An

AMD Athlon 64 3200+
1 GB DDRAM
160 GB Hard Drive
Geforce FX 5500 128 MB AGP 8x Video
DVD/CD Burner Combo Drive

17" LCD Monitor

Getting it this morning at 11 am from the store, should be ready by then for me to pick up.

Half Life 2......HERE I COME I've been waiting for this day to come foever....Finally a decent computer for me to play with.

Oh and all you who play CS Source......BE ready to die. I'll be playing ASAP

Very nice.

I was orgasming until the graphics card. Still pretty nice all together.

Very nice, indeed.

Minus the FX5500, it is pretty nice.

Shutup.

Yeah, I plan on buying a newer graphics card once I get the money together for it. I mostly stuck with that just because it came with the commputer of course and I feel no necessary need to immediately upgrade as of yet. I wanna see how it handles my needs so far before I go ahead and decide to upgrade the vid card.

Nonetheless, thanx for the positive feedback. I was hoping this computer was a good choice. Now all I gotta do is find you guys on some servers.... :p

How much did you pay for it? If you got it from a store, you probably paid for the name on the side of the box. Money that could have went towards an X800.

JediKirby

My WD750GD 10,000 RPM Raptor and 4 drive SCSI RAID 0 > your hard drive.

first of all FX5500... HL2 will run in dx8.1 mode (you won't see water reflections) and probably nmot very fast...

Don't worry Thrawn, your 4200 spanks that 5500, which is actually kinda sad.

It sucks that you got such a great system--minus the videocard. Those things are just a step up from the 5200s. You probably don't have any money for an upgrade either.

:\

Yes! My computer is still superior!

Nice rig though. (get a new graphics card).

the card is not that bad. Not the best there is, but it should work.

At least you're not stuck with onboard for awhile like I was. Now THAT was awful.

Still, your card is still a moderate bottleneck. You'll want to upgrade that to get the best performance.

Moderate? It's a major bottleneck. The damn thing can't even get 50 fps 1280x1024 on UT2k3.

Seriously though--major bottleneck for your system.

..store? Why? :p

Much faster than mine...but mine is two years old next week.

??? Yes you will.

What are you all smoking? I run a Geforce 4 MX from 2 years ago, and I can run ut2k4 at high res, and HL2 with all the settings maxed, BEAUTIFULLY. Not to mention he has double my RAM and a better processor for gaming.

Without the eye candy though.

HL2 scales according to your card. The settings that you have maxed are designed for the GF4MX. I know because I've tested HL2 with both a geforce2 MX and a Radeon 9800 pro, and I maxed the settings with both of them with good framerates. The difference? the radeon looked a whole hell of a lot better.

I'm on it right now.. Just got it set up. Im about to install Half Life 2. But yeah, it was 1200 at Future Shop. I know I coulda build one for less, so dont get started on that :p But it was on sale so my parents decided for it. I have the money for a new video card, but the money has to first go towards bills and such first. After that I'll be able to buy a brand new card around 700 dollars with my next paycheck. But for now, I'm just happy to be able to run the game, period. :p

700 CA will buy you a nice 6800GT

:thumbsup:

Ok I just finished playing Half Life 2 for the past few hours. And all I gotta say is this game is ****ing amazing.

Second, I had all the detail settings to high and the res to 1024x768 or whatever it was, and the game ran beautifully, even in large firefights.

Because it's probably in DX8.1 mode. Trust me. It seems to run great...but it's only because it's running in a different mode. (Also, your card IS capable of DX9) Valve doesn't have universal setting system.

Besides, try playing FarCry, and see how badly it rapes your video card. And I do mean rapes. I'd be surprised if your card didn't take the game to court.

no... here's the comparison shots

dx7
dx8/8.1
dx9

i don't have separate DX8 and 8.1 shots since i saw no difference when i tested the 2 modes

Wow... the hud in those shots looks serriously diffrent than when it runs on mine... what res are you running that at?

1280x1024 6xAA 16xAF all menu options at their highest settings only difference is the DX mode

ARE YOU THREATENING ME!?

...I am runnning in Direct X 9. It was already installed before the comptuer was sent to me.

open your HL2 options and read the hardware DX level... the direct x version you have installed does not affect the mode a game runs in

all FX series cards by default run in dx8.1 mode in HL2

Bah, if you happen to have PCI-e, forget the 6800GT; the X800XL is literally an X800XT for $300US. And it seems that an x8 AGP version is to come soon enough. 'twas NVidia's turn for the past 9 months, now it's ATIs. Now all we need is a AMC/SLI mode that combines an X850XT and a 6800U, and then we wouldn't have to worry, because the resulting anti-mater nullification shockwave would level a 1-million person city.


