I’m about to buy a new comp. Im a pretty hardcore gamer but don’t know too much about comps so I need decent customer service. I’ve heard alienware and falcon northwest are pretty good. Are they cheap for what you get? Is one better than the other?
Now, AMD for Pentium. I’ve heard AMD is much faster for an equivalent rated pentium processor. Should I go AMD and are there any caveats I should know about AMD. FI, does some stuff not work well with it? Any help much appreciated.
One other thing. If I get a “gaming” pc, I’m I sacrificing any other aspect of functionality or just getting really good graphics and sound?
Probably not Pentium but Intel.
What’s your budget and what games do you play? Do you ned serious 3D graphics?
Intel still calls their top-of-the-line processors for homeuse Pentium, even if they’ve reached the fourth version. (I know, there are more than four, but cut me some slack here). AMD begun a while ago labelling their processors in comparison to Intels Pentium 4. I’m currently running a system with an AMD XP2200+, which operates at ~1800MHz and is roughly equivalent to an P4 running at 2200MHz. The AMDs are generally somewhat cheaper than Intel but in return require more cooling, thus an AMD system easily end up more noisy than a P4 counterpart. The advantage with Intel also comes with overclocking, where an intel processor is generally (I know, lots of things are in general terms, but it’s a hard question to answer without going into details about the specific system) more robust and can take more overclocking.
In my opinion, you don’t need an expensive sound card for gaming, a cheap soundblaster will suffice. Looking into a GeForce 4-Ti or a Radeon 9700 graphics cards is however very recommended. Whatever you do, stay away from the GF4-MX cards as they are slower than GF2-Ti/GTS-cards are. Do note that the newest graphics cards are quite thirsty on power so you should make sure to get a chassi with a PSU producing atleast 340W, 400 preferably.
Yea, I play the most graphically demanding games. I always here gamers say that AMD’s are so much better. I’m pretty sure what I;ll be getting in terms of audio/graphics hardware. Any opinions on whether 512 ram is enough? Also, what do I need a DVD thing for if I don’t play movies on it? Lastly, is Falcon Northwest or Alienware better in terms of price/service and is there an even better place?
I’m not a gamer, but my PC has a 1.2 GHz Celeron, my notebook has a 1.3 GHz Athalon, and my lab PC has a 1.0 (?) GHz Pentium. The notebook is definitely faster, though not much faster than the lab PC with the Pentium. I’m amazed at how much quicker it is than the Celeron.
Both Falcon & Alienware are extremely EXPENSIVE places to buy a comp. If you do your research, you will note that overall they get reasonably good service ratings, but not perfect ratings.
If you are going to shell out this kind o’ bucks for a computer, you might also check out Puget Systems or (for the ulitmate in this kind of thing) VoodooPC .
I would say if you are truly a hardcore gamer, you don’t want to sacrifice or short yourself quality/performancewise with ANY of your components. That is why these companies are so expensive in comparision to say Dell or Gateway - ALL the components are top of the line qualitywise & ALL are pretty much at the bleeding edge performance wise.
That said - I agree that you don’t need to go over the top with the sound card, the Audigy should pretty much handle it. Graphics is another story. A good way to get an idea of what the top end cards IMHO is to look at a number of these custom build sites and see what they are including on their top end machines.
Now, to your point about getting what you pay for servicewise:
Check out sites like: Reseller Ratings. Places like are kinda like EBay feedback. I only have that one handy, but there are others, Google or Yahoo to find em. Overall, all three were pretty well rated, but YMMV.
Intel vs AMD? Its a neverending debate. At this point all my home comps are AMD, but that is for budgetary reasons. There are no interoperability problems I am aware of. AMD systems have very STRINGENT cooling requirements, but overall give you more bang for the buck. OTOH, based on clockspeed, Intel has a slight edge. OTOOH, clockspeed doesn’t mean much in and of itself. OTOOOH, AMD had an advantage until recently, but DDR-RAM mobo’s may swing this back as DDR may unleash some of the P4’s latent capability. OTOOOOH I could go on for several more pages of reasons why one may be better than the other. Your best bet: do some research at places like Tom’s Hardware Guide see what makes the most sense to you.
