Please Rate My PC--Just got it, not sure on how it compares

LilB281

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AMD 64 3400+
1.5Gb Kingston RAM
200Gb Serial ATA Harddrive
256Mb GeForce FX 5500 PCI Video Card
Sound Blaster Audigy Audio Card

I would just like to know if you think will be a decent gaming PC, I've never owned an AMD, curious how they compare with the rest. Thank you for input!!
 
That's uhhhh, decent... but it will be out of date within a year, considering DirectX10 is coming out, and that card can barely handle 7. Besides the card, its pretty nice.
 
Its pretty good aside from the video card did you check if it has AGP or PCI-E port?
 
I just checked, my board does have a PCI Express slot, is there a big difference from the PCI and PCI-E slots? I know a little bit, but I dont' know nearly as much as most of the people here.
 
Yeah, there's a big difference. How much can you spend? There are cards that are a couple hundred dollars that will do well, and there are those that are in the upper $600-700's that are incredible performance wise. A waste of money right now, but they do do the job. If you have around $300, you can a great card for pci ex.

edit: like I'm doing right now to remind you, please use the edit button... it's there for a reason... thanks.
 
The only thing I would change in that rig is your video card. It's horribly outdated. PCI technology for video cards is, well, dead. I recommend that you invest in a better video card, and failry quick.

I recommend about three cards, all of which are DirectX 9 compatible and perform rather well.

The first up, is the 7300GS. It's horribly under-rated simply because it has 4 pixel pipelines, however, it still uses a 7 series GPU, and from reviews, it even plays Half-Life 2 and Call of Duty 2 on max settings, not bad for a video card that has four pixel pipelines and only cost $70. :)

The second is the ATI Radeon X700. It's about $25 more then the 7300GS, but not quite as good. I own the AGP 8x version of the X700 and I can honestly say it's at the bottom of the mid-range video cards. It's somethign you'll want to consider gettign only if you want half-arse performance, and just to play the game.

The last video card I recommend is the NVIDIA 6600GT. This is about the same price as the X700, yet it delivers a tad bit better performance, and includes a different type of RAM, GDDR3, which is just Graphics Double Data Rate RAM 3. It's much better then your standard DDR on most video cards.

Whichever card you get in PCI-Express, it's sure to be better then that NVIDIA 5500. I sugest you either upgrade to a low to mid-range card now, or save up some cash and upgrade to a much better video card in the future. Which ever card you decide to get, wether it be a 7 series NVIDIA or an X1K from ATI, it'll deliver all the eye-candy you'll want.

But be forwarned that if you want to have the absolutly best graphics available, then you should be willing to spend up to $400-600 dollars depending on what kind of performance you want to get. If you want all the eye-candy enabled and not have to upgrade for years, then the $500 cards are the ones to get. That may seem liek a lot now, but when everyone has to upgrade and you don't, in the long run you save yourself money. :)
 
i agree with 1337dud3, and its not because we have same basic system + or - somethings. If you have a pci-e slot use it, save up and buy a 7 series card from nvidia or a x800 series from ati. other then that maybe add another gig of ram just to top it off. I have both 5 series and 6 series gpu from nvidia, both are great. the 5 series runs just fine with my AMD but it will be outdated soon. when that happens i'll buy a new 7800gs to replace my 6200oc, in turn replace my 5500oc with the 62000oc. lol...sorry for the run on. i want to see whats next for nvidia, 8 series?
 
Ouch.. Poor kid, even my video card is better. And its an x300! Wowza!

Oh well, nice processor, and ram! :)
 
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