What Should I Look for in a Gaming Computer

[nancyb]

Hey,

We're going to buy a new computer that will serve both for gaming, surfing and word processing. What are your recommendations for graphics cards, assuming I'm not going high end (mid-range), and memory for today's games. I usually spend about 1000-1200 when I get a new computer. It's been like that pretty much since I bought my first one with a whopping 20 meg disk drive and probably 128k of memory.

The computer we're upgrading from is a 3.2 Ghz Pentium 4, with a gig of memory and an NVIDIA Gforce 6600 card. I was thinking of this store brand from MicroCenter:

501; Intel® Core 2 Duo Processor E6300 (1.86GHz); 1GB DDR2-667 RAM; 320GB 7,200RPM Hard Drive; 16x DVD-ROM Drive; LightScribe Dual/Double Layer DVD±RW Drive; 8-in-1 Media Card Reader; NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT Video Card; 10/100/1000 Network Adapter.

Will that be enough of an upgrade from what we've got to make it worth the 1k it's going to cost me?

[royalstilton]

Hey,

We're going to buy a new computer that will serve both for gaming, surfing and word processing. What are your recommendations for graphics cards, assuming I'm not going high end (mid-range), and memory for today's games. I usually spend about 1000-1200 when I get a new computer. It's been like that pretty much since I bought my first one with a whopping 20 meg disk drive and probably 128k of memory.

The computer we're upgrading from is a 3.2 Ghz Pentium 4, with a gig of memory and an NVIDIA Gforce 6600 card. I was thinking of this store brand from MicroCenter:

501; Intel® Core 2 Duo Processor E6300 (1.86GHz); 1GB DDR2-667 RAM; 320GB 7,200RPM Hard Drive; 16x DVD-ROM Drive; LightScribe Dual/Double Layer DVD±RW Drive; 8-in-1 Media Card Reader; NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT Video Card; 10/100/1000 Network Adapter.

Will that be enough of an upgrade from what we've got to make it worth the 1k it's going to cost me?

the video card is good, not great, but what do you expect for the price? from what i hear gamer freekos prefer ATI cards, but they are a bit pricier.

only thing is, you are not making a quantum leap as far as processor speed goes, so you won't notice a big difference, at least from what i understand. maybe someone else has a different perspective.

before you make your final decision, i think you should check out the Dell Outlet website, cuz you might save some serious caish.

http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/topics/global.aspx/arb/online/en/InventorySearch?c=us&cs=22&l=en&lob=DIM&s=dfh

[Belgian guy]

Hey,

We're going to buy a new computer that will serve both for gaming, surfing and word processing. What are your recommendations for graphics cards, assuming I'm not going high end (mid-range), and memory for today's games. I usually spend about 1000-1200 when I get a new computer. It's been like that pretty much since I bought my first one with a whopping 20 meg disk drive and probably 128k of memory.

The computer we're upgrading from is a 3.2 Ghz Pentium 4, with a gig of memory and an NVIDIA Gforce 6600 card. I was thinking of this store brand from MicroCenter:

501; Intel® Core 2 Duo Processor E6300 (1.86GHz); 1GB DDR2-667 RAM; 320GB 7,200RPM Hard Drive; 16x DVD-ROM Drive; LightScribe Dual/Double Layer DVD±RW Drive; 8-in-1 Media Card Reader; NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT Video Card; 10/100/1000 Network Adapter.

Will that be enough of an upgrade from what we've got to make it worth the 1k it's going to cost me?

Why not simply upgrade your current pc with a new graphics card and some extra memory? You won't feel that huge of a difference with your current system when compared to the configuration you suggest. Your current RAM memory is probably working at 533MHz, so you'll gain a small boost in performance there. Your current CPU has the same amount of cache memory as the new one you propose, so the only performance boost will come from the cpu's clock speed and architecture. I'm fairly sure that in most games, that will hardly be felt.

I'd just add 1 GB of 533 MHz memory, you can do real bargains on that at the moment, and then just replace the 6600 with an NVIDIA GeForce 7950. You'll probably feel a bigger boost in performance with that than with buying the new system, and it'll cost you less than half of what the new system would cost you.