Need new computer advice

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am playing with Fred Flintstones old computer. I bought it over 6 years ago. I really need a new one. I am now in a position to do so. Honestly, the most strenuous use of my computer is gaming.

However, things have changed over 6 years!

My first concern is that when I get a new computer, I am used to large, multiple times increases in speed. While checking out Dell and Falcon Northwest, I noticed that speed is 2.66 or 3 Ghz. My current old computer is 1.9Ghz. This makes it seem like my computer isn’t so slow but I also know there might have been other changes in the meantime.

The choices are bewildering! I know that Video cards are key, plus RAM. Is this still true? So…what should I get? Which cards? How much RAM? What about the sound card?

What other items are a necessity (primarily for gaming). What can I avoid?

Who are the companies to buy from…and who do I avoid?

My budget is $3000…I could be talked up to $4000. Less would be cool to.

2

That much money would buy you a screamer which could run any game out there. Heck, I play a lot of current-gen games, and that much computer would be overkill for ME.

My current machine was bought from a local computer shop- I talked to them, and they assembled the machine to my specifications. It cost me $800 or so, and the only thing I’ve done to improve it since then (almost three years ago) was to add in a new, better graphics card (I spent about $130 on it). I’ve never had any trouble running any of the current games on it.

3

That’s a sizable budget there my man!

I’d recommend that you build it yourself. You could build a dream machine with much less than $4,000 AND you can learn about the new gear, this way you could stay on top of new developments and hopefully upgrade at keypoints so as not to break the bank while maintaining a high end system for the next 2-4 years.

Anyway, the Ghz rate is no longer a complete picture of the performance of a particular chip. Today’s CPU’s do a LOT more work per cycle than those made 6 years ago thanks to ever developing architecture.

The main components for a gaming machine are the CPU and the GPU or video card. High end CPU’s are the fast dual-cores and quad-cores, and right now intel is the company to buy. Their core 2 duo’s or quad lines should be your first stop.

The mother of all GPU’s right now is the Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX Ultra and you can run two of those babies together in SLI for increased gaming performance.

RAM is for the most part still DDR2 though DDR3 is just now coming into the mainstream. I wouldn’t bother with it as performance increase is minimal right now.

A simple outline of a great gaming machine:

Mobo: Geforce 680 i SLI board.
CPU: Intel Core 2 duo extreme.
GPU’s: 2X Geforce 8800GTX
Hard Drive: 2 x 250 GB hard drives in RAID 0
Sound: Soundblaster Gamer Extreme
Monitor: LCD 20-22" 1680x1050

If you do decide to build yourself I’d recommend new egg.

4

[QUOTE=Kinthalis]
That’s a sizable budget there my man!

I’d recommend that you build it yourself. You could build a dream machine with much less than $4,000 AND you can learn about the new gear, this way you could stay on top of new developments and hopefully upgrade at keypoints so as not to break the bank while maintaining a high end system for the next 2-4 years.

Anyway, the Ghz rate is no longer a complete picture of the performance of a particular chip. Today’s CPU’s do a LOT more work per cycle than those made 6 years ago thanks to ever developing architecture.

The main components for a gaming machine are the CPU and the GPU or video card. High end CPU’s are the fast dual-cores and quad-cores, and right now intel is the company to buy. Their core 2 duo’s or quad lines should be your first stop.

The mother of all GPU’s right now is the Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX Ultra and you can run two of those babies together in SLI for increased gaming performance.

RAM is for the most part still D

DR2 though DDR3 is just now coming into the mainstream. I wouldn’t bother with it as performance increase is minimal right now.

A simple outline of a great gaming machine:

Mobo: Geforce 680 i SLI board.
CPU: Intel Core 2 duo extreme.
GPU’s: 2X Geforce 8800GTX
Hard Drive: 2 x 250 GB hard drives in RAID 0
Sound: Soundblaster Gamer Extreme
Monitor: LCD 20-22" 1680x1050

If you do decide to build yourself I’d recommend new egg.
[/QUOTE]

New egg? EDIT - oh the company! I will check it out.

Thanks for the outline. I posted this same OP in the forums on WWIIOnline. The consensus seems to match your CPU, GPU and Sound card. This gives me confidence that they are the right choice.

The other site brought up Vigor…are they good? Also, sites seem to have double video cards (or was it sound?) Are they worth it?

Heck, if I can REALLY impose on ya all…what desktop would you think is good from that site?

Any other companies you think is good?

Is 4 Gigs of RAM completely and stupid overkill and 2 will do…or should I go for 4?

