So $445 USD is just a bit expensive? Hmm, my system somehow cost a lot when it said and done. This secondary system of mine seems to have cost me at least $600 USD. No matter how hard I try it never come out cheaper than that.

I paid 410 on ebay for mine


Nice System Alec




This new Dell 2001FP rocks.


GOt my XT intoday, and its great. You can tell a differnce big time in games at 1600x1200

nice niec

yeah even my 9700PRO - a red cover plate over some corcuit gets darn hot!

it came in my dell system - one thing dell needs to work on is cooling - the pice got so hot i could not touch it! no wonder i had to have the card replaced!~


i want to volt mod my 9700 PRO so tempting i can only get about 350CORE and about 330 memory - so not even 9800PRO specs

we'll see!

yeah that is because 2004 will be brining

PCI EXpress (16x AGP)
DDR II in motherboards

new CPu Prescott and another one form Intel maybe if no delays

the new socket 939 for the AMD FX64

alot of new things coming out this year that is why i am trying to hold off as long as i can on my dualie rig i want to build.

AGP 8X made stuff all difference to video card performance so I can't see PCI express making a difference. Is it just me or is putting the video card back on a shared bus a step backwards? All PCI devices share the same bus so having the video card compete for bandwidth from other devices like gigabit LAN, RAID controllers, etc a bad thing. AGP is separate from the PCI bus now so why not just raise the AGP spec again?

Having recently switched to an ATI graphics card, I can agree with the superior 2D performance, especially with MPEG decoding. With my old MX200, I had poor or nonexistant DXVA and my system couldn't decode 1920x1088 MPEG2 streams sent by my HD tuner card but with the Radeon, I get about 20 to 40% CPU usage on HD streams and about 4 to 10% on 720x576 PAL ones. As well as the better CPU usage, I bet a better image with all of the enhancements.

TV out quality on Radeons is damn good too. The TV out on the Radeon blows the TV out on my crappy TNT2 in my other box away.

I guess it all the extra bandwidth PCI Express will have(much better than PCI ). Considering that PCI has been around sence 1992 and hasn't been cahnged sense.

ATi has always had excellent video output along with their excellent DVD decoding as well.

This is why it's hard to make a choice of new graphics card unless you have one of those nice 42" or larger plasma displays. Then the choice becomes clear, ATi all the way

Also check out the PCI-X sig for more on the specs.

Sapphire Radeon 9600XT and an Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe.

I just recently purchased a Celestica Radeon X800 Pro thru work. I couldn't believe how much faster it is over my older GeForce FX 5600, the display looks much cleaner and crisper as well, and this is thru a KVM switch box

Trying to get my system ready for Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, need I say more...

Wow this is an old thread resurrection.
Okay this is what I got.

P4 3.0e ghz processor
asus P4C800 motherboard both were FREE.
and an LG GSA-4120B 12x DVD+/- burner (does Double Layer discs as well) and that was $129.00 CDN.

I lucked out on the processor and mobo and I couldn't resist the price despite having been an AMD user the last four years or so...

S

yeah I got the burner at www.dealsdirect.ca in case anyone else is interested.

so my current set up is
P4 3.0E ghz
asus P4C800-Deluxe
1GB pc 2700 (which I need to upgrade soon)
Ati X800 256MB vid card
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS
LG GSA-4120B 12x DVD+/- burner

So now I anxiously awaiting my pre-ordered copy of DOOM3.

S

Not Doom3 related, but I bought a Canon Elura 65 in preparation for my son's birth...

I picked up an Athlon XP 2400+ and am enjoying lower temps and a faster speed. Under load, I've got 13-14*C lower with the same heatsink and fan.

IN the last month, I bought an Apple G5 tower (dual 2.0's) and a 23" Display, 15" powerbook for school, and an IPOD

The very last thing I bought was a Linksys Cable Modem/DSL Router, so that I won't have to let my PC share its internet connection (DSL) and thus have to leave it on all the time.

Originally posted by Alec§taar:


O its great, I really love my 2 MAC's. Use my PC for gaming only now.

