A New PC: Your Help/Advice Sought

Apologies in advance if this sort of thread is disallowed.

Dear fellow guru-ers,

My birthday nears and I'm looking for a good, cost-effective PC from the United Kingdom. I have a few ideas of what I do and do not want in a new PC but I have struggled to find one that meets my demands, even on Dell.

It will be used for playing Guild Wars (when I buy a new account!) and general word processing but I would like it to be future proof (for the speculated GWII) and, of course, reliable.

My current 5-year old system, in a nutshell, is:

Intel P4 HT 3.00GHz
1024MB RAM
Radeon 7000 series (X800 XT died a while ago)
17" TFT HP Pavilion Monitor f1723

When I played Guild Wars with the Radeon x800 XT graphics it was virtually flawless although frames dropped quite a bit under intense graphics because I maxxed out everything.

In a new PC, I'm looking for a base unit (tower or otherwise) and a monitor. Keyboard + mouse are optional because they can be bought relatively cheaply. My price upper limit is £1000.

The following components are roughly what I would like:

Intel Core Duo processor (is AMD better? which model is good value/performance?)
1024MB -2048MB RAM
Radeon X1950 range (too extravagant? is the nVidia equivalent better? Is the X1600 range ok?
TFT/LCD Monitor - 17" minimum.
CD/DVD RW Drive. (I'm not fussy with this).

If anybody can find a system similar to this or if they can suggest a good place to buy one I would be extremely grateful. I have been searching intensively for something and I’m not using you fine people to do the leg work for me – I’m merely ignorant.

Are my component choices valid/good? Or are there better alternatives?

Thanks for the help and sorry for being so sketchy and uninformed.

make sure to get 20" or bigger Widescreen lcd.
viewsonic or samsung
that Will be the best part of your new system.

seeing more at a glance is invalueable in gw
also the extra gui space is very useful

and if you plan on playing FPS

a lot of them(css for sure) let you see more than regular aspect ratios, giving you the definite advantage

Your five-year old computer is better than my 3 1/2 year old computer!!! Im stuck with 512 MB ram and an Nvidia GeForce 4 MX 440 AGP8X that cant run DirectX 9 and has problems with GW on low quality graphics now that Nightfall came out. lol. Anyway, I suggest a Mac that has boot camp and all the requirements because they run a lot better, but thats just my opinion and I suggest you ask a professional as well.

i suggest something like this



with an nvidia 8800gtx

Thanks very much for the replies, greatly appreciated. Which website is that from, Ragin Ember? Looks good, thank you.

This is from www.pcspecialist.co.uk:



Is this good, bad or indifferent? Am I missing something crucial such as poor components? Thanks again.

DONT GO VISTA, at least not just yet matey, it will crash on alot of ur games becuase alot of games dont suppoart it yet, think of it as a book with some pages missing, and over the course of 8 months microsoft writes those pages and sends u them.

also i really do suggest u get a Direct x10 card (8800 series)
also, get a better psu, something around 600-700watt with 12 rails saves u upgrading in future.


if you are good with computers and hardware ect.. i suggest u build it urself

Thanks again Raging Ember. Didn't realize Vista was so bad so cheers for the heads-up.

Vista isn't that bad, and is surprisingly stable. I would rather purchase Vista now than have to drop money on it later.

The computer you showed looks fine. Future proof? Not quite. DX10 is the future, but even at that once DX10 comes out there will be much better DX10 cards than the 8800 series. No system build right now is "fool proof," but the system you showed is certainly one of the best right now that fits your price range.

I agree, the 8800 is the first generation and is still expensive, there will be newer (and probably cheaper) generations of DX10 cards when games actually start supporting DX 10, so i'd stick with the 1950 for now.

Just make sure you PSU can handle all of your system's components since it's 500Watts peak, it'll give you less wattage than that most of the time.

As for vista, it's relatively stable although xp is a bit more stable at the moment.

The rest is pretty solid though

19" Monitor and 1950 pro or better vga doesn't make much sense.

