Building a PC for a friend - bloom25, please review!

[beet1e]

A friend has approached me about getting a used PC.  The one she found was crap - an old 4GB hard drive, 64MB memory, no dedicated vid card, no dedicated sound card, 300MHz P2, - and she wants her kids to be able to play games on it like Medal of Honor.  I've seen that played, and it's fast moving and highly anumated. I didn't think the used PC would be a good bet, so I've offered to build one using new components.

As before, I've had to do it down to a price, hence crappy IBM mouse and trailing edge AMD 950MHz Duron processor, but I think this will be good enough.

After you've finished laughing at our crazy British prices, can you help me on a few points?

• What is the Ali Pro chipset?
• Will the chosen mobo be OK for this CPU?
• Will the sound and graphics cards I've chosen be OK for games like Medal of Honor? (Dare I ask how they would be for Aces High?)

That's about it. All very cheap (I use the word in the relative sense) and cheerful... By the way, I have selected these items from the Scan Website here in the UK. We already have a monitor that we can use.

[DES]

Have you looked at a Nforce board like the MSI  KN420 pro? I've used it in a budget system and was very pleased with the performance for the money. The built in video is pretty good and it has an expansion agp slot so you can upgrade later. The built in sound is pretty good to. The biggest downside I found was I couldn't get the board to run stable with anything less than windows 2k. They may have better windows 98 support now I'm not sure. I have the setup I done running XP now and it is very stable and runs some very graphic intense games very well.

DES

[Lephturn]

I also suggest the NForce for something like that.  Although it won't be the best ever, the onboard video in the nForce will do well enough to play games like Medal of Honor: Allie Assault (I think that's the game you are referring to).  It won't run the fastest or in the highest resolutions, but it should run just fine.

Now, the extra money you save by getting a mainboard with all the video, sound, and networking built-in, you can use to get a better processor.  Our prices are not great in Canada either, but the price difference between a Duron 950 and an Athlon XP 1600+ is not that much, and the Athlon XP is MUCH more powerful.  Also, as games get more demanding later on, you can always disable the onboard video and put in a mo-stompy video card.

Oh, and DES is right on about the OS.  Go with XP or Win2k.  They are far more stable and modern OS's than the 9x/ME line.  If you are starting from scratch, I'd go with XP Home.  (I'm presuming they only have 1 computer at home... if you have a home LAN you might want the Pro version of XP)  XP is the newer OS and will be bettre supported in the long run, plus it has lots of nice new features like remote support that you can use to help them out if they are having problems.  I'd suggest XP Home for that reason.

[Skuzzy]

I would vote on w2k versus any version of XP.

1)  As of July 31, 2002, MS will no longer any upgrades for thier products, except for W2K.  In other words, you will not be able to buy upgrades of operating system after this date.
2)  XP comes with a 2 year license, and when it expires you will have to cough up more money to MS to keep it alive.  NOTE:  Corporate versions also require a new license after 2 years.


W2K comes with the old license (basically somewhat unlimited time) and is the only operating system MS will offer upgrades for after July 31, 2002.
When I say "upgrade" in this context, it means replacement operating systems, not bug fixes.  The bug fixes will be available for all MS OS's, as long as the license is maintained.

Oh, for those thinking about upgrading any MS product, you better do so before July 31, 2002.  After that date, you will have to buy full versions of anything MS offers as they will no longer offer upgrades to any product they sell.


Just my 2 cents worth.

[bloom25]

Surely something else can be done here.  I hesitate to recommend that motherboard, mainly because you are not going to be able to do much with it in regards to upgrading the CPU in the future.  The video card is also very dated and would have a very hard time keeping up with modern games.  The sound card is also old, but not bad actually.

I'd HIGHLY recommend (as others have mentioned) you look into an nForce 420 based motherboard.  It not only supports DDR ram, but all currently and future Athlon and Duron CPUs for at least the next few months.  It has integrated GeForce 2 MX 400 class video (much better than that SiS card) and has excellent integrated sound.  (Some boards also have integrated ethernet controllers, but that may or may not matter to you.)  The Gf2 Mx is obsolete as well, but is far more capable than the SiS card.

If you can afford it, go up to a 1 Ghz Duron.  The 1 Ghz Duron and above have SSE instruction support and run cooler.  It also means that you will have SSE instruction support without reinstalling windows if you choose to upgrade the CPU in the future.

I've personally used the MSI K7N420 Pro with Windows 2000 and was very pleased with it.  (I wrote about it a long time ago, look for a thread containing "building a system with an nForce based board" or something similar.  This would have been around December 20th or so.)  This board ought to cost under $200 US, but remember you don't need a video or sound card anymore.  DDR SDRAM costs basically the same amount as SDRAM.  (On a technical note, buy 2 sticks and use slots 1 and 3 on this board to get dual channel operation for even higher performance.)

If you go with an nForce board, I recommend you use Windows 2000 or XP.  Windows 98 is not officially supported, and ME is a terrible OS overall.  I personally use and most like Windows 2000 over XP at this point.

[beet1e]

OK guys, you’ve won me over to the nForce boards...

I’ve tried to find a website with details about the KN420 but could only find the vtr-hardware site, which is all in French – a Canadian company?  I would like to be able to read the mobo manual before committing to purchase. Can you point me in the right direction?

