Which would be better?

Alright, which would be better for games like GW, and other high requirement games? A sony with 1gb ram and Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 900, or a dell with 1gb of ram and a 128mb PCI Express x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) Ati RAdeon X300 SE Hyper MEmory graphics card, and does it really matter if the pc has 1gb ram or 512? would there be a considerable difference? BOth run PEntium 4 3.0 Ghz processors.

Both would be ok, but the graphics capabilities on both of them are quite poor, it would play guild wars but not with all the eye candy enabled..

EDIT _ guild wars would play fine with just 512, but 1gig would lessen any potential lag

I upgraded to 1Gb or ram, and its the best money I ever spent.

always, always go for a card instead of onboard crap (i assume the intel accelarator is onboard ...). yes, sure, onboard will work fine when you buy it, but you can not upgrade it, which is ridiculous in a fastevolving industry like computers.

anyway, if you play a lot of games, go with a custom build computer (not a branded one) and get yourself a decent GFX card

Depends WHICH Dell you are getting. The 2XXX & 3XXX series have NO video card slot at all. They are good for Business and nothing much more then that. They only come with a on board video set up. Now the Dell 4XXX & 5100 series has the option for you to order a on board video OR a video card. They do have a video card slot in them. You can order one of those with only the on board video then go to Best Buy,Online,etc and order a video card for those systems. You have to change your BIOs in the setup(When it boots up) from a on board video to a PCIe slot video. It isn't all that hard to do either.

I just bought a Dell 5100. I got the best Dell had to offer, the X600.(It annoyed me greatly that they would not offer anything better. I know it can handle more then this card.) It is not all that great of a card however it is far better then the X300. My reasoning is I will get a Nvidia 6800 later on when they come down some more in price.

So pay attention when checking out pre-built computers. If you are in the dark then call the companies up and ask questions like: "Does this computer have a video card slot? What kind of video card slot?" And so forth.

As for ram I would get no less then 1 GB. Why? Windows XP is a hog for one. It will use almost 256 megs right off. You need the extra ram so your system has room to dump data while you open up more and more programs. 2 GB will be the next Standard soon. You can get by with 512 megs for now. But why? It doesn't cost all that much more to go to 1 GB. You will be glad you did.

Is htere a computer with 1gb ram, and a good graphics card, for under $1000? Also, I am running hte game on lowest setting iwth a GeForce 2 MX, and 256mb of ram right now, so just how poor can those computers be? What do you think about Ibuypower.com, quality? good deals? reliable?

build one...
i built mine.. but haha, mine is really expensive...

it's really not that hard to build..

I built a little AMD Duron computer in about 30 mins.

My computer

AMD 64 4000+
ATI X850XT (PCI Express)
1 GB OCZ Vx Gold Extreme
ABIT AN8 Fatal1ty MB
PC Power and Cooling SLI Deluxe 510 watt
Koolance PC-426 Watercooled Case

no way, i have absolutely no experience, and i need something that is going to work.

i had no experience... just get a PC world mag or something... theres one back issue called, The PC building Bible!

color photos...

i used it as a manual...

for games , you need ,

best grafics card you can get
best power suply to feed grafics card and lots of fans
1 g ram

dont spend too much on CPU clock , its useless

don't let all the ub3r 1337s around the net scare ya. Building a computer is literally plugging shit into other shit. My 4 year daughter helped me build hers.

RTF (Read the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing manual) if you're building your own PC. Every motherboard comes with one, and thats all you need.
When you hear "AGP" you instantly think: "Ah, thats where my videocard goes!"

And if you're truelly scared of building one, just get the parts and go to a local retailer and ask them to build it for you. (will cost ya about 20 bucks and you might not have a computer for a max of 48 hours).

May be the OP just doesn't want to go through the hassle of building a PC. Some people just don't want to. I can respect that. He just wants something that will work when he turns it on. He is not being stupid or lazy or dumb. I use to build my own all through the 80's and 90's. To me it just isn't worth it anymore. Processors and the components are so fast now that there is no real need to build one. I can understand why someone would like to do it. It is a nice feeling to know that you put it all together, tweaked it, etc. That is great. But don't look down on others if they choose not to do what YOU do. Like I said I was building them when allot of posters here were still figuring out how a "See N Say" works.

What I have learned from building my own boxes is that I can trouble shoot just about anything anymore. As for building them...no way, not anymore.. Not worth the time or the hassles to figure out why one part is being stubborn. I'll let the company that built it fix the darn thing.

I, for one, spend the 20 minutes it takes to put a computer together because it's cheaper. My system cost me about 800 bucks and it's far more powerful than anything you could get from dell/gateway/micron/hp/insert crappy maufacturer. It also allows me to put whatever components I want in it....so I don't have to be stuck with a POS gigabyte motherboard or XFX video card. The benefits of building a machine far outweigh the hassle(for me atleast)

i know nothing about pci ... and other hjunk, which motherboard has this slot for this etc. I just want it to work when i open it and i decided to get a cheap pc for my comp needs, the 1 i hav now only has 256 ram, and it runs. I will get xbox360 or somthing for games. Gaming computers are simply too expensive for my budget.