I just had to brag about what I just ordered, and want to know what you all are running on.

AMD Phenom 9500+
4gb RAM
ATI Sapphire 3850

Total Cost: 550 USD (with ASUS AM2+ mobo)

my old machine:

AMD Athlon 2700+
1gb RAM (underclocked due to being retarded.)
Nvidia Geforce 5200

So I'm finally going to be able to play games again! So what are you all on?

similar to your old one (just some minor other alternatives like ati card, a little less cpu power etc.).

My god that's top of the range of the AMD-ATI offerings... only $550!?

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (not overclocked, actually using Intel SpeedStep so it's like at 2.13 Ghz instead of the original 2.4 Ghz ),
2GB DDR2 Ram @ 4-4-4-12 timings, @1.80v instead of the recommended 2.10v,
ATI X1900 XT 256MB, @ 2D Core/Memory clocks nearly all the time.
2x 250GB hard drives, Raid 0 with Intel on-board Raid

It's a year old, and yeah I like running things at below manufacturer specs clocks/voltage

For a start you made the wrong choice of gfx card, the 8800gt or the new gts 512mb g92 are currently the best and cheapish cards around. The 8800gt is the more popular due to it being very powerful yet very cheap for what it is.

The cpu while stock speed its good but if you got a Q6600 and overclocked it (very easy to do) you could have had a better processor.

Anyhow nice setup regardless.

Mine is.

AMD x2 3800+ (overclocked from 2.0ghz to 2.6ghz)
2gb DDR1 pc 3200 ram
x1950pro 512mb AGP
Sblaster Audigy 2 ZS

Runs games great for my needs. Runs crysis at 1024 res on high about 20fps but most of the time 30fps depending whats on screen.

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Strings, speedstep turns the cpu down a bit when its not using games but when gaming it pops back to what it should be running at. Basically its energy saver thing. Also overclock it to 3ghz :p just upp the fsb thats all and make sure to check temps dont go past 55ish on load (using orthos to stress test if stable etc)

yeah I had it on 3Ghz for a long while, but I hardly play any graphically intensive games any more, lol. I do the underclock mostly for the sake of lowering fan speeds, lol, and stability, for stuff like modelling and coding.

ah k

I just read the reviews on TomsHardware, Skeeter is right, the Phenoms quad cores are behind the Intel quad cores in performance. But it also says this:

So really, you're not worse off value for money wise.

Btw, is the difference in quality between on-board sound and a sound card by a specialist manufacturer like Creative very noticeable? I have never owned a Creative sound card and so I don't know.

which I would say is a better thing than performance which is totally outdated once it's supposed to be of full use and that's when quad-core kind of MPI language written programs take full perfomance out of the quadcores. By then, better quadcores will be available I'm sure so I'd take the money ten times rather.

A normal PC:

CPU: Athlon X2 3800+ @ 2.5Ghz (sockel 939)
RAM: 2x512 MB DDR (A-Data Vitesta DDR500)
GPU: Geforce 7900GT extreme Edition
Storage: 2x160GB Samsung RAID0 + 500GB Samsung
OS: WinXP prof 32bit

I can do all that I want. Office, Internet, multmedia, games and development. Maybe I need more RAM, but DDR1 isn't cheap

Yes a soundcard dedicated like audigy or xfi is better than onboard, for performance and quality.

I hope you keep your code backed up regularly--the RAID-0 configuation doubles your risk of drive failure .

Yes, of course. I have a lot of backups: USB-Stick, Mobile HDD, Internet Mailaccount, CDs, two other PCs and many backups on my computer

I hope this should be enough

you know if the usb-stick causes a spike in the electric current on the mainboard which toasts the surrounding usb ports and setting your mobile hdd on fire and soon burning down your whole appartment along with the two other pcs plus your email account got hijacked and deleted, meh, in that case it wasn't enough

I've posted my stats plenty of times on the forums, but here goes again. It's getting on three years old but at £440 (Plus £60 to upgrade the RAM), it was an absolute bargain at the time as it was an ex-display model from PC World.

Advent T9003
Windows XP Home Edition SP2
Pentium 4 model 540 Processor @3.207Ghz
1Gb RAM
2x Radeon 9250 graphics cards
250Gb Hard Drive
1x HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM GDR1862B Drive
1x Lite-on DVDRW SOHW-1653S Drive
17" Medion MD30917PN Monitor
Creative Inspire T3100 Speakers (2.1 Sound)
HP Photosmart 2575 All-in-one Printer/Scanner/Photocopier

I've got 2x 250GB RAID0 and nothing else. It worries me quite a bit lol. I think I'll change it to a matrix raid of 100GB RAID1 and 300GB RAID0 the next time I decide to format the drives. Also I won't bother with triple booting xp, linux and vista, cause it turns out I did not use the other OSes at all, so it was quite a waste of time setting it all up. lol

The cheapest 8800gt was around $280 for a good one, compared to the $150 I spent. And if you look at the benchmarks, the 3850 is almost directly below the 8800gt.

