Can it even be done nowadays?

Basically, the only things I think I can keep are my ATX case, the Mushkin 500w PSU, and the SATA HD.

So I know I need a CPU, mobo, graphics card, & RAM. Unless I'm mistaken, I can still use the parts I mentioned above, right?

I know nothing about todays processors or graphics cards. I mean, I know a quad-core > duo-core, but that's about it.

And graphics cards... I'm waaay out of the loop there. I currently have an Nvidia 7950GTX if that tells you anything.

I checked out Krok's recent thread about PC building, but I didn't learn much. Any advice/opinions to guide me in my purchases would be greatly appreciated!

Oh yea, the PC will be used for games and internutz. I don't do video editing or even photoshopping anymore really.

[EDIT]
Here's what I was looking at earlier today. Have I picked out crap? Overkill? Underpowered? Overpriced?

AMD Phenom II X4 3.4GHz & ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard

PNY GeForce GTS 450

and a 4 GB stick of DDR3 RAM that seems to meet the specs of the mobo.

Also I'm concerned that if this stuff is ok, that it isn't going to work with XP. That's the latest OS I've got. I didn't see anything about it on NewEgg's product descriptions, but I am getting quite old...
[/Edit]

I would imagine your best bet in staying under $500 would be an AMD AM3 system.

I agree, if you have to cut corners go for AMD, Intel/ATi has the value option right now, but you would have to spend the extra buck.

See OP.

Those parts are fine. Here are a few details you might want to consider:

- Its probably time to ditch XP. I believe there are XP drivers for all the parts your are purchasing BUT unless your using XP64 alot of your ram will be unusable. Probably more than you realize, since your videocard alone will have 1gb that needs to be reserved. I'm gonna hazard a guess and say your XP install will probably only be able to use 2.8gb of system memory. If you are using XP64 ignore most of that, but I also heard its a horrible OS for compatiblity/gaming. I have no personal experience with it.

-Possibly going with an Athlon II X4 instead of Phenom 2 and spending more on the GPU. Depending on what resolution you game at, a little upgrade to a 5770 might be worth it. Although, I understand if you want to stick with Nvidia- then the GTS450 is probably the best option given your power supply.

-Just questioning why you picked the PNY model of the GTS450. For example this Gigabyte GTS450 is the same price before the PNY with REBATE, and has higher clock speeds.

Yeah ditch XP and forget about XP64, every time I installed it I got pissed off.

Windows 7 will work wonderfully on any system made after 2006 with more then 2 gigs of ram.
Also, with most processors/bios settings XP will automatically detect PAE and be able to use 3.5 gigs of main ram, whatever other memory (video etc) is off by itself. Allowing you to keep that 3.5 gigs no matter how much video card ram you have.

And by wonderfully he means with aero turned off and it will be sluggish as hell.

It will run fine with 1GB of ram WTF?

My pops had an AMD X2 3200+, AM2, 1gig of ram and it ran Win7 fine, I did just update it to 4gb but it ran fine with 1gig. Wasn't slow and no need to turn off aero. I also had the Win7 beta running on a 939 socket (single core) 3200+ with 2gig of ram, system was well older than 2006 and it ran just fine.

Ehhhhh, it'll run fine with a gig of ram, but I wouldn't recommend it.
I'm just saying that if you can't crack the 1gig/2006 barrier you might as well just stick with XP. I tried Win7 on my netbook and dear god did I hate that, it destroyed what little video performance I had.

Why in the world would you purposefully turn off Aero?

I guess people have different opinions on what "wonderful" means.

I've never tried it myself, but I never heard of PAE doing anything positive for a typical user in a non-server setup.

Ditch XP? Crap. I can't budget it.

A netbook can run Aero just fine, so I'm going ahead and assuming anything at all can. Aero is really not at all resource intensive.
Also about PAE, Like I said it separated my system memory and my video memory, so that my 2GB video card wasn't mooching off the limited 32 bit address space and limiting me to 1.5 gigs of system ram. That's really about as useful as it gets. Vista 32/7 32 can be hacked to use PAE to address more then 4 gigs, by separating system ram further into 4 gigabyte... partitions? I don't know how to phrase it. but it's unstable as all hell and bricks drivers.
Basically what I'm saying is that XP is still a viable alternative to 7 so long as your drivers support it, and very few things don't. This won't last for much longer though. The limitations are really starting to stack up, especially where SSDs and other new specifications are concerned. For a budget PC it will do just fine though. I like to keep a dual boot even on my spanking fast quad core because then I can play JK and other old games without having to worry about bizarre compatibility issues.

