Buying a Gaming PC - Advice and tips

[Branden_Lucero]

you can easily out perform a gtx 285 by overclocking a sapphire vapor-x radeon 4890 2GB card. you dont a $500 graphic card, which is clearly a waste of money and wasted performance you'll never fully use.

as for a processor and motherboard, i bought a phenom II 955 3.2ghz black edition with a 790gx hdmi hybrid crossfirex motherboard for a little over $300, 8gb of ddr3 ocz platinum 1600 ram, a thermaltake black gaming cause with 700w power supply, sonyy optiarcc 24x dual-layer dvd burner, western digital caviar black 1tb 7200rpm 32mb HDD, and a logitech ergonomics wireless mouse and keyboard all for less than $900 including shipping. only thing i need is a graphics card, which they were out of stock on the one i want, a wireless adapter (since its not close to a router), and an os (which ill just install windows 7 rc until the retail arrives)

[randomwab]

I'm very close to an upgrade. At the minute, I'm fighting between which of these two rigs to get, I'll post the core pieces.

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8500 3.16GHz 6MB Cache 1333MHz FSB
2GB GDDR5 ATI® Radeon™ HD 4870 X2 – Dual GPU Technology
4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 2 x 2048MB
Rough cost: £1,200

Compared to...

Intel® Core™ i7-920 Mainstream 2.66GHz 8MB Cache
Single 1,792 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 295
6GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz - 3 x 2048MB
Rough cost: £1,700

I really don't know what to do though. The first option seems nice for what I'm running on at the minute, a 19" screen running at mainly 720p, but I can't help but feel that those specs will be outdated fast, and I want this rig to last me at least another good few years.

[Member_of_STARS]

The first option wont be outdated. Not until a new generation of consoles hits the streets or DX11 is going mainstream, at least. But considering how much the development costs of making a videogame have gone up, were probably reaching the cost/efficiency point from which the industry wont move onward, unless they develop something which would cut costs across all fronts, drastically.

Sure, you might play a couple of games which GFX options wont be completely maxed out... But like I mentioned earlier, those games are either extremely poor ports (Blacksite: Area 51, Wanted: Weapons of Fate, GTA4, et cetera, Vegas and Vegas 2) or just godawful, bug-ridden shovelware.

It depends on what you need, entirely. If videogames will be the main resourcehog for you, then you could use that money better and get a better rig than the first option, for less funds. If youre doing a lot of editing and rendering, then that changes the picture a little.

Get yourself a PC that is going to be futureproof for 1-3 years and which will run the most straining PC games at Mid-high to high graphical settings and a decent resolution. Because once newer games actually start utilizing quadcores and the new tech, most of this costly BS you see enthusiasts buy today to "futureproof" their rigs, is going to be obselete or extremely cheap.

Something similar to your first rig, but Im sure there are cheaper solutions, because 1200 pounds is just too steep. Or maybe you mixed up dollars with pounds? (hopefully)

[Gideon Quinn]

Hey folks. Sorry to bump an old thread but i'm after a bit of advice. I've specced a PC for a mix of game/music recording and it looks like this...

Intel Quad Core (2.83ghz)
4GB RAM (to start with anyway)
1TB Hard Drive
As far as Graphics Cards go i'm looking at an ATI HD 44650.

There's a store in Bristol that can build this for me for £630. Unfortunately it comes with Vista, but also gets a free upgrade to Windows 7 when released. Is £630 a good deal for the afformentioned specs? Would appreciate thoughts

[WeskerIncarnate]

Vista is REALLY not that bad.

It mostly flopped because of widespread driver compatibility issues. Tons of people would have needed to buy all new equipment like cameras just to get it to work with Vista, and even now it still has some problems.

And it's also a major resource hog. This was the biggest of the complaints. "Vista capable" machines that were supposed to be able to run Vista fine turned out to not be powerful enough, so it ran like crap on their computer.

Even so, Windows 7 will in fact pwn Vista AND OS X, in my opinion. Just a couple more weeks.

Okay...

Overall, that's a VERY good setup for the price it's running. However, I'd look at newer ATI Radeon models to see if you can get a better card for just a little more in terms of price, though again, it's not really necessary. My laptop came with 4670, and it runs Crysis at about 25-30 FPS at 1280 X 1024 with 2X anti aliasing. Runs Source engine based games like a charm, though (The Orange Box).

[riderkid]

i recently paid 725 american for a i5 system with 4 gigs of ram and a 4350. it runs bioshock on high textures and plays cod4 a biut choppy but i plan on getting a 4890 in january hopefully. also when the i7 goes down a bit i can add it as well. ibuypowers newegg selection is nice so if you want a prebuilt system fast i recomend ibuypower

[Borman]

Honestly save up for the latest ATI card, that thing is beastly. By January it should be slightly cheaper and easy(or easier) to find. If I could get it to work in OSX, Id already be using it. Though at this point, Id prefer Nvidia since i was planning on going 3d and all that, but their loss.

[Gideon Quinn]

Ah, if only i could wait until January...

I think i'm gonna go with it, and upgrade the graphics card in 8 months or so once i've got a bit more money and some more time to play games. Thanks all for the advice!

Edit - New PC is here and it is beastly. I'm currently installing my rather large collection of Steam games..!