New gaming machine needed - recommendations?
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
Prices off the top of my head. YMMV Q6600 $200 P45 mobo $150 4GB DDR2800 $50 GF260 $200 (or ATI 4850/70 ($150/300), which is better varies by game. On a budget the GF 9/8800GT will probably be able to do COD fine at normal resolutions) Case $50 Harddrive WD640 $80 (or a slightly slower previous generation 1TB drive for $100) Windows $200ish A few GPU reviews below: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTU0OSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==[^] http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTU2MiwzLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==[^] http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTUyNCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==[^]
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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Judah Himango wrote:
I used to be a hardware freak, keeping up with all the latest releases on Tom's Hardware and other sites. Now I know almost nothing; I've never heard of crossfire! Given my lack of knowledge of hardware, would you still recommend building my own?
I always build my own. I reckon I probably build (or extend) every 2 years or so. I don't keep up with tech in between, I just read up on all the latest when I'm ready. I've never had a problem catching up again pretty quickly. CrossFire[^] is just a way of connecting 2 (or more) graphics cards together to get more processing power. $1000 sounds low to me, but things are different in the UK I think.
Simon
Thanks. I've talked with a co-worker and he's basically said the same thing. I just visited Alienware at the recommendation of another CPian, and I see some interesting stuff: their 4 featured desktop gaming machines are: $3400 $1600 $1040 $999 So $1000 would buy a lower-end gaming machine. Of course, I already have a monitor, hard drive, keyboard, mouse, wireless card. So $1000 for a decent machine may not be out of the question.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
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For a gaming machine, I would custom build. You can specify things like video card and motherboard (eg if you are an ATI fan, making sure the motherboard is CrossFire compatible) and so on yourself. Basically, if you custom built, you can build up to a specification. If you buy off the shelf, it's always built down to a price.
Graham Bradshaw wrote:
eg if you are an ATI fan, making sure the motherboard is CrossFire compatible)
For COD, crossfire or SLI (nVidia) is overkill, and is arguably overkill at the $1000 pricepoint anyway.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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Graham Bradshaw wrote:
eg if you are an ATI fan, making sure the motherboard is CrossFire compatible)
For COD, crossfire or SLI (nVidia) is overkill, and is arguably overkill at the $1000 pricepoint anyway.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
It might be now, but wait until Crysis 3 comes out. My point was not that you need it now, but if you built your own, you can make sure you have expansion capacity (suitable PSU, multiple 16-lane PCI slots etc)
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C isn't that hard: void (*(*f[])())() defines f as an array of unspecified size, of pointers to functions that return pointers to functions that return void "Always program as if the person who will be maintaining your program is a violent psychopath that knows where you live." - Martin Golding
Thanks, I'm familiar with them. I just checked their desktop gaming systems[^], and it looks like I might be able to afford one. It is tempting to just buy an existing, pre-built machine without the hassle of getting one setup properly yourself.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
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I would custom build it, specially targeting the machine to the games I'm interested in playing. Otherwise, get a 360 and be done with it.
:..::. Douglas H. Troy ::..
Bad Astronomy |VCF|wxWidgets|WTLDouglas Troy wrote:
Otherwise, get a 360 and be done with it.
I've got most of the gaming systems. Nothin' beats a keyboard and mouse, I tell ya what. :)
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
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Get a trebuchet.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001That sounds like fun. And I'm already an expert in trebuchet operation -- I've taken down countless castles in Medieval 2! ;)
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
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Prices off the top of my head. YMMV Q6600 $200 P45 mobo $150 4GB DDR2800 $50 GF260 $200 (or ATI 4850/70 ($150/300), which is better varies by game. On a budget the GF 9/8800GT will probably be able to do COD fine at normal resolutions) Case $50 Harddrive WD640 $80 (or a slightly slower previous generation 1TB drive for $100) Windows $200ish A few GPU reviews below: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTU0OSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==[^] http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTU2MiwzLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==[^] http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTUyNCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==[^]
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
Thanks! I've got an MSDN subscription, so Windows isn't a problem. By the way, do you recommend 64 bit for gaming? I see all the Alienware systems are being sold with 64-bit OS...makes sense for RAM considerations, provided games support 64-bit. Do they?
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
if you are looking for gaming focused towers with lots of options try this place: http://www.ibuypower.com[^] they tend to have good prices on pre-prepared machines. also have lots of options for any kind of setup you are looking for.
----------------------------------------------------------- "When I first saw it, I just thought that you really, really enjoyed programming in java." - Leslie Sanford
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It might be now, but wait until Crysis 3 comes out. My point was not that you need it now, but if you built your own, you can make sure you have expansion capacity (suitable PSU, multiple 16-lane PCI slots etc)
For a hardcore gamer yes, but given what Judah's current gaming machine looks like I don't think he falls into that catagory. :-D By the time he decided to upgrade again, slapping in a new single card will make more sense than adding a second of his old one.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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Thanks! I've got an MSDN subscription, so Windows isn't a problem. By the way, do you recommend 64 bit for gaming? I see all the Alienware systems are being sold with 64-bit OS...makes sense for RAM considerations, provided games support 64-bit. Do they?
