Kuuso on 10/2/2010 at 14:16
I am finally replacing my current computer, which has a magnificent AMD athlon 2 ghz processor with radeon 1650x gfx card (et cetera). Nothing from this computer will be transferred to my to-be-bought one, since I'm giving this to my little sister.
The problem is that I'm effectively stuck at five years ago considering PC hardware and I need help determining what I should get. The computer will be primarily used for gaming.
Is Intel processors the only real way to go nowadays? Dual- or Quad-core? How about Nvidia/ATI? I'm leaning towards Nvidia as a company, so what Geforce series is the thing now?
mol on 10/2/2010 at 17:05
Quote Posted by Kuuso
I am finally replacing my current computer, which has a magnificent AMD athlon 2 ghz processor with radeon 1650x gfx card (et cetera). Nothing from this computer will be transferred to my to-be-bought one, since I'm giving this to my little sister.
The problem is that I'm effectively stuck at five years ago considering PC hardware and I need help determining what I should get. The computer will be primarily used for gaming.
Is Intel processors the only real way to go nowadays? Dual- or Quad-core? How about Nvidia/ATI? I'm leaning towards Nvidia as a company, so what Geforce series is the thing now?
My old pc was as crap as yours for gaming. Even though I only use the PC to play WoW, and Macs for everything else, I wanted a new rig. Anyways, after months of faffing about, reading forums, trying to get my head around what would be 'good enough', I decided the whole PC hardware market is too hard to figure out. Therefore I simply decided a budget and called up a fairly well known PC hardware store (Mikromafia).
They recommended something, I upped a bit on that, and went for their Morse Gamer i5 750.
Antec Three Hundred case
Chieftec 700W power
Intel DP55WB motherboard w/ P55 chipset
Intel Core i5 750 quad-core CPU
4096 Mt Kingston DDR3 1066 MHz RAM (2x 2Gt)
500 Gt Sata II hard drive 7200 rpm
22x DVD+/-RW, Dual Layer optical drive
Ati Radeon HD 5770 1GB GPU
7.1 sound on the mobo
10/100/1000 RJ45 ethernet on the mobo
2 USB 2 ports in the front panel
6 in the back
Firewire
769 euros, plus 100 euros for Win7 UK 64-bit.
This rocks, and will be good for a few years. I can always upgrade the cpu, and the gpu.
So - just call up a pc store like Mikromafia or Jimm's (since you're in Finland), and ask them to set you up. Unless you particularily want to think about all the hardware stuff.
Brian The Dog on 10/2/2010 at 17:07
For processors, Intel currently are the best with their i7 range, but they are very expensive. Personally I would go for either a mid-range Intel, or a high-end AMD. Note that the CPU sockets have all changed, AMD have moved to socket AM3, and Intel to either socket 775 for their mid-range or socket 1366 for their top-range products.
For graphics cards, nVidia's latest generation begins with "G". Don't let the branding fool you though, a top-of-the range GeForce 9 card is way better than a low-range "G" card. By the way, if you're going to play Thief, then I gather the fog works better with the ATI cards (although DDFix is being looked at to sort this out).
One thing that has moved on massively is memory - the RAM speeds are much quicker than 5 years ago. RAM is currently quite pricey though.
How much are you thinking of spending? That would give us an idea of what level of hardware to recommend.
Edit - after reading mol's post, I would agree to not skimp on the power supply, as modern CPUs and graphics cards are power hungry these days. Make sure you get at least a 500W PSU made by a reputable manufacturer.
Kuuso on 10/2/2010 at 18:06
Thanks for the comments. My budget goes upto 1000€ or so. Main thing is getting a quality PC.
My current PC was from a hardware shop like Mol suggested and it has served me well. I think I've managed four or five years I've had it with only gfx card breaking down and it's good enough to run Borderlands and the like still. I might use a shop like that again, but I'd love to have some kind of general gist of what's going (because I have trust issues with PC salesmen).
Renzatic on 10/2/2010 at 19:15
You could build a helluva machine with a Core i7 920 (just 2.66Ghz at default clocks, but can be OCed to hell and back), an EVGA E758 LGA 1366 mobo, 4 gig of DDR3 1600, a good graphics card, quality 800w PSU, ect, and fall just below your 1000€ limit.
Brian The Dog on 11/2/2010 at 00:29
Yes, for that price I'd go with Renz's idea. One other thing that has happened in the past five years is the introduction of 64-bit OS's. If you are wanting to use more than 4Gb of RAM, then you will need a 64-bit OS to utilise all of it. 32-bit OS's will still work but only see a total of 4Gb total RAM (including graphics ram). For most apps this won't make much difference since games are pretty much all 32-bit, but it does make your computer more future-proof. The only problems with 64-bit OS's are (a) drivers can be more difficult to obtain (although with the introduction of Windows 7 x64 this shouldn't be a problem any more), and (b) 16-bit apps will no longer run, and will need to be run through a dedicated emulator such as DosBox.
bikerdude on 11/2/2010 at 10:12
If you still need some recommendations Kuus, I can go onto newEgg and knock one up for you..
b.
Sulphur on 11/2/2010 at 20:15
Quote Posted by Brian The Dog
Yes, for that price I'd go with Renz's idea. One other thing that has happened in the past five years is the introduction of 64-bit OS's. If you are wanting to use more than 4Gb of RAM, then you will need a 64-bit OS to utilise all of it. 32-bit OS's will still work but only see a total of 4Gb total RAM (including graphics ram). For most apps this won't make much difference since games are pretty much all 32-bit, but it does make your computer more future-proof. The only problems with 64-bit OS's are (a) drivers can be more difficult to obtain (although with the introduction of Windows 7 x64 this shouldn't be a problem any more), and (b) 16-bit apps will no longer run, and will need to be run through a dedicated emulator such as DosBox.
The other thing is that even if you have just the 4 GB of RAM, 32-bit versions of Windows won't let you use all of it. It'll show as 2.99 or 3.25 or 3.5 GB usable, depending on your BIOS settings and which 32-bit version of Windows you're using.
bikerdude on 11/2/2010 at 20:18
Quote Posted by TBE
Bikerdude knocking up a computer,
Ha, sometimes computers do infuriate me - specially when they do things their arent supposed to. Which 90% of the time is the shitty Microsoft OS... The day I can play most of my games under linux will be the day windows gets f**ked in the bin... ;)
Gallium 3D - OpenCL, DirectX10 &11 driver for Vmware - (
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzcwNQ).... coming.
