A PC do I want one?

Gary Sax wrote:

Specs look pretty good.

The main thing you want to think about is your videocard. It's an *ok* (512 9500GT) card but you could do much better and I the rest of the rig would easily support it. If I had to guess, looking at the specs, that is where your bottleneck will be if you run games. A video card, if you play FPS and good RTS to a lesser extent, is really what you are going to see the biggest improvements in most games from.

Should I pump it up or not bother? I've never really been one who blows over graphics and find that with video cards especially its the law of deminishing returns.

Scout out the specs of the games that you are currently interested in. I've got one installed on my PC that I can't play right now because my video card isn't good enough, even though I meet all the other specs.

Mr Skeletor wrote:

Should I pump it up or not bother? I've never really been one who blows over graphics and find that with video cards especially its the law of deminishing returns.

The 9500GT is a reasonable entry-level budget card and will be fine for most games, as long as you're willing to play in lower resolutions (1024x768 or lower) and don't mind shutting off most of the graphical bells and whistles. It will play most current and older games at this resolution perfectly well. As to how well that will keep up over the next few years, I don't know. The card itself is below the sweet spot for price vs. performance.

Definitely spend the extra $12 for the 500GB hard drive update.

I'd go for a better card if there's an upgrade option that isn't too expensive (or do it yourself, videocards are pretty easy installs). The rest of your rig will do a good job running games so virtually all your games will be restricted (resolution wise in particular) by the video card.

But it is a decent card. You can play all current games with it in all likelihood. Not sure how crisis would look and I can't assure you that you can play in really high resolutions but you may not care about that.

Bullwinkle wrote:

Mr Skeletor wrote:

Should I pump it up or not bother? I've never really been one who blows over graphics and find that with video cards especially its the law of deminishing returns.

The 9500GT is a reasonable entry-level budget card and will be fine for most games, as long as you're willing to play in lower resolutions (1024x768 or lower) and don't mind shutting off most of the graphical bells and whistles. It will play most current and older games at this resolution perfectly well. As to how well that will keep up over the next few years, I don't know. The card itself is below the sweet spot for price vs. performance.

Definitely spend the extra $12 for the 500GB hard drive update.

I was going to get all 3 of the optuional upgrades.
Maybe go for a bigger monitor too.
Which Grafics Card would you get? I don't want to be shutting off all of the bells and whistles from day 1!

Spinrad wrote:

The Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War games are pretty pisser. I keep my old decrepit franken-PC around just for Dawn of War at this point.

Got to agree. If you can run, World of Warcraft you can run Dawn of War.

I'm also looking into buying a new PC at the moment. I lost my old one when I moved jobs. I'm currently on the one I had before that. It's seven years old and struggling with all the flash stuff on modern websites. Two flash websites open at the same time and it pretty much comes to a standstill. I can't play any recent games. More to the point I have to open it up each time I turn it on and flick some fans to get it to run.

I'm thinking about building a new one myself. Is that stupid? The reason is I want it quiet.

Mr Skeletor wrote:

Which Grafics Card would you get? I don't want to be shutting off all of the bells and whistles from day 1!

In that case, you have two options from the list of ASUS (reliable brand) VGA cards on the page: the 9600GT 512MB at $165, and the 9800GT 512MB at $215.

I personally would get the 9800GT 512MB, but I'm willing to put a little more into the graphics card because I'm a big gamer. This card will be very good with the current, more demanding FPSs, and should last reasonably well for a few years. (We're still nowhere near the top end available, but, as you said, it's truly diminishing returns if you go much higher than this.)

If you want to get the 9600GT, that's still a fairly reasonable option, but it is definitely inferior to the 9800, and will have less shelf life.

Citadel wrote:

I'm thinking about building a new one myself. Is that stupid? The reason is I want it quiet.

Why would this be stupid? I almost always build my own PCs, and I always upgrade them myself. It's not that hard to do, and you learn a lot about your machine in the process.

Although I'm not sure what wanting it quiet has to do with building it yourself?

Bullwinkle wrote:

Citadel wrote:

I'm thinking about building a new one myself. Is that stupid? The reason is I want it quiet.