Finally, the tech in me cannot let a question like this pass without saying: It’s cheaper to build yourself. I built a system that pretty much kicks the butt of the top-end Alienware system for about $1000 less.
Course then you have to support it yourself as well… 
Hope that helps
512 MB RAM is enough right now, I’ve got that amount and I have never had problems due to being low on RAM. Getting a DVD, well, there’s no reason why not to. DVD-readers are only slightly more expensive than their CD-counterparts and a reasonable guess is that as games get bigger the game companies eventually will end up using DVDs instead of a bunch of CDs.
Not true.
sandpile. The AMD CPU uses a bit less power.
Both Intel and AMD CPUs are now locked and very, very hard to OC.
You will definately get more bang for the buck with AMD processors, and there are no applications that will run on Intel processors but not on AMD. I go exclusively AMD with all the systems I use and build, and they work very well.
Urban Ranger: You’re looking at the wrong processors. Here are the desktop processors we’re discussing:
If he buys a CPU now, he will get a Palomino, which at 66W uses more power than a P4-A 1.8Ghz, at 54W. The newly released Thoroughbred-A processor does use only 51W, but he’s not likely to get one of those.
Eh? iirc 2000+ is throughbred A, and 2300+ is throughbred-b
2200+ is guaranteed to be at least a Thoroughbred-A. Everything below that is almost certainly a Palomino, unless explicitly stated otherwise. 2400+ and higher is definitely Thoroughbred-B.
Wow, I had always heard that building a computer ended up being the same price as buying one - economies of scale and all that. So the DVD drives do all the work of a CD-rom plus DVD?
The last two comps I’ve bought have always ended up needing ram upgrades and uninstalling of older games just to free up disk space. I had always bought the top of the line at the time so this time I know to get extra ram and diskspace. I figured I’d go with 180 gigs and 1024 ram.
Another question. How does a “gaming pc” differ than any other besides having a top of the line graphics and sound card?
Usually a high-end gaming rig will have Dolby 5.1 audio hardware and speakers to boot. I’ve had good success with the MSI K7N 420Pro, which has the nVidia nForce chipset. This was one of the first to offer Dolby 5.1 onboard through the chipset, although many other motherboards offer it through other onboard components. Speakers are somewhat subjective. Klipsch speakers are generally held as the standard for performance, but their price is quite a bit higher than others. Dolby 5.1 is useful in gaming for positional cues, you’re not necessarily looking to recreate La Scala, so I’d look at lower priced 5.1 systems. I won’t name speaker names because some audiophile will probably call me a Philistine 
Another important component for a gaming rig is the mouse. There are other input devices (joystick, driving controller etc.) of course, but since they aren’t usually included in a PC package I’ll omit them. For FPS games like Quake, Unreal and Counterstrike, the ability to precisely target is merely everything… Optical mice are more accurate as a general rule since they don’t suffer mechanical degradation other than the buttons.
Finally, screen real-estate is a very useful component in gaming, and the bigger something is, the easier it is to target. Therefore, a big CRT monitor (19-21") is recommended, since it allows higher resolution (more real-estate) without sacrificing visibility of smaller graphic elements. I’ve been told that LCD monitors do not have adequate refresh rates to be considered adequate for gaming, although I cannot comment from personal experience.
Just the cacklings of a corvid…
-Rav
While the LCD-displays are catching up in terms of refresh-rates, they still have a long way to go when it comes to colors and contrast. Most LCDs will only support 16 bit colors and the contrast problem will make many dark surfaces look black.
Here is a good comparison between LCDs (TFT) and CRTs.
Bottom line is, a “gaming PC” is a more robust PC than most other consumer level PCs, and be able to perform all tasks faster than their more mass-market counterparts.
So better Photoshop performance, better (consumer level) video editing, smoother playback of video files, all around better performance. This may theoretically be even better with a P4, what with hyperthreading and all, but I haven’t been reading up on this…