{They also overwhelming said I should build my own…but I don’t have the confidence, patience or time to do so.}

5

There’s already some advice here that I consider to be questionable. For example:

That’s a generalization. Crysis for example when turned up to max settings will not get playable frame rates on any current system. There will always be games requiring more and more resources.

Why RAID 0 with 2 250Gb hard drives? I’ve yet to see any benchmarks that show a real speed advantage with RAID 0 (using on board controllers). All this does is combine the drives while cutting your MTBF (mean time before failure) in half. That’s bad, especially considering 500G drives are easy to find. For that matter, 1Tb drives are readily available.

My advice would be to start with a site like AnandTech or Sharky Extreme. Check out their recommendations for high end gaming system builds. Tune it to your likes and your budget. Naturally feel free to come back and discuss options or gloat/brag about your new kick ass system!

6

[QUOTE=BlinkingDuck]
Also, sites seem to have double video cards (or was it sound?) Are they worth it?
[/quote]
Two video cards is called either SLI or Crossfire depending on the graphics chip manufacturer. It requires a special motherboard. To do this properly, it also requires a very good power supply. Both of these up the system cost, but with your budget, it’s very doable. Don’t expect double the performance though. 40% is more a more likely gain. Some games will actually run slower in a dual card system. I would go with a single card solution myself.

DDR2 RAM is very cheap right now. That said, it’s a matter of some debate on various boards if more that 2Gb is useful on a 32-bit Windows machine. With the current price of RAM, I say future proof the system a bit and go with 4Gb.

7

I use Overclockers UK as a benchmark and also buy quite a bit of hardware from them.
My intention was to link to Overclockers.com but something seems to have gone horribly wrong there.

Tom’s Hardware is always worth consulting before making any decisions too.

8

[QUOTE=RogueRacer]

Why RAID 0 with 2 250Gb hard drives? I’ve yet to see any benchmarks that show a real speed advantage with RAID 0 (using on board controllers). All this does is combine the drives while cutting your MTBF (mean time before failure) in half. That’s bad, especially considering 500G drives are easy to find. For that matter, 1Tb drives are readily available.

[/QUOTE]

You haven’t seen benchmarks that show improvement? Can you point to some that do not show improvement?

I see a read increase of nearly 100% on my machine and a significant write performance improvement as well.

With good, RAID rated hardrives the mean time to failure is nothing to worry about as long as this is a gaming machine. If you’re going to work with priceless family pictures or important documents, buy a NAS with the left over money and BACKUP your stuff- something you should be doing anyway.

I wouldn’t recommend a raid 5 with an onboard controller though.

9

For system guides, I find Ars Technica’s periodic system guides to be more focused on technical merit than other sites, which sometimes come off as fanboy-ish. Tom’s Hardware always has solid methodology and explains their test setup so that a layman can understand which conclusions the data do (and don’t) support. Anandtech had a not-too-recent scandal where a benchmarking test he did favored one of his advertisers, so I don’t trust the reviews or advice from that site anymore.

Ars recently updated their guide, so it’s less than a month old. In your budget range, consider reading the Hot Rod ($1,600) and the God Box ($14,000) to get an idea of how steep the curve is at your price point. You can probably start with the Hot Rod and add a bunch of nice-to-have features: two graphics cards instead of one, the very fastest available CPU for your motherboard, a second monitor, maxed out low-latency RAM, 15k RPM SCSI drives, and so on.

If you’re not terribly savvy building your own machine, you could spend a little extra and go with the custom gaming-box builders at WidowPC, who will assign you a sales rep who gets paid to answer these questions. The guys from Penny Arcade (who play video games for a living) had WidowPC build them a rig and they were impressed at the quality and service. I prefer to build my own, but if I had $4,000 to spend and wasn’t sure what I wanted, that’s where I’d go.

10

Keep in mind that when it comes to deciding whether to go with SLI (two Nvidia cards) vs one card, I believe that right now you can buy two lesser cards and pay less than buying one 8800 GTX Ultra and the SLI performance will be better than the single card.

11

[QUOTE=Shamozzle]
Keep in mind that when it comes to deciding whether to go with SLI (two Nvidia cards) vs one card, I believe that right now you can buy two lesser cards and pay less than buying one 8800 GTX Ultra and the SLI performance will be better than the single card.
[/QUOTE]

I would not suggest this simply because SLI performance will NOT be even across all games. Some will play better than with one faster card, but some will play worse. Get a top of the line card, and if you have the cash to burn, or you want to play at high resolutions with all the bells and whistles, then get the second.

12

Dont do SLI.

Dont do Raid 0.

Dont buy the absolute top of the range card.

