Just wondering if this is good for the price

H

hoodwrat

New Member
So I have somebody that is selling me a computer and here are the specs..
Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 @ 2.66ghz
8gb Ram
500gb Hard Drive ( will be a brand new)
Dual DVD Drives (both are dvd drives and burners)
GeForce 9800gt Video Card with dual DVI(Digital)Outputs. Supports up to a 1920 x 1080 resolution
650 watt Power Supply
8 total usb ports (6 rear 2 front)

He will have his choice of operating systems. He can either have Windows XP Home(will be a fresh installation on a brand new Hard Drive) with the computer for $400. If he wants Windows 7 (also would be a fresh installation on a brand new hard drive) it would be an additional $125... Is this pretty fair for the price is my main question and will it hold up with most newer games..Thank you everybody
 
I would say thats on the high side. I would say closer to $300 because its a dead cpu socket setup. Plus it all depends on what power supply is being used.
 
Just means that the type of cpu socket that it comes with has been discontinued. Basically we call it old technology and should not be sold like new technology would be. They don't even make slot 775 processors anymore.
 
johnb35 said:
Just means that the type of cpu socket that it comes with has been discontinued. Basically we call it old technology and should not be sold like new technology would be. They don't even make slot 775 processors anymore.
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and the processors one ebay are all ridiculously expensive for very little performance compared to modern processors. the 2 and 300 dollar core 2 quads only beat the 120 buck i3-2100 in video editing and other professional things that are made for 4+ cores, and the i3 kills it in gaming.
 
I think $400 for a Core 2 Duo system is probably too high with the CPU running on an old socket and the 9800 GT which isn't a great graphics card. I'd say $300 is probably about the most you want to pay for that system, even with the new hard drive and 8GBs of RAM.

hoodwrat said:
He can either have Windows XP Home(will be a fresh installation on a brand new Hard Drive) with the computer
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Windows XP Home on 8GB of RAM? It will run but it won't be able to use all 8GBs. With XP Home being only 32-bit it will only detect and use about 3.5GB of those 8GBs. If you buy the system with XP Home get the seller to remove 4GBs of the RAM and then sell the system to you for a little cheaper.

hoodwrat said:
If he wants Windows 7 (also would be a fresh installation on a brand new hard drive) it would be an additional $125... Is this pretty fair for the price
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Windows 7 would probably be a better choice on that system, but only if it is 64-bit. Don't get him to install Windows 7 for you for $125 though, buy and install Windows 7 yourself for $100 and save $25 right there - see here! Unless of course he's going to install Professional or Ultimate for you then it may be worthwhile depending on what you need, but for most users, Home Premium is just fine.

So my recommendation is to either buy the PC with XP Home installed on the new hard drive with only 4GBs of RAM installed and get the seller to sell it for less, or get the seller to sell you the PC with the new hard drive but no with no operating system installed for less as well.

hoodwrat said:
will it hold up with most newer games
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It depends entirely on the resolution you're going to be running at, what settings you want the games at, which games you want to play, and how long you want to play them on your PC for before you need another upgrade. I'd say with a 9800 GT and an E8200 you're probably looking at running most of today's games at low settings with half-decent FPS at 1024x768 or 1280x720. You're certainly not going to able to play most of the more graphics intensive games (Dirt 3, BF3, Skyrim etc) at high settings and high resolution on a 9800 GT and an old dual-core CPU.
 
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thank you all for the help! Im asking 400 for the computer with windows 7 x64 on it and seeing what he says. With a 650 watt power supply i could find a better card on tigerdirect or something and replacing it..Being the core 2 duo it should be compatable with new video cards correct ? im not looking at playing battlefield 3 on high res or nothing but i want it to be able to play most games..Diablo 3 should be coming out soon and i think it could handle that
 
hoodwrat said:
thank you all for the help! Im asking 400 for the computer with windows 7 x64 on it and seeing what he says. With a 650 watt power supply i could find a better card on tigerdirect or something and replacing it..Being the core 2 duo it should be compatable with new video cards correct ? im not looking at playing battlefield 3 on high res or nothing but i want it to be able to play most games..Diablo 3 should be coming out soon and i think it could handle that
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have you thought about just building your own, for about 500 you could build a pretty good little gamer
 
hoodwrat said:
i could find a better card on tigerdirect or something and replacing it.
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You sure could! Even something that is considered pretty low-end these days such as a GTX 550 Ti would walk over a 9800 GT in the games, and the 550 Ti is a pretty cheap card.