As to the choice of OS, I have two HDDs in my own system, with W2000 Pro on one (my primary system) and W-ME on the other, which I use only for Aces High and other activities like testing things out. I do not want to force these poor people down the W-XP route, and never plan to go there myself. So I was slightly disappointed to hear that the KN420 mobo does not like W-ME.  I have absolutely no problems with W-ME, and have never had a single crash, so I was rather hoping to use that. I use ME for Aces High, and not W2000 because I have a MSW Prec. Pro joystick, whose drivers are not supported in W2000. My own mobo is an Asus A7V133, and I have been very pleased with both it AND the Asus website, which provides a wealth of information.

As a possible alternative to the KN420 which you guys recommend, I was also considering the Asus A7N266 - some detail attached. Unfortunately, the .PDF mobo manual does not appear to be included on the Asus website. But I've attached a snippet. It describes itself as an Audio board, but at the bottom says that the model does not support onboard LAN and Audio".  What does this mean??? Being a VGA board, I take it that means onboard video? Would the onboard video be good enough?

[DES]

That board is similiar but does not include the built in lan and audio. Here is a link to the MSI site and you will need the pdf manual if you get the MSI board as the printed manual has some jumper settings wrong.

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/detail_spec/k7n420pro.htm

I had no luck getting w98 to run stable on this board but I have seen where some people got it to run with WME. I would recommend using W2000 if you have it or XP. Here's a link to the forums for the Kn420.

http://cweb.msi.com.tw/eforum/?target=topic&fid=9&order=

DES

[Skuzzy]

Actually, MS released an update to W2K which gives support to thier joystick line.  It will not auto-detect the stick.  You have to go to the Control Panel, and open the Game Controllers ICON and add it manually.

[beet1e]

DES,  thanks for those URLs!  I think I'll go ahead with that K7N720 board, now that I can read the mobo manual - I'm just going through it now. I'll probably suggest that my friend goes for W2000 and not W-ME.

As for the problems of running W98 on that board, wouldn't an upgrade of the chipset drivers have solved any snags? I had a problem with a previous mobo. The Windows "ding" sound was not a ding, but would repeat indefinitely - ding-ding-ding-ding-ding..... until another sound was played. That stopped it. I was a newbie to all this back then in 1999, and a friend came over and fixed it, and I'm 90% sure that it was the chipset drivers that he upgraded.

Skuzzy - about the Windows update: I've just come from the Microsoft Sidewinder download site, and I don't see anything about that update you're talking about. I'm not even sure that the site is supported any longer, as it talks about DirectX 8.0a.....

[Skuzzy]

No no, the update is for W2K, not from the joystick site.  Check your "Game Controllers" ICON in the Control Panel.  If the MS joysticks are not listed there, then go to the W2K update site and get the W2K updates.
You can do this from the "Tools->Windows Update" in IE.

[DES]

W98 isn't supported on that board by the manufacture. The chipset was designed for W2000 and that is where the driver support is best. They do have W-ME drivers but I never bothered with loading it as I never cared for ME. In W98 the system clock would run crazy sometimes gaining an hour every 5 minutes and I was getting lockups using a modem. I loaded XP Pro on it and the only problem since is they can't use the optical mouse they have. With the optical mouse the mouse pointer just takes off but with a regular mouse there's no problem. Since loading XP on the system 3 months ago it has run pretty much foolproof. Just make sure to use the jumper settings in the pdf not the ones in the manual as the printed manual was wrong and I tried to boot the system with the clear cmos jumpered

DES

[bloom25]

Hah, I did that too DES when I built the system using that board.  Fortunately the silkscreening on the board has it the right way if I remember right.

The system I did with Win2k has been trouble-free ever since I finished it.  (I did have to deal with a bad new stick of ram at first though.)

The Gf 2MX video built onto the board is pretty good.  My only real complaint with it is that the video quality (like all integrated video solutions) isn't quite as good as what you get with a standalone card.  3D performance is identical to a GF 2 Mx 400 if you use the two sticks of ram in slots 1 and 3 specifically.  With only 1 stick of ram the board runs in single channel mode and the 3D performance is reduced.

The integrated sound is far and away the best integrated sound I've ever used.  It's directly comparible with a SB Live 5.1.

The board itself is well designed and includes a TON of USB ports (7 specifically) if you need that many.

It's performance is just slightly less overall than the top performing VIA chipsets.  (One thing I've never seen reviewed is hard disk benchmarks on this board as compared to VIA chipset boards.  My own testing showed it to be significantly faster in burst transfer than my VIA board.  The Southbridge uses a very high speed link for IDE traffic and also has a special DSP that is supposed to increase system disk performance.)

In case you guys didn't know, the nForce chipset is identical to that used in the Xbox.  The only difference is the Xbox uses a P3 hybrid CPU, rather than AMD.  Since the Xbox runs a modified version of Windows 2000, that in all likelyhood is why the boards run best with it.  (BTW:  There were new chipset drivers released a couple days ago with support for Linux.)

[beet1e]

Skuzzy, I did all that, and had to add a 3 dimension joystick with 4 buttons, but that's as far as I got.

I think what I meant was that the MSW 3.02 drivers and software (see that Sidewinder website, hyperlinked above) are not supported under W2000. That's the software I use for programming the buttons on my joystick base. The drivers plus that software are an application that has to be downloaded and installed (7MB approx).

Here is the download screen for that software. As you see, it's for W95 and W98 only - but works on W-ME. Maybe it would work with W2000 ???

Doh - have to put pic in next post...

[beet1e]

screenshot

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Windows2000 has the microsoft joystick support built in so you shouldn't need any special software to run it with it.

I have MS PP1 and the w2k detected it as sidewinder stick - works great. You do have to go to turn it on in the gaming options setup though.