PC geeks - ultimate gaming rig help

[stosstruppe]

Was just browsing Company of Heroes / OF & Age of Conan forums & checking out some of the PCs people had (as I was growing increasingly exasperated at how low I had to put my graphics settings for CoH / OF) when with ever increasing obviousness it occurred to me how obsolete my (former awesome) PC had became for gaming after "only" 3 years.

I'm cringing at the thought of yet again spending the equivalent of $3'500 for a new gaming PC again (fucking absurd I know, especially when I'm reading about PC savvy Yanks throwing together an awesome rig for 30-50% of that).

All of a sudden now these high end games seem to require DirectX 10, Vista 64mbit OS, 4GB RAM, 8/9 series GT(S), Quad processors etc etc giving me a fucking headache trying to decipher this bullshit.

Anyhoo, what am I looking for in order to throw together an awesome gaming rig with regards to graphics card, CPU, RAM etc? Generally what factors do you prioritise when constructing a PC for the ultimate gaming experience?

 

[75th]

Ill still pwn you in Call of Duty 4.

 

[chewyxrage]

I'm assuming you want a desktop?

 

[Razorguns]

Was just browsing Company of Heroes / OF & Age of Conan forums & checking out some of the PCs people had (as I was growing increasingly exasperated at how low I had to put my graphics settings for CoH / OF) when with ever increasing obviousness it occurred to me how obsolete my (former awesome) PC had became for gaming after "only" 3 years.

I'm cringing at the thought of yet again spending the equivalent of $3'500 for a new gaming PC again (fucking absurd I know, especially when I'm reading about PC savvy Yanks throwing together an awesome rig for 30-50% of that).

All of a sudden now these high end games seem to require DirectX 10, Vista 64mbit OS, 4GB RAM, 8/9 series GT(S), Quad processors etc etc giving me a fucking headache trying to decipher this bullshit.

Anyhoo, what am I looking for in order to throw together an awesome gaming rig with regards to graphics card, CPU, RAM etc? Generally what factors do you prioritise when constructing a PC for the ultimate gaming experience?

Get a grip on yourself bitch! It's not that bad!!

Quad, 32-bit Vista, Expensive Video card, 4 gigs, good warranty, powerful enough power supply, not having a zillion apps blogging your system, good speakers, big monitor. That's more than good enough right there.

The PC gaming geeks are the losers that spend hours and thousands of dollars tweaking shit for a 2% improvement. Imaging putting expensive rims on a sports car, hoping it'll go faster.

You can get more then good enough of a system at best buy. If you have money to blow, and want to look cool - you can get alienwar and xps sytems. Mind you, they also have just as many technical problems that go along with it. Read up on complaints.

(btw: If you've subscribed to my monthly newsletter - you'd know I bought a kick ass intel 4gb 2.6ghz quad from hp. And so far it kicks butt at any game i've tried it with).

r

 

[stosstruppe]

Ill still pwn you in Call of Duty 4.

Probably - I prefer Red orchestra OST-Front to CoD4 for my FPS experience.

I'm assuming you want a desktop?

Can you get laptops now that can handle high end games? But yea, I'm looking towards a desktop.

 

[stosstruppe]

Get a grip on yourself bitch! It's not that bad!!

Quad, 32-bit Vista, Expensive Video card, 4 gigs, good warranty, powerful enough power supply, not having a zillion apps blogging your system, good speakers, big monitor. That's more than good enough right there.

The PC gaming geeks are the losers that spend hours and thousands of dollars tweaking shit for a 2% improvement. Imaging putting expensive rims on a sports car, hoping it'll go faster.

You can get more then good enough of a system at best buy. If you have money to blow, and want to look cool - you can get alienwar and xps sytems. Mind you, they also have just as many technical problems that go along with it. Read up on complaints.

(btw: If you've subscribed to my monthly newsletter - you'd know I bought a kick ass intel 4gb 2.6ghz quad from hp. And so far it kicks butt at any game i've tried it with).

r

I hear ya. Don't care what the tower looks like, performance > image. Not going to spend a grand just for a negligible boost either. I don't know how to assemble my own PC - yea ok, I can do slight customising with the options provided via Dell, but I'll be fucked if I'm paying top price via Dell again.

I currently own a XPS Gen 5 system that's coming up for 3 years old, it has:

256MB nVidia GeForce 6800 (which is apparently superbly obsolete)
2048MB RAM DDR2 533MHz
3.2GHz Dual-Core

The problem is I hear people talking about boosting their RAM and graphics card, both of which I have no idea how to do, and also what part of my PC specs / component is hindering my gaming performance (RAM? Graphics card? CPU?)

Do I seriously want Vista btw? I heard it had a tonne of problems which is why I stuck with my Windows XP.

People were also discussing the difference between Vista 32 and 64bits with regards to RAM usage / limits e.g. you can put 4GB of RAM with Vista 64bit, but expect alot of problems, whereas 32bit with 2GB RAM is less hassle, but then someone said RAM "works better" in even numbers, lol?

 

[Dial_tone]

Considering how much PCs cost why not just buy a game console?

 

[stosstruppe]

Considering how much PCs cost why not just buy a game console?

I haven't owned a games console since my Playstation about... 5-6+ years ago perhaps? I wouldn't even know where to start. Apparently they can hook up online now? <--- that's how ignorant / behind the times I am now with regards to consoles.

 

[milo hobgoblin]

Go with what I got

Commodore Vic 20
8 K RAM cartridge
12" color TV

Fucking PWNS Age of Conan!!



hehe



If you want to upgrade what you got (Im guessing its AGP)

Just install a Radeon HD3850 with 512MB of RAM for 200 bucks.. it will give you decent frame rates at medium settings on your box..

You can also OC that proc about 400 MHz and eek some decent performance out of that in combo with the card I mentioned

 

[Razorguns]

I hear ya. Don't care what the tower looks like, performance > image. Not going to spend a grand just for a negligible boost either. I don't know how to assemble my own PC - yea ok, I can do slight customising with the options provided via Dell, but I'll be fucked if I'm paying top price via Dell again.

I currently own a XPS Gen 5 system that's coming up for 3 years old, it has:

256MB nVidia GeForce 6800 (which is apparently superbly obsolete)
2048MB RAM DDR2 533MHz
3.2GHz Dual-Core

The problem is I hear people talking about boosting their RAM and graphics card, both of which I have no idea how to do, and also what part of my PC specs / component is hindering my gaming performance (RAM? Graphics card? CPU?)

Do I seriously want Vista btw? I heard it had a tonne of problems which is why I stuck with my Windows XP.

People were also discussing the difference between Vista 32 and 64bits with regards to RAM usage / limits e.g. you can put 4GB of RAM with Vista 64bit, but expect alot of problems, whereas 32bit with 2GB RAM is less hassle, but then someone said RAM "works better" in even numbers, lol?

Boosting ram and the video graphics card is easy. Just buy the best when you buy your computer.

Vista 64 is a pain because of trying to get drivers and hardware to work with it. Plus most apps are 32-bit so can't even take advantage of 64-bit. So you get neglible speed increase, and much more problems. Not worth it.

Visually Vista is far better. It has lots of organization, intuitive improvements which I like. Stability, I personally find it better. Then againm ost of the people who knock it, have 1GB installed. That's just stupid.

Get 4 gigs. I do. 3.2gigs for apps, and the rest used by the hardware and makes the system even faster.

Make sure you "tweak" vista to use the 4 gigs. I had to do some tweaking and now it shows all 4 gigs in system properties.

r