hoodwrat said:
Being the core 2 duo it should be compatable with new video cards correct ?
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A Core 2 Duo will work with any modern graphics card but don't buy a crazy graphics card because your Core 2 Duo will bottleneck it, meaning you won't be able to get the best performance out of the card. Don't go buying a $300 graphics card for your Core 2 Duo system because your C2D will limit it's performance for all sorts of reasons. You may want to watch this YouTube video (linking, not embedding, please remove if it violates the forum rules) to help you understand hardware bottlenecks. I think he even uses a Core 2 Duo as an example of a potential bottleneck in the video. Generally, don't buy a very high-end card for that system.

hoodwrat said:
Diablo 3 should be coming out soon and i think it could handle that
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At lower resolutions a 9800 GT may be able to play that game. I think if you bought the system you should upgrade your graphics card first to something like a GTX 550 Ti and then possibly upgrade your CPU to a quad-core if you think it's going to be worthwhile. Any of the Socket 775 Core 2 Quads (which is all of them apart from the QX9775 I believe, which you wouldn't be looking at buying anyway) will do you good if your board will support it.

jonnyp11 said:
have you thought about just building your own, for about 500 you could build a pretty good little gamer
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For $500 you could likely build something which would outperform the Core 2 Duo machine you're looking at here. You'd probably go for an i3 CPU and the GTX 550 Ti graphics card I've been on about.
 
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I agree with everything the rest have said. I also recommend that you build your own. It is very easy and the people on this board would help you pick out the right components for your budget. It's one of those things that many people are uncertain about or nervous going into it, but after you do it once and see how easy it is...you'll never go back.
 
Would the additional $125 for windows 7 just be a preinstall or would you also get win7 disk and COA aswell . would it be a 64bit or 32bit version since your running 8gb ram

I aggree with the other guys though build yourself a system , his specs are not that great , but i would be really interested to know if he would be selling the disk and COA ,if he isnt i would suspect foul play
 
OxfordPCRepairs said:
Would the additional $125 for windows 7 just be a preinstall or would you also get win7 disk and COA aswell . would it be a 64bit or 32bit version since your running 8gb ram

I aggree with the other guys though build yourself a system , his specs are not that great , but i would be really interested to know if he would be selling the disk and COA ,if he isnt i would suspect foul play
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I would imagine the seller would pay 100 bucks for the copy of Windows 7, then charge the buyer the 100 bucks for Windows 7 and $25 extra to install and set-up Windows 7 for him. I would imagine the seller would give the buyer the disc and product key.
 
I wouldn't doubt the seller charg that much so it sounds right, but do it illegally and pocket 125 for the little time it takes to install windows.
 
jonnyp11 said:
but do it illegally and pocket 125 for the little time it takes to install windows.
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Another reason why the OP should ask to buy the PC with an empty hard drive with no OS, if he buys Windows and installs it himself he knows it's going to be genuine and licensed properly.
 
So I talked to the guy and talked him down to 300 for the tower..So a hundred into windows 7 and that isnt so bad..I was thinking about going to a quad core and updating the graphics card? any tips on this would be much obliged..and going to the processor i would just have to remove the fan and pop the new chip in?
 
Can you provide what motherboard it comes with? That way we can determine what processors you could upgrade to.
 
As far as updating the graphics card goes I would personally recommend the MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti myself. I've used this card in the past and it was very good value for money, customer was more than satisfied with it. If you don't want to spend that much the Radeon 6870 is meant to be pretty good.

As for the CPU, the E8200 is a Socket 775 CPU, so assuming that any Socket 775 CPU would work in your board and you want a quad-core, depending on the frequency of the RAM I'd go for the Q6600 or the Q9300 - the Q9300 uses the faster FSB and should allow for the faster RAM, do correct me if I am wrong here though. Either one of those will do you fine. You could also consider a Q9450 or a Q9550 as well, anything faster than that would be overkill I think.
 
Ouch that processor is pretty expensive..Im looking at possibly spending no more than 200 on a cpu and the graphics card..dont know if that'll happen though. As far as what comes on the motherboard I know nothing more about the computer but what I posted in the beginning
 
hoodwrat said:
Im looking at possibly spending no more than 200 on a cpu and the graphics card
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In that case you'll have to look at older CPUs and graphics cards on the second-hand market and see if you get lucky.

If you just built the PC yourself you could include a quad-core CPU and a decent graphics card if you wanted and it wouldn't cost much more than this guy is asking for his (fairly outdated) machine. Have you bought the machine yet? I'd seriously consider looking into either building your own or getting somebody else to build one for you before you buy this machine and see how much more performance you'd be getting and what prices you'd be paying.
 
Well lets say that I dont upgrade the cpu and leave it a core 2 duo, would the MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti be a good candidate for what i have now without bottlenecking the system..Looking at the cpu's for the 775 slot there isnt alot for upgrading to quad cores without getting pricey. So im thinking just the card ill toy around with
 
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