Ok So...

[kuttlewug 28]

Is this a decent gaming rig or what? will this thing last, good parts, etc? If something needs to be changed PLEASE suggests!

• Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
• AMD Phenom II X4 920 quad-core processor [2.8GHz, 2MB L2 + 6MB L3 shared, up to 4000MT/s]
• FREE UPGRADE! 6GB DDR2-800MHz SDRAM [3 DIMMs] from 4GB
• FREE UPGRADE! 750GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive from 640GB
• 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 [DVI, HDMI, VGA]
• LightScribe 16X max. DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
• Integrated 10/100 Ethernet, No wireless LAN
• 15-in-1 memory card reader, 1 USB, 1394, audio
• No TV Tuner w/remote control
• Integrated 7.1 channel sound with front audio ports
• 20% OFF! HP USB 2.0 stereo speakers
• HP multimedia keyboard and HP optical mouse
• Microsoft® Works 9.0
• Norton 360(TM ) - 15 month
• HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

[You suck and have no life 203]

the GT 220 is shit, just look at it

if you are short on money, get a radeon 4850. should run tf2 just fine.

Everything else is fine. Next time take out the extraneous stuff, like norton, the dvd player, memory read, etc etc etc etc.

[JonasV 9]

Yeah you need at least a 260, preferably name brand to be able to run most new games full out. A 260 is equivalent to the top of the scale 98xx line.

Everything else looks OK. If you have the option to get a DDR3 board you might want to, but if not it isn't a huge loss.

EDIT: If they try to charge you more than $150 to upgrade to a 260, then just take the PoS and buy one off NewEgg.

Edited August 17, 2009 by JonasV

[Rydawg 14]

the GT 220 is shit, just look at it

if you are short on money, get a radeon 4850. should run tf2 just fine.

Everything else is fine. Next time take out the extraneous stuff, like norton, the dvd player, memory read, etc etc etc etc.

4850 'should' run tf2 fine? lawl you dont even need that much of a GPU. a 9800gt is fine, even when my main computer is doing work i use my 2ndary PC which has a 9600 GSO and that runs it fine.

Yeah you need at least a 260, preferably name brand to be able to run most new games full out. A 260 is equivalent to the top of the scale 98xx line.

Everything else looks OK. If you have the option to get a DDR3 board you might want to, but if not it isn't a huge loss.

EDIT: If they try to charge you more than $150 to upgrade to a 260, then just take the PoS and buy one off NewEgg.

ddr3? wtf.

260 is equal to 9800 gt? lawl 260 trades blows with ati's 4870

I wish people who know little about PC building would shut there mouth and stop trying to give advise. 99% of people want bang for the buck and don't need over the top stuff.

Pod, assume you bought from dell or hp?

drop the 220 and pick up a cheap 9800gt on ebay for less than $100. But make sure your PSU can handle it, not all PSU's are made with quality and even though it may say 300w, 500w or 1kw doesnt mean it will work like that or that its quality

[You suck and have no life 203]

4850 'should' run tf2 fine? lawl you dont even need that much of a GPU. a 9800gt is fine, even when my main computer is doing work i use my 2ndary PC which has a 9600 GSO and that runs it fine.

If you want to play on 1920x1200 with all settings maxed you do. And second, "need" is a subjective term. If you are a starving kid in Ethiopia, you dont even need TF2.

[Link2086 5]

If you want to play on 1920x1200 with all settings maxed you do.

When you start getting up into resolutions like that with max settings, you should be running cards in SLI or Crossfire, depending on whether you're an AMD or NVidia fan. And if that's the case, you had better make sure your northbridge has the PCI express ports running at x16 if you want the best performance, meaning you could be looking at a new motherboard as well. I'm putting together a new rig myself, and had to spend quite a while shopping for a board because I needed one that had at least two PCIe x16 slots running at x16 (I kept finding ones with one at x16 and one at x4).

Now, I don't think podsaurus is going to need to run TF2 at 1920x1200 with max settings, so (s)he won't have to worry about any of that. However, if that's what you're looking to do, you should take that into consideration.

Here's what matters out of what you posted, Pod:

* Vista Home Premium (64-bit)

* AMD Phenom II X4 920 quad-core processor [2.8GHz, 2MB L2 + 6MB L3 shared, up to 4000MT/s]

* 6GB DDR2-800MHz SDRAM [3 DIMMs]

* 750GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive

* 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 220

I like the Phenom II X4, especially because they have the L3 cache. I'm a bigger fan of the multilevel caching approach of AMD as opposed to Intel's "let's make a 12MB L2 and call it a day" view.

