New Computer, some advice please...

Mickah

What I want :

---

PII 400
64 MB RAM
Over 3 GIG HD
A good Video Card
32 speed CDROM
56k Modem
I have a monitor, Sound Card and peripherals!

---

- Hard Disk is gonna have to be FAST, any recomendations on a make?
- Video Card, I wanna run GL aswell as gettin over 30 FPS in norm quake. Whats the STD Velocity 128 4MB like?
- 56k modems, has all that crap about different protocols been sorted, FLEX is the new standard yeah?

That's it, I'd appreciate any advice...

Mickah

Mickah

: Voodoo 2 Should run great. Getting the 12 mb board is probably a good idea if you want to use the high resolution textures. The
: main rendering mode won't be able to take advantage of the dual TMU the same way quake 2 does, so the extra TMU will be used for
: slightly higher quality rendering modes instead of greater speed: trilinear / detail texturing, or some full color effects where others get a
: mono channel.

How much is a Voodoo 2 card?

Mickah

Mickah

: mickah
: check out this website www.western.ie
: and give em a ring and ask for anne she'll answer ure quaetions and give u a price too

Weighing scales? Not quite what I was looking for...

Mickah

LegacyUser

Mick,

You can get the nvidia drivers from www.rivazone.com which runs GL quite nicely...

Rook's

Von

: How much is a Voodoo 2 card?

: Mickah

240 quid from Ireland Direct in Drogheda 1850-23-23-11

If you find it cheaper anywhere else they say they'll beat the price.

LegacyUser

: : Voodoo 2 Should run great. Getting the 12 mb board is probably a good idea if you want to use the high resolution textures. The
: : main rendering mode won't be able to take advantage of the dual TMU the same way quake 2 does, so the extra TMU will be used for
: : slightly higher quality rendering modes instead of greater speed: trilinear / detail texturing, or some full color effects where others get a
: : mono channel.

: How much is a Voodoo 2 card?

160 for a Maxi Gamer 8MB, 200 for a Maxi Gamer 12MB,
200 for a Creative labs 8MB, 250 for an Orchid 12MB.

All available in either Game or Electronics Boutique.

You should definately think of splitting your 2D and
3D hardware - a decent 2D card like a mill 2 will do
you for years - there's very little happening in the
2D card market atm, so it's a good investment. In contrast
the 3D card market is going nuts atm, and will continue
to do so - to keep up with the latest games you'll have to
upgrade every 9-12 months IMHO, assuming you're buying the
best stuff. In the light of this, it's better to buy pure
3D cards instead of rebuying 2D hardware on combo 2D/3D
cards everytime you upgrade.

At the moment, a matrox mill-2 4 or 8MB and a voodoo2 12MB
is a great combination - at the end of the year you can either
buy a second voodoo2 and SLI (voodoo2s sould be much cheaper then)
or sell off the voodoo2 and go for another 3D card - but you
won't have to replace the mill-2, it'll be grand for ages yet.

Teeth.

LegacyUser

: - 56k modems, has all that crap about different protocols been sorted, FLEX is the new standard yeah?

New standard is almost ready, if i remember its called V.90. Most decent modems these days can be upgraded by flashing the internal code. So try get one that either mentions V.90 or says it can be upgraded.
But why dont you just go for ISDN? Prices may drop soon.

Video - for best performance currently available (at a price) get a voodoo2. Of course it only does 3d. Matrox have a new 2d/3d thing called the G200. Which is almost as good as a V2, but cheaper. Question is should you split or combine 3d.

FlavorFlav

Slosh

K, what I'd do..

Hard Drive: 7GB Maxtor DiamondMax UDMA, one very fast and reliable drive. Tis hard to get 3GBish drives at the mo. but there isn't much price difference. Partition it into Win95/ Win NT - reason being the WinNT TCP protocols are that much more faster, but MS has downloads to upgrade the Win95 dialup & tcp stack. If you want the ultimate HDD then try the 4.5 GB Ultra Wide SCSI Seagate Cheetah drive, you'll also need the adaptec 2940UW scsi controller - both big bucks!

Graphics: Matrox Millennium II for 2D stuff, Orchid Righteous 3DII/Diamond Monster 3D II for the GL Stuff, both 3D cards around £250ish in Game.

Modem: The one I currently use is a Diamond Supra Express 56k, which they have just uploaded a patch to upgrade it to v90 standard!

For a processor the 300MHz is very good price/performance choice. The extra for a 400Mhz could be spent on the better graphics cards etc. However the 400MHz board does run at 100Mhz, against the 66Mhz of the 300, but I haven't gotten near one to do a proper comparison yet.

Hope some of this helps,

Brian.

Ronin

Just about the modems,....

Tinet are Flex,
indigo are X2,
but with a Flex at 36.6 to indigo I get the same ping as i do with my tinet account at 38/42
the only diff is the downloads, i get 3.2k/s with tinet and 1.2/2 k/s with indigo
so its up to you , I`d say go Flex
as far as I know its only indigo, clubi and aol(yes america on line) that are X2...or is clubi Flex??
to many standards, too many ips :P

ps I`m connected to em all, and I pay for none :P

Ro.

LegacyUser

Ok, yes there will be a new standard called V.90. Heres the bad bit: most Irish ISP's wont change to V90 till the new year even so yer best bet is to go for a Flex modem because all the ISP's currently support em.
I have a mate who has a k56flex and hes able to get 6-8 k/sec transfer rates from IOL Galway. Pings should be 150 ish and maybe under
If yer looking for somewhere decent to buy yer machine try DiskDoctors (www.diskdocs.com). They have decent prices and will more or less get in any bits you want. Best of all they're about 200 meters from my house:)

Rob

LegacyUser

Lads,

Heres a section of a page from Telefragged about Q3 detailing the system
requirements especially the video technology needed for it.

