john9818a on 2/3/2019 at 15:02
I play Thief 1, 2 and 3 on an old Vista PC which I am in the process of replacing, so pretty much anything out today will play Thief just fine.
Yeaterday I placed an order for an i5, 8GB & nVidia 1060. I will be pulling out my Creative Labs X-Fi sound card and installing it into the new PC because the EAX Environmenral Surround is important to me as I can hear where sounds/voices are coming from.
Building a PC is a fun experience but can cost more than if you bought a PC off of the shelf. Some benefit are that you decide what to install, and you won't have a lot of unnecessary software installed that PC manufacturers love to dump into their PCs.
Corsair on 2/3/2019 at 17:10
Fallen+Keeper is right, any modern hardware will do. Just make sure you get a graphics card. These sites should help you out.
(
http://www.logicalincrements.com/)
(
https://pcpartpicker.com/)
There are some FMs out there where your performance is going to tank simply because the engine can't handle everything the author put into it. IIRC the Keeper of Infinity missions were like this.
Fallen+Keeper on 2/3/2019 at 20:31
Quote Posted by harley
Do you still think the "i5, 8GB RAM and a 1060" is sufficient. Thank you
That is the configuration I had 2 years ago when I actively played Thief and FMs and it performed well so I can guarantee it works fine.
No need to bother getting an i7 for Thief, unless someone throws it at you at a major discount. Also 8GB of RAM will be more than enough. Graphics card will be the most important thing you will have to choose. I'm an NVIDIA fan, so I can only give you my opinion on them: choose a graphic card which has a number "6" in its name, which means "entry level". A 1060 will work as a charm, but also the incoming 1660 will be great (even if maybe an overkill for your needs). Stay away from 7s (heavy duty gaming) and 8s (maximum performance, highest price), even those of the 10 generation, like 1070 and 1080: those are way to much for what you need and will still be pricey even as 20 series is becoming the current standard. And stay away from any "Ti" version of the NVIDIA card, that's a kind of powerhouse you will not need for Thief.
To be honest, even a GTX 600-900s would do nicely but good old hardware is hard to find and costly, so the 1060 is the oldest one I would suggest.
P.S. Actually you can even pick up a 1050, it's a deep bottom of the NVIDIA line-up, not really made for gaming, but then again, it should eat Thief and its FMs for breakfast. As Corsair pointed out, it's easier to have performance problems with a FMs because of engine limitations than becuase of the today's hardware. Or yesterday's hardware....
Starker on 2/3/2019 at 21:08
Quote Posted by john9818a
Building a PC is a fun experience but can cost more than if you bought a PC off of the shelf.
In my experience, it's usually the opposite. The cost part, that is.
john9818a on 3/3/2019 at 05:48
Quote Posted by Starker
In my experience, it's usually the opposite. The cost part, that is.
PC manufacturers buy in bulk so its cheaper for them to build PCs than if someone bought all of the same components from a retailer. Of course it might come out cheaper to build if you choose cheaper components, and in some cases you can upgrade an existing PC by swapping out the motherboard, cpu and ram & keep the case, dvd drive, hard drive etc.
Starker on 3/3/2019 at 06:36
Well, that maybe goes for general computers, but I've found that a gaming computer is quite often cheaper to build. And I don't even mean those horribly overpriced Alienware computers. And yeah, keeping the old components of course helps quite a bit.
To be fair, that was also before crypto miners jacked up video card prices.
Cigam on 3/3/2019 at 11:46
Good news about the new T2 patch.
Also AF = anisotropic filtering and SU = sneaky Upgrade, the T3 fan patch.
I agree with others you don't need anything fancy just to run the game straight, but if you want MS, AF bloom etc, that is another matter.
Built my own PC once. Never again. I remember it being a quite stressful experience.
Fallen+Keeper on 3/3/2019 at 12:31
Quote Posted by Starker
...those horribly overpriced Alienware computers.
Yeah, I knew it would come to this, sooner or later :D
Did you have bad experience with Alienware?
Starker on 3/3/2019 at 13:26
Not as such. Apart from my very first one, which was a used Compaq Deskpro I got for fairly cheap, I've put all my computers together myself. I know a couple of people who got one and seemed fairly happy with their purchase. But they've got money to spare anyway.
harley on 4/3/2019 at 05:19
Thank you for all the responses. I do appreciate it. The original game is not my concern really. Been playing a few missions lately and clicked on Keeper Of Infinity. Evidentl yi had started it a long time ago as I had saves, but I couldnt play it. Made me dizzy try to look around.
If I do decide to build one, I'd like it to be able to do everything Thief and have it look and perform the best it can get, the fan missions, add on packs, and everything thtas related from this forum. All the mods, etc. I dont game at all, but have been hooked on this game for a long time. Ever since it came out.
How do you check what is in your PC? I right clicked on My computer, properties, and it shoes a little AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual core processor + GHZ gb ram. All this running on XP. It appears that it has a Nvidia Geforce 7950 GT and I'm almost positive that the driver is not updated to the latest. Like I said I remember vaguely that at one point you could only use a driver to a specific version or it wouldnt work.
Is there any hope for this pc now? Or to get what I am looking for, is it time to update this pc.
I'm guessing the operating system needs updated as I cant even open youtube, or yahoo.com This website opens(using it as I'm typing) Thanks again for all the help.
