Quote:
Originally Posted by Noel
JJJ, I always had this feeling you were a [closet] gamer! Must of been your love for Penny Arcade that gave it away. Anyways...
Couple of review sites:
Tom's Hardware
AnAndTech
Guru3d
Suggestions:
I suggest investing in a 20"-24" wide screen monitor capable of handling 1680x1050. I bought this one a few weeks ago and boy, Wide screen gaming rules. An absolutely essential upgrade-especially from 1280x1024. Although, one caveat exists: in order to support this resolution, one needs to have powerful graphics card.
A good pair of Cans/Speakers + sound card helps as well. If you listen to music/game frequently, dedicated hardware is simply superior to on board proprietary hardware.
5000 dollars is a lot of money. And a lot of the suggestions Athenian proposed are a bit overkill. You can make a bitchin' computer with 2000 easy. Hell, I built mine a few months ago for 1300.
DD3 memory, whilst the future, is ridiculously overpriced for the gains you receive and hardly any motherboards support it. DDR2 is dirt cheap right now and you could buy nearly triple the ram you could with DDR3. 2gb is pretty standard these days if you want a satisfactory amount of ram (only windows applicable) If you plan to run xp, the kernel caps out at 3.5gb because it's a 32-bit operating system. With the 64-bit version of xp / Vista, I think it's 16gb. Although, one caveat for 64-bit OS': driver support is worse than 32-bit - though it is improving significantly. In other words, 32-bit = 2gb & 64-bit = 2gb+.
ATI/Nvidia, you can't go wrong with either of them. Nvidia has better linux support though.
Raptors are fast. Really fast. But they're loud. Like RAM, hard drives have become extremely cheap. I'd pick up a Sata2 one with as much space as you want.
Intel/AMD, well Intel is clearly winning the benchmarks. AMD is still a good choice, especially if you're looking for something not as expensive. If you go Intel, definitely try to procure one of the new 45nm chips.
I feel most people misgauge how much power their system needs. This was the last thing I picked out. Research the required Amp rails needed to supply your graphics card.
I can not stress the importance of having a quality power supply and RAM.
If you have any other questions, feel free to shoot me a PM or reply here. |
If I may say so... running a bigger monitor doesn't make a program run better, or even improve the graphics quality. All it does is make it slower and increase the viewable area, especially in games. Sure, some people prefer the size advantage, but if you're comfortable with lower resolution, you can have a really fast computer with excellent graphics. I've personally always hated widescreen displays, because they feel awkward and disproportional.
He might be able to get triple the ram, but 8GB (which is what my recommendation gave him) is all most motherboards can handle, and games benefit greatly from better RAM. Unless you're building a server, it pays more to have fast RAM than simply more RAM, especially after you hit about 2GB or 4GB. And I'm focused on the future. If he builds the best system now, he can hold off for at least 2-3 years before upgrading, possibly more depending on his needs. People only have to upgrade annually because they go cheaper with their components all the time.
Then again, maybe I just don't get the value of quality sound and display because I'm focused on the technical aspects of what the computer can do and is actually outputting in hardware, rather than what's showing up on the screen. That and the fact that I'm deaf in one ear, and can't even tell 16-bit sound from 32-bit sound.
I did select a quality power supply that would handle those components, and maybe more.
Your approach is far too Te (and not great Te either, I might add). You don't understand how the components work together.