Why would this be stupid? I almost always build my own PCs, and I always upgrade them myself. It's not that hard to do, and you learn a lot about your machine in the process.

Although I'm not sure what wanting it quiet has to do with building it yourself?

By building it myself I can buy quiet fans, a quiet PSU and a quieter case. I guess it would be easy enough to just modify a company built computer as well.

I have upgraded computers myself and replaced motherboards before. My worry is that something I get doesn't work and I can't tell what. I guess that is fairly unlikely. It should be pretty obvious where the problem lies.

I still haven't decided how much to spend. I kind of want to get one I won't have to even think about upgrading for 2 or 3 years. I want to be able to play the latest during that period but I don't really care about high resolutions. Any advice on a good budget.

I agree you seem to want a computer more than a console, but those boardgames mentioned on the xbox360 sure are tempting Anyway, I'd say, if you can, get a mac. The operating system really is so much better in every way and you can install also windows for the games that are not released on the mac.

About the FPS games, after playing Metroid Prime 3 on the Wii, I don't want to ever play one with any other type of controller. It really is THAT good.

I have used Macs quite a bit in various places I have worked. I'm not sure I see the attraction. Yeah, they are a bit swisher but you basically pay an extra US$600 for the mac styling and OS. They are now PCs inside so you can make the direct comparison. If you are into the Mac-ing up your life, fair enough but otherwise I wouldn't bother.

Shellhead wrote:
"There were certain design decisions that failed to respect what users might actually want. For example, if you do a file search in XP, it will slowly but surely search your whole computer for the file. If you do a file search in Vista, the search will go faster but fail more often, because it will only search files that are indexed for searching. Another example is the annoying way that Vista questions everything that you do? Are you sure that you want to save this file?
Not that I'm saying Macs are any better. Their engineers have made equally serious blunders, like that desktop with the passive chimney heat ventilation, or that time when they decided that nobody wanted disk drives anymore."

I wasn't going to suggest a Mac but Shellheads' post has prompted me to say that Macs are better. Quite a while back when I wanted to change computers I costed Macs and PCs. My conclusion was that I'd spend about the same to do what I wanted; the difference was that for a Mac I'd spend two-thirds on hardware and one-third on software, but vice versa with a PC. I went with the Mac and haven't looked back.

And to address Shellheads' points above: Spotlght indexes everything and the search results update instantaneously as you're typing; my iMac has the passive ventilation which is wonderfully quiet and I've had no problems for three years now; "they decided that nobody wanted disk drives anymore" is simply untrue (if you mean 3.5" floppies then yes Apple switched to r/w CDs long before anyone else).

And Frank, Vista copies a lot from OS X, which came out almost two years prior. OS X also includes Boot Camp which allows you to boot into a Windows machine, giving you the best of both worlds.

Citadel wrote:
"Yeah, they are a bit swisher but you basically pay an extra US$600 for the mac styling and OS."
Numerous comparison articles in the UK, in both Mac and PC magazines, seem to indicate that Apple pricing is generally on a par with Dell.

If I brought a MAC it would be as a laptop, which is out of my price range.
Anyway I just ordered the PC, got the one I said plus the 9800GT Hybrid 1 GB graphics card.
Thanks for the advice guys.

Now what games should I check out?

Notahandle wrote:

Citadel wrote:
"Yeah, they are a bit swisher but you basically pay an extra US$600 for the mac styling and OS."
Numerous comparison articles in the UK, in both Mac and PC magazines, seem to indicate that Apple pricing is generally on a par with Dell.

iMac
20-inch: 2.66GHz
2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB memory
320GB hard drive
8x double-layer SuperDrive
ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB
Free Shipping
£929.00

Dell
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E7300 processor (2.66GHz, 1066MHz, 3MB cache)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 - English
20in SP2009W WIDESCREEN UK Black (1680x1050)
256MB ATI® Radeon™ HD 3450 graphics card
2048MB 800MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024]
500GB (7200rpm) SATA Hard Drive
DVD+/-RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD)
Free Shipping
£579

Difference £350 (US$525) for a like for like system.