My Dell PC is getting a bit old, I reckon. It doesn't seem to like CDs or DVDs being inserted into it. Just sort of whirs for a bit and then ignores them. It suddenly occurred to me last night that it is now almost exactly five years old! So it's probably just showing its age now. I bought a new graphics card and some extra memory towards the end of 2007, but other than that it's as it was in 2004:

Pentium 4 2.80GHz
1.5GB Ram
Radeon X1950 Pro
Creative Labs 5.1 Audigy2 Audio Card

I bet some of you are wondering how I can race anything with that kind of spec!

I'm due to get a pay rise at work this month, back-dated to October, so there might be some money I could use to get a new system. My question is what sort of system should I be getting? I know nothing of what is good these days, so would like advice re: processors, memory, graphics cards, etc.

I'm not interested in building my own PC, even if it is cheaper that way. Life's too short to spend hours inside a PC case, IMO. I haven't had any issues with my current Dell PC, and would happily consider going to them again. Unless anyone else has any recommendations?

Budget?

Hmm, good question. Few hundred pounds, maybe. I don't need a monitor - the one I have at the moment is fine. My speaker system is also fine. So I'm just looking for a new 'box', really.

Anyway, I would go with a quad processor from intel. And at least 4GB of RAM. A graphics board with at least 512MB, but I don't exactly know how much they put on it now-a-days.

If you want to save money, you can go with a duo core processor, but I think the future will demand more processing power, so a quad should keep you happy longer.

Windows 7 is rumored to be great, but I don't know your time frame, or MS' time frame. It is in Release Candidate testing i think, so shouldn't be to long.

If you go for a 64bit OS, I would go with 8GB of RAM, and I would deffinately go for 64bit. At least with Windows 7. I would, but that doesn't mean it's 100%, as a matter of fact I have no idea how stable it's gotten, but I imagine it should be usable now. Earlier (early Vista 64) I think mostly the drivers were lacking, so that shouldn't be a problem anymore.

Thanks Morten. I didn't realise Vista came in different flavours. What's the advantage of 64bit over the standard?

As an example, playing around on the Dell website came up with the following system for £610:

Quote

Components
PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Quad-Core Q8200 Processor (2.33GHz, 4MB cache, 1333MHz FSB)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 - English
HARDWARE SUPPORT 1 Year Limited Warranty - Collect & Return
MICROSOFT APPLICATION SOFTWARE Microsoft® Works 9.0 / English - (Does not include Microsoft® Word)
MONITOR Display Not Included
MEMORY 4096MB 800MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [4x1024]
HARD DRIVE 640GB (7200rpm) SATA Hard Drive
GRAPHICS CARD 512MB nVidia GeForce 9800GT graphics card
OPTICAL DRIVE DVD+/-RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD)

To me, that looks pretty good.

I would have said that was more than a "few hundred pounds"

I assume that's one of the "XPS" ones.

You /could/ get a quad core Inspiron for £450 then just go and buy your choice of gfx.

I assume you priced up the "Studio". If you go up to the XPS I think you can get faster memory - 1333 v 800.

Yes, the example I posted was a plain 'Studio' - the base was the third one along on this page.

I'll have a look at the XPS, then...

Isn't your graphics card not too bad anyway ? if it is okay you could get a decent base unit for 3 to 4 hundred & bang your graphics card straight in it to start with then upgrade it later on.

I don't think it's all that good, Neil. It was fairly 'cheap' when I bought it in 2007, so it's probably not good enough to base a system around.

To put it another way, I have last month's issue of PC Pro, and they review twenty graphics cards, ranging from bargain to top-of-the-range. My Radeon X1950 isn't even worthy of a review.

I could do with a new card aswell may get a nvidia 9600GT 512mb to replace my 7600GT 256mb not that expensive now about £70 but should improve things a little then that is as far as I go with this system ! Already added a new card 4 gig of ram & a new processor since I bought the system about 2 & 1/2 yrs ago .

