Buying or Building your own PC?

[OrinMaxden]

I have been out of the computer world ( as in parts and stuff ) for about 5 years. I heard the new and better Graphics cards are PCI express. but see mother boards that have AGP 8x. I thought AGP was better then PCI but that was 4 or 5 years ago. not sure what the best processers are anymore. I always like AMD.

I used to goto www.pricewatch.com to get good deals. but found www.cyberpowersystem.com to have what appear to be good deals on pre built systems. Just wondering if it is that much cheaper to build your own like it was 4 years ago.

thanks for the help in advance.

[Roland Of Gilead]

Re: Buying or Building your own PC?

People always ask me how I come up with these great burns and I tell them: FIGURE IT OUT EINSTEIN!

[Snarf]

Re: Buying or Building your own PC?

Building is far cheaper than ready made. Another great thing about building your own is that you have everything and only what you want. The down fall, of course, is that you have to know what to get.

What do you want to do with your computer? If you are going to be doing any graphic design or music writing, I say get a Mac. If you just want to get online and look around, get email and crap like that and you dont want to pay a lot of money get an e-Machine. If you want a step up from that, go with an HP, Viao, Gateway, etc. If youre going to be gaming and you want decent performance, dude, youre getting a Dell (teehee). Dell has decent ready made machines. The high end ones are pretty good. But if you want a serious gaming machine that you have to donate a couple of organs for, go with Alienware.

A bad part about some ready made machines (like Gateway) is that everything is on-board and you cant upgrade. I mean you can, but you have to pay Gateway and arm and a leg for their proprietary ****.

So yeah, thats my opinion.

[OrinMaxden]

Re: Buying or Building your own PC?

I am going for gaming. So is the P4 better then Athlon 64? is PCI express better than AGP? I can still put it togather just wondering which motherboard to get. Also does anyone know a good site to buy the parts from, or is pricewatch.com still a good one?

[The_Real_Crunk]

Re: Buying or Building your own PC?

A good thing to do with stuff like that is to go to a computer geek store(or something) and talk to the guys there like your looking to buy something from them. Ask them about all that stuff, like which thing is better, blah, blah, blah.........

Then once you've got all you need, say thanks and walk out knowing what you need to go buy, and look around for cheap prices.

[Sampson]

Re: Buying or Building your own PC?

If you're going for a desktop, you'll want the AMD. AMD is better in every way for gaming. Intel survives only because they have contracts with the major computer manufactorers and AMD lacks a good mobile processor.

As for video card, depends what you're going for really. If you want something mid-quality I'd say get either a nVidia 6800 or an ati Radeon x800. I personally prefer Radeon, but a lot of other people like nVidia. As for the super high end stuff that costs $500+, I'm not too sure about. cnet has good video card reviews.

[Snarf]

Re: Buying or Building your own PC?

You can always go to newegg too.

When it comes to video cards, I prefer ATI to nVidia just because I think landscapes and colors are better and I play a lot of RPGs. If youre into FPSs, you may want to go with nVidia. They are both decent cards though.

As far as mobos go and you dont want to spend alot, Asus and Abit are good. Make sure its has a VIA chipset and try to get something with 8x AGP.

[JLaCroix]

Re: Buying or Building your own PC?

PCIe and PCI are two completely different things. PCIe is newer than AGP. PCI is older than AGP. PCIe cards are a bit more expensive, but I hear that they are worth it, but I don't know.

Building is definitely the way to go, if you know how. I reccomend a good AMD chipset and an NVidia card. (Not ATI products, due to their horrible driver support and overall slower performance).

But like someone else said here, it does depend on what all you want to do. Failure to remember something you want to do with your computer will only cost you in the end, so take your time.

[hitogoroshi]

Re: Buying or Building your own PC?

Warning: make sure you know what you're getting.
My family bought a brand new dell recently. We though our 64X CD drive had that number in reference to burning CDS..turns out it didn't have a burner. Or a DVD drive.
Bleagh.

[JLaCroix]

Re: Buying or Building your own PC?

I agree about that.

My Dell has a major video problem (integrated video, impossible to turn off) which is just plain annoying. I got it for free, so maybe I shouldn't complain.

If you're going for gaming, I reccomend to stay away from integrated video and buy a video card. Then you won't have the hell I go through with my Dell.

[Sampson]

Re: Buying or Building your own PC?

Aye, integrated video is terrible. I like my dell, but when I was shopping around for a laptop in the $1200 range, I decided to look at the XPS. And the XPS in that range all have integrated

As for for the nVidia cards being faster--that's not necessarily true. Depends which class of cards you are comparing. At the moment in the high end sector nVidia has the superior card, but in the mid-range ATI offers the superior product. Plus ATIs generally take less power and require fewer PCI slots.

[Zieg Rauros]

Re: Buying or Building your own PC?

Ok, time to show what I know. Athlon processors are better for the sole reason they can actually determine which programs need more thinking power. Intel will actually concentrate on a text file as much as a game, not good. Athlon is much better for gaming. As far as slots go, PCI < AGP < PCI express or PCIe. As for building your own machine, post your specs sometime if it works well, planning on building a machine sometime soon, want to see what works well.

[JLaCroix]

Re: Buying or Building your own PC?

Aye, integrated video is terrible. I like my dell, but when I was shopping around for a laptop in the $1200 range, I decided to look at the XPS. And the XPS in that range all have integrated

As for for the nVidia cards being faster--that's not necessarily true. Depends which class of cards you are comparing. At the moment in the high end sector nVidia has the superior card, but in the mid-range ATI offers the superior product. Plus ATIs generally take less power and require fewer PCI slots.

I am just speaking on personal experience. I know not all ATI cards are probably bad, but all of them I used are horrible. Especially compared with NVidia, again, talking about my own experiences.

One thing to keep in mind about ATI is that they are not as much "cross platform" as Nvidia. To this day, I have never gotten an ATI video card to work under Linux. Nvidia cards are extremely easy to set up under Linux.

Finally, another problem I had is that their line of TV Tuner cards are pathetic in my opinion. In the instruction manual for the TV Tuner card I bought from them, they actually require you to lower your refresh rate, and then increase it every time you want to watch TV on your PC. This is the only way to get the TV Card to work, until they released their newest driver which fixed this problem, and in releasing the newest driver, they replaced their old driver with it. Their newest driver is not compatible with ANY operating system. (I'm not kidding). You follow the instructions on their site, and your computer will lock up when trying to start TV to the point that your whole PC hard locks. Sometimes you can get it to work, but its really hard. This is what I mean by horrible drivers. Their video card drivers aren't much better.

As I'm saying, this is all just mere opinion and me speaking of personal experiences with their products, and experiences other people share will differ, of course. But due to the massive TV Tuner problem, and the fact that lower end Nvidia cards I have out perform higher end ATI cards, you can probably understand why I feel the way I do.

[Garr123]

Re: Buying or Building your own PC?

One of my friends bought the new ATI card and another bought the new Nvidia, while the Nvidia, the Nvidia looked slightly nicer but it had random chops going on while the ATI ran smooth as silk.

[JLaCroix]

Re: Buying or Building your own PC?

Using Nvidia's official drivers, or Microsoft built in drivers? If you use the Microsoft drivers, Nvidia cards run horribly.

But again, my experiences with ATI is just that, my experiences. My most recent experience (before I switched to Nvidia) was with the Radeon 8500, where even with the latest drivers, most my games would just crash unexpectedly. With an Nvidia card everything was fine from there on. I use BFG Nvidia, which one was yours? Maybe it was just a bad reseller.