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
I just custom-built, parts from NewEgg. Got up to speed on equipment from a few places, including: EggXpert System Builds forum[^] and 2008 PC Builder's Bible[^] My final machine was a bit more, but that's because I'm doing photo work, and wanted redundancy on storage, so went with a 3-disk RAID5. If I could figure out how to publish my wish list on NewEgg, I'd send you a link to let you see what I got :confused: -- it was around $1500, but could be trimmed down quite a bit pretty easily. Specs in short then: ASUS P5Q Deluxe MoBo CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 case (it's huge and heavy, but oh-so-quiet) eVGA GeForce GTX 260 Gamestream 700W power supply Intel Core 2 Duo 3.16GHz CPU XIGMATEK 120mm CPU cooler Corsair 4GB 1066MHz DDR2 RAM - 2 sticks Seagate Barracuda 750GB SATA - 3 disks LG Lightscribe SATA DVD+-R Saitek Eclipse illuminated keyboard The GPU came with FarCry2, and it plays buttery-smooth with all the display settings turned all the way up on a 1280x1024 monitor. I've got MS FlightSim X on the way for Christmas and I can't wait to see how it plays! -matt
Matt Newby President, Matt Newby Enterprises, Inc. matt@mattnewby.com
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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
CyberPowerPC has lots of preconfigured gaming machines that are very cost effective [^] - you can also do custom configurations
Steve _________________ I C(++) therefore I am
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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!
The controller isn't too bad (though the digital pad isn't the best). I have an Xbox 360 wired controller for my PC that I use for a few games -- mostly the Grand Theft Auto games. For everything else, I have the PlayStation 3. I do the majority of my gaming there. Almost bought a 360 in 06, but decided to hold out for the PS3 for backward compatibility with my previous PlayStation systems. :) Flynn
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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
Hard drives are better than ever too, check the WD velociraptor. :omg: And let's be serious about your mouse and keyboard too :-) And just like others said, you can jump in on the hardware train, read up, buy stuff, put it together, jump off and wonder why everything has gotten so much cheaper since you bought your new rig.
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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
xbox 360? ;P that can handle COD:WAW no problem and will save you a few dollars :-\
---Guy H ;-)---
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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
I was in similar situation as you 1 month ago. I spent £500 in UK (I guess you can do the same with $500 in US) and now the machine flies. Motherboard: gigabyte x48 based motherboard GA-X48-DS4 about £150 (go x48 chipset cause supports crossfire in 2x16 speed, good for future expansion when the following GPU becomes dirt cheap in 1-2 years). GPU: 4850 ASUS about £115 CPU: 45nm quad core Q8200 (cheapest quad core of 45nm family - go 45nm for energy efficiency) £100 on ebay new RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX DDR2 XMS2 Dominator about £90 CPU fan: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - S775 Dual/Quad £15 Since you know how to put it together that's your best bet. Keep in mind this MOBO has 1 IDE slot supporting 2 devices. If you have many IDE drives, might be worth getting a new CDROM for £15 which have SATA connectors now, to free up IDE slot.
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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
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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
Don't know about CoD spec's as compared to something like WoW or Warhammer Online, but I run a Dell Inspirion 530, 1.8Ghz, 2GB RAM and a 512MB GeForce (forget the actual model #)...all together probably spent ~$500 Already had the monitor, keyboard, etc.). Now Warhammer says to have 2Ghz minimum, 1GB Ram, so I'm under processed, but over stored as it were. Running around on medium-high settings I'm getting 50-70FPS, and even in large group areas with 24 or more people I'm getting 35-40FPS. I'd think you could easily get something for under $1000...
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Graham Bradshaw wrote:
eg if you are an ATI fan, making sure the motherboard is CrossFire compatible
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? And do you think I can get a decent gaming machine for $1000?
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
Judah Himango wrote:
Now I know almost nothing; I've never heard of crossfire!
you know more than you think. Google can tell you a lot. ATI and Nvidia have competing multi-card technologies, Nvidia is SLI and ATI is Crossfire. Knowing that much you can google tests between the two and find which is faster if that is your goal (Nvidia) or less expensive if that is your goal (ATI). You can google which is designed for more cards (Nvidia) or on cheaper motherboards (ATI). With a quick google you can learn just about everything about ATI vs. Nvidia including the floating point hacks and IEEE floating point. as far as assembling yourself, The manual for the case will tell you how to put in the motherboard. The motherboard manual will tell you how to connect the case LED's and powerswitch. Cards slide in and lock, a tool-less case makes it 5 seconds and you are done. A tool-less case can cost you an extra $100 US, but it will save you an hour of assembly at least, and a lot of headaches. Drives slide in and lock, done. Connect the cables close the case. :-D
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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
http://www.sharkyextreme.com[^] Look for the "November Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide" - it will price out the best parts on a $1000 budget.