I know you don't want to build your own, but that's all I do. Or at least specify what I want them to put into it.

The RAM is probably twice as fast if you go with 2x2048, than 4x1024.

It doesn't specify 32 vs 64 bit, but the difference is that your processor handles 64 bit, but with only 32 bit OS, you won't take full advantage of this.

32 bit=2^32
64 bit=2^64

This is used towards adressing at least. RAM example:
32 bit system: max RAM 4096 GB
64 bit system: max RAM 17,179,869,184 GB
Of course windows has it's own limitations so you won't get all of this, and I guess you wallet has too.

Your X1950 is probably outdated, but I don't know much about ATI cards.

Another concideration is the graphics cards fan/cooling. Many of the newer cards have over the top fans, which will keep the noice down. But some has the little plastic things still.

But I must say I'm tempted to recommend you stick with 32bit, as I have no experiance with 64 bit yet, and wouldn't want to give you a hard time.


No HDD in that Dell?

Still looking at getting a new PC from Dell. The one I'm thinking of getting is this one here for £629. Plus, I can get 10% off if I order in the next couple of days.

Anyone got any comments on that machine and any possible changes to the basic config?

Are there no better offers about than Dell ? Have you had Dell before Alan is that why you want to use them again ?
Ebuyer have some quite good offers usually or Aria

http://www.ebuyer.com/store/5/cat/Desktop-PCs

Yeah, my current PC is Dell, and I've had no trouble with it at all until the CD drive recently stopped working. So I'm happy to go with them again, and they seem to offer a lot for the money.

I recommend you don't go for 3GB RAM, I recommend 4, 2x2GB. Other than that from what I can see, it's an okay system. With 4GB RAM, you'll only be able to use 3,5 of them, but you should be able to run them twice as fast, if the system supports this feature, but most do.

AlanS wrote

Quote

Components
PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Quad-Core Q8200 Processor (2.33GHz, 4MB cache, 1333MHz FSB)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 - English
HARDWARE SUPPORT 1 Year Limited Warranty - Collect & Return
MICROSOFT APPLICATION SOFTWARE Microsoft® Works 9.0 / English - (Does not include Microsoft® Word)
MONITOR Display Not Included
MEMORY 4096MB 800MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [4x1024]
HARD DRIVE 640GB (7200rpm) SATA Hard Drive
GRAPHICS CARD 512MB nVidia GeForce 9800GT graphics card
OPTICAL DRIVE DVD+/-RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD)

To me, that looks pretty good.

Didn't see this before, and this looks pretty sturdy.

sorry if this has been answered but 32bit (standard vista or xp) can only see 3.2Gb of ram where as 64bit can see up to 8.4Gb, the 64 bit option is the same price on the dell site.

Base
Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Core Processor Q8200 (2.33GHz, 1333MHz, 4MB cache)
Memory
4096MB 1333 MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [4x1024]
Keyboard
Dell Multimedia USB Keyboard Black - UK
Monitor
Display Not Included
Video Card
512MB ATI® Radeon™ 4850 Graphics card
Hard Drive
640 GB Serial ATA non Raid (7200 Rpm)
Floppy Drives and Additional Storage Devices
19-in-1 Media Card Reader
Microsoft Operating System
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 (64 Bit) - English
Mouse
Dell Laser Mouse USB (6 buttons scroll) Black
Optical Devices
Blu-Ray ROM combo (Blu-ray read only, DVD, CD read & write)
Sound Cards
Integrated HDA 7.1 Dolby Digital Audio
Speakers
Creative Labs Fatal1ty Gaming Headset


just went for one of these and got the order in before midnight 29th April so got extra discout. £664 inc vat.
I'd recommend the 4Gb 1333MHz ram too.
Thank your given choice of deity for good old overtime.

http://www.dmxdimension.com/dell-uk/xps-430-deals-codes-coupons/


its the D04X305 with a few extras listed.

