Guest TonyJaymzV1 Report post Posted October 5, 2004 Okay so I'm not a computer person. I know basics but thats it. I've had a HP Pavilion for the last 3 years, boughht it for 500 dollars at walmart. Pretty good, but now i want something more, and I need something more for video production. heres the specs of my computer i just ordered, please tell me if I did okay. Dimension 4700 Pentium® 4 Processor 530 with HT Technology (3.00GHz, 800 FSB), Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition Qty: 1 Unit Price: $2,254.00 Dell Dimension 4700 Media Center Edition Pentium® 4 Processor 530 with HT Technology (3.00GHz, 800 FSB) CP308MH [221-5268] Memory 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz (4x512M) 2GB4 [311-3626] Keyboard Dell Quietkey® Keyboard QK [310-1582] Monitor 15 in (15.0 in viewable) E153FP Flat Panel Display E153FP [320-4065] Video Cards 128MB PCI ExpressTM x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI RadeonTM X300 SE X300SE [320-3873] Hard Drive 160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) 160S [341-0884] Floppy Drive and Additional Storage Devices 64MB Dell USB Memory Key only 64MK [340-8688] [311-4287] Operating System Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition WMCE [412-0721] [313-7222] [412-0688] [420-3931] [463-2282] Mouse Dell 2-button scroll mouse SM [310-1871] Network Interface Integrated Intel® PRO 10/100 Ethernet IN [430-0412] Modem 56K PCI Telephony Modem 56KWS [313-2280] Document Management Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 6.0 AAREAD [412-0705] CD or DVD Drive Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + FREE UPGRADE! 48x CD-RW Drive DVDCDRP [463-1548] [430-0945] Sound Card Integrated 5.1 Channel Audio IS [313-2758] Speakers No Speaker Option N [313-2198] Productivity Software Productivity Pack with WordPerfect® CORELM [412-0555] [412-0701] Security Software Norton Internet SecurityTM 2004 15-mth (3 extra mths included) NIS15M [412-0667] Digital Music Dell Jukebox - easy-to-use music player and CD burning software MMBASE [412-0691] Digital Photography Paint ShopTM Pro® Trial plus Photo AlbumTM Starter Edition DPS [412-0521] Limited Warranty, Services and Support Options SAVE $60 (after rebate) 4Yr Ltd Warranty, At-Home Svc, and Tech Support QPRO4OS [950-7447] [412-0359] [980-9397] [900-3963] [902-5560] [960-2800] [900-9773] CompleteCare Accidental Damage Service Add CompleteCare Accidental Damage Service to 4Yr Lim Warranty CCADP4 [960-0027] [412-0358] Internet Access Services 6 Months of America Online Membership Included AOLDHS [412-0585] [412-0625] [420-3224] [412-0687] Operating System Enhancements Microsoft® Plus! Digital Media Edition DME [412-4000] Personal Finance Software Microsoft® Money 2004 Standard MNY [412-0551] TV Tuner Card ATI E-Home WonderTM TV Tuner TVT [320-3880] Dell Home Customers: Save 15% off the Dell Dimension 4700! Expires on 2004-10-07 05:59:59 - $338.10 ADDITIONAL DISCOUNTS AND COUPONS Dell Home Customers: FREE 2nd day shipping with purchase of select new Dell Home Systems! Limited time offer. Expires on 2004-10-05 05:59:59 - $120.00 Sub-Total: $1,915.90 Shipping Discount: -$120.00 Shipping: $0.00 Estimated Tax: $6.99 Total: $1,922.89 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Perfxion 0 Report post Posted October 5, 2004 That is one hell of a PC. Great buy there, the only thing I would have done different is put in a DVD+RW/+R and a regular DVD ROM drive. So burning CDs and DVDs would be simple. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest TonyJaymzV1 Report post Posted October 5, 2004 Well i've already got an extrenal dvd burner, so I didn't need that and a printer/copier. I've also got some really good speakers. The joys of working at target- I get the clearance items before customers Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Eclipse 0 Report post Posted October 5, 2004 Massive PC, and I think it's worth the price. Awesome buy. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Youth N Asia 0 Report post Posted October 5, 2004 *comes on keyboard* Sorry man, very nice set up. I wish I had that kind of money to burn on mine Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest TonyJaymzV1 Report post Posted October 6, 2004 *comes on keyboard* Sorry man, very nice set up. I wish I had that kind of money to burn on mine I've been literally saving up for this computer since my sophmore year in high school. And then, when I had 200 bucks for it, i spent another 6 months just looking around. But yeah, im literally giggling with joy and anticipation until it comes. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ced 0 Report post Posted October 6, 2004 I'm jealous. Very jealous. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ZGangsta 0 Report post Posted October 6, 2004 The processor is nice and beefy, and I'm feeling the 2G of RAM that's in there. But I hate to be the one to break it that the video card is a piece of shit. Wait, that's a bad way of putting it, it's not a piece of shit (it's a brand new video card) it's just very low-end. The X300 series is meant for the cheap cheap entry level "grandma needs a video card for her new PC" market. It will not perform on any new games out there worth a damn. Now, if you're not planning on doing anything graphics extensive (ie video production or gaming), then I'm sure you'll be fine with an X300, but if you are definately upgrade that mofo (if you have any money left after the comp that is) It just pains me deeply to see a machine that powerfull with such a weak GPU. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest TonyJaymzV1 Report post Posted October 6, 2004 thats what everyone is telling me, and more han likely ill change it. they didnt have any other options to cuztomize it, so i got stuck with it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ZGangsta 0 Report post Posted October 6, 2004 Yeah, that happens. Wait a few months until the next generation of top level cards come out, save up some cash, and buy one of the current generation's top level cards. Maybe a Nvidia 6800GT or Ultra, or an ATI x800 variant. Unless you need a decent card now. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MrRant 0 Report post Posted October 6, 2004 Build your own. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
