New Computer - No Idea

[Murray_H]

Hello,

My old computer is getting all dusty and elderly and I think it's nearly time to say goodbye to my 9800pro and XP2800 ;(

Anyway, I last was in the hardware loop 3 years ago when I bought the zombie I have now - I had a look at some hardware sites today and came away with only two things. Intel has lots of cores, nVidia are good at the moment.

I'll have ~?800 (roughly $1300) to spend in a couple of months and I was wondering what should I be looking at for the money. I need everything new bar monitor, KB + mouse and optical drives...I think I will hold off Vista for a while too.

Also should I wait longer than March/April to buy it? I don't have any real need for it until say the summer, will I get anything more for my money?

Merci beacoup in advance xxx

 

[Stigmata]

If you buy it by March or April, that should be perfect - the DX10 cards will have been out for a couple months, and the prices on DX9 cards, especially the high-end models, will have dropped drastically.

Now, as for videocards, If I recall correctly, the upper-hand holder is as follows:

DX10: Nvidia (is the ATI one out yet, anyone?)
High-end DX9: ATI
Midrange DX9: Nvidia
Low-end DX9: it's a wash

For your CPU/Mobo combination, definitely go for the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 and an Asus P5B-model motherboard. The E6600 is hovering around $300-375 right now, but it will come down in the future, and when coupled with the P5B you can basically get a free overclock (anywhere between a 10-40% increase, I think) with about no risk whatsoever. Best value ATM, and the Cores benchmark higher than Athlon64 X2s.

You can pick up a 320GB SATA2 hard drive (SATA2 is like IDE but better - IDE in this case is basically the strip-like cables used to connect hard drives and optical drives to the motherboard; SATA2 is a smaller cord, and is much faster, and I think it does away with master/slave jumpers) for about $90, maybe even less.

You should get at least 2GB of DDR2 memory - preferably DDR2-800 or DDR2-1066 (if you can afford it - and currently only Core 2 Duo motherboards support it). Value memory should be fine, as long as it's at least 2GB of 800MHz stuff.

I think if you were to buy all that right now, plus a mid-range GPU and a new PSU (pretty necessary if you're getting a midrange DX9 card or higher), you could get it all for around $1100-1400, depending on the quality of the components. If you're buying in April, you'll probably be able to snag a high-end GPU and some really nice RAM for the same price.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Well, the more you wait the more chances you have that the prices will go down or you'll find a good deal somewhere.

How long do you plan on having the PC? If you want a PC that will last you for a few years and allow you to play DX10 games and such, then grab a 64-bit CPU (if you have the cash, go with Intel's multi-core designs since they are ace, or if you want to go cheap go with a 64-bit AMD single core CPU), also get a nice Nvidia 8800 or something in that nature...

I highly suggest getting Vista, especially if you want to always play the latest games. Yea sure currently right now you have a small performance drop (~5-10%) but with new hardware it won't be noticeable at all. Also, if you are planning to want to do any Games for Windows Live (part of Live Anywhere), then you really need to get Vista since right now they've only confirmed titles for it with Vista like Halo2 and Shadowrun. If you're getting a new PC, there's no reason not to get it really.

 

[Stigmata]

Vista isn't necessary yet, though. For the time being, XP will do just fine, since there are still games coming out that are going to support XP, and I'm sure Murray can get away with reinstalling his Windows anyway.

 

[63]

Stop pimping Vista :|

 

[Naudian]

I'd say don't bother with vista yet. Wait a couple months at least...unless you like fixing software issues.

Definitely good advice from stiggers there :thumbs:

 

[CyberPitz]

I'd say hold your money, things get slightly cheaper in the months, and your rig can still play decent games..

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Stop pimping Vista :|

If you want a forward looking system, Vista is the only way to go. Currently Games For Windows Live is only for Vista. Why get XP then if Vista can do everything it can (with small performance hit) and then even more (DX10, Live, etc)?

Don't care what anyone says, but I firmly believe that if you are getting a new PC and you're a gamer, Vista is best choice (not the only choice and I'm sure you would still be fine with XP but you just won't be able to play some games that come out).

 

[Stigmata]

Only problem is, AT THIS MOMENT, Windows Live doesn't do anything, and there's a noticeable performance hit vs. gaming on XP. Not to mention the lack of optimized drivers, software options, and so forth, simply because Vista hasn't fully penetrated the mainstream.

Right now, Vista does not matter. Maybe it will in April, when Murray is building his PC, but maybe it won't. Maybe Windows Live will suck. Maybe DX10 won't become standard for another year. Not to mention the fact that Vista is roughly double the price of XP.

Anywho.

Murray: You might want to look into getting a DVD drive if you don't have one already. Though we are moving towards digital distribution, DVD drives are inexpensive. I got a combo CD/DVD reader/rewriter and it works just fine, got it for under $50.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Here's the best DVD drive I've ever bought (got it around a month ago).

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...ategoryId=pcmcat107700050010&id=1152227797113

I haven't tried burning any dual-layers with it, but for everything else it works fast and is overall an excellent drive. Might be on the pricier end though.

 

[ComradeBadger]

Ack, Samsung drives.. stay away

That's my only advice in that regard :E

 

[3ssence]

Samsung have just bought out a sata optical drive for a very reasonable price, which gets a thumbs up from me, because the only other sata optical drives are plextor drives, which you don't half have to pay for !

 

[ComradeBadger]

I don't know if they've gotten better now, but at least when I was working with computers extensively, most of the crapped-out drives we had to remove were Samsungs..

 

[Stigmata]

SATA optical drives can't really make use of SATA's bandwidth, they're still bottlenecked by the drive's read speed. But SATA looks cool so it's all good

 

[3ssence]

Yah, it's a thumbs up purely because of the aesthetic benefits of the sata cable instead of an ide cable

 

[Asus]

Ya know when you put in a CD or DVD into the drive and your PC pauses for a second to read the disc? That doesn't happen with SATA optical drives, just with the ones going through IDE.

 

[Stigmata]

:O!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pics or it didn't happen.