[peacewarrior]

Ok, I am planning on buying a PC from my friend, and I think I am getting a pretty good deal.

Heres the specs

e machine
AMD 64 3200
1.5 gigs of ram, with 1 gig being high speed corsair
Nvidia GeForce 6600
160 gig HD

It will come with registered Windows XP pro
Microsoft Office
Norton 2006
and some others I cant remember right now

Hes selling it to me for 350 bucks, which from price comparisons is 100 dollars cheaper than a similiar system online.

My question is #1 is this a good deal
#2. I want to upgrade either the video card or the proc in this system, which do you think would be a better option for someone who wants it mainly for games and various programs.

Im looking at an AMD 64 3700 with 1 mb of L2 cache which is only $74
OR a video card that is around $150

My problem is I just bought a $200 video card for my current system so Im hesitant to drop that much on yet another video card, and Im not sure which way to go for optimum performance/cost ratio

Hope I phrased it well, thanks ahead for any responses!

Keith

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Hi and welcome to geeks to go!!!


Being that it is an emachine i would stay as far away from it as i could

there are countless threads on this site with people having major problems with emachine's systems

a new video card would mean an upgraded PSU because the ones in them are utter rubbish and depending on the motherboard you might have a problem upgrading the CPU

i have personally never owned an emachines system but from what i hear and have read on this site they are cheap rubbish machines that break quite alot

also it doesnt matter that there are high speed corsair RAM in there because the RAM will only perform as well as the slowest chip so i would suggest removing the other 512 alltogether so that your 1 gig cvan run at dual channel which would give the system twice the bandwidth

do some more reasearch into the system and find out the exact specs you can download Everest home edition from here:
http://www.softpedia...e-Edition.shtml

this will tell you every thing that is connected to the system its specs and what speed it is runnign at. this program will give you a greater depth of the specs and therefore you can make a more educated decision also use google it is your friend type in themodel number and see what you find you may be surprised you may not be but its worth a try

troppo

Edited by troppo, 31 January 2007 - 04:40 PM.

[troppo]

Hi and welcome to geeks to go!!!


Being that it is an emachine i would stay as far away from it as i could

there are countless threads on this site with people having major problems with emachine's systems

a new video card would mean an upgraded PSU because the ones in them are utter rubbish and depending on the motherboard you might have a problem upgrading the CPU

i have personally never owned an emachines system but from what i hear and have read on this site they are cheap rubbish machines that break quite alot

also it doesnt matter that there are high speed corsair RAM in there because the RAM will only perform as well as the slowest chip so i would suggest removing the other 512 alltogether so that your 1 gig cvan run at dual channel which would give the system twice the bandwidth

do some more reasearch into the system and find out the exact specs you can download Everest home edition from here:
http://www.softpedia...e-Edition.shtml

this will tell you every thing that is connected to the system its specs and what speed it is runnign at. this program will give you a greater depth of the specs and therefore you can make a more educated decision also use google it is your friend type in themodel number and see what you find you may be surprised you may not be but its worth a try

troppo

Edited by troppo, 31 January 2007 - 04:40 PM.

[Hemal]

emachines = garbage, your better off trying to get a nice deal from dell or something which could even come with a flat panel moniter

[peacewarrior]

Thanks for the advice

I forgot, he upgraded the psu to a nicer one, im not sure what brand but I know its 400w

Yeah, that thing about the ram makes sense - Ill have to try that

Someone told me that the emachines that have the most problems have a certain green colored motherboard, he told me what brand but I cant remember right now, so I will check it before I buy.

Im pretty sure I am going to buy it though, because for the hardware alone that he put into it I think its worth the price...and if something happens, well hes my friend Im sure hed be willing to help out

thanks again

[Dan1887]

emachines are ok for base systems, however they use budget motherboards and psu's and that is where all the problems come in, for 350 dollars thats a pretty good deal, if he included the full windows disc I would take it because then you in the future have the option of removing the motherboard in place of a better quality one. Emachines has such a bad rap because of the budget parts they use and some of their packaged software issues. If he has replaced most of the stuff in the system it may be ok, but i would still change the motherboard on it.