New Sony Vaio...

[talith]

Just got a new sony vaio computer from best buy for around 1700 bucks. Im thinking for 1700, has to be good. Well here i am running 3dmark03 and find that i get an awful score of around 1500. Most of the games it tried were getting like 5 frames a second. I wish my cousin would have listened to me and let me build the computer instead. For 1700 i could have made this thing amazing. I mean the computer is good and all, has a 3.2 ghz P4 but they seemed to skip on the graphics card like they always do. Instead of something more up to date they gave me a geforce fx 5200. So am i supposed to go out and buy a brand new graphics card for 200-300 to bring this thing up to par, aswell as another 512 chip of ram so ill have 1 gig? Thats like 400-500 bucks ontop of the 1700. Man this sucks.

[fishybawb]

You've learned your lesson the hard way No chance of you just taking it back is there? 1700 for a rig with an FX5200 is just taking customers for idiots, no offence. If it were me and I couldn't take it back, I'd honestly just sell it and start from scratch. You know where to come for advice on parts

[talith]

Well i was under the impression we were only spending around 1000 bucks. SO im pricing away at newegg and then he decides he is just going to go to the store and buy a pc. My plans were going with the amd 64 bit 939 socket 3500+ processor and a gig of ram, and something along the lines of a radeon 9800 pro. Sure wish i knew he would spend 1700, would have been a lot better. Hopefully ill break the news tomorow to him since we just got it tonight and he is sleeping. Iv been up testing it and whatnot and i think that he will try to take it back or something once he knows that playing games like doom 3 isnt going to be happening.

[fishybawb]

That's bad man On the plus side, those Sony's look nice

[Midknyte]

Sonys are pretty expensive as it is. you rarely see top end cards on OEM systems. Most home users wouldn't utilize that kind of power. You need to do your research before you go and buy something, not just computers.

$300 would get you a 6800NU card. That would beat the tar out of the 5200.

[Midknyte]

also make sure to burn the recovery cds. there should have been a message about it when you first booted the system. if you don't create them, then you would need to order them from sony. I've seen too many people skip this, then they can't reinstall windows when it crashes.

[Magua]

Ouch.

Computer manufactuers tend to stick in a high rated CPU and skimp on everything else. The vast majority of the population think CPU Speed and Hard Drive space means everything.

[talith]

Your right. They always give you a nice processor but always fail to give a good graphics card. He told me the sales man said this graphics card got good ratings for games or some **** like that. If it were up to me yes i would have built this thing in the first place. I do agree though. This thing DOES look nice hehe.

EDIT-
I found the computer on the sony site HERE
Its liquid cooled it seems and windows media center. I would trade both for a good graphics card

[MrBurns]

i heared, that windows media center sucks

you could also get a readeon 9800 for about 200$ or a geforce fx 5900 series card for about 170$. they are not as fast as the x800/6800 cards, but they are still much faster than a 5200.

[WillihamS]

I agree with above my 5900xt can play doom 3 on high detail 1024*768, and was only £120 (not sure what thats in dollars)

[MrBurns]

I have a ti4600 w/ 128mb and i can also play doom3 on high details in all levels before hell. but only in recruit mode, because the game gets a little slower when the ai is increased.

also in winxp i can only play it at low details in this levels. for high details i need win98.