Buying a new system

[InCreator]

I intend to spend some cash and buy myself a completely new computer. Problem is - there's lots of different stuff available and I'm not familiar with all this new technology around...

My goal is simple: To get all at least every game released in 2005 and before to play smoothly with medium-high settings.

So I'm asking some recommendations for a motherboard, CPU and video card. Videocard, should be GeForce card, I think. But I don't know which ATI cards equal with which GF cards so some explanations on this could change my mind aswell.

Also, any other important things to keep in mind, so my system wouldn't get old fast.

[Alynn]

The main thing between GForce and ATI equivilent cards especially in later series, is do your games rely on OpenGL more often than not.

Generally speaking (and I do mean generally) ATI fares not as well against GeForce for OpenGL, but generally are on par or above elsewhere. ATI has always been bad for OpenGL.

It would help if I had a money figure to go by, but I can tell you what I built for my wife

XION XION II XON-103 Black SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450W Power Supply - Retail $59.99 
1 ASUS P5WD2-E Premium Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 975X ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail $219.99 
1 POWERCOLOR 1900XT512MB Radeon X1900XT 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail $439.00   
1 Antec TruePower 2.0 TP2-550 EPS12V ATX12V 550W Power Supply - Retail $99.99 
1 Intel Pentium D 930 Presler 800MHz FSB LGA 775 Dual Core Processor Model BX80553930 - Retail $320.00 
2 CORSAIR ValueSelect 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Unbuffered System Memory Model VS1G667D2 - Retail $298.00 
1 Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM $89.95 
1 SONY Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model DDU1615/B2s - OEM $20.99 
1 LITE-ON CD Burner Black IDE Model SOHR-5239V BK RT - Retail $21.99 
1 Creative SOUND BLASTER X-Fi Platinum 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail $179.00 
1 Airnet AWD108 32bit PCI 802.11g 108Mbps Wireless Card - Retail  $23.99
4 Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $175.96


She had nothing so I also bought keyboard, mouse, speakers, and monitor which I'm sure you won't need to. Anyway with what I listed above 1728.86 USD (not counting shipping) is what I paid for it, but that was the beginning of the year, some of that may have gone down. Also if you don't plan on running a raid with your SATA drives then you don't need to buy 4 of them, however make sure any HDD you do with with the mobo above is SATA, unless of course you only run one optical drive, since there is only one IDE port on the mobo (and one E-IDE) and 4 SATA ports. However with that case they are spread far apart however the top HDD slot in the case and the bottom drive slot of the case you can make that layout work. If you believe that a 450 watt PSU is enough then you don't need to buy the other one, although I do recommend it since the 99 dollar one is ATX 2.0, as is the motherboard....

However this is a somewhat top of the line build... but let me tell you, the thing screams.

[SSH]

Get a new Core 2 Duo processor if you want to be very future-proof.

Something like: http://www.meshcomputers.com/Default.aspx?PAGE=PRODUCTVIEWPAGE&USG=PRODUCT&ENT=PRODUCT&KEY=96504

[InCreator]

Thanks for tips. Never even thought about dual core processors, stupid me!

There's 2 systems I found and probably decide between:

*Processor: Intel Pentium D 930 DualCore (3,0GHz, 32/64bit, 4MB)
*Motherboard: Asus P5PL2, Intel 945PL chip
*RAM: 1GB DDR 533MHz (DualDDR)
*HDD: 320GB Serial ATA II 7200rpm 16MB
*Video: Asus 256MB nVidia GeForce 7900GT DDR3 TV-out 2xDVI
*Other: LightScribe 16x DVD-writer, Artic Silver 5 thermal paste, 10/100/1000Mbps LAN card, 8-ch Soundcard, Antec LifeStyle Sonata II SmartPower 2.0 450W Case, Firewire, USB 2.0, trust keyboard and Logitech mouse

Price - about $1400

OR

* Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ DualCore
* Cooler: Arctic Cooling Silencer 64 Ultra TC + Artic Silver 5 thermal paste
* Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI, nForce4 SLI chip
* RAM: 1GB DDR 400MHz CL2,5 (DualDDR)
...And same things as previous setup, including same video card

Price: $1445

I'll probably skip "other" things (I can keep those from old set) and get only a Motherboard + CPU + RAM + HDD + Case + videocard. But is it worth it? And which set would be better?

[Alynn]

Keep an eye on the motherboards. Back when I bought the comp for my wife, there were quite a few mother boards out there that supported dual core... The problem was you had to boot them go into the bios and set them to be able to use a dual core chip... I researched for awhile until I found that ASUS board that supported dual core out of the box.

So unless you want to, or don't mind doing some chip swapping, make sure the MOBO is out of the box compatable with dual core.

[InCreator]

Those are premade setups, not optionally chosen, so I believe they're all compatible.
Thanks for the hint, though.

With Windows Vista and DirectX10 rumors, I'm still a bit undecided on video card...

[Renal Shutdown]

1 Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM $89.95Ã, 

Chortle.

[Toefur]

I'd double the ram.