Yet another "Help me buy a new comp" thread

[Feerspoir]

Thinking of buying a new comp within the next few months (could be tomorrow, could be in 3 months).

I was planning on waiting until summer, but one of my HDs started making strange noises at startup since yesterday, so, apart from an external HD, maybe I'm buying the new comp in the next days/weeks.

The question to the community: what are the specs I should be looking for, having in mind a gaming comp (probably with XP)?

Thanks in advance.

PS: retards need not post. Only well informed people should bother (Ego, Arch, LL, okiN, Mer, Janus, Jace, etc.)

 

[Llew2]

What's your budget?

 

[Raz]

FINALLY.





Now I won't be needing to take a dump during the load times anymore. I guess you finally got tired of the jokes, eh?

Oh, and to answer your questions: I'm no expert, and I assume that you'd like to stay under €1000, so you'd be best off buying a dual core processor. They aren't that expensive anymore. You won't need anymore than 3GB of Ram. Make sure the motherboard is compatible with either DDR2 or DDR3. DDR2 is the cheapest if I recall it correctly.

Anyway, I'll leave the rest up to the experts here.

 

[Merentha]

PS: retards need not post. Only well informed people should bother (Ego, Arch, LL, okiN, Mer, Janus, Jace, etc.)

*grin*  Why didn't you just ask in IRC?

What's your budget?  Raz's call with a dualcore is probably your best bet and if you start looking around places like newegg, you can snag good graphics cards for very cheap. 

 

[Feerspoir]

What's your budget?

Was planning on spending 1000 euros in the summer, but as of now I can only spend 500-700 euros

FINALLY.
Now I won't be needing to take a dump during the load times anymore. I guess you finally got tired of the jokes, eh?

Up yours, dutchie. Go attend the shrooms

Oh, and to answer your questions: I'm no expert, and I assume that you'd like to stay under €1000, so you'd be best off buying a dual core processor. They aren't that expensive anymore. You won't need anymore than 3GB of Ram. Make sure the motherboard is compatible with either DDR2 or DDR3. DDR2 is the cheapest if I recall it correctly.

Rgr that.

Raz's call with a dualcore is probably your best bet and if you start looking around places like newegg, you can snag good graphics cards for very cheap. 

Was thinking of buying the comp at a store which lets you choose the parts and then they assemble.

a) I'm obliged to install XP on it (due to applications related to work which aren't compatible with Vista (according to colleagues)), but I'm afraid games will start moving to Vista only on a very short notice Is this true or am I just being paranoid?

b) so Intel Dual Core, 3GB RAM (probably DDR2 due to budget), compatible motherboard (probably ASUS); what graphics card do you recommend, GeForce what? And what else?

 

[Jericho]

You might want to consider purchasing an SLI capable motherboard so you can do a "minor"
upgrade 6 - 9 months from now by purchasing a second SLI video board and boosting your gaming
up to acceptable framerates for several more months until the next major upgrade in a couple
of years from now.

I just upgraded and plan to purchase my second video board to run an SLI system around August.
(btw, I also run XP)
My Rig:
AMD Athlon FX2 5000+
BioStar SLI mobo
2GB DDR2 RAM
8800GTS 320MB
600W Power Supply
Heatsink & Fan
----------------------
$582.00 US

 

[CrazyEyes]

You can get a nice deal for an Athlon 4800+ here, and they perform better than the Intel "equivalent".

If you want proof - look at the prices of a not-so-good Core 2 Duo and then check the specs of my Athlon. The 4800+ is a spiffy CPU, comes at almost half the E6550 - I don't even want to know how much Intels that perform as well as AMD processors cost. You think there's a catch with that price, but there really isn't.

As for video cards, stick with nVidia. ATI used to produce decent products that were cheaper than nVidia's, but not anymore - and most software does not like ATI cards, anyway. The 7900 GS is what I use, and it gets the job done for me (I can run Armed Assault with 3 klicks visibility and the object detail on high as well as shadows, it runs smoothly)

RAM mainly depends on the brand, so you don't pick a crappy one. Kingston is a good one; Gigabyte's not bad either.

 

[Raz]

Kingston is one of the cheapest at it too. You'll get your 3GB for as low as ~€70.