Again, your definition of "just fine" is clearly different than my definition. My brother just got a new netbook with windows 7 on it. His has the dual-core atom processor and it feels molasses. But you would probably consider it "wonderful."

"borrow" a copy till you can afford to buy it

my almost-2yr-old laptop with a dual core AMD chip and 2Gb RAM runs nice and smooth with Win7. That's not a netbook, but it's a cheap laptop.

I'm not arguing with you, but tibby said netbooks and any computer built after 2006. I'm not buying it.

I don't know what your current system is like but you can probably build something decent including Win7 and still come in under $500, granted its close if you still need stuff like a DVD drive.

X4 630, Gigabyte mobo = $169.00

4gb(2x2) DDR3 = $40

Gigabyte GTS450 = $110.00

Win7 Home Premium x64 OEM = $100

Total: $419 + tax + shipping

I've tired both XP and 7 on my sister's Eee PC, and 7 is was faster. It's probably just that you are expecting what is essentially just a slow computer to be fast. On any reasonably modern computer 7 should be better than XP in every possible way.

You just have an irrational bias towards windows operating systems.

Yeah I also love CPU compositing that's way slower than specialized hardware.

Oh, and screen tearing is the ****.

Also I use Windows 7 on my netbook. It runs fine considering it's a netbook and everything is slow. Ubuntu was slow, too, except Windows makes it actually useful.

If windows 7 was "faster" than windows xp, wouldn't you expect it to have lower system requirements?

It's faster on more capable hardware, i.e. one with a good GPU.

Also why would newer OSes even have lower system requirements? Ubuntu 10 has higher system requirements than Ubuntu 3.

Windows 7 runs great on my netbook. Of course I know how to find and install drivers for it.

Also runs great on my dual-core Atom based HTPC.

Your arguments are really weird. If something takes more powerful hardware to run, then it is slower. If you take a P4 and a geforce 4 and run windows xp on it, and then run windows 7 on the exact same hardware, and then tell me windows 7 is "faster" I'm going to call you a liar. It will take longer to boot, it will feel more sluggish, etc. Of course, if you put windows 7 on "more capable" hardware and compare it to windows xp on "less capable" hardware, windows 7 will of course be faster.

If you're trying to tell me that windows 7 runs faster than windows xp on identical hardware as long as that hardware is really new and fast, well that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about putting it on relatively slow hardware (netbooks or computers built in 2006). Putting windows 7 on relatively slow hardware is going to result in slower performance than putting windows xp on it.

To specifically answer your question about system requirements, if an operating system is getting inherently "faster" it would require less advanced hardware to do the same thing than the previous version. I'm not telling you that happens in practice but it would be logical that if the operating system were getting faster it would require less hardware to support it.

And no, I'm not going to tell my brother to put xp on his netbook. I hate windows XP more than I hate windows 7.

Also, ubuntu is the "windows" of the linux world. If you really want fast, you have to get something a lot less bloated. Actually ubuntu is worse than windows since "vanilla" windows (straight from a real OS install disk, not some vendor disk loaded down with extra crapware) comes with a lot less software running by default than a typical ubuntu install.

Windows 7 has a different kernel and scheduler. It makes better use of multiple CPUs and IO than Windows XP does. Windows 7 on a Core 2 Duo will be faster than Windows XP on the same machine. There's some additional overhead, yes, but at a certain point it'll be faster because it actually knows how to use the better hardware.


This is a really naive simplification of computer architecture and operating systems.

Let me interrupt this mind-boggling arguement to say THANK YOU to Triscuit. It probably took you a few minutes to find that and I spent half a day or more...

On an equivelant price point PC bought today, 7 is a hell of a lot faster XP due to it's support for newer hardware. It's that ****ing simple. The fact that there is a good chance your hardware will have to jump through hoops in order to work with XP means it will be slower, also 64 bit, SSE4, 4gb+ ram, DX10/11, etc.

It's funny because things like DX10/11 still really havent seen mainstream. For almost all games there is still a DX9 codepath (I blame consoles). I just like to see hardware utilized to its maximum potential.

I'd guess that DX9 remains popular simply because not everyone has uplifted to Vista or Windows 7.

So it went from any computer since 2006 to a "price point pc bought today" -- that's quite a shift.

Don't underestimate the influence of the 360 having dx9 hardware. It's just simpler to use dx9 if you want to release a game on both platforms.

And by "not everyone" you mean ~60% of computer users.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/364000/windows-7-tops-20-market-share

Those higher system requirements exist because certain measures that are used to speed up the system could not be implemented if it were necessary to also support older hardware. It's using more of the system resources to make the over all system faster. Is a car going to be faster if you tap on the gas or if you floor it?



Among people who actually use their computer to play games, it's closer to about 20%.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Er, yes?