Please help me Hardware upgrade problem 3

[matt000]

I am wanting to go into games development and games testing. I will require two systems,
one for the development?

And one for the gaming?
The system I currently have I want to upgrade and use for testing the games I develope, a list of the components are below:

VIA MS-6309LE5 Motherboard
Celeron 600Mhz processor
128MB Memory
15GB HDD
LS-120 Drive
Proline DVD1000
Diamond viper V550
15"LG Monitor
Windows 98 SE2
Internet Keyboard
Microsoft Basic Mouse
Apollo P2100 Printer

The other system to be used for developing I want to build from scratch.

I would really appreciate any help at all on this.

Thank you,

Matt

 

[CitrixEngineer]

I can personally recommend the new MSI KT3 Ultra motherboard as a base for your new system - I just built a PC for a relative using this board, and it's the fastest desktop machine I've ever used.

I used PC2100 DDR Ram, but this board will take PC2700 333Mhz Ram (which has just come on the market). However, it's worth noting that most reviews on this board comment on the fact that there is not much performance improvement over PC2100, so you may wish to save your pennies.

The motherboard is USB 2.0 compatible, and has no less than 2 USB 2.0 hubs - if you get the RAID version. The non-RAID version is cheaper, but loses out on a lot of features.

Obviously, with a board like this, anything less than an Athlon XP would be sacrilige (even though it would work OK). I got an XP 1700, which fitted the budget I had. Don't forget proper cooling - CPU and case fans are essential.

This board also comes with on-board 6-channel audio, which, for a change, is really good - it doesn't suffer the pops and crackles that I notice in all SoundBlaster cards. I tested this with a 5.1 speaker setup, and, while it wouldn't compete with my HiFi ;-), was more than adequate for e-Jay audio mixing.

The graphics board surely has to be a GeForce 3/4 Titanium. These boards are the business, and don't have the freezing issue that ATI's Radeon has with Via chipsets in 3d Games. A 128Mb card will make your graphics fly - and the 3d support is astounding. If you can't afford the Titanium models, the ordinary GeForce 4 boards are excellent for the money - make sure your graphics card supports DDR.

At least 512Mb RAM, for gaming development - although I'd personally go for 1Gb. Get 2 sticks, whatever you choose. DDR Ram works better in pairs, from my experience. I know the theories of how DRAM doesn't care about combinations, but, as I say, experience tells me otherwise.

Since the board supports ATA133, get a pair of 7,200RPM drives. The Maxtor ones offer great price/performance/reliability.

That's the basics, anything else is up to you. These components will ensure you have a machine that really rocks - and is well up to the task of games development.

I almost cried when I had to hand the built machine over to my relative (who paid me to build it). The entire machine cost just £650 in parts, including a rather wicked AOpen case.

As a really cool extra, give your machine a Pioneer 115 DVD Rom and a Plextor 24x CD Writer. If your budget won't stretch that far, the current Liteon CD-R model performs just as well overall. It's just not as cool as the Plextor ;-). The LG DVD/CD-R combo is OK, if you're really strapped, but don't expect high speed.

My $0.02

Good luck with your new machine! CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk