Would this be a decent computer?

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Erfinjerfin

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Jan 1, 2009
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So, I'm saving up to buy a gaming computer from CyberPower, and these are what i *think* the specs will be:

Case: Thermaltake M9
Power supply: 580 Watts
GFX cards: GeForce 9400 512 MB X2
CPU: Core 2 Duo E7400 @ 2.8 GHz
Cooling Fan: XtremeGear Ultra Heatpipe
RAM: 4 GB DDR3
Motherboard: EVGA 750 SLI
500 GB SATA Hard Drive

Comes to a total of $785. Thoughts? By the way, I'm on a budget of $800 here.
 
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The 9400 is fairly anemic card. I see you have X2 written by it. SLI with a 9400 would be a bad idea. You would be better off spending the money you would for two of them on one much better card.

Get a ATI 4670 instead if you're on a budget. I wouldn't put it crossfire either. Again spend money on one much better card if you have the urge to buy two of them.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102820

Review of 4670

Or get a 9600 GSO.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150320

You would be much happier with either of those. I think that even playing something like TF2, DOD:S, or L4D you would be extremely disappointed by the 9400. For an idea of the performance of the 9400 read the ATI 4670 review I linked and look at the part of the graph for 9400. Even in TF2 game performance at any resolution above 1024x1028 is abysmal (less than 30 FPS is not good and is very noticable).

Since you play TF2 here is a direct link to the TF2 part of the review so you can see the numbers yourself.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_4670/18.html

The rest of the system is well rounded. The E7400 is a very solid processor and 4 GB of RAM is nice.
 
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i agree, leave the video card area alone & go onto newegg & find a decent video card that will give you more power & performance w/o hurtin ur wallet. i recently upgraded from my 7600gt 2 my current 9800gt (i had a lil bit of $$ that i was willin 2 spend 4 the upgrade). also i decided 2 run the same deal as u did, just 2 get a lil heads up on what kinda deal u were wantin 2 do. 1st off, leave the motherboard w/ the motherboard that they chose, itll save ya some $$. 2nd off, they dont do ddr2 memory, they do ddr3 memory, so tell us please which memory ur choosin as theyre givin u several options there. so rite now, im @ 684 w/ all the same options you chose (they had more options of which u didnt specify so i chose none on those) & they had the option 2 go w/ the 4670 (based on geheimwaffe's suggestion) & 684 is what i got, so apparently your not tellin us everything. please try to tell us EVERYTHING your wantin 2 get from cyberpower!!
 
So then instead of 9400 X2, I should get just one 9600?

Edit: Ahh... Only 24.2 FPS for the 9400.

Edit 2: Only brought up the cost by $6 for the one 9600. Thanks Der Geheimwaffe.
 
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alright I'm looking at the configurator right now. def don't get the EVGA board, it's really expensive and the Asus board will do you just as much and save you 180 dolllars.

Unfortunately however, these computers don't come with an OS included. Vista Premium 64 will run you another 105. So the computer you have up there wouldn't work anyone cause the OS would push the price above your budget. Here's the build I came up with.

Raidmax Sagitta II case
580-Watt PSU
Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 @2.8GHz
XtremeGear Ultra Heatpipe CPU Heatsink
Asus P5Q3 Motherboard
4GB DDR3 RAM @1333MHz
ATI Radeon 4670
500GB HDD @7200 RPM
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit

that all runs you to 786$. If you have a Vista 64-bit disk already and don't need to buy the OS, you can just replace the 4670 with a GeForce 9800GTX or a Radeon 4850.
 
9400 should be fine ..
any thing from 8000 above is good and 9600 above is extreme
 
malalla said:
9400 should be fine ..
any thing from 8000 above is good and 9600 above is extreme
Click to expand...

Naming scheme means nothing, you can't go by that in the way you are thinking. The 9400 is absolute junk for gaming, it's a low end card not even mid-range (nvidia's weakest card of its generation in fact). A Nvidia 6800 or ATI X800 from 2004 would outperform it. It all has to do with the GPU on the card and to a lesser extent the type of memory used on it. The 9400 is only worthwhile for casual gamers who play old titles at a resolution of 1024x768 or lower.

I see you like Call of Duty 4 so that would be a good example of the performance of a 9400 on a game. At a resolution of 1280x1024 a 9400 would average around 15 FPS. Anytime FPS drops below 30 it's considered very noticeable.
 
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really you can start to notice if your FPS drops below 60, since the human eye can only refresh at 60Hz.
 
hmm, didn't check. either way it'll come closer to your 800 dollar mark than the build you posted because that was 800 without the OS.
 
i priced a phenom II system for $860. Some things could be changed to lower the price close to 800
 
Alright, I'm going with Endiment's idea. Thanks dude.

Actually, I'm going with a *slightly* edited version:

Core 2 Duo E8500 and Radeon 4830 instead of E7400 and Radeon 4670.
 
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I have to say this..ASUS definitely makes really good motherboards..reliable too..my past experience with eVGA ones are hit or miss mostly..they are either really good or really crappy..take ur pick..
 
I would check out making a phenom II system. I configured a triple core with a 4670 for about 747. I would play around with the phenom IIs before you decide on the pc you wanna get. The one you picked out is pretty solid though. What ever system you get it will be enough to play tf2 and whatever games you wish. :)
 
smoochee said:
I would check out making a phenom II system. I configured a triple core with a 4670 for about 747. I would play around with the phenom IIs before you decide on the pc you wanna get. The one you picked out is pretty solid though. What ever system you get it will be enough to play tf2 and whatever games you wish. :)
Click to expand...

I'm going to buy a Phenom II X3 if there's really an advantage to 3 cores.
 
the real advantage to having processor cores is in multitasking not gaming, a dual-core will be fine for TF2 but if you're doing lots of stuff like image or video editing then having an extra core in your processor will help a lot.
 
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