I'd save on the 6600, by getting a 4300-4400 processor and overclocking it slightly, and investing in a bigger display. If you're a fps gamer, you might want a screen with TN panel, otherwise PVA or S-IPS panels offer better colour fidelity (and fast enough response time for GW by far).

Also, if you buy a dx10 card, you might as well buy vista, since it's the only OS that supports dx10 (xp don't have, and won't get dx10).

overclocking can be dangerous and void ur warranty if u dont know what your doing, id say stick with the e660 myself since they will be dropping like hell.

I agree. I really don't get why so many people think it's so darn important to get a GeForce 8800 right now. As tijo said, DX10 doesn't have anything really significant to offer right now, and by the time it does there will be better choices in DX10 hardware for more reasonable prices. nVidia loves it that people are doing that, though. That's one of the big benefits of being first-to-market with a new standard. Be careful, though, because nVidia was also first to market with their Shader Model 3.0 hardware, and their implementation is incomplete compared to ATI's. The later model 79XX-series GPUs still carry this flaw.

As far as Vista goes...well, I don't think it's going to be necessary for at least another year or so. Right now it doesn't have anything (that I care about right now) to offer me that I don't have in XP, and currently most software and games perform better under XP as well. I'm not saying that Vista is evil, but I personally don't have time to deal with the growing pains of a fledgling OS right now...especially when the only thing I'd be interested in is the "wow" factor of a shiny new OS. I don't think it would be a huge mistake to use Vista on a new system if you don't already have an XP license that you're planning on transferring over, but it might give you a few more compatibility headaches than XP would.

On the other hand, 8600 Ultras are just around the corner. Since these are set to retail for less than $200, would any X1900 series card make a lot of sense right now?

I mean, even if you still wanted one after 8600 is released, wouldn't it make a lot of sense to wait just a little longer since the prices for DX9 cards are bound to drop tons?

My biggest "issue" with graphics cards right now is that I see it as an "all or nothing" type thing. If I am gonna spend more than $150 on it, I am going to go all the way and make it a DX10 card. (The least expensive right now is the 8800GTS, which is under $400.) Otherwise, I'll buy a budget card that satisfies the requirements of the games I play now while waiting on more DX10 cards (and games needing it) to hit the market.

Just keep in mind that when you buy the top-end of anything like a CPU or video card you're paying a "bleeding edge" tax of up to 60%. The price isn't in proportion with the performance.

Also keep in mind that a budget card doesn't necessarily meet the requirements of every game everyone plays now. For me, no budget card runs Oblivion or BF an a level that is acceptable to me. Heck, a dual 7900GT SLI setup doesn't run Oblivion at a level that is acceptable to me. Now, you can get a 8800 GTS for around $300 US if you go for one of the cheap ones. However, in some shader-heavy games the x1950 performs on-par with it for less money.

If you plan to keep your card for 1.5 - 2+ years as your primary gaming card, then I guess DX10 is an issue. Otherwise (IMHO) it just isn't relevant. How many game companies are going to spend a ton of money developing a game right now that REQUIRES DX10 hardware and Windows Vista? I think you'd be crazy to put a lot of money into a project with such a small target audience. I'm a gamer - have been for about 23 years - and I will not be running Vista on my main desktop anytime in 2007. There are a lot of others out there like me. I really don't see Vista (and therefore DX10) becoming a requirement anytime soon.

I fully agree. Every time a new OS comes out, there are people that resist it. I moved over to Vista last year, and have not regretted it at all. Not to mention that most of the problems with Vista are not the actual problem of MS, but of the creators of drivers and other software.

You are eventually going to have to move to Vista anyways, so why buy XP now, and buy Vista in another 3-9 months?

And as for the difference between AMD and Intel? That is largely personal opinion. Some say Chevy is better, some say Ford.

And the question you ask really has 2 answers. AMD has long provided the "Bast Bang For The Buck", while Intel tends to offer more power. If you look through the Intel lineup, you will fine the lowest Core 2 (E4300) starts at around $170. That gives roughly the same performance as the Athlon X2-3600, which sells for around $70.

My new system is going to be an Athlon X2 4600. Here is where my personal opinion kicks in, because I trust the AMD Upgrade Path a lot more then the Intel Upgrade Path.