Your RAM is fine. I guess you're going to have three 2GB sticks, which will be plenty. You shouldn't have to worry about that.

Hard drive is fine; it barely matters for TF2 anyway.

Like everyone else has said, your graphics card could probably use a swap. You might want to consider ATI if you're not a fan of NVidia. I have used NVidia exclusively in the past and have had a few issues, so this time around I'm trying ATI. I can't make much of a recommendation from experience, though.

As for DDR3...really, you don't need to bother. The premium you'll pay for it at this point is not worth the minor performance boost. Chances are, with 6GB RAM, you'd hardly notice it as it is. Now, if you're looking to make this a machine you'll upgrade in the future, you might want to see about getting a motherboard that supports DDR3 (if yours doesn't already), but that may not be what you're looking for now. If you just want to play TF2 and keep spending to a minimum, upgrade the graphics card and you should be fine. Regardless, I would not recommend spending the money for DDR3 RAM right now.

[You suck and have no life 203]

building a computer is easy. its not about what components are the best, its about how much money you got in your wallet.

[Rydawg 14]

When you start getting up into resolutions like that with max settings, you should be running cards in SLI or Crossfire, depending on whether you're an AMD or NVidia fan. And if that's the case, you had better make sure your northbridge has the PCI express ports running at x16 if you want the best performance, meaning you could be looking at a new motherboard as well. I'm putting together a new rig myself, and had to spend quite a while shopping for a board because I needed one that had at least two PCIe x16 slots running at x16 (I kept finding ones with one at x16 and one at x4).

You need SLI or Xfire for that res? Get real, I run that res and use ONE 4870 and it runs tf2 awesome, I nvr get fps lower than 50 (which only happens when mass spam and all players on screen)

Not to mention there are some really powerful GPU's out there that can handle even higher res's without wasting money on sli/xfire.

[Mana 3,867]

How much monies are you spending on this?

[You suck and have no life 203]

You need SLI or Xfire for that res? Get real, I run that res and use ONE 4870 and it runs tf2 awesome, I nvr get fps lower than 50 (which only happens when mass spam and all players on screen)

Not to mention there are some really powerful GPU's out there that can handle even higher res's without wasting money on sli/xfire.

Some people like their fps right around 200 ish.

[Link2086 5]

You need SLI or Xfire for that res? Get real, I run that res and use ONE 4870 and it runs tf2 awesome, I nvr get fps lower than 50 (which only happens when mass spam and all players on screen)

Not to mention there are some really powerful GPU's out there that can handle even higher res's without wasting money on sli/xfire.

Do you need it? No. Is it recommended? Yes. When you've got 30" monitors running 2560×1600 at max settings, you'll have issues with just one card. The 4870 can probably handle 1920x1200 just fine, but if you're looking for absolute peak performance with >60FPS at all times, you'd be better off running SLI or Crossfire with 4850s instead of a single 4870. Crossfired 4850s outperform one 4870. Check LegitReviews for more specifics on that.

Again, I'm not recommending that he get Crossfired cards for his rig or saying that you should always go with SLI/Crossfire; just commenting about Suck's post on resolution and saying that sometimes it's better to have two lower GPUs crossfired than it is to have a single card. Crossfire/SLI is not always the best solution; I agree. However, if your board supports it, it could be cheaper to get two good cards going as opposed to one high-end one.

[Rydawg 14]

Some people like their fps right around 200 ish.

those people are retarded seeing how anything over 60fps is void. I had xfire 4870 for awhile noticed 0 difference. You have to remember tf2 is a cpu based game where gpu does less work.

Do you need it? No. Is it recommended? Yes. When you've got 30" monitors running 2560×1600 at max settings, you'll have issues with just one card. The 4870 can probably handle 1920x1200 just fine, but if you're looking for absolute peak performance with >60FPS at all times, you'd be better off running SLI or Crossfire with 4850s instead of a single 4870. Crossfired 4850s outperform one 4870. Check LegitReviews for more specifics on that.

Again, I'm not recommending that he get Crossfired cards for his rig or saying that you should always go with SLI/Crossfire; just commenting about Suck's post on resolution and saying that sometimes it's better to have two lower GPUs crossfired than it is to have a single card. Crossfire/SLI is not always the best solution; I agree. However, if your board supports it, it could be cheaper to get two good cards going as opposed to one high-end one.

we werent talking 30" monitors, sucky said 24 res....

[You suck and have no life 203]

those people are retarded seeing how anything over 60fps is void. I had xfire 4870 for awhile noticed 0 difference. You have to remember tf2 is a cpu based game where gpu does less work.

we werent talking 30" monitors, sucky said 24 res....

