Thoughts please. Worth it or not?

[Concept]

I've still been holding back on picking up a new PC because I want to know when Half-Life 2 is coming out, and I thought it would be best to wait until after this year's E3. Yet having read the stellar impressions of Far Cry on here, and getting a leaflet through the post offering this for ?799 from the local Computer World in town:

AMD Athlon 64 3200
1024Mb DDR Ram
200Gb Hard drive
ATI Radeon 9800
8x DVD-Rw
Firewire
5x USB

I'm tempted to get a new PC now, even though I keep telling myself it's better to wait. What do you lot think?

Are those specifications worth the price of ?799 for a relative PC novice such as myself? How well does a game such as Far Cry perform on what I've just listed?

And one last question...

Assuming Half-Life 2 comes out this year, would it most likely run satisfactory on the above?

It's the awesome state and future of the FPS market on the PC that's on the verge of getting me back into PC gaming.

[VR46]

No monitor included ?

[Concept]

Standard 15" TFT I presume.

[mid]

Don't presume - its entirely possible they are doing it without one to make the price look better.

[Crispin]

Plus you need USB 2.0 which isn't included otherwise they'd say so.

[Chadruharazzeb]

That is a very good price. Sheeeeit, if I had the cash I'd snap that up like a moustrap.

God damn it, I was pricing up a spec similar to that and it was around ?400 just for the board, CPU, and a (much smaller Hard drive).

Do it now!!!!

[Len]

Looks good from here. I'm in exactly the same situation, got a pile of cash and keep going through yes I'm gonna buy it now and no wait for HL2 moments every few days.

It's bloody hard but I'm gonna wait a little longer (plenty of other stuff to play), though like you I had a quick go on Far Cry round a m8's and it really raises the bar, so roll on HL2, Doom 3 blah blah blah...

[Montaver]

Wait a few more weeks. Then either get:

A socket 939 AMD 64 with paired 512 sticks of 3500 ram, and an nforce3 250gb. The new nforce boards are finally going to make ocing on amd 64 viable, as it has PCI/AGPlock.

Or a socket 754 AMD 64 with same RAM (doesnt have to be paired tho) and the nforce3 250 chipset.

With that board, you will easy get another 250mhz out of the proc on default voltages, as A64's are looking set to be damm sweet for ocing.

[Fragmaster]

Not a very good price at all in all honesty. I could knock you up a price that would be miles cheaper.

[Fragmaster]

Hmm well I just knocked up a base system that came to ?1054 (OCUK)

Abit KV8 (Socket 754) Motherboard ?75
AMD Athlon 64 3400 ?311
Corsair 1GB DDR XMS2700LLPT TwinX (2x512MB) ?160
Sapphire ATI 9800 Pro ?150
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 120GB 2MB Cache x2 ?120
LiteOn LDW-851S 8x DVD?R/?RW Drive ?63
ThermalRight SLK-948U Cooler ?34
Zalman ZMF2 92mm Silent Case fan ?8
Chenbro Gaming Bomb with Side Window - Orange ?50
Enermax EG465AX-VE(G)(FMA) 460W ATX Power Supply ?65
Logitech Deluxe Keyboard OEM ?8
Logitech B58 Optical Mouse OEM ?10

Basically better everything most likely. In all honesty buying from a store would most likely guarentee you don't have the best performance parts. (bet any money that ram isn't dual channel),

You get what you pay for and in my experience building yourself is better, you know what your getting at the very least.

[Len]

Couldn't agree more.

If you can build it yrslf, or at the very least, get the parts yrslf and find someone to put it together for you if yr not happy doing it yrslf.

[Montaver]

All DDR memory can run in dual channel. its irrelevant anyway as the Athlon64 on S754 only has a single channel memory controller anyway.
ALso, in that system you buiilt, why get pc2700? A64's run at 200fsb (HTT or whatever u wanna call it), running it at 166 fsb would cause the proc to run slower.

[Concept]

Too late. :/

I haven't been on the net to revisit this thread today until now.

I already paid for the PC earlier this morning, along with a 17" TFT. It'll be here in 7-10 days because TIME are building and sending them out externally from the shop I bought from.

To be honest, I didn't fancy building a PC because if I messed it up, then there wouldn't be any come back, and personally I can't be bothered with the hassle of tracking everything individually down. And while I know someone who could build one... The time and effort it would take just isn't worth it for me. In no simple terms, I was only ever looking for a decent-ish PC around the ?1000 mark that could stand a chance of running the likes of Far Cry and Half-Life 2 in a not-so-bad-way.

Having said that I'm a touch concerned about the graphics card more than anything... I'm not sure a 128mb ATI Radeon 9800 is going to be up to the job for Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 when they eventually hit the shelves later this year.

As for the 1024Mb DDR Ram... I'm pretty sure it is dual channel.

[demon9k]

9800 Pro will run Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 easy, imo. It might not be at 1600*1200 with every setting to the max but I don't see any problem running it. Plus I have the alpha demo and I have seen the beta demo of Doom 3 on a 9800 Pro and they run fine.

Although I might be wrong I don't think I will be.

[MartyG]

A 9800 Pro should be plenty for running Doom 3 and HL2, unless you're expecting 100 fps with stupidly high levels of FSAA. I can run Far Cry on medium at a steady framerate on a Ti4600, and that card is over two years old now.

If it's an SE or non pro then it'll be down on performance due having four pipelines rather than the eight in the higher spec cards. However, a good percentage of these can be softmodded to unlock the additional pipelines. Sucess rate isn't 100%, but you won't damage the card and the process is easily reversed.

There are very few games that push the 9800 series atm.

Regards
Marty