[Jofaba]

Re: After careful concideration.

I tried helping him out in PM but he seems comfortable with low settings and is more interested in the LCD upgrade etc. For everyone trying to help him, it's okay for him to want this stuff. This is what Dell etc exists for. Good luck to him and his ventures.

[firezip]

Re: After careful concideration.

Dude if ya wanna waste you money, send it to this address

naw jk lol

[Braheem]

Re: After careful concideration.

lol nooo I dont want a dell.. infact i cant buy a desktop. i only have enuf money for a 1 and i need laptop and i need it for school. lol well I guess i might just go ahead with the ABS Mayhem g3 looks pretty sweet. :)

[lonegunm4n]

Re: After careful concideration.

I play BF2 on all high on my friend's Compaq.

He has:
AMD Athlon 64 3800+
2 gigs of RAM
BFG Nvidia 7800GT

I don't see why people say Compaq's aren't that good. I know it's not all uber stuff, and I know you can build one for less. I've seen too many personally built computers fry, and that person have to buy a new component to replace it. When the mobo went out on my current Compaq, Compaq replaced free of charge, all I had to do was take it to one of their certified shops, and pay the $25 labor fee. That was it. I dropped it off and in an hour and a half, I had it back again.

[firezip]

Re: After careful concideration.

Also if you are getting an LCD, make sure it has below 10 ms response time. I know most dell LCD's have 25 ms which can creat "ghosting"

[Jofaba]

Re: After careful concideration.

It's been a while since I've taken a look at Compaq so here's what I'm assuming from their website:

1) They are owned by HP. I already knew that. That happened a long time ago. But from what I see on their website, it appears that they have moved the Compaq namebrand into being their economy based level computers. I didn't spend too much time on the site, but I only see three Compaqs to choose from, and the third is uncustomizable, and the second more expensive can't customize up to a 3800+ and 7800GT, so I can't even guess at how much your friends computer cost.

2) So I moved over into HP land. I still couldn't configure your friends computer, so the closest I could come was a 3800+ and an ATI X1600XT. The only other thing I upgraded was to two gigs of ram (name brand and timings unknown). I stuck with the default 80gb hard drive, the standard dvd/cdr, and opted for a 17 inch lcd witha maximum resolution of 1280x1024@75hz. I had to open the extended info, and then another extended info pdf file to find out that it has 16ms responce. Without a service plan the computer cost $1,239.99 and with a 2 year plan, the cheapest and shortest, brought the total to $1,339.98.

3) If you want to upgrade to a 19 inch screen add another $70. I assume you'd want to do this since theres a huge difference between the two, especially for gaming, and because the small price gap is so tempting. This is why these online prebuilt customizations are so addicting. But these small upgrades add up quickly. The computer now costs $1,409.98 and that's AFTER the $200 mail in rebate. To get this computer you'd actually have to give them $1,609.98. The good news is shipping on this comp is free.

The computer is as follows: 3800+ Venice core, 2gb of 400mhz value ram, 80gb 7,200 SATA hard drive, ATI X1600XT, HP DVD+/-R/RW, Windows XP Home, HP 17" 16ms LCD, HP mouse and keyboard. Total: $1409.98 after rebates.

Problems

Here's what we don't know about this computer:

A) Quality of the ram. Calling customer service would most likely answer this question*.

B) Type and quality of the motherboard. Same as above.

C) Number of available PCI slots. Same as above.

D) Wattage and quality of PSU.

E) The rest of the upgradeability. Can the processor be replaced or is it solid to the motherboard?

*If there interest is generated by this post, I'll consider calling HP to find out this information.

Here's what we do know about this computer:

A) It's either a Venice core 3800+, or they went the industry route of having a specificly tailored processor made for HP that can't be bought on the open market. Either way, it has a 512kb L2 cache.

B) The "included monitor" added $350 to the price after the upgrade and has a fairly high responce time.

c) At it's current build, you only have 80GB of hard drive. I don't know if they tailor to the customer so that you'll actually see 80gb available, but usually it's a little less. You might be okay with the size of this hard drive.

CONCLUSIONS

You've just spent over $1,400 on a computer that will probably handle any current game at maxed settings considering the resolution limitation of your monitor. (If you were to try playing the game on a CRT monitor at 1600x1200, it'd probably lag).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustRatingReview.asp?DEPA=1&Type=&Item=N82E16814102657&SortField=3&Pagesize=

So, right now I'm building the same computer on Newegg. You get the luxery of a time warp forward to the results as I do all the work =P

Same computer: $1,257.88, or $1,320.23 after s/h to my zipcode. There are, however, $65 in mail in rebates between the monitor and the videocard.

Things to note:

First the bad; there is no tech support or warrenty for this computer as a single unit. And you'll either have to build it yourself or pay someone to do it.

Reasons for that are: The first is that even choosing some of the cheapest equipment, you gained upgradeability and quality hardware. I chose an MSI Crossfire ready motherboard which means you can put a second X1600XT into the computer later on. The monitor is a Benq 16ms 19". You can easily upgrade to a faster responce and even a larger monitor for either the same price or a little more. And last but not least, I chose a quality Thermaltake 480w psu, and budgeted $90 for a mouse/keyboard combo and computer case. You can easily get an HP looking case for around $25, and a Logitech keyboard/mouse combo for $25-40.

Now for the good news: This computer will last twice as long as the HP because its upgrade friendly. All the parts are industry standard and compatibility issues are almost non-existant when compared to a prebuilt brand name computer. Also, you got to choose your parts and can easily choose better ones for about the same price.

-----------------------------------------------
Harder? Yes.
Riskier? Hard to say. What's riskier, in your opinion? Paying $1,400 for a computer that can only upgrade to a certain point and will litterally and positively be out of date within 6-8 months? Or paying $1,400 and having to deal with individual hardware warrenties instead of the computer on the whole? What's that? Yes, your computer is still warrentied, it just doesn't include the incompetent tech support of HP or Dell, and when they replace hardware, they usually give you a refurbished/used/heavily tested (floor unit) piece.
------------------------------------------------

My final advice is this: with the HP, you have to have $1,600 on hand. The $200 in rebates will take a couple of weeks to get back to you, and then it takes a week or two for the check to clear. If you build one yourself, you can buy in smaller doses and still have a working kickass computer. If you've got a current pc and monitor that you're planning on throwing away once you get a new computer, then use that case for now (if you can, assuming it's ATX), or at least use your current monitor. But still, for the same price you can build your own, be able to upgrade very easily, know that you have quality parts, any failures will be replaced with brand new units, and you don't have to wait for $200 in rebates. In fact, it's like you've already gotten the $200 back instantly, plus you get another $64 back down the road.

I hope this was helpful to some degree. It took a while to write. =P

[Braheem]

Re: After careful concideration.

woah jofaba very detailed. but as i see now i need a laptop my current computer (compaq) will go the main office in my house and i need a laptop for school. ABS Mayhem G3 is what im looking for now. Thanks for the detailed post. :)