Buying new computer?

Well, i've been thinking on retiring my old warhorse. Currently on a a intel dual core 2.67ghz with 4gb ram and a 8800gts graphics card. Starting to feel a little slow (well not really slow, but i've been forced to tone down settings in some games now) to me and i've started poking around for a new one.
Now i'm probably not gonna buy one anytime soon (guessing after x-mas), definatly not before windows 7 is out tho.


What i'm looking for is a gaming machine mostly, but i'm not really uptodate on everything.
I don't wanna skimp out on stuff because it's cheap, but at the same time i don't wanna overpay for minimal gains.

I've been glancing somewhat at this machine: https://www.inet.se/datorer/stationa...gamer/1517094/

Now my biggest questions are probably.
The processor, i understand i7 is the newest one out and i was looking at some prices.
why is the 3.33 Ghz almost 4 times as expensive as the 2.66 one? is it four times as fast? what makes it that much more spendy?
And the graphics card, how much better is a 285 or even a 295? i know the 285 is about 50% more expensive and the 295 is over twice as much as the 275. Is there a point with SLI? how many games are actually gonna take advantage of that? (note, i do not want an ati)

And how much benefit am i gonna see if i get a velociraptor harddrive, they're pretty small only 100-150gb, but i guess they're faster. Should i put the OS on that if i get one or games? and how much of a diffrence do they really make?

Would i notice any diffrence with more than 6GB memory? if i should say double that.

And is there something else coming out in the near future that might be worth waiting for, either for being really good or due to it's gonna drive prices down on other parts.


I'm asking here for some info prior to going into a computer store cause for some reason i tend get odd looks when i ask for a gaming rig and not taken seriously. When i was looking to buy the comp i got now, in one store a clerk even said "do you really a machine that fast for blogging and chatting?", suffice to say, he did not make a sale to me that day.

Now, to be honest here Sapph, you could probably get away with simply buying a faster CPU (what is your motherboard? it might support one of the E8x00 CPU's) changing the graphics card for one with a bit more oomph and wait until the new graphics cards and i5 chip prices have settled down early next year. There's new cards coming from ATi next month and NVidia closer to Christmas and intel have just released their i5 chips which are much cheaper than i7 but only a little bit slower. There's very few games that are CPU limited compared to GPU limited.

As for the memory question, it depends on your operating System. ANY 32 bit operating system will see a maximum of about 3.2GB of RAM. Any more than that and you'll need a 64 bit OS such as Vista 64 bit or Windows 7 64 bit. Both 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows 7 ship on the same disc so, again, you might benefit from waiting for 3-6 months for it all to shake out.

It's a shame you don't want ATI, they make some excellent value for money cards at the moment. if you must go for Nvidia i need to know how big your monitor is and if you're planning on changing that too? no point in a GTX 295 if you're only pushing a 22" Widescreen as you'll be wasting your money. IMO SLI is still a waste of time unless you have a huge monitor and want everything running at full HD res @100FPS. You can usually buy a faster single card solution for the cost of SLI. There are very few games that give more than a 50% speed increase for adding the extra card when for another 50% of the price of the single card you could probably by a faster card, heave less heat and less power draw from your PSU, which may even need to be replaced for SLI anyway!

Miss Chief is right. You'd probably be better off just buying a new graphics card, and maybe updating your CPU.

If you're after the cosmetic feel that you actually have a new PC, get a nice new case as well.

Usually XP slows down over a 12month period, and a backup and re-install is like having a breath of fresh air through your system.

I can thoroughly recommend Win7 though. If you're going to replace your hard-disk for something a little sparkier, then wait until the end of October and grab yourself a copy of Win7. MS are suffering from Star-Trek Movie syndrome with their O/S's and Win7 is very good indeed.

The power of CPU isn't that important. I've run Age of Conan on my singlecore 5-year-old CPU, but I had lots of RAM and a GF8800 graphics card (when 8800 was actually good). No problems on high settings.

So I'd get a new graphics card and more RAM. 6-8gb seems about right nowadays.

A friend of mine suggested getting two identical hard drives and putting them as a single RAID drive. It should make the biggest impact on Windows, more than any amount of RAM can do.

Hmm. Thanks for some info.

My Motherboard is an ASUS P5N32-E SLI PLUS.
How much better is a E8x00 compared to my E6750 ?
Would i have to upgrade the memory as well, since the speed of the CPU would prob be quicker. Or would it, the memory is only DDR2, if i get a 1333 cpu while memory is only 800, wouldn't that be a bottleneck?

I have a 22" widescreen atm, but after i got the new comp i was thinking on replacing it with a 30" i saw at a store the other day which had me drooling. (i have a really deep desk so it could be good!).

I am not keen on ATI because every single person i've talked to who had one have all gone "oh it's nice and fast, but i gotta turn off half the settings or the game will crash". I havn't had to do that with Nvidia, so i'm sticking with that.

Also not keen on RAID, since i did try RAID 0 a couple of years back and it worked fine, until one harddrive crashed and i lost all data. So prob won't do that again.