You pay through the nose for comparatively tiny amounts of performance increase when you go for the bleeding edge. Save the money and use it to buy whatever the next big upgrade will be in a few months, generally videocards offer the biggest performance increase for games. Or better yet just save the money, its really easy to get focussed on things that are only really an issue in benchmarks.

Dont build it yourself. The headaches that can result from building it yourself simply arent worth it. Its great for satisfaction when it works, but its a real pain when it doesnt.

Bang for the buckwise, currently the NVIDIA 8800GT or the ATI 3870 are the way to go and offer more than ample performance for most games. Dont aim to be able to play current games at the topmost level, its more an exercise in egotism than useful benefit most of the time.

4gb of RAM wise, its the easiest thing in the world to add later, why do it before you need it?

Advice wise, most of the people posting in this thread will be gearheads and will encourage you to buy way more machine than really needed. If you’re one yourself no problem, but if you’re not take advice with an according grain of salt.

Otara

13

While the answers may be factual, this is more of an informed opinion thread. Moved to IMHO.

samclem gQ moderator

14

[QUOTE=Otara]
Dont build it yourself. The headaches that can result from building it yourself simply arent worth it. Its great for satisfaction when it works, but its a real pain when it doesnt.
[/quote]
Depends. If you know how to build it, do it. It will be a real help when you have to fix or upgrade it down the road. If you’re scared of the project, don’t, and when it breaks, someone else will have to fix it.

15

[QUOTE=Otara]

4gb of RAM wise, its the easiest thing in the world to add later, why do it before you need it?
[/QUOTE]

Well, these days the price difference is tiny, especially compared to the cost of a whole computer. 2 gigs is less than $40 these days, so what’s an extra $40 on top of a thousand-dollar computer? That’s up to the buyer, of course…

I do agree with the rest of your points. Shiny benchmarks may make the top of the line seem worth it, but in the real world, the difference is probably not noticeable under normal conditions. It’s not worth hundreds (or thousands) to be able to play Crysis at “OMG AMAZING SHINY DX10”, instead of merely “that’s pretty good looking”.

16

[QUOTE=BlinkingDuck]
I am playing with Fred Flintstones old computer. I bought it over 6 years ago. I really need a new one. I am now in a position to do so. Honestly, the most strenuous use of my computer is gaming.

However, things have changed over 6 years!

My first concern is that when I get a new computer, I am used to large, multiple times increases in speed. While checking out Dell and Falcon Northwest, I noticed that speed is 2.66 or 3 Ghz. My current old computer is 1.9Ghz. This makes it seem like my computer isn’t so slow but I also know there might have been other changes in the meantime.

The choices are bewildering! I know that Video cards are key, plus RAM. Is this still true? So…what should I get? Which cards? How much RAM? What about the sound card?

What other items are a necessity (primarily for gaming). What can I avoid?

Who are the companies to buy from…and who do I avoid?

My budget is $3000…I could be talked up to $4000. Less would be cool to.
[/QUOTE]

I own a computer shop, for $3K I can build you a work of art. Feel free to contact me if you wish to discuss further www.pcsearchandrescue.com . I can beat newegg on alot of stuff, not to mention, newegg does not assemble or test for you. At $3K price points things like solid state drives become a possibility, give me a call, we will go “Airwolf”* on the thing. We are gamers here too.

*5th generation swiss craftsmen constructing the case optional.
*Original DaVinci parchments will be consulted

17

[QUOTE=Otara]
Save the money and use it to buy whatever the next big upgrade will be in a few months
[/QUOTE]
Correction: take the money you save, and buy a really huge flat panel monitor. Or two!

18

[QUOTE=RogueRacer]
I’ve yet to see any benchmarks that show a real speed advantage with RAID 0 (using on board controllers).
[/QUOTE]
This used to be the case with first-gen SATA controllers, I believe.

But these days, RAID across 2-3 drives is very fast. I run 3 500gb drives in a stripe using the mobo SATA, and get something like 160mb/s (or in that range, I haven’t tested it in a while). I’m a developer, and when I installed the RAID, the full build time for my codebase dropped from 1 1/2 hours to 35 minutes. I’ve done the same on my Mac tower, with similar improvement.

Which isn’t to say that BlinkingDuck needs a RAID, but it does improve disk-bound performance considerably.

19

[QUOTE=drachillix]
*5th generation swiss craftsmen constructing the case optional.
*Original DaVinci parchments will be consulted
[/QUOTE]

Ran a couple ideas through my shopping cart at my primary parts vendor.

I had to push one of my techs away to stop the growing puddle of drool on my shoulder.

20

[QUOTE=squeegee]
Correction: take the money you save, and buy a really huge flat panel monitor. Or two!
[/QUOTE]
I think you need one of these. Minimum.