what do you think? a little help needed here

hi all,


hopefully this is the right place to post this...

i am planning to sell of my old system and thinking of buying a new one...

so far i have found out that dell is the cheapest.....

this is what i am planning to buy....


8400 Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 530 with HT Technology 3.0GHz, 1 MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB)
Intel® 925X Chipset
Integrated Gigabit Ethernet
1Yr Limited Warranty with Next Business Day Onsite Service
1GB(2x512) NECC Dual Channel DDR2 533Mhz SDRAM Memory
128MB PCIe™ x16 ATI Radeon™ X300 SE w/TV-Out & DVI (i think they mean the 9800XT series, is it any better then the 9600SE one??)
Dell™ Wireless Keyboard and Optical Mouse
17" Flat Panel LCD Monitor
160GB SATA (7200RPM) Hard Drive
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional (English)
DVD+RW/+R With CDRW Combo Drive
Sound Blaster® AudigyTM 2 Sound Card
Dell™ A425 stereo speakers with subwoofer (Australia)
56K PCI Data/Fax Modem
+ some other software and dial up connection package and standard warranties.....

they are ready to throw in the 5.1 surround, floppy drive and a extra optical drive for a discounted price as well...

now here is what i am asking your opinions on:

what do you guys think.. is this alright??? do i need to add anything else in there? i am already way past my budget and can spare another 50-100 dollars...

are dell systems any good... ?i do not wish to spend lots of money and then find out that i might have been ripped off . really really confused about this....

has anyone had any experience with them? particularly dell australia??

hey,
The X300 SE means that it is pretty much the same as a Radeon 9300 SE, but on PCI XPress 16X, ut seing as all PCI Xpress cards out at the moment aren't actually taking advantage of the 16X Bus Connector, any PCI Xpress card is useless, and SE model cards are slow as hell, it should be taged "Slower Edition". so the X300-SE will be a tad faster than a Radeon 9200-SE or to compare to a non-SE based card, around the Radeon 7500. But apart from that it looks all good, not a bad system.

hi,

thanks for the reply.... just wanted to make a small update... instead of going for the X300 series.. i am opting for the X800 one (i think that is the 9800 series)... dell is giving me a pretty good deal on it... and i am also opting for the ultra sharp 17"in instead of the normal one.

x800 is not the same as 9800. The x800 is the newest current generation card, supplanting the 9800 series as the top of the ATI cards. Great card to get.
If you are planning to copy lots of cd's and such, adding another cd drive might be worthwhile. Else, it looks good (for a purchased system. Someday you'll see the light and build your own )

I look at that system and see just about the best system you could buy from Best Buy, CompUSA, etc. 3.0GHz uP, 1G RAM, 800MHz FSB, etc., etc.

If it is what you really want then go for it, but keep in mind, that system will probably be at least 2/3 the cost in 6-8mo. You always pay premium for the higher end equipment, where as if you buy equipment that what cutting edge 6 months ago (2GHz, etc.) you pay much less.

One issue to consider is how fast is your system now. If you are running a 700MHz system and are looking for performance, then you will be very happy with something running around 2GHz. However if you are already running 2GHz and are bogging down then its time to upgrade.
My advice to you based on your budget statement and also that fact you're asking if this is good (please don't take offense, but it sounds a bit nieve), you should scale back some unless you have a need for such performance.
GL, HTH
kevin

thanks again for the replies, i am currently useing a PIV 2.4 Ghz, 512 RAM, 80 GB HDD

Your current setup is plenty for just about anything. If you're looking for gaming performance or something, more ram and a graphics card update would do nearly as much for much less money. The faster DDR2 ram would have higher latencies than good DDR ram, so the speed difference is minimal. Add a second hard drive for more space, and you've got a pretty nice machine for half the cost of that new one.
If you don't game, and just use the box for typical browsing/word processing stuff, you don't need to upgrade anything.