And like Strings said above, the price point is excellent for the Phenom - I didn't want to spend another $100 for processing power I won't need.

I ran 2x Seagate Cheetah X15s (15,000rpm) in a RAID-0 for a while... it was pretty great (and blazing fast) until one of the drives failed. Half the nightmare was figuring out which of the drives was the source of the problem. Since then I've stuck to a single WD Raptor as my boot drive and three 250gb + a 750gb drive for media and such (no redundancy). I find single drives to be generally safer now .

I thought i'd dig up this oldish thread and post my updated stats. I've got a new Radeon X1650 Pro.

I've posted my stats plenty of times on the forums, but here goes again. It's getting on three years old but at £440 (Plus £60 to upgrade the RAM), it was an absolute bargain at the time as it was an ex-display model from PC World.

Advent T9003
Windows XP Home Edition SP2
Pentium 4 model 540 Processor @3.207Ghz
1Gb RAM
Radeon X1650 Pro Graphics Card
250Gb Hard Drive
1x HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM GDR1862B Drive
1x Lite-on DVDRW SOHW-1653S Drive
17" Medion MD30917PN Monitor
Creative Inspire T3100 Speakers (2.1 Sound)
HP Photosmart 2575 All-in-one Printer/Scanner/Photocopier

LOL, same one i've got hope the demo runs better lol

Regards Wolfe

Yep, framerates have doubled.

Just got a new PC off internet i got:

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ (2.6gzh times 2) so its 5.2 GZH
3454 MB Ram
Vista Ultimate
a 1GB graphics card (came with it and im upgrading that soon)

All for a Mere £200 haha what a bargin

Windows XP Professional Edition SP2
AMD AthlonXP 1800+ @1.5Ghz
1280Mb DDR266 RAM
Nvidia GeForce4 MX440
80Gb pata drive
250Gb Sata2 Drive
No optical drives
19" GNR LCD Monitor




Have it for about 5 years, and i still doesn't thinking about buying a new one .

I've just (finally) got a working PC again after an expensive upgrade exercise to replace not one, not two, but three consecutive hardware failures over a 9 month period. Listen to me ladies and gentlemen when I say: do NOT bother buying Asus kit. After 3 faulty Asus motherboards I just gave up: faulty memory controllers, faulty chipsets, and now I've given up on AMD once and for all. I've gone Intel for the first time ever.

And hardly anyone is listing their Motherboard spec, which for me is the most important component. New spec is:

Gigabyte motherboard GA-EP35-DS3 (1,600 Mhz bus speed)
Intel Quad core Pro Q6600 (2.4 Ghz)
Crucial 2GB Ballistix Memory DDR2 PC2-8500
GeForce 7900GT Extreme Edition 256MB
Maxtor 400 GB HDD SATA2 7200rpm
Windoze XP Pro

Desktop Workstation
HP Blackbird 002
Intel Core 2 Duo 3.00GHz
4gb Corsair DDR2 @ 1066MHz
nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX w/ 768mb DDR3
Samsung 305T 30" LCD @ 2560x1600
160gb WD Raptor @ 10,000rpm
3x 250gb Hitachi DeskStar @ 7,200rpm
1x 750gb Seagate Barracuda @ 7,200rpm

Personal Mobile Workstation
Apple MacBook Pro
Intel Core Duo 2.16GHz
2gb DDR2 @ 667MHz
ATI Radeon X1600 Mobility w/ 256mb DDR3
100gb Seagate Momentus @ 7,200rpm
Airport Extreme 802.11n Upgrade

Professional Mobile Workstation (1/2)
Dell Latitude D620
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.20GHz
4gb DDR2 @ 667MHz
nVidia Quadro NVS 110 w/ 256mb DDR3
160gb Seagate Momentus @ 7,200rpm

Professional Mobile Workstation (2/2)
IBM ThinkPad T61p
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.50GHz
4gb DDR2 @ 667MHz
nVidia Quadro FX 570M w/ 256mb DDR3
Samsung 243T 24" LCD @ 1920x1200
64mb MTRON MSP-7500 SSD (130+MB/s read, 120+MB/s write, <0.1ms access)

You're just showing off now, Mike.

Ya! Mike has 3 spare computers he is willing to share around, finally i can replace my old and delapidated hamster wheel driven machine for one of his

Regards Wolfe

Mine's almost the same.
Not as much HDD's in there tough (got room for 11 total..BIIIG Armor casing) and I have the ASUS P5B Deluxe motherboard.

The 250gb drives have been accumulating for a few years now. I'll probably pull them out and throw in a new 1tb drive to replace them. Five harddrives give off a lot of heat...