I guess this is really hard for me, simply cause i have no idea how much this will actually do.
How much would it actually differ if i just bought a new CPU and a graphics card (and prob a harddrive) compared to what i got now, and how much better would a whole new system be?
Would upgrading cpu and graphics card give me like... 10% more fps or?
Would something in my old system act as a bottleneck if i upgrade it, feels pretty pointless to buy stuff and find out something like my memory can't keep up, or the CPU can't keep up with the graphics card etc etc.

Your motherboard dosent officially support 45nm quads so the upgrade that would make sense ie to Q9550 say might not work out.

Changing to a dual core E8400 or whatever i cant see making much difference.

Get a new graphx card, a GTX 275 maybe.

Your 8800GTS, is it one of the 384MB or 768 versions or is it a 512MB version? the 384 and 768 versions are the 'older' ones, the 512MB one is newer. personally, if it's mainly a games machine then there's little point in going for a CPU upgrade at the moment. Get yourself a new graphics card and enjoy for the moment. As has been said, a GTX275 would be a fine investment.

384MB card.


It does say on the box to my motherboard (i got it with the comp when they made it for me) that it's intel quad-core ready.

Just feels not worth it just buying a new graphics card. I just don't think the rest of my computer would keep up with it. Granted a 275 isn't the most expensive thing, but i get the feeling "what if it doesn't really do much?"

Your 384MB 8800 is tech that's nearly three years old! Treat yourself to a top of the range card and next year sell on the board, CPU and memory, keep everything else and get yourself a new board etc. The new card will work on your existing system, make it play your games better and you can still keep it when you buy that i5/i7 setup.

SATA is still the connection standard on the new i7 boards so you can use all your Drives. The case, if it's a good one, you'll be able to keep as well, assuming it's big enough to take all the gear. You may need to replace the PSU as the 295 is a real power hungry card and requires TWO 4 pin power connectors. If you're looking with envy at that 30 incher (I'll decline from any funny comments this time!) then you'll need the 295 to push it all. be careful, your eyes may be bigger than your head and some large screen monitors, especially slightly older ones can actually have quite poor resolutions. At that screen size it should really be a 'Full HD' capable monitor, running 1920x1080 and you'll need a 295 to push new games at that resolution. You'd probably need to look at a 750W PSU do power it all. Corsair seem to be FOTM. I have one, although only 520w and it's running my rig great.

Mmm... only got a 420W PSU atm, so i guess i should buy one of those along with the graphics card. The case itself is pretty nice and quiet so i guess i'll keep that too.

So a 295, a PSU, a harddrive and windows 7 once it's out.
Then a couple of months later, a CPU, Mainboard and memory.

Guess it'll work out, and nice to split the money so it's not all one big buy. But then again... thats a whole new computer anyway. heh.

If your going to spend GTX295 money on a card wait for the next generation of Nvidia cards. If you just want something now get a GTX275, you only have a 22 inch monitor anyway at the moment.

I have that card, as I've said in other threads (the 295 one). It doesn't work properly for CoX. There's at least 4 options that can't be on without causing major screen flickering. Nothing I've done, except disabling them, works so I'd advise against spending that money on a card if you're doing it just for CoX.

I've just got myself one of these M17x's - it's expensive, but it's the finest gaming machine I've ever had.

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/pr...dhs&source=428

It's my way of being able to play the next gen of MMOs - I've specifically got Star Trek Online and TOR in mind for it. And since I can run Champions without a single problem (engine-wise anyway ) then it's proving its worth.

Saph,

Quad core and beyond: Not worth the price hikes, unless you do a lot of video encoding or Photoshop work there are almost no games that will acctually run faster on a quad core, most still prefer hight clock speeds.

New GFX card: Unless you have that monster display, which would probably cost more than the fast as hell PC you would need to run games at it's native resolution, the Nvidia 260/275 (same chip different clock speeds) are more than enough for everything, I have yet to run anything that puts a strain on my 260. nad i made the same jump as you, the old 8800 gts to a 260 (also got a 3.0ghz chip to replace the older 2.33 I had)

The thing that would actually speed up you PC the most would be having an OS and the main game you are playing on a Solid State Drive (SSD) until installing one of these I did not realise how much of a bottleneck the hard drive actually was to almost everything I was doing.

Isn't that a laptop though? Their life expectancy is about 3 years so the warranty is pretty much for its life...

What really stood out the most to me, was when i was looking at the XPS730(something)
And then compared it to the one i linked in my first post.

The diffrence is the dell one has a 285 card instead of a 275 half the memory and 250GB less disk space.
One would think they'd cost about the same?
Nope...
The dell one is more than twice as expensive... I personally don't think four years of service compared to one year service is worth €1500.
Cause how often have you serviced your computer, really? Once, twice? And even it does break down, for that money i can buy a new computer.

For a laptop i can see the service being more useful, since it's usually lugged around and manhandled. I know my laptop which i taken with me every time i go on a tip is getting iffy, it's almost four years old now, and the DVD player is shaky, can't play most movies.

But for a stationary computer? eeh... maybe €500 for four years would be worth it, but not €1500.