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
No reason not to now, and tests done by Corsair memory have shown modest FPS gains going from 2/3gb to 4/6. Nothing earthshaking but free performance is free. :cool:
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
"Behemoth" is a quad core, cross-fire breathing (got 2 SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 4850 512MB cards, they didn't have the 1 gig card at the time, but I plan to switch out one in the future). 2gig ram, and a 250gig HD. Sound is on board but will be update that part in the new year ( pending the creation of my Wife's box of course). Creating a gaming Rig for 1k is very do-able mine when I started a year ago noty even was $1025 (I needed new keybaord). your most expensive part maybe the graphics card proccessor so shop around ( I would not advise places like futureshop, bestbuy, etc unless forced to). Some swear by ati, some by Radeon. Cross-fire ( joinning of two cards) or what ever navidia calls it is optional, depends on personal preference. happy hunting.
///////////////// Thus spake the master programmer: ``A well-written program is its own heaven; a poorly-written program is its own hell.''
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
Thoughts of a new machine make me do some searches and it looks like Abit are leaving the mobo market at the end of the year. A real shame, they're the best boards I ever used and I regretted moving to Asus at my last rebuild. :(
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
You need to give consideration to the size of the power supply. 600-750 watts is not an unusual requirement to run the newer graphics cards. This was what led me to build my own. When I cracked open my old Dell to upgrade, not only was the power supply way too small, it also had some goofy non-standard connectors making changing it a pain. I put together a system via Newegg pretty much what Dan listed in his post with the ATI4870. Worked so well I put another one together with the ATI4850 board (the kids can't have a nicer machine than me). Each under <$1000.
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Thanks. I've talked with a co-worker and he's basically said the same thing. I just visited Alienware at the recommendation of another CPian, and I see some interesting stuff: their 4 featured desktop gaming machines are: $3400 $1600 $1040 $999 So $1000 would buy a lower-end gaming machine. Of course, I already have a monitor, hard drive, keyboard, mouse, wireless card. So $1000 for a decent machine may not be out of the question.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
Buy an Xbox 360. Quick & easy, for $350 you have a machine that can run COD5 at a great resolution at 30fps. And probably will be able to nicely run all the games in 2009 and 2010. The only problem is: you'll need to get used to the controller, it's a nice controller, but it's very different from playing with a keyboard and mouse.
I see dead pixels Yes, even I am blogging now!
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Thanks! I've got an MSDN subscription, so Windows isn't a problem. By the way, do you recommend 64 bit for gaming? I see all the Alienware systems are being sold with 64-bit OS...makes sense for RAM considerations, provided games support 64-bit. Do they?
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
64bit windows isn't bad anymore, it actually has decent driver support now and that was the only real downside it used to have. (except for old or rare hardware, such as many pre-USB printers) Vista would cost you a couple of FPS though (not many) and causes a lot of rants here on CP - personally I'd wait and see if maybe Vista SP2 is any better, or maybe Windows 7, and in the meantime use XP x64/Server 2003 x64. For gaming there is no advantage in having Vista, opinions vary if there is for normal work, but I doubt it (it only slows you down with UAC, slow network transfers and sluggishness of the new Explorer)
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Buy an Xbox 360. Quick & easy, for $350 you have a machine that can run COD5 at a great resolution at 30fps. And probably will be able to nicely run all the games in 2009 and 2010. The only problem is: you'll need to get used to the controller, it's a nice controller, but it's very different from playing with a keyboard and mouse.
I see dead pixels Yes, even I am blogging now!
Daniel Turini wrote:
Buy an Xbox 360.
I spent about 15 years being an exclusive PC gamer, and fought this notion until I got the original Xbox several years ago. These are the video cards ALONE that I purchased from 1997 to 2003, not counting other hardware upgrades (processors, RAM, etc): 3dfx Voodoo 3dfx Voodoo II Another Voodoo II for SLI Voodoo 3 (mistake) nVidia GeForce 2 GTS GeForce 4 TiWhatever And I wasn't even close to the cutting edge by the time I got my first nVidia. Then I got the Xbox, and now I have a 360... it's so nice not to be worrying about running framerate tests when I get a new game. And gaming on a 50" widescreen has its perks too.
He said, "Boy I'm just old and lonely, But thank you for your concern, Here's wishing you a Happy New Year." I wished him one back in return.
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
At least have a look at Sager[^]. They pack more for the $ than anyone. Support is great too.
ed ~"Watch your thoughts; they become your words. Watch your words they become your actions. Watch your actions; they become your habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -Frank Outlaw.
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Buy an Xbox 360. Quick & easy, for $350 you have a machine that can run COD5 at a great resolution at 30fps. And probably will be able to nicely run all the games in 2009 and 2010. The only problem is: you'll need to get used to the controller, it's a nice controller, but it's very different from playing with a keyboard and mouse.
I see dead pixels Yes, even I am blogging now!
I've owned almost every gaming system that's come out from 1990 on. :-) Nothin' beats PC gaming, IMO. Can't beat a keyboard and mouse for FPS.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
