[Ridemonkey]

I am pondering a new PC. I will be using it for the only 2 things PCs are good for:

1. Games
2. Testing Web sites in IE PC

Number one is the real reason for the upgrade (I already have a PC). Can someone suggest a bare bones (cheap) PC that would be a rippin machine for 3d games? Links to particular products would be cool too.

Thanks!

 

[Ciaran]

Are you looking for a complete box would you be building this yourself?

I have always been an AMD fan.Though at work I have been using Intel stuff which seems pretty nice. Maybe an AMD Athlon 64? Sadly I don't know much about gaming other than that a fast processor, lots of memory and a good video card are needed. I would maybe think about getting some of the higher end memory like the corsair stuff.

The only games I run are The Matrix, the Sims, and GTA vice city. I run them on an AMD Athlon 1.1 gig, 1 gig of RAM, and an Nvidia ge force2 vid card. Older stuff but they seem to run well.

Sorry I can't offer more/better advice.

http://www.corsairmemory.com/

http://www.amd.com/us-en/

 

[Ridemonkey]

Are you looking for a complete box would you be building this yourself?

I'd rather have elctrodes attached to my nuts before I would want to work on computer hardware.

 

[Squeak]

http://www.viciouspc.com/product/config_ranger.html

How much do you want to spend?

 

[Kornphlake]

I'd rather have elctrodes attached to my nuts before I would want to work on computer hardware.

Man you must be pretty willing to have electrodes attatched to your nutz, building a computer is dead simple, the hardware stuff is easier than putting together a bike, the only real challenge is software drivers sometimes but it sounds like you're a little software savvy so that shouldn't be a real problem either. When it comes down to it most of the pre built systems are underperforming and overpriced compared to something you could build up yourself. Get as fast a processor as you think you can afford, usually the differance between 1.5 ghz and 1.6 ghz is about $20 so you'll have to figure out where the sweet spot is, look for an AMD processor with at least 333 FSB or an intel processor with at least 800 FSB, that will ultimately determine how fast your computer will run. For games you'll want a good graphics card, something like a Radeon 9800 pro or 9800 XT is pretty much the standard for gamers, while there are faster cards out there these are the sweetspot for pice vs performance. If you're looking for a budget video card that will still perform well the best sub $100 video card is the geforce 4 ti 4200, they're two generations old but outperform several of the last generataion cards. Avoid anything with a SE or LE suffix, they're crap. You'll want at least 512 meg RAM, 1 gig is optimal, get whatever matches the FSB of your processor and don't worry about the other numbers unless you plan on overclocking. Try looking at one of you local computer shops and see if they have a no name, or shop brand prebuilt system, if they do it'll be faster than a dell and cost about the same or less plus it'll be more upgradeable, tell the guys what you want to do with the computer and your budget and they'll get you setup with something descent.