Thinking about new PC

[bigo73]

Hey what's up? I'm going to purchase a Compaq 850mhz w/Duron, 128mRAM, 40Gig Drive, 16MB nVIDIA TNT2 video card. I know an Athlon would be better, but I'm getting a good deal on this one and just wanted some opinions about the Duron and whether or not I'll get some quality use for gaming and the likes. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[Xayd]

Well, the Duron is a great little processor for gaming, I have one and love it.

I can't recommend that anyone buy a Compaq computer, though. The proprietary parts make upgrades a pain, and you get less in parts for the same price that you can build one yourself for.

If you really want a gaming machine, build it yourself. It's not rocket science. Anyone who's read a few reviews and how-to's can put together a machine with the motherboard manual in front of them.

Trust me, you'll be much more satisfied with the end result if you build it yourself. A better machine for the same price or less, how can you go wrong?

Xayd

[bigo73]

I've previously built one. The one that I use currently. I built a 650 Athlon w/Tyan S2380 board (slotA), 128mRAM, Voodoo3 PCI card, 20.4GB 7200rpm HDD, running WinME. I like it for the most part, but I've had alot of trouble running games. I've racked my brain and can't figure out what's going on. It locks up whenever I run WinMedia Player 8 and just about any game I've tried to play. I took the video card out of another system where it was running fine. I've checked into the compatability of the Voodoo3 PCI card and the Tyan board and haven't found anything. Just been frustrated with the whole thing. That's why I was kind of considering buying a ready made system that's been tested for any compatability issues.

[smiffy]

I wouldn't guarantee you will get no compatability problems on a pre-built system especially a Compaq. We have Compaq deskpro's here at work and and system using the Compaq version of NT (Via their restore CD) will NOT run command & conquer but on an identical machine set up with a plain & simple NT disk (+drivers from the web of course) it runs fine.

[Xayd]

Agreed. You can just as easily have compatibility problems on a Compaq. Their hardware will be tested with everything on that recovery disk, nothing else. If you call them about an issue with some other software, guess what they're gonna say, "sir, do you have your recovery disk there?" ;).

Your issues with games could be WinME issues as well. Older games that need true-DOS won't work in ME without patching the OS here and there to get true-DOS mode back.

I'd take a backup of everything, run an install of 98FE, and see if your games work then.

Xayd