FYI, did it ever occur to you that people play more than 1 game? I have a core i7 with crossfire 4850's and I still can't run crysis even close to max settings.

[Rydawg 14]

FYI, did it ever occur to you that people play more than 1 game? I have a core i7 with crossfire 4850's and I still can't run crysis even close to max settings.

thats cause crysis is the shittiest game ever made. great for burning ur pc in though

[You suck and have no life 203]

thats cause crysis is the shittiest game ever made. great for burning ur pc in though

Crysis Review = 9.5/10

Following worst games ever made.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/127579/the_10_worst_games_of_all_time.html

http://www.gameguru.in/features/2008/04/top-5-worst-pc-games-ever/

There are 10000+ games ever made. You never played them all, how can you claim Crysis is the shittiest game ever made? Second of all, it was rated 9.5, so you are saying all other games are rated higher than 9.5? Even if it was rated 5/10, you don't think at least one other game in the world would be rated a 4/10? This is why you can't be trusted.

[Rydawg 14]

With all the hype that was Crysis, i bought it. I sold it a week later for 5 bucks cause i didn't like that game. In my years of gaming, i have never sold a game cause it was shitty.

So yeah it's the shittiest game ever.

[You suck and have no life 203]

With all the hype that was Crysis, i bought it. I sold it a week later for 5 bucks cause i didn't like that game. In my years of gaming, i have never sold a game cause it was shitty.

So yeah it's the shittiest game ever.

No. Your evaluation of the game is a relative comparison, not an absolute comparison. You are comparing it to fictitious awesome game hyped in your mind. Just because it didn't meet that, doesn't make it the worst game in the world.

An example is Susan Boyle. Is she the best singer in the world? No. But she sang much better than what peoples expectations of her were (since she was ugly, and nobody thought she could sing). Therefore, it appeared as if she was amazing.

[Rydawg 14]

No. You're evaluation of the game is a relative comparison, not an absolute comparison. You are comparing it to fictitious awesome game hyped in your mind. Just because it didn't meet that, doesn't make it the worst game in the world.

An example is Susan Boyle. Is she the best singer in the world? No. But she sang much better than what peoples expectations of her were (since she was ugly, and nobody thought she could sing). Therefore, it appeared as if she was amazing.

all this horrible mobo jumbo and nothing comes of it

If you think something is the shittiest thing in the world, wouldnt you tell other people that? Stop trying to protect your shitty ass game

[You suck and have no life 203]

all this horrible mobo jumbo and nothing comes of it

If you think something is the shittiest thing in the world, wouldnt you tell other people that? Stop trying to protect your shitty ass game

I'm not saying its the greatest game, but I am saying its not the worst game. I'm just arguing with you because you're wrong, not because I give a shlt about the game.

[Link2086 5]

I have a core i7 with crossfire 4850's and I still can't run crysis even close to max settings.

I just got a Phenom II X4 with crossfire 4870s and I doubt I would be able to run Crysis at max either. Max settings with the antialiasing is ridiculously taxing. However, if crossfire 4850s can't run it on max, a single 4870 won't be able to either.

[JonasV 9]

Um I have been busy the last few days and haven't had time to check this. Felt I needed to comment on one thing, just a note, the 260 is on par or better than the 9800 GTX+ if you are going by the Tom's Hardware tests. Plus I was assuming he would buy a name brand SC version like eVGA.

Also I'm running a PhenomI dual core, with an eVGA 260 and I have everything maxed out at 1900x1200 in TF2 and it pegs at 60FPS since I have Vsynch enabled.

[You suck and have no life 203]

The moral of the story is, get educated, get a good job, and then you can afford a nice computer since its always better to have overperformance than underperformance.

[FunkyFresh 68]

The thing that killed it for me was the A.I. in Crysis.. youtube search for some vids of it in action, it's no bueno.

[Rydawg 14]

The thing that killed it for me was the A.I. in Crysis.. youtube search for some vids of it in action, it's no bueno.

this

[Imhotep 0]

The moral of the story is, get educated, get a good job, and then you can afford a nice computer since its always better to have overperformance than underperformance.

I have a good job, it doesn't mean I am willing "waste" my money on a dual or tri GPU based machine which will loose half of it's value in the next 6-12 months. Playing at a high resolution with full details won't make you play better at TF2.

For the most part, my PC is almost 3 years old except for the graphic card which is 9800 GT or GTX that I upgraded later on. I'm still having a lot of fun playing TF2 with that old box and I'm regularly in the top players.

However, I might start looking for a new PC that I can keep for the next 2-3 years when the new Intel processors i5/i7 are available.