The Gamer's Quarter

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

For the past couple years I've entertained the prospect of building my own PC with the main purpose being catching up with years of gaming that I've missed. I have a 2-year-old laptop that runs a lot of things pretty well, incluidng Half-Life 2 at medium settings; however, it chokes on Oblivion and obviously can't run anything like Stalker or Fear.

So, with that in mind and with my Christmas bonus as a guide (at this point a charred and crumbling guide), this is what I'm looking at:

Proc: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ Windsor 2.8GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2
Mobo: ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP ATX AMD
Video card: EVGA 320-P2-N815-AR GeForce 8800GTS 320MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP
PSU: FSP Group (Fortron Source) FX700-GLN ATX12V, V2.2/EPS12V, V2.91, 700W RoHS Quad. SLi
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda ES ST3320620NS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1000 (PC2 8000) Dual Channel

That's a lot of numbers! And it adds up to quite a bit. On the other hand, it should be enough to handle everything that's been released to date and a lot of what'll be released in the future.

As for monitor, I'll try and find the best Samsung LCD that I can get for the price and ditto for a low-end Lian Li case and prolly a Samsung optical drive. Keyboard and mouse to be determined.

Thoughts? Warnings? Screams of terror?

dhex · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 7:03 pm Post subject:

that looks pretty dope to me.
_________________

AJ 187 · . Joined: 26 Dec 2006 Posts: 22 Location: Chicago

yeah that looks pretty good, assuming you get an OS that runs in 64 bit.

simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

Recommendation:
Buy a generation behind, especially with the GPU. It's really damn easy to waste $100-200 per component buying the bleeding edge while not getting any recognizable gain. I've run Oblivion, Stalker, FEAR, HL2, etc. just perfectly comfortably on my 9800 pro which is what, 4 years old at this point? My guess is that your laptop fails you largely on the RAM side of things. So unless you're one of those dorks that just upgraded your 60" tube TV to a 60" Bravia so you could watch the Fifth Element in HD rather than just plain DVD, you might be overshooting the mark here.

Think of it this way: six months from the time you buy any bleeding edge component, you can generally buy it for half the original price or less. And there is no game in existence that will require you to buy a quad-SLI setup to be playable.

Another recommendation:
I've never once regretted my Dell 2405FPW, in gaming or otherwise. And the optical drive makes no difference whatsoever.

dhex · Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 7:41 am Post subject:

you might have a good point here were it not for vista and dx10. in a year or so we're going to see a lot of dx10 only games, and in two years that will be the rule.
_________________

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

what the hell is dx10?

I kind of hate computers from a recreational side at this juncture.
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

dhex · Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 9:25 am Post subject:

shaper long story short dx10 means you either bump to vista or you don't play games on the pc after figure maybe two years or so, depending on how things move.

i.e. this is my last year of pc gaming, probably. but what a way to go out! stalker, bioshock, crysis, half life 2 ep 2, etc.

even hellgate. i think that has potential.
_________________

Ethoscapade · . Joined: 30 Oct 2005 Posts: 276

hey man hell if the eventual ep3 (aka "mango box") won't run on dx7 hardware.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

BIOSHOCK!

My wife actually said to me the other day: "When's that awesome looking game in the underwater city coming out?"
"Which one?"
"The one that was pretty violent"
I remembered I had shown her the Bioshock trailer "OHHH! BIOSHOCK! Yeah that comes out in the fall."
"Oh Sad

"
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999