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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
Scott Hanselman (a very famous software developer) created a very nice article about building the Ultimate Developer Rig. Although his intention was not for gaming, there is plenty of intelligent discussion about why he chose each component and how much he paid (all from NewEgg, I think). I used his article as sort of a basis for my machine that I just built and I couldnt be happier. I ended up in the $1400 range, but the prices keep dropping. Here is a link to his article: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheCodingHorrorUltimateDeveloperRigThrowdownPart1.aspx[^] Erik
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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 don't want to spend the time configuring and building it yourself I'd recommend Velocity Microsystems. Made in USA, customer support in USA. They use top quality components. Their reps are active on the HardOCP forums where they often help people out. My current system is a Velocity, and a buddy got one a few months ago, we both love them! I've done my own upgrades in the past but once you pass a tipping point of number of components, it can be almost as cheap to just buy new especially when you factor in time. Here is a system that can easily still come in under a grand: http://www.velocitymicro.com/wizard.php?iid=157[^]. I'd bump up to an ATI 4850 card and put the RAM up to 4Gig and it's still less than $1000. That system even with the 2.4Ghz CPU will be fine for gaming - its about what I have in my now 1.5 year old system and I play most games with full detail at 1600x1050. Not Crysis of course, and I haven't tried COD5 on it. But COD4, Far Cry 2, Fallout 3, Warhammer Online, STALKER, all run beautifully at high res. Good Luck!
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Of course, $1000 will buy you a Better machine than their worst gaming rig, even if you didn't have the monitor etc already. Alienware is extremely overpriced.
I had a really bad experience with Alienware. Both the motherboard and power supply crapped out in first two months. They make you provide a deposit even for replacement parts covered by warranty. Never got the deposit for the power supply back, despite many calls to them. Buy locally, and if you are not inclined to build your own box, find somebody locally who listens to what you need, builds to suit, and stands behind their work.
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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
I'm with the guys saying custom build. Don't get it from a vendor like Alienware, as their premiums will hurt your budget. Look at extremetech.com's gaming and bang-for-buck custom builds for inspiration. Additionally, be sure to check eBay. I often find underpriced systems on eBay. Last year I was looking for a cheap computer to do home server work. I found a system with AMD-64, 2GB+ RAM, gaming graphics card, 100GB-200GB SATA drive, etc. for $300 in good condition from a reputable seller. I gave the full specs to a builder friend of mine and he said it was a good deal. I passed on it for a nearly new Dell Laptop (mine broke while looking for gaming rig...). Someone else got a good deal (or steal). So, be sure to check the big auction and used resellers just in case. ;)
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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
I bought my parts on Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend. The whole thing came out to be around $900 before the rebates, but there were some really good deals that weekend. I think this rig should be able to run most games. I went the Intel/Nvidia route. Intel is raping AMD pretty bad right now, and from what I read, ATI cards run super hot. Also, 9800 GTX+ is supposed to run much cooler than 9800 GTX. - CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 - CPU Fan: Blue Orb II CL-P0257 - MD: EVGA 123-YW-E175-A1 LGA 775... 750i SLI ATX - Video: EVGA 512-P3-N879-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB - RAM: G.SKILL 4GB DDR2 (2 x 2GB) - HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS (2 x 500GB for RAID 0) - PSU: COOLMAX CUG-950B 950W - CD/DVD: LG 6X Blu-ray DVD-ROM - Case: SILVERSTONE Black SST-LC17-B You probably won't need the blue ray disc player, and you can probably reuse your old case. Those should shave off another $200 or so. If you're a serious gamer, I would consider another 9800 GTX+ for SLI. If SLI isn't the thing for you, you can get a cheaper motherboard, one with just single PCIe slot but I wanted the option to do SLI later. I got my parts after checking newegg, directron, mwave, and tigerdirect. I went with whoever had the cheapest price. Don't forget to check the combo deals on NewEgg.
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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 can easily build your own for less than $1000. You can usually build a respectable system for around $600 if you're reusing a few old components like your case, DVD drive, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers. * Look at the performance benchmarks for each type of component and plot them against price to get the best price/performance tradeoff. * Factor shipping into the price of every component before comparing the price/performance ratios. Sometimes a slightly better, more expensive component will have free shipping, making the choice a no-brainer. * Don't spend more than $150 on the video card. You can usually get a really good deal if you buy 1 generation behind the curve or buy the second-best card of the current generation. * Don't spend more than $100 on the CPU. The "sweet spot" for price/performance (the point at which your performaince gains begin to shrink with every extra dollar spent) is usually right at the low end for CPUs, around $60-$75. * Don't spend more than $100 on the hard drive. $100 is the sweet spot, and sometimes you can get a good enough deal for $80 or so. * If you have an old copy of Windows that you can legally transfer to the new computer, use that instead of buying a new copy. It will save you at least $120. * If you're running 32-bit Windows, don't buy more than 4 GB of RAM. Windows won't be able to use more than 3 GB (3.5 GB, if you're lucky), anyway. * Buy a reputable-brand power supply, but don't worry about getting an oversized or extra-fancy one if your budget doesn't permit it. ActivePFC 80-Plus-Certified power supplies are now pretty affordable. (Usually $50 on sale is sufficient, and $80 is bordering on overkill.) I've had bad luck with off-brands failing or causing weird glitches and system instability. * Buy a motherboard that has solid capacitors instead of electrolytic capacitors, at least around the top part of the board (around the CPU area). Electrolytic capacitors have gotten a bad rap because a stolen, incomplete formula got into the supply stream. These caps degrade and leak over time, causing your motherboard to eventually fail. You can tell the difference easily by looking at pictures of the motherboard (solid caps are encased all around with silver-colored metal, with some colored areas on the top and down one side. Electrolytic capacitors are wrapped with a colored plastic wrapper and just have a circle of visible metal on the very top. * Heed the reviews, but beware of people who give low ratings just because they don't know how