EMAXSAUN 0 Report post Posted October 6, 2004 does that model dell have an AGP slot? because PCI video cards aren't good, even the new PCI express. upgrade to an AGP video card. like a geforce fx 5900 or 5950. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
frisco 0 Report post Posted October 6, 2004 I think someone said something about building your own computer. Really good advice in my opinion. You have a very state of the art computer but it really --in my view--isn't worth 2 grand. The processor is great. very fast. But for 2 grand I don't see why your not getting a dvd r/w drive in it. I also think your 2 GB is memory probably isn't going to be as useful as you think. I have 512 and I do video editing with it all the time and its more than sufficient. A lot of computers can't even handle that kind of memory. The big issue to me is computers depreciate faster than new cars. What is state of the art today next year will be average. Already your 160GB hard drive is not super impressive as i'm being 200+ GB drive available. This is my system(I built it myself) athlon 3200 chipset asus motherboard-has AGP graphic card NEC DVD ROM drive NEC DVD r/w drive 512 mg kingston pc2700 memory 128mb nvideo video card-(I don't really do much gaming but it seems to work fine) Sound blaster audiology sound card windows xp western digital 120 GB Hard drive I do video editing (premiere) all the time and it works fine. total cost -less than $600 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest TonyJaymzV1 Report post Posted October 6, 2004 This is my system(I built it myself) athlon 3200 chipset asus motherboard-has AGP graphic card NEC DVD ROM drive NEC DVD r/w drive 512 mg kingston pc2700 memory 128mb nvideo video card-(I don't really do much gaming but it seems to work fine) Sound blaster audiology sound card windows xp western digital 120 GB Hard drive I do video editing (premiere) all the time and it works fine. total cost -less than $600 Thats awesome. Yeah, i've been talking to computer friends of mine and they all told me i jumped the gun. So i canceled the order(which was a pain in the ass). Right now I'm probably just going to build a computer, with the help of people i know. Which is more or less me giving them the money and they making it. i should take a computer class...... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
frisco 0 Report post Posted October 6, 2004 If your buying parts I generally find newegg.com to be about the best sourse. They have some great prices as well as customer reviews on the parts your interested in. If your thinking of building you should go to a book store like barnes and noble because they have a few books on computer building that would be very helpful. There basically for beginners and not to technical that you'd get lost. Also theres a few magazines out there that could be helpful. I would definately use XP for an OS because its pretty easy to load. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Eclipse 0 Report post Posted October 7, 2004 It's good for the price, but like others have said, you can build a PC for way cheaper. My friend has a better PC than that, and only paid 800 bucks for it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Youth N Asia 0 Report post Posted October 7, 2004 Can anyone tell me how an athlon 3200 compares to a pentium 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ZGangsta 0 Report post Posted October 12, 2004 does that model dell have an AGP slot? because PCI video cards aren't good, even the new PCI express. upgrade to an AGP video card. like a geforce fx 5900 or 5950. That's not true at all. While you won't get an increase over AGP with PCI express (because the graphics cards havn't evolved to take advantage of it yet), the PCI-E bus is certainly not worse than AGP. The AGP slot will have completely diaspeared within a year on new motherboards. Oh, and the Geforce FX series was a complete abomination, never buy one. You could get a Radeon 9700 pro for cheaper than either the 5900 or 5950, and it will kick the shit out of them performance and quality wise. Thankfully NVidia seems to be back on track recently though. Also, for an OS, definately go with Win XP Pro over regular XP. Can anyone tell me how an athlon 3200 compares to a pentium 4What kind of P4? They go from 1GHz to 4GHz. Most of the time it depends on what you want to do with the computer. Though AMD and Intel desktop chips are pretty evenly matched these days. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jobber of the Week 0 Report post Posted October 12, 2004 I guess you haven't noticed the 64-bit AMDs. Anyway, I think the poster paid too much. 1GB of RAM is sufficient unless you're using a dual Opteron, Xenon, or Mac G5. I would have put that money into a bigger LCD. Of course, if all you want to do is rip CDs into MP3s and use Word, you're covered until Office 2020 or so, that's a ton of power that's pretty much reserved for games and nothing but games for now. Even video processing, which is the other big task and one I do a lot of, I'd say that's more than enough power, and would have invested money into a few hard drives and a good RAID controller. I wouldn't say your computer is bad, I just wouldn't pay that much for that setup. I have the same CPU setup, with only 1GB of Ram but a GeForce 6800GT graphics card, and a odd hard drive setup that basically comes down to a RAID array and a backup drive for when Windows breaks apart. While I don't mind using it for gaming and applications that require a ton of disk space or power, I still prefer to use my four-year-old Mac instead. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Youth N Asia 0 Report post Posted October 12, 2004 Let's say P4 2.8-3.2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
