Buying new gaming PC. I have some questions.

[Dinomarcel]

Hi. Well, I have a 5 year old sony vaio, and its alright, but not the best. And i experience very low FPS in Hellgate: London and other games of that caliber. I Plan to use whatever i decide to get, for gaming, and maybe for other media. Here is my system specs now

Intel Pentium 4 CPU 1.80GHz
Graphics; 265mb ATI Radeon 9550/X1050
1g Ram
60g hard drive


Im not the best with computers, so im new to all this.

With that being said, I am looking to upgrade some stuff in this one to preform better, or, just build my own.

Im leaning towards building my own.

Can someone give me some tips on what to buy for parts? i dont need to run crysis, but would like to have some power in it.

I kinda need some help here. Any suggestions? :confused:

Thanks

[123456]

You'd want to start with at least 250GB hard drive, 256mb or better video card, and 2GB of RAM. Go with Vista if you want a gaming PC, since many new games are going to be DX10 only (Vista compatible only).

[Dinomarcel]

I heard vista is a nightmare. What are your thoughts for video card brands? and processor?

Im thinking maybe 2 1g sticks of ram, a antec sonata 3 case, an Intel core 2 duo 3.0ghz, maybe some nividia graphics card. and thats as far as i got.

What do you think?

[Ajmukon]

I heard vista is a nightmare. What are your thoughts for video card brands? and processor?

Im thinking maybe 2 1g sticks of ram (Good), a antec sonata 3 case (good), an Intel core 2 duo 3.0ghz (good, but not great, the Q6600 series (Quad-core) are cheap right now), maybe some nividia graphics card (8800 GT 512 min for DX10 gamming). and thats as far as i got.

What do you think?


See quote, and VISTA is not really all that bad. unless you have a cheap OEM PC with it installed, then you would NEVER get it to work right...

[Dinomarcel]

Ok cool. i was thinking one of the 8800gt ones. I really want something affordable. Im just so broke right now. I added up everything that i WOULD buy and its gonna be like 900 - 1000 dollars. ouch

[NewPunk]

This is a quick build I'd recommend for gaming under $1000.

Remember the graphics card is the most important thing.
It's better to spend a bit less on the CPU and RAM, and have a good graphics card.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 ~ $200 (April 2008 release)

Asus Motherboard with P35 chipset ~ $130

Corsair 2GB XMS2 Memory DDR2-800 ~ $100

Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT ~ $200

Seagate 250GB Hard Drive ~ $65

DVD-RW Optical Drive ~ $30

Cooler Master Case & PSU ~ $160

-------------------------------------
Just under $900, well GL with building your new comp :)

-------------------------------------
[My PC]
CPU/MB/RAM: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 @ 3.33 Ghz / Asus P5K-E Wifi-AP / Crucial Ballistix 2GB PC2-8500
VIDEO/AUDIO: EVGA Geforce 8800 GT 512MB / Razer AC-1 audio card w/ Logitech 5.1 + Razer HP-1
HDDS/OPTICAL: Seagate 500GB, Seagate 320GB, Maxtor 300GB / (2x) Samsung 203B DVD burner
CASE/PSU: Antec Nine Hundred / Coolermaster 650W
DISPLAYS: Samsung 225MS / Samsung 913T

[Dinomarcel]

Thanks for the tips. Do you think that processor is going to last me? Im probably gonna wind up playing games like bio shock and stuff.

Right now i was gonna get a niVidia 8800gt, Intel 2 duo E6550 Processor, 2g ram, sound blaste x-fi card, antec sonata 3 case, (some sort of power supply for it), 250g western digital hard drive, and of course a drive for it.

But that stuff alone is pretty expensive, as i said above

Sounds like a pretty solid setup tho. i'll look into it.

[Ajmukon]

that is a low level "mid-range" computer, but it will work, just not at anything ALL that high...

[jlreich]

Asus Motherboard with P35 chipset ~ $130

Corsair 2GB XMS2 Memory DDR2-800 ~ $100
I would recommend a board with the X38 chipset. The P35 chipset doesn't have support for PCIe 2

Any gaming machine that ever intends to have vista on it should have 4GB ram. Although 2GB is plenty for XP you can get 2x2GB DDR2-800 for less than $100. ;)

You can get a nice dual core right now and worry about quad core later. There really isn't much out there that can really utilize quad core anyway. This will change over the next year or so I would think.

[Dinomarcel]

that is a low level "mid-range" computer, but it will work, just not at anything ALL that high...

It wont handle bioShock or hellgate?

Im confused, i thought that that kind of stuff was the thing to get for those types of games

[jlreich]

It will play Bioshock and Hellgate just fine. The 8800GT is a great card. And a E6550 is a pretty good CPU as well. Although as I said above if you are going with vista get 4GB ram.

No, those specs are not "top of the line". But nothing to sneeze at either. If you get as good solid motherboard that support PCIe 2.0 and 45nm CPU's you will have plenty of room for future upgrades as you need and can afford. The motherboard will determine what kind of potential it has.

I would not call it a "lower mid-range" system. Comparing this to a high end system with a $1000 CPU and SLI/CF high end video cards $1000-$1200 it doesn't look quite as appealing, but I pretty much guarantee you will have one of the better systems than most anyone else you know. Just having an 8800GT will put you in good standing.

I have a co-worker that bought (stick can't figure out why he didn't build it???) an OEM system with a Q6600, 4GB ram, 2x320GB HDD, and ..... here is the kicker..... an 8600GT! He paid around $1500 or more for the system! To top it off two days after he bought it it died. He took it in the shop and they had to end up replacing the motherboard and PSU which took about two weeks! And he ended up throwing the wireless mouse and KB that cam with it in the trash because he never did get it to work.

My E6750, 8800GT, 4GB DDR2-800, and x38 mobo will stomp his into the ground on any game and do just about everything else just as fast. My cost for those four components? About $650.

[Ajmukon]

i was trying to say that it will not run the newest games on high.. and that it was using older hardware, but it would still perform...

and that it would not be the BEST for that price range...

[jlreich]

i was trying to say that it will not run the newest games on high.. and that it was using older hardware, but it would still perform...
No, it will not run Crysis on high settings. Actually I don't think most systems will. :p It's one of those games that is ahead of mainstream hardware. But it will play it at enjoyable settings.

I wasn't trying to attack you or anything, it's just the way it came across it sounded like you were saying it was $500 Dell or something. :)