Building computers vs. buying them

Redwolf

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The 8800GTX is out for some time and doesn't seem to have many broken cards like the 7900 series had (I strongly recommend that you do not get a 7900, go from 7800 to 8800 directly).

The 8800 GTX is also a very solid performer.
 

Dragon2611

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The 8800GTX is out for some time and doesn't seem to have many broken cards like the 7900 series had (I strongly recommend that you do not get a 7900, go from 7800 to 8800 directly).

The 8800 GTX is also a very solid performer.
If you have a spare £300 + and wish to buy me one then i'll happily accept it.

otherwise i'll wait for a 8600 which should be cheaper.... and see if its a worthwhile upgrade.
 
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Wait, I have an ATI Radeon card, so which one should I get, the 8800 or 8600?
 

Redwolf

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In my opinion, if you spend the money on an almost best card, you should get the best card instead.

Also, after the next generation arrives, the absolute best card of the previous generation usually has a much higher resell value than the second best, so you don't even pay for it if you keep going.

This is not counting atrocities like the 7950 dual cards or the 7800 GTX 512 MB that were keeping slow GPUs and packed expensive nonsense for few gain around it. Just regular one-GPU cards.
 

Dr Zaius

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The 8800GTX is out for some time and doesn't seem to have many broken cards like the 7900 series had (I strongly recommend that you do not get a 7900, go from 7800 to 8800 directly).

The 8800 GTX is also a very solid performer.
Yes, I totally agree with Redwolf on this. 7900GTX and 7950 series are still pretty expensive cards, so I don't see the advantage of going with one of these instead of an 8800GTX. 8800GTX is a much better performer and fully DX10 compliant.
 

Dragon2611

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Yes, I totally agree with Redwolf on this. 7900GTX and 7950 series are still pretty expensive cards, so I don't see the advantage of going with one of these instead of an 8800GTX. 8800GTX is a much better performer and fully DX10 compliant.
still see the 8800 as overpriced, mind you i hardly ever buy the topend card probably becuase i don't usally have £300 + to drop on a video card

if you can afford it then its upto you.
 

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I havent had a graphics card for 3 years now, i simply have a chip in the mother board. So far i have managed to play most games except for maybe BF2 and some others. But i think as long as you get the minimum requirements of a graphics card then your alright. I am planning on spending max £100 on a graphics card which will run most games at low to med settings which is alright with me.
 

Redwolf

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still see the 8800 as overpriced, mind you i hardly ever buy the topend card probably becuase i don't usally have £300 + to drop on a video card

if you can afford it then its upto you.
I can only repeat what I said earlier. If you are using a regular replacement cycle and watch prices for used hardware, then the top-end card of the current series will usually have no higher total cost of ownership than the medium cards.

It is absolutely mindblowing what people pay on ebay and the like for yesterday's top end card. Yesterday's runner up? Lost more money than the top end, real money, not percentage.

Same applies to top-end chips like Athlon FX CPUs.

The trick is of course that you need to appear as a seller who knows what he's doing and has good feedback. It's more of a thing for regular traders, but it does work.
 

Dragon2611

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I can only repeat what I said earlier. If you are using a regular replacement cycle and watch prices for used hardware, then the top-end card of the current series will usually have no higher total cost of ownership than the medium cards.

It is absolutely mindblowing what people pay on ebay and the like for yesterday's top end card. Yesterday's runner up? Lost more money than the top end, real money, not percentage.

Same applies to top-end chips like Athlon FX CPUs.

The trick is of course that you need to appear as a seller who knows what he's doing and has good feedback. It's more of a thing for regular traders, but it does work.
I think if i wanted to sell a graphics card on ebay id have no problem listing it ;)

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mr_clark

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I guess it depends on where you buy your rig.
I would never go for one of the cheapo things sold with large lectronics chains, but on the other hand a friend has a Dell PC and they build a wonderfull machine. Plus I think all these upcoming companies on the web providing 'pro gamer' rigs, will surely build decent systems. The downside to it is the generally higher price then with selfbuild, or not gaming specified systems. I mean you can easily pay $3-6K with those companies for a state of the art rig.
Many friends of me have made very good experiances with small private firms building systems. They just charge a moderate flat fee for the buildup and you get the parts for the price you would pay for them if you bought them directly from them.

Personally I have for the past years always lacked the cash to buy a whole new system, so my current machine is more or less completely build up by myself, especially after I put it all in a new tower when I needed a bigger PSU my old one couldn't hold.
I think if you have rudimentary knowledge of how to handle hardware upgrades you can more or less always build your own machine for less money then buying it. And most often the build is also more stable, and of course exactly suiting your needs (at least in the beginning ;))
The point is that you need to look for what components you need and to buy them from a high quality producer.
 

Hexagoner

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Building is a no-brainer decision for me, but thats largely because I know what I'm doing and used to design very high volume PC motherboards and ASIC chips years ago. You learn the ins and outs of proper grounding, cabling, and figuring out what broke pretty well.

I think for most, buying a high quality rig from a reputable manufacturer is the way to go. Its the problem of what do you do if something goes wrong. I heard that Alienware and Falcon built great gaming rigs. Depending on what you want and what you know, I also believe you could put together a "better" and cheaper rig yourself.

I'm not so much into gaming, but rather Music creation and recording. So I'm putting together a silent PC that should be able to run lots of software instruments, samplers, and so on. My graphics needs are pretty modest, so I stay away from the cost and cooling issues with the high-end graphics accelerators.

I know all about overclocking, but also knowing about design margin and reliability I generally avoid it. From my POV, I don't want to worry about a crash due to marginalized hardware while I'm working. I have made it happen, and know it can happen. Stability and reliability are more important to me.

Someone earlier mentioned buying a good-quality power supply, and I couldn't agree more. There is a lot of trash at the low end of the PSU market, and I'm a believer that for the most part you get what you pay for. I don't tend to need a huge number of watts or vacuum cleaner cooling capacity, but I do research what is out there and try to find out what I can about failure rates.

hex
 
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