************************************************************************

Section 2: System requirements.

Quake3 will require a 3D accelerator. This means, that there will be no "software" renderer at all and everything
will be rendered in hardware. As I believe (not confirmed), Quake3 will require at least P200 with 32 MB Ram.
See section 3 for info on current 3d cards with Quake3.

Section 3: 3d cards.

Here are John Carmack's "guesses", about how well current 3d cards will work with Quake3 (quote from John's
.plan update) :

"Voodoo 1 Performance will be a little slow, but it should look good and run acceptably. You will have to use somewhat condensed
textures to avoid texture thrashing.

Voodoo 2 Should run great. Getting the 12 mb board is probably a good idea if you want to use the high resolution textures. The
main rendering mode won't be able to take advantage of the dual TMU the same way quake 2 does, so the extra TMU will be used for
slightly higher quality rendering modes instead of greater speed: trilinear / detail texturing, or some full color effects where others get a
mono channel.

Permedia 2 Will be completely fill rate bound, so it will basically run 2/3 the speed that quake 2 does. Not very fast. It also doesn't
have one of the needed blending modes, so it won't look very good, either. P2 does support 24 bit rendering, but it won't be fast
enough to use it.

ATI Rage Pro It looks like the rage pro has all the required blending modes, but the jury is still out on the performance.

Intel I740 Should run good with all features, and because all of the textures come out of AGP memory, there will be no texture
thrashing at all, even with the full resolution textures.

Rendition 2100/2200 The 2100 should run about the speed of a voodoo 1, and the 2200 should be faster. They support all the
necessary features, and an 8 mb 2200 should be able to use the high res textures without a problem. The renditions are the only current
boards that can do 24 bit rendering with all the features. It will be a bit slow in 24 bit mode, but it will look the best.

PVR PCX2 Probably won't run Quake 3. They don't have ANY of the necessary blending modes, so it can't look correct. Video Logic
might decide to rev their minidriver to try to support it, but it is probably futile.

RIVA 128 Riva puts us in a bad position. They are very fast, but they don't support an important feature. We can crutch it up by
performing some extra drawing passes, but there is a bit of a quality loss, and it will impact their speed. They will probably be a bit
faster than voodoo 1, but not to the degree that they are in Quake 2."

*********************************************************************************************************

Check out the full article/page at the linke below.

Gandalf

LegacyUser

Doh, forgot the link............

anon

: What I want :
:

---

: PII 400
: 64 MB RAM
: Over 3 GIG HD
: A good Video Card
: 32 speed CDROM
: 56k Modem
: I have a monitor, Sound Card and peripherals!
:

---

: - Hard Disk is gonna have to be FAST, any recomendations on a make?
: - Video Card, I wanna run GL aswell as gettin over 30 FPS in norm quake. Whats the STD Velocity 128 4MB like?
: - 56k modems, has all that crap about different protocols been sorted, FLEX is the new standard yeah?

: That's it, I'd appreciate any advice...

: Mickah


mickah
check out this website www.western.ie
and give em a ring and ask for anne she'll answer ure quaetions and give u a price too

SeP

: ps I`m connected to em all, and I pay for none :P

shhhhhhhhhhhhusssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh =]

adra

: : mickah
: : check out this website www.western.ie
: : and give em a ring and ask for anne she'll answer ure quaetions and give u a price too

: Weighing scales? Not quite what I was looking for...

: Mickah


no
if u look u will see they do computers too ring and ask i got em to check it out for ya
u need a good graphics card re:ATI video wonder for AGP 3dfx card
as ronin said go with the flex/k56flex
adrastea

LegacyUser

: : : Voodoo 2 Should run great. Getting the 12 mb board is probably a good idea if you want to use the high resolution textures. The
: : : main rendering mode won't be able to take advantage of the dual TMU the same way quake 2 does, so the extra TMU will be used for
: : : slightly higher quality rendering modes instead of greater speed: trilinear / detail texturing, or some full color effects where others get a
: : : mono channel.

: : How much is a Voodoo 2 card?

: 160 for a Maxi Gamer 8MB, 200 for a Maxi Gamer 12MB,
: 200 for a Creative labs 8MB, 250 for an Orchid 12MB.

: All available in either Game or Electronics Boutique.

: You should definately think of splitting your 2D and
: 3D hardware - a decent 2D card like a mill 2 will do
: you for years - there's very little happening in the
: 2D card market atm, so it's a good investment. In contrast
: the 3D card market is going nuts atm, and will continue
: to do so - to keep up with the latest games you'll have to
: upgrade every 9-12 months IMHO, assuming you're buying the
: best stuff. In the light of this, it's better to buy pure
: 3D cards instead of rebuying 2D hardware on combo 2D/3D
: cards everytime you upgrade.

: At the moment, a matrox mill-2 4 or 8MB and a voodoo2 12MB
: is a great combination - at the end of the year you can either
: buy a second voodoo2 and SLI (voodoo2s sould be much cheaper then)
: or sell off the voodoo2 and go for another 3D card - but you
: won't have to replace the mill-2, it'll be grand for ages yet.

: Teeth.

The 5D cards don't perform as well as the equivalent seperate 2D and 3D boards.
Or so I hear, Yes?