Help! Computer Spec

[swindonabroad]

May get shot down as being a little out of date.

I want to buy a PC. I have been told that Pantip Plaza best place to go. I know very little about memory, size etc and dont want to walk in and get sold something i dont need.

I need-

Word

Internet

Downloading, viewing music and films

Play some games

And thats about it.

If anyone could post some spec's of memory size etc that i need and maybe some price peramiters would be great.

Thanks.

[toret]

All depends on what kind of games you will be playing. If you only will be playing Solitaire and simple internet games, 512 MB RAM Memory will do more than enough on a Windows XP Computer if you have an average processor.

[Guest Reimar]

All depends on what kind of games you will be playing. If you only will be playing Solitaire and simple internet games, 512 MB RAM Memory will do more than enough on a Windows XP Computer if you have an average processor.

XP with 512 MB memory isn't enough if you want to use Multitasking (more than 1 program open at time) The recommonation is 1 GByte!

Also a bigger HDD, 200 GB or above should be ok because the use of Movies and Music besides of the games is something which will need some more space than "normal"!

The Monitor should be at least 17" LCD but better 19"!

Anyway everything is depends on the buget!

[toret]

Well, it don't mention anything about multitasking there so i reckon the guy is gonna use Word for normal stuff.

[cali]

Sure someone can "get by" on a 486 with 16MB of RAM running Windows 98 and hey, a lot of Thai's do that. But what you want is a 2 Core CPU, 1GB RAM, and a Nvidia 7600GT graphics as a minimum spec for a decent machine today. These are not brand new or state of the art, just parts that will run most of todays stuff pretty well. If budget allows then sure feel free to go much farther.

Cost saving tip. If you choose a Intel Core 2 Duo which you should because it is cheap, fast, and runs cool, then benchmarks show you should opt for slow, cheap RAM because the Core 2 has such a giant internal cache it basically ends up fitting the working set inside it and RAM speed doesn't really matter much. I could dig up articles, but basically reviewers compared really slow RAM with insanely fast over clocked RAM and could barely measure the difference for insanely expensive RAM. AMD would be a different story though, but no one wants those these days for good reason as they are obsoleted by Intel as of now.

[swindonabroad]

Thanks all for the advice.

Notes have been taken and i feel much more confident going down to pantip with a bit of info behind me.

Thanks again.

[toret]

Cali:

On my old desktop i run XP Pro, and it runs well for everyday use.

AMD Duron 1200 processor, 512 MB SDRAM and nVidia TNT2 32 MB graphics card.

[ballbreaker]

May get shot down as being a little out of date.

I want to buy a PC. I have been told that Pantip Plaza best place to go. I know very little about memory, size etc and dont want to walk in and get sold something i dont need.

I need-

Word

Internet

Downloading, viewing music and films

Play some games

And thats about it.

If anyone could post some spec's of memory size etc that i need and maybe some price peramiters would be great.

Thanks.

Buy the best machine you can afford for one reason. You might find you want to do more than you originally thought after having one for a while. I've talked to so many people that just bought a PC a few months earlier and now it won't support their latest computer interest.

good name brand motherboard (Intel, Asus, Abit, Gigabyte)

motherboard with WiFi, LAN connector, sound, Bluetooth and 56K modem

Intel core 2 duo processor (highest price you want to spend for speed)

Intel chipset

1 gig ram

200 gig HDD or bigger

video card with 256 Meg Ram either ATI Radeon or Nvidia GeForce (highest price you want to spend and very important for high end games)

good speaker system

good case with proper cooling

[Firefoxx]

One thing about the specs of a video card: Don't go by the amount of RAM on the card. It's not a good indicator. Many cards have exactly the same amount of video RAM, but perform very very differently. Look at the GPU (graphics processor) model used. It's usually a 4-digit number for ATI and Nvidia cards, the thousands number denotes the family, the higher it is the newer it is. The hundreds number is the rough performance, lower is slower. Finally the suffix (GTS, SE, PRO, etc) denotes whether it's been crippled, enhanced, etc. etc.

Low-end (~2-3k baht) cards can barely play 3D games at low resolution, no matter how good your CPU is, with bad frame rate, and are only slightly better than on-board VGA. Mid-range (~4-6k) cards can play 3D games, with good frame rates at around 800x600, nice detail. Enthusiast cards (~7-10k) can play them at around 1280x1024. Extreme cards (~20k) can play them at 1920x1200, full options, given a capable CPU. Newer cards can also accelerate HD video, which is nice, since even a high end machine cannot play H.264 HD video (the type used in blu-ray) well without help.

[bonsaimax]

Cost saving tip. If you choose a Intel Core 2 Duo which you should because it is cheap, fast, and runs cool, then benchmarks show you should opt for slow, cheap RAM because the Core 2 has such a giant internal cache it basically ends up fitting the working set inside it and RAM speed doesn't really matter much. I could dig up articles, but basically reviewers compared really slow RAM with insanely fast over clocked RAM and could barely measure the difference for insanely expensive RAM.

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but one quick question if I may: Are the older DDR 333MHz RAM sticks compatible with the mainboards which support Core 2 Duo chips?

Edited May 4, 2007 by bonsaimax

[Naam]

you should opt for slow, cheap RAM because the Core 2 has such a giant internal cache it basically ends up fitting the working set inside it and RAM speed doesn't really matter much.

sure! 4MB of internal cache runs each and every program. my grandmother used this much cache for multitasking and won several Formula One races (when she was young).

p.s. i don't realize any noticeable difference in performance between my new Duo 3.6 and my old AMD 2500+ and i have no idea who brought up in Thailand the wide spread fairy tale that AMD processors run hot. correct of course is that my Intel runs cooler than my AMD but what difference does it make whether Intel runs at 26ºC and AMD at 34ºC? both located in the same airconditioned room with an ambient temperature of 26 degrees.

[cali]

Lower temp = cool, quiet, energy saving. AMD seemed to pioneer this for desktop cpu's and was much better than Pentiums in that regard, but Intel has gone one better with Core 2.

Here is a study on slow vs fast ram with core 2 duo that shows the difference is about nil. Best to opt for cheap RAM and reallocate the money for something that makes a bigger difference like a better video card.

As far as DDR333, yeah there are mobo's that let you run that with Core 2 Duo with ancient RAM and Thailand would be just the kind of place that would have such a thing I would guess. Here is a brand new 1500 baht class mobo that does DDR400 & Core 2 Duo for instance.