I had that stuff in my old PC. Intel tried it with the first lot of pentium 4 processors but it never took off since it was far more expensive than DDR.
I managed to get 256mb of it off ebay for £50 to add to my 128mb a few years ago but I think you'd probably be better off getting a new PC...
It sounds like a new machine may be your best bet. I wouldn't just throw out the old machine, though - you could use it as a firewall, file server, any number of things (I'm not a big fan of throwing out perfectly functional computers). Alternatively, sell the RAM (and the rest of the parts) on ebay.
eion wrote:I wouldn't just throw out the old machine, though - you could use it as a firewall, file server, any number of things (I'm not a big fan of throwing out perfectly functional computers).
This. It'll always be some use even if it's just sharing/leeching files, checking stuff out with another character in an MMO, surfing the web, or giving to someone who only wants to play older games.
You could save money by reusing bits of it and upgrading, but you're at a similar point to me where once you upgrade the mobo, pretty much everything else you have in there is obsolete, so you'd be wasting money in the long run by getting backwards-compatible stuff and limping along.
Ta for the advice, sadly the RIMM modules I have are 4x128Meg, which are pretty worthless.
I'll keep the PC and use it as a media server or summat.
next Q; what should I get? I really don't understand the chipset denominations these days, used to be that you could be guided by the Ghz, but that seems not to be enough these days. Hehulk pointed me to Scan.co.uk and their cheapes "gaming" rig is about 700 of your fine English pounds, which is about my budget I guess, does this config look sufficient and is it about the right price? Any advice on recc'd upgrades etc would be appreciated aswell. Otherwise I'll just get lazy and order a Dell or something
That does look pretty reasonable. Make sure you take note of the things missing: Monitor, keyboard, mouse, Operating system. I take it you're going to use ones you've already got? Or pirate (OS)?
Also, I don't think you need to go for such a high spec soundcard, that could save you £15, or go for onboard and save £45.
pixie pie wrote:Also, I don't think you need to go for such a high spec soundcard, that could save you £15, or go for onboard and save £45.
Soundcard's probably all or nothing - either live with onboard or get the X-Fi. I'd personally select 1.5-2GB of RAM, and the 300W PSU is likely to cause problems in the long run, look for at least a 450W modular model from around 40 notes.
I don't know much about current processor technologies - the quoted 2.13GHz of the Core 2 Dual Pentium appears a much more expensive option than a ~3GHz Celeron or HT/dual-core P4, but as I say, I'm unsure of their relative merits in a gaming context.
FatherJack wrote:
I don't know much about current processor technologies - the quoted 2.13GHz of the Core 2 Dual Pentium appears a much more expensive option than a ~3GHz Celeron or HT/dual-core P4, but as I say, I'm unsure of their relative merits in a gaming context.
I'm very tempted to say that the quoted 2.13GHz Dual Core will be much better than the older ones. Mainly because they don't sell the old ones anymore. Celerons are probably best avoided for a 'gaming' rig. If you find yourself with some spare beer tokens after going for more RAM like FJ suggests, you might go a model up on the processor. But this one should be okay.
A 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo is far superior to pretty much any Pentium D at any speed. Consider that C2D is on average roughly 20%+ faster than an Athlon 64 X2 at the same clock speed, and 64 X2's are faster than Pentium D's that run at speeds 300-400MHz faster.
My point was that they're two or three times the price, while not necessarily faster by the same factor. I wasn't questioning whether they were better, just whether they were worth it.
FatherJack wrote:My point was that they're two or three times the price, while not necessarily faster by the same factor. I wasn't questioning whether they were better, just whether they were worth it.
They most definitely are. The only possible reason to get a Pentium D/Celeron over a Core 2 Duo is if your budget can't squeeze a C2D in. Also, at least over here, you can get the lowest level C2D for a tiny bit over twice the price, but the performance difference will be huge.
This. It'll always be some use even if it's just sharing/leeching files, checking stuff out with another character in an MMO, surfing the web, or giving to someone who only wants to play older games.