I picked up the Logitech Cordless MX Duo on sale, pretty slick. Although ironically for being cordless the receiver has a charging station that installs to the USB port and an adapter that goes to wall, nothing is truly wireless and cordless.

OK, this post is not exactly something I purchased in the last week but it's about as close as you come without purchasing

Anyways, my employer needed somebody to test out the Aopen Xcube AV Editions, check them out HERE!

So I got to take home (2)Two of these boxes over the weekend to play around with, yes that's right, two of them

Well, I need to finish geeking out over these and I will post more info from work tomorrow morning into the afternoon on what I like/dislike about these SFF machines

Since the EDIT option expired I'll have to post a new reply, so here's what I like/dislike about the Aopen Xcube AV Edition.

Pros:
SFF(Small Form Factor) Design makes it ideal for a home media center placement, like any other Hi-Fi equipment.
Aluminum chassis for added weight savings and better cooling, this includes the power supply also being made of an aluminum cage.
4-in-1 card reader in place of floppy disk drive.
Front panel connectors including Audio, USB and Firewire.
Prescott CPU ready motherboard with dual channel memory slots.
Support for both SATA and PATA HD's.
Comes with a separate TV/FM Radio tuner PCI card.
Remote Control that basically covers all the functionality you could want.
Home Theater Software app by a third party software developer, in this case Intervideo. It requires Windows 2000 Pro/XP Home or Pro to run properly.
Comes with an all Copper CPU heatsink fan along with the Smart Fan control on the motherboard BIOS for quiter operation.
Cool black design makes it look like other Hi-Fi equipment in your rack or media center.
One PCI and One AGP slot available on the motherboard, however since the TV/FM Radio tuner card takes the PCI slot you only have an option to add a decent graphics card to the AGP slot.

Cons:
No room for an internal floppy drive, USB only and external, sorry about this you legacy folks out there.
The Smart CPU Fan control seems to be too conservative in it's settings, with a Prescott core CPU the cube can become something akin to a space heater
Only room for a single HD, so make it a very large capacity drive as you can only add external USB/Firewire drives
Only room for a single Optical drive, so make it a DVD-RW to get the most out of this box.

Recent purchases:

A Sony DRU-710A Dual-Layer capable DVD Burner
An ASUS P4P800-X motherboard (Pentium4 w/ Intel 865 chipset, Dual Channel DDR RAM support, SATA support [the main reason I bought it])
A Seagate Barracuda (7200RPM) 200GB SATA hard disk (for use with the above mobo)
Sparkle GeForce4 MX-4000 video card (for my brother's old PC)
2 Coaxial IDE ATA-133 cables (replacing the standard ribbon types to reduce cable mess)

Well, I have just returned from ALDI (UK) with this >

# ntel® Pentium® 4 Processor 550 with HT Technology 3.40 GHz. DVB-T Digital TV & FM Radio Tuner card
# Dual Layer Multi Format DVD/CD Writer
# Bluetooth
# Geforce 6610 XL with new PCI-Express x16 bus architecture
# 250 GB Hard disc - SATA
# WLAN 54 MBit/s
# 9 in 1 Memory Card Reader
# 512 MB Memory
# 6x USB 2.0
# 2x FireWire
# 8-channel Intel® High Definition Audio
# LAN Network Controller
# 56K V.9x PCI Data/Fax modem
# Reddot Design Award
# Microsoft Works Suite 2005

Woohoo..Can't wait to try HL2 & DOOM III on it.

Originally posted by Yakkob:

Blimey!
You managed to get a PC like that from a supermarket?!!

How much did it set you back, and did they have any left? :p 8)

Rgds
AndyF

Originally posted by AndyFair:


For real, we have an ALDI in Germany too, and a couple of other supermarkets, and they all always have compititions with biggest PC's at the best prices, at least one special offer per month.

BTW, what do you guys think about these FANS

http://www.arlt.com/shop/pics/C1030419.jpg
http://www.arlt.com/shop/pics/C1030428.jpg
http://www.arlt.com/shop/pics/C1030405.jpg

Just got this one only last night:

Intel Pentium4 3.0GHz Prescott CPU.