That's pretty much the same system as I'll be getting, Paul. Main difference is I won't be getting a Blue-Ray drive or gaming headset.

Is it better to go for 4096MB 1333 MHz Dual Channel than 3072MB 1067 MHz Tri Channel?

XP 32 bit you can be sure all your games will work in the short term.
however, with any 32bit windows with more than 2gb installed, your devices use memory locations which are taken out of the address of the main ram.

with tri-channel you would probably only have 3x1gb installed but with a 512mb graphics card, less than 2.5gb would be addressable!
with dual channel you would likely have 2x2gb. this is more than enough for today's use and leaves slots free to increase to 8gb at a later date.

these days you would be hard pushed to use all the bandwidth of dual channel in gaming - you might find in some situations that the faster frequency of the dual channel is an improvement due to lower latency.
and you can get a faster dual core cpu for the money than quad core, and this would mean current games run faster (almost all games still only use a single core).

but i suspect you want your next pc to last another 5 years? if you could afford to wait, or spend the extra dosh right now, the intel core i7 is the best chip of the day. that should leave you an upgrade path for a longer while, since it is so new (who can tell really though?)

however, for affordability, my choice would currently be the AMD Phenom II X3 720BE which has similar performance to intel at its price point, only uses 95 watts, and is also very overclockable should you wish to!
you should choose DDR3 if you can afford it - 4gb now and 4gb later (will be much cheaper by the time you actually need more)
im not sure what motherboards have tri-channel. i will have to look into that as i have not had to upgrade for a while (my core 2 duo and geforce 8800gts run everything i can throw at it, even with a 24" monitor!)

for graphics, go with Radeon HD 4770. this is new out, so you might have to wait a week or two for it to show, but it is by far the best for the money. slightly better performance than the 9800 you mentioned earlier, but a lot cheaper. and uses 20watts less as well!

i probably seem like an amd/ati fanboy by now, but i am currently using intel/nvidia

if you want me to build you a pc alan, i am still in glasgow. i can price you one up?

After ordering mine I was pointed at this site
http://www.alienware.co.uk/main.aspx
for the best/cheapest , bar building your own, gaming computers. Happy with the Dell though so please dont any one tell me Ive bought a lemon.

Here's something about Vista 32/64: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946765

Had a look at the alienware site - they look to be more expensive than Dell. Also, their case styling is a little 'childish', in the sense that a child would think it's way cool.

Thanks for the offer, Paul (B), but I'll probably just go with a Dell.

OK, that's me ordered a new PC:

Base Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Core Processor Q8200 (2.33GHz, 1333MHz, 4MB cache)
Microsoft Operating System Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 (64 Bit) - English
Memory 4096MB 1333 MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [4x1024]
Keyboard Dell Multimedia USB Keyboard Black - UK
Monitor Display Not Included
Video Card 512MB ATI® Radeon™ 4850 Graphics card
Hard Drive 640 GB Serial ATA non Raid (7200 Rpm)
Floppy Drives and Additional Storage Devices 19-in-1 Media Card Reader
Mouse Dell Laser Mouse USB (6 buttons scroll) Black
Optical Devices 16X DVD+/-RW (Read/Write DVD, CD)
Sound Cards Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy ADVANCED HD
Speakers No Speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system)
Shipping Documents English Documentation with UK/Irish Power Cord
Gedis Bundle Reference D04X302
Standard Warranty 1 Year Premium Warranty Support
Enhanced Service Packs 1Yr Premium Warranty Support
Order Information XPS Desktop 430 Order - UK
Dell System Media Kit Resource DVD - (Diagnostics & Drivers)
Accidental Damage Support No Accidental Damage Support
Online Backup DataSafe Online Backup 2GB 1 year
Microsoft Application Software Microsoft® Works 9 - English
Protect your new PC No Security/Anti-Virus Protection - English

£626 all in, including delivery.

Is there no recession in Scotland ?

Looks good enjoy I'm only jealous !