[Tech] Aldi Thursday offer; expert opinion?

[Ashya]

Looking to buy this ( http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/58_8763.htm ) for the missus next week. She plays WoW (Rhya in <The Haven>) and at the moment plays on a system that... well... leaves some things to be desired.

So, any opinions?

 

[thatbloke]

looks shiny!

 

[Ashya]

looks shiny!

Now that we've got that out of the way, anyone with more then one braincel wanna respond?

*gives thatbloke a cookie and pats his head* Yes, it's shiny. Now go sit in the corner and eat your cookie.

 

[thatbloke]

I can has moar cookiez?

But yes, for the money that's not that bad at all. Will certainly run alot better than the previous system by the sounds of it

 

[Ashya]

Well, the one thing I know is good about her current system is the gfx card, a XFX 8600GTS ( http://www.legitreviews.com/article/486/1/ ) but the mobo is iffy, the processor not that grand and all that and it's a noisy beast. We were pretty much shafted by the shop when we bought it, replaced the gfx card and the PSU myself at one point (Looooove XFX cards, tbh)

On Aldi PCs in general; I have mine since 2004, and love it to bits. Upgrade-wise it's had some more ram stuck in (2gig original, now 4), the gfx card replaced (with an XFX 8600GT when the original one died from cat-hairs of doom with 1 month left to go on the warranty) and it's gotten a bigger, better PSU when the old one started leaking the magical smoke and refused to work anymore. It performs great for a 4 year old rig, that's all I can say.

 

[Haven]

The 4350 is not a good graphics card - certainly worse than the 8600GTS, if you are comfortable with a bit of computer DIY and are happy with most of your components then take a look at:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-017-OE&groupid=701&catid=339&subcat=1334

For the same price you re-use some of what you have and if your case supports a full ATX sized board then you can re-use it and your PSU.

The system you linked comes with vista home which is really sucky as an OS as it is functionally crippled especially with networking. The parts are mostly dirt cheap and unbranded. Its fine for mum and dad to browse the web but not to play games on.

My advice would be to avoid.

 

[waterproofbob]

To not repeat everything Haven has just posted the 4350 is a horrid card not gaming suitable really. You should be able to play WoW fairly happily on a 8600. It's not a great card but should be up to that at least.

Vista home is one of those frustrating experiences that you really do want to avoid.

Following Haven's advice go for a OcUK bundle. If it were me however I'd go for the always awesome Q6600

I still get impressed by mine 18months now since I got it. It is a stunning CPU and with some very simple tweaking can be made even more awesome. You don't need to OC this chip at all to get the most out of a 8600 but I let mine out a bit to get the most of my 3870X2 and it will run stable at 3.6GHz.

The Phenom II are however not a bad chip and for that money it is indeed a very solid bundle indeed. You will get a much better out of the box gaming performance from this new Phenom, good to see AMD competing again. But I do love my Q6600 and if you are wanting to save a bit to get a better gfx card as well, then I'd suggest a 4850 would be the lowest point you want to be looking from ATi and from the nvidia camp IMO there's not much that is all that appealing at that price point.

 

[Silk]

Out of interest what is her current mobo ram and cpu?

It's just that, for 60-120 pounds (2nd hand, ebay) you could upgrade to a geforce 8800 GT or GTS with very little cost and effort and those cards are much much nicer/faster than the 8600's.

Could be all she needs if wow is your main interest, afterall main chunk of games performance is in the graphics card.

 

[Ashya]

Well, thanks for all the advice sofar. Looking on the internet for reviews already told me I am not going to buy this PC, but gonna wait for a better offer (the one they did a few months back was just great, tbh) or start looking to build something ourselves. Which might take a while and more badgering of people who know what they are talking about.

 

[Silk]

If you are gonna build one, you might as well get the gfx card sooner rather than later so it gives instant benefit now and more benefit when you get a new mobo etc.

 

[thatbloke]

yea but no point in having a graphics card like that if the CPU can't cope

I know mine can't......

 

[Silk]

Unless it's a pentium 2 it'll still make an improvement - the GPU does most the work in games.

 

[Huung]

Unless it's a pentium 2 it'll still make an improvement - the GPU does most the work in games.

Well, it would need to be better than a P2... P4/A64 3200+ at least for graphics cards in the 8800 sort of range not to bottleneck

 

[waterproofbob]

Unless it's a pentium 2 it'll still make an improvement - the GPU does most the work in games.

To get the most out of a graphics card you need to have a half decent CPU.

To give you some idea, at stock CPU speed I can get about 12500 3D marks from my machine. At 3.00GHz I gain a fair bit more and at 3.4GHz I can get it to break 20000 comfortably.
This is why building gaming PCs is about balance, not just getting the best graphics card you can and skimping on the rest. You need a good balance between the CPU + GPU and RAM and to a lesser extent a good quality mobo chipset to get the highest end result from games.
You can often get a better result by spending less if you get the right bits.

Not my best analogy but imagine you have A river that is very wide at the top (graphics card) so that the flow is nice and juicy, it then goes through 2 branches the CPU and the RAM (This is not how it works but works giving you the general idea) before giving you the end result. If the 2 branches aren't able to keep up with the flow the end result isn't as good as it could be.

 

[Silk]

I know about bottlenecking and the pentium 2 comment was sarcasm (since we are talking about PCIe slot).

However a better graphics card will still give some sort of performance boost, and since they're going to build a whole new system anyway, it'd make sense to start with the graphics card first and use it in the old pc in the interim for whatever a small boost they may get.