You're confusing having DirectX software for having direct3D hardware. You need DX9 to run HL2 no matter what; that's just the way it is. However, the hardware generation fo your card will determine what is possible. GeForce Mx cards are D3D 7; they can use hardware T&L, but no shaders. The same goes for Radeon 7x00 cards. To use any shaders at all, you'd need at least a Radeon 8500 or GeForce Ti; those are D3D 8.1, and can make use of Shader model 1.0 and 1.1.

Although The GeForce FX line is capable of D3D9.0, it does so at such horrible performance that HL2 by default sets it to D3D 8, which they run kick-*** at. On the other hand, the Radeon 9500 and up run D3D9 perfectly; You'd need a GeForce 6200 or better for decent D3D9 performance.

lol @ FX5500

When you see stuff like that you always know that the computer was purchased at some store for some exorbitant price.

Secondarily, I propose we turn this into a specs-posting thread.

AMD Athlon XP 2800+ OC'ed to 3200+
1024 MB DDR Dual Channel pc-4000 ram
Abit AN7 w/ nForce2 (I <3 Soundstorm)
10x DVD / 32X plextor CDRW
Radeon 9800 nonpro softmodded to Radeon 9800 Pro and then OC'ed beyond R9800Pro

HDs:
1 160GB SATA Hitachi
1 120GB EIDE Maxtor
1 40GB EIDE Maxtor (20 gb free overall )

Logitech MX510

Samsung 17" 712N LCD (12 ms response time)

First the bad, then the good.

HDD: 40gb Maxtor 2mb cache (hey, that's what DVD burners are for)
RAM: 2x512mb PC2100 (rated higher, but I can't push them. Damn Biostar)
Mobo: Biostar. Yeah, eff you all too.

Now the good...
DVD-RW 8x+/-R, 4x+/-RW, by the time dual layer discs are affordable I'll upgrade again

Proc: 1.53ghz 1800+ TBred @ 2.03 ghz effectively 26-2700+

Logitech MX1000 mouse (don't care what Brad says, this mouse was worth every penny. ;))

Logitech Z3e 2.1 speakers (damn fine for just 80 bucks)

And of course, the deal breaker, mein 6800GT! Effectively turns this average rig into a gaming rig.

Oh and nottheking, it doesn't matter how low priced the X800XL is, if you have PCI-E you probably have SLI, and so ATi still loses. Buy a 6800GT, buy another one down the road. Can't go wrong.

good system bar the card Temperamental, would highly recommend that you look at either the 6800gt (now) or an X800XL (if and when it makes it to AGP), if you do have PCI-E definatly go for the 6800GT as Yoshi said because although you will only get around a 1.8 increase when you buy the card its likely to be half the price it is now if not more....

i've just installed an Asus V9999 6800GT 256mb DDR3 today in mine and its just beautiful...

got this setup over 2 1/2 years ago yet still manages to pull around 5000 in 3dmark05, its had it tweaks and upgrades over the years mind, obversiously haven't got PCI-E but even with AGP x4 which I have you aren't being held back yet by the bandwidth of the interface...

P4 2.8ghz @ 3ghz
ASUS V9999 6800GT 256mb DDR3
PC2100, 2x512mb ~@ 286mhz
Gigabtye GA-8STXCFS
WD 80gb
Soundblaster 5.1
DVD (samsung)
CDRW (LG)
Logitect MX1000 (this mouse is amazing)
Samsung 172x LCD (17")

+external maxtor onetouchII 250gb firewire HD for general *cough*stuff*cough*.

^^ I didn't want to have to place an IDE cable inside what will be a SATA enabled motherbroad if I had upgrade to an internal drive when I buy a new computer in 1+ years time....

[edit]should point out thats with the system overclocked, i don't keep it at those speeds because there isn't a need as yet, normal scorces downclocked are ~4600 in 3dmark05[/edit]

The MX1000 is amazing, though you get a boost in 3dmark, because for some reason it works better on P4's. Meh.

que - evil laugh

P4 - 2.6Ghz
768MB PC3200
9800 Pro 128MB @ 435/355
160GB WD /w 8MB Cache
Every performance tweak known to man

I dunno, doesnt matter to me. I could swear I was in Direct X 9 since my screenshot looks exactly like the ones posted above for Direct X 9.

http://david.vincent.home.insightbb.com/hl2/dx9.jpg

Unless your 5500 turned into an X800, there's no way you could be running it on those settings DX9 flawlessly.

You are all about to get owned... Wait for it...

Pentium 4 1.6 Ghz
384 MB PC 133
80 Gb hard drive
128 Mb ATI Radion 9000 LE
No sound card... integrated

Yeah, that's right. OWNED...