Buying a PC from the High Street

[jrisgod]

I was planning to buy a PC from the internet but my Dad has said that he is willing to pay half but only if I get it from a shop (he's a bit unsure about warrantys and all that). He won't budge,meh.

Where's the best place to buy, am I better off going through a chain or a local independent.

The Computer Shop had a AMD 64 3200, 1024Mb Ram, 200gb HD, 9800 Gfx for ?800 (plus ?200 for a TFT monitor) which sounds okay but it's hard to buy from the high street knowing that you can get it cheaper on the net.

[fifty?ballz]

Get yourself Computer Shopper magazine and have a good read over a week
or so. Thats what I always do.

As for the 9800 gfx, is that the Pro or the Xt, if it's the SE version then
it may not be that good, the SE version note can be slower than the
9600.

[demon9k]

I would go to a local computer shop in your area. Usually small local shops will build custom built PCs. Get the specs you want from the net, take them into the shop and ask them to build it. Might be more expensive than the net but at least you will get the same performance.

My mate was in the same boat as you and his PC is quailty

Or if you don't know what specs to get then ask someone on here to make some specs up for you. I am sure there would be loads of people more than willing to give you a hand.

[Concept]

The Computer Shop had a AMD 64 3200, 1024Mb Ram, 200gb HD, 9800 Gfx for ?800 (plus ?200 for a TFT monitor) which sounds okay but it's hard to buy from the high street knowing that you can get it cheaper on the net.

That's what I picked up recently, along with a 17" TFT. All in all, I got what I was expecting, and it delivered quickly too. It was the ATI All-In-Wonder card that came with mine, which although having seemingly received bad press on the net, came with the 9800 Pro.

I initially experienced performance issues with Far Cry (stuttering Bink videos/dodgy frame rate), but thankfully those were solved when I downloaded Catalyst 4.4 from the ATI website. Now I can run everything in Far Cry at 'very high' in 1024x768 with no major problems, and to be honest, the visuals are an absolute treat... It was hard to believe my eyes at first.

I haven't played any PC games in a long time and honestly, from a technical point of view, things are furthering ahead in comparison to what's on the console front. Much more so than I first thought.

Assuming a large part of the reason in picking up a PC is going to be gaming, then I can think of worse specifications to pick for that price.