Hardware

Omega

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I'm new to this site so forgive me if this is a regular one. Hardware. I'm looking to upgrade PC hardware, so whats seen as run of the mill and whats state of the art. Particularly keen on flat screens, but are they worth the money? Any views greatly appreciated.
 
Hi Omega, welcome to the site.

Chartman, is definatley the one to speak to. I'll ask him to add his opinion. Personally, if I were to buy a new PC - my min spec would be:

PIII/AMD Athlon 800
128/256Mb Ram
20GB HD
GeoForce 2 MX AGP Graphics Card
CD/Rewriter - Rioch or Plextor
Laser Printer - Brother HL-1250
2 Iiyama/Nokia/Mitsubishi 17/19" monitors

And I'd say that little lot with accessories would cost around about £1250-£1500, at a rough estimate. But it would be a great platfrom to trade.. and play the odd game of Quake3!

Pigsy.
 
No 1 Flat screens are a luxury that is only to seen as needed if you really are short of space.
No 2. Something like an Athlon 750 with 128 meg as a minimum should be your target.
Hard drive- not an issue but 20-30 gigs is normal.
No 3. get a multi monitor system- 2 to 4 monitors 17".
The easy route is W93 SE, the hard route is W2000.
dont even think of ME.
W2000 only supports multi monitor by using Vodoo3 2500 video cards which are hard to get hold of...BUT for RT charts etc, W2000 does give a more stable platform.
I used to have W98, but had crashes quite often. Only way to recover was to re-boot.W2000 is rock solid, only a very occaisional crash. Because of the structure of W2000, a crashed application can be terminated is isolation and restarted.
I use an Athlon 800 overclocked to 896, 256M ram, 20G hdd and 3 17" monitors.I am comfortable with this for daytrading (others use much more!).If you are only trading occaisionally, using EOD charts etc, then a single monitor system, 64M, 500Mhz cpu would be more than adequate.

Hope this helps.
 
Mmmmm piggs.Intel CPU's are overpriced.AMD give you far greater value for money.I prefer a colour printer to a laser, I certainly don't need the speed of a laser, but I do prefer colour output from time to time.A fancy 3D graffix card is only needed if you are a games player.I used to use 8M AGP/PCI cheapo cards in my W98 system.Expensive monitors? well yes if you're going to be stuck infront of them all day. Mine are middle of the road 17" @ £170 ish each with .26 dot pitch.
Like every thing in life, you pays yer money......
Confused? join the majority.
 
Pigsy and Chartman...excellent feedback just what I was looking for, thanks for your help.

I'm currently running W98 with 450mhz and 128RAM. I'm rather hooked on running pricing data through some chunky spreadsheets and the system has started crashing. Good feedback on the monitors, I'm leaning towards ploughing the money into the CPU and RAm rather than the monitors.

You may not want to say but any views on decent suppliers??

Thanks again
 
Omega, well in my experience Dell and Mesh are pretty good. But you might also want to speak to Chartman, he's in that line of business too.

From what you describe I'd definately get 256mb, which now costs as little as £100 inc. vat from somewhere like http://www.insight.com/uk and probably get an Athlon 800 or thereabouts, as it's often not worth the progressivly steep increases in prices for some of the higher speed processors.

Sharky, formerly Pigsy.
 
Funny looking shark wearing a hat. Where's the new picture?


Omega said:
Pigsy and Chartman...excellent feedback just what I was looking for, thanks for your help.

I'm currently running W98 with 450mhz and 128RAM. I'm rather hooked on running pricing data through some chunky spreadsheets and the system has started crashing. Good feedback on the monitors, I'm leaning towards ploughing the money into the CPU and RAm rather than the monitors.

You may not want to say but any views on decent suppliers??

Thanks again
 
Omega- since you have Pentium already, see if your motherboard can take a new P3 800 ish- if your'e not sure ring me at work, and I'll run through it with you. You'll save the cost of a new M/board - £100 ish.
Maybe you have a memory problem . I can email you a burn in memory test program if you want.
 
Sorry this is off topic, but I couldn't resist,

Well you got me Hill. I just wanted you to see one last time how lovely I was, before I swapped the grass for the ocean :)

How's this for a new pic, I feel dizzy already..!

Sharky

shark.gif
 
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