Intel has a history of changing platform every year or so, while AMD tends to make a platform that is adaptable to change. Most people forgot about the Wilamate Core P4 (which was not compatible with Prescott processors). And the early LGA-775 boards which are not compatible with Core 2. AMD however made sure that every Socket 939 was dual-core capable.

Of course, AMD has an interest in making sure that Motherboards and Processors are as compatible as possible, they only make processors. Intel makes Motherboards and Chipsets, so it is in their interest for you to upgrade everything each time you move up.

I mostly agree with this. However, there are also quite a lot of people that already own XP (multiple licenses in my case) that simply have absolutely no reason to move to Vista right now. Vista has absolutely nothing to offer me at this time that I care about, and performs slightly worse than XP with most current software. That doesn't mean I'm resisting it...I'm just completely indifferent to it.

That was true before the Athlon arrived on the scene (anyone remember K6, K6-2, etc.?) and AMD fell behind power-wise...especially when it came to floating-point calcs. From the time the Athlon platform became mature up until the Core 2 Duo was released AMD has provided the more powerful solutions. The Core 2 is the first time Intel has held the power crown for more than a few months in quite some time. I don't necessarily favor one company over the other. My last 6 CPUs have been AMD simply because they were a better value, offered more power, and ran cooler. Unless AMD's next products are better (or at least a much better value), it's looking like my next CPU could be an Intel.

That's a really misleading statistic, though. At Newegg.com you can get an E6300 for ~$180 (only $10 more than the price you list for the E4300), and it eats the X2 3600+ as an afternoon snack, especially in games. That's not even considering that if you're an overclocker (I'm not) one can push the E6300 quite significantly faster, which is something the Athlon X2 line has never been particularly good at.

First of all, this isn't true. It's been true for socket 939, but that's all. Before that AMD did plenty of platform hot-potato...just as much as Intel. The most recent example of this was socket 754. Second, outside of moving from single-core to dual-core, how often do you buy a new CPU for an existing motherboard? IMHO a clockspeed increase doesn't offer enough of a boost to warrant the price of a new CPU. I rarely upgrade my CPU without upgrading my motherboard as well. I'm not saying you're wrong for doing things the way you do....I just wanted to provide a different perspective on that.

This is kind of my point. For me, personally, I am only playing GW and running the internet. That's it. Since I didn't need much in the way of graphics, I bought a budget card (<$100) and when something comes out (probably GW2) that I'll want/need a Dx10 card to run, then I'll buy one. I just don't see any need (on my personal usage) to buy a high-end card, when I am not running any high-end graphics intensive games.

The OP though wanted to "future-proof" this build. And that means DX10. And for now, that means an nVidia GeForce 8800.

Nobody is "resisting" vista. Either you want it or you don't.

If I had a brand spanking new Vista right infront of me and my PC, I would install XP without even a second thought. There is nothing on Vista that I would need that isn't already on XP, and yet there are more flaws and errors on vista (and problems with drivers and whatnot) than there is on XP. So basically, it's a draw-lose situation.

Draw-Draw > Draw-Lose

Look, all I'm saying is that if you're buying a particular card specifically for DX10, you should wait. By the time we all "need" DX10 hardware (it's already been stated that GW2, which is still 2 years out, will not require DX10) the 8800 that you spent $500+ on will be far from top of the line anymore. There's nothing wrong with buying a $175-$200 card right now. Upgrade again in a year and a half (which is not at all a short upgrade cycle for a gamer) when you actually need a DX10 card and you can get a much better one than the 8800 for less money. Your x1950 is plenty future-proof for the next 1.5 years and it didn't break your budget. Future proof = DX10 is completely dependent on how long your upgrade cycle is.

My point is that telling people that they need DX10 hardware or their rig is going to be obsolete next month is insane and a waste of money.

I've neither said nor implied that. Personally, I don't like nor desire the bleeding edge of technology, but there are people who do and making suggestions for products available now makes sense for those people who do wish to go that route. It's a matter of making sure the questioner is aware that product xyz is available now if he really doesn't want to wait for others to hit the market.