 

[LavaLampMaster]

^ True that. I love kingston because I'm a cheap sum*****. And it's generally very good RAM.

If you have any ability with assembling stuff and are decent at being careful, I'd suggest you assemble it yourself since it's a lot cheaper than to buy a similar rig from a company. There's lots of guides on the internet. This is the one I used to build my first one
http://www.buildeasypc.com/hw/howto/assemblepc.htm

also, question for the bigger tech geeks out there; are those AMD opteron (dual core) for the 939 socket good? I've been wanting to get a new CPU for a while, since I feel geek-demasculated having a single core.

 

[Redcoat-Mic]

Do you know how to overclock? Q6600 (Intel Quad Core) is great for that, outclassing the more expensive Q6700 IIRC.

 

[Archonsod]

Do you know how to overclock? Q6600 (Intel Quad Core) is great for that, outclassing the more expensive Q6700 IIRC.

No, the Q6700 is just as good for overclocking (possibly better, since it's upper limit is higher). The real difference is the price, for the extra £100 or so for the Q6700 you're looking at a whole 10 % performance boost.

For a new box with that budget I'd go for a quad core minimum, 2 Gb Ram minimum and an 8600 or up. Sticking with dual core would be pointless unless you were desperate to save money. Vista vs. XP. I doubt you're going to see games moving to Vista at short notice, the only thing it offers a dev that XP doesn't is DX10, and none of the current console generation are DX10 compatible (though for the non-mainstream publishers you never know). Course, you can always dual boot between them (not sure what kind of apps you'd be running that would work in XP but not Vista, unless they're legacy Dos/16 bit applications anyway).

Getting an SLI capable motherboard is also a good idea, solely for the cheap upgrade potential.

To be honest, if you dig up my old post about my newest system you should be able to get something similar (if not the same, bloody depreciation) for the money. In fact, strip out the LED's, lights and similar silliness and you'd be saving a good £100 or so

 

[Volkier]

AFAIK, the 7x series of GeForce gfx cards actually outperforms the 8x series if you run DirectX9 apps. The 8x series was designed deliberately for the DX10 apps (and obviously outperforms on the applications designed for DX10 too), but still actually has slightly less raw power - hence if you are staying on the XP, the 7x might be worth looking into (especially if you have a choice of a 7900 vs something like an 8600 due to budget).

Won't be able to help with the actual budgeting since I have no clue what the prices would be like in EU.

As for the processor, the number of cores seems to be the new benchmark of 'tomorrow', rather than the actual speed. Again, not sure what exactly your budget is and how it relates to local currencies, but if you can afford it, go for the Quad. With Ram, if it's a gaming machine, I would suggest at least 2Gb (DDR2 if you are low on budget, DDR3 if you have enough to spend. Do note, that a DDR2 mb may be slightly more expensive based on other features, or generally where you are buying it from, so you might be worse off for the same price.

 

[Archonsod]

AFAIK, the 7x series of GeForce gfx cards actually outperforms the 8x series if you run DirectX9 apps.

Nope, the 8x series is a better performer, especially when it comes to pixel shading. The advantage of having programmable rather than dedicated pipelines, you can do a lot more with a lot less. They also tend to have more brute horsepower too, which helps.

Biggest trick is making sure you're comparing like to like, especially since Nvidia switched naming conventions. Any high tier 7x series (7800, 7900) will outperform the entry/budget level (8200) but that's the same with every series.

 

[Feerspoir]

What do you Gods of Heavy Metal think of this:

Processor: Intel Quad 2 Core Q6600 2,4GHz
Motherboard: Abit Fatality FP-IN9 SLI Nvidia650i LGA775 Qcor
Graphics card: XFX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB DDR3 or XFX GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR3
RAM: 3x1GB DDR2 667MHz Kingston
HD: 160GB SATA2 UDMA 150 7200RPM. 8MB buffer
Box with 520W power supply

together with DVD writer, sound card, etc. 800 or 1000 euros depending on video card

 

[Archonsod]

Power supply might be a wee bit small, but otherwise looks good to me.

 

[Feerspoir]

Power supply might be a wee bit small, but otherwise looks good to me.

new comp; edited, see above