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Advice on Gaming PC?

G5Unit

G5Unit

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 3, 2005
2,107
10
I'm calling the cops
Yeh I know this is MACRumors, but any advise on the best gaming PC? I have a budget of around maybe 1200 or a little more. I would alos like a 20 inch screen at least. Or just no monitor. I want to be able to play the latest games along with enough hardrive space and ram.

-G5Unit
 
I

iEdd

macrumors 68000
Aug 8, 2005
1,956
4
AMD or Intel?
I recommend buying just about everything from newegg if you are in USA. (I can't, I'n aussie).
Buy your graphics card, Processor and RAM from ebay.

Within that budget you should get a reasonable setup.
 
J

jeffzoom

macrumors member
Oct 8, 2004
59
0
I guess your Powermac isn't cutting it game wise eh? Well, first you want an SSE3 compatible prossesor (so when (if) OSX comes for X86 (openly), you can use it). So you have intel or AMD, for overclocking and better performance, not to mention cheaper, go AMD. You want a 939 pin vience core CPU at least 3200, if not 3500 (3800 if your wallet allows). For a motherboard, get a gigabyte,DFI,ASUS,MSI, and maybe a chaintech. Make sure it is a 2000mb/s board. For ram, pretty much anything will do, you will want least a gig if not more, and maybe in two 512 sticks if you want or one 1024 stick, i don't care. No reason to buy anything faster than 184 pin DDR400 because amd won't recognise it as any faster. Then for hardrives, at least a 120gb 7200rpm SATA drive will work, bigger the better there. Then you will need a video card, so make sure you have pci ex on your motherboard, you can do agp, but you have enough $$$ for PCI EX. Wallet permitting you may want SLI, especially if you do some real high resolutions. You want at least a 6600gt for this, 6800gt or 7800gt are better. Now i assume you already have some 5.1 speakers, if not, get some. Itegrated sound sucks, so get a nice Creative labs sound card, probably the new series (forgotten name). and get and old case and a good antec power supply. That my speial. PM if you have questions.


jeff
 
I

iEdd

macrumors 68000
Aug 8, 2005
1,956
4
The thing is, it's generally cheaper to get an intel with sse3 and hyper-threading than it is to go AMD. For a fully compatible x86 system you need a motherboard most similar to the ones in the intel G5s. That would be an ASRock 775Dual-915GL Micro ATX Intel Motherboard, with internal graphics best for mac os x. Though this might be bad on the gaming pc side. I don't recommend anything illegal. For more info, read This guide.
 
P

pionata

macrumors 6502
Oct 12, 2005
447
0
Montreal
Seriously, Wait for a ps3... Nothing will be better than playing ps3 games in high res on an apple cinema display with surround digital audio and 1920x1080 video... Its even built on a PowerPC processor...

The color of the ps3 will even fit with your mac setup.
 
W

wako

macrumors 65816
Jun 6, 2005
1,404
1
Selling my Gaming System


If you're looking for a gaming system, check out mine. If you are interested maybe we can cut out a deal or something :)


But anyways, just to reiterate on a gaming systems...


If you want something that can run the latest games coming out, you WILL need atleast a regular 6800. For a good video card prices will start out around 350, but if you have the money, dig deeper in this area.

AMDs are definately the best. It really doesnt matter if you go either socket 939 or 754. If you are a benchmark (3Dmark, aqua, etc) whore then you will see very SLIGHT differences, in games you wont. At the very least you want a 3500+.

For RAM, 1gb is a absolute MUST. 512 these days wont cut it. Games now a days are taking up about 500mb of memory. With windows cutting 200, anything below 1gb will just start going after virtual ram which is to say the least is the worst possible situation.

As for the motherboard. I really dont think brand really matters. Just make sure it uses a nvidia chipset it should be fine. However, at the very least, go with a brand that is atleast known. Not generic brand
 
PCMacUser

PCMacUser

macrumors 68000
Jan 13, 2005
1,706
25
jeffzoom said:
Well, first you want an SSE3 compatible prossesor (so when (if) OSX comes for X86 (openly), you can use it). So you have intel or AMD, for overclocking and better performance, not to mention cheaper, go AMD. You want a 939 pin vience core CPU at least 3200, if not 3500 (3800 if your wallet allows). For a motherboard, get a gigabyte,DFI,ASUS,MSI, and maybe a chaintech. Make sure it is a 2000mb/s board. For ram, pretty much anything will do, you will want least a gig if not more, and maybe in two 512 sticks if you want or one 1024 stick, i don't care. No reason to buy anything faster than 184 pin DDR400 because amd won't recognise it as any faster. Then for hardrives, at least a 120gb 7200rpm SATA drive will work, bigger the better there. Then you will need a video card, so make sure you have pci ex on your motherboard, you can do agp, but you have enough $$$ for PCI EX. Wallet permitting you may want SLI, especially if you do some real high resolutions. You want at least a 6600gt for this, 6800gt or 7800gt are better. Now i assume you already have some 5.1 speakers, if not, get some. Itegrated sound sucks, so get a nice Creative labs sound card, probably the new series (forgotten name). and get and old case and a good antec power supply. That my speial.
Click to expand...
That pretty much covers most of it. I'd just like to add a couple of things... with the RAM, you'd need two chips, because both Intel and AMD use dual channel configurations (and have been for the last 2.5 years at least). So 1Gb would have to be 2x512mb.

I would also recommend a motherboard with RAID 0 support, and the purchase of two SATA drives (eg, 2x 160gb can be had pretty cheap these days). That will virtually double hard disc performance.
 
PCMacUser

PCMacUser

macrumors 68000
Jan 13, 2005
1,706
25
G5Unit said:
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/product_detail.do?product_code=EG194AA%23ABA&tab=detailed_specs&storeName=computer_store&landing=computers&category=desktops/hp_pavilion/a1130e_series&subcat1=rts&catLevel=4#defaultAnchor
+
A sound card(suggestions?)
+
(Graphics Card) suggestions?

Want to play HL 2, Doom 3, Call of Duty 2 etc at at least 30 fps bare minimum.
Click to expand...
This looks like a decent system.

Sound card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 or higher (higher models include the Audigy 4 and X-Fi)
Video card: Nvidia 6600GT or 6800 or higher. ATI Radeon x700 or higher. Doom3 runs better on Nvidia cards than on ATI cards. HL2 runs better on ATI cards than on Nvidia cards. Personally I'd go for the 6800.
 
G5Unit

G5Unit

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 3, 2005
2,107
10
I'm calling the cops
PCMacUser said:
This looks like a decent system.

Sound card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 or higher (higher models include the Audigy 4 and X-Fi)
Video card: Nvidia 6600GT or 6800 or higher. ATI Radeon x700 or higher. Doom3 runs better on Nvidia cards than on ATI cards. HL2 runs better on ATI cards than on Nvidia cards. Personally I'd go for the 6800.
Click to expand...

What about the 7800GT? Too much power?BTW, I tried playing the demo of HL2 on a 2.6Ghz P4 256mb ram and a REALLY old geforce mx 4 (64mb) and I would get about 24-0-15-2-20-0 all the time, didn't have the right shaders and this was everything on max with 1280 by 1024.

EDIT: So what's the best pre congifured, cheapest gaming PC out there?
 
plinkoman

plinkoman

macrumors 65816
Jul 2, 2003
1,144
1
New York
for a sound card, i'd highly reccomend one of these over creatives

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Revolution71-main.html

i have one of these, and it really is quite nice, and cheap too, $120 for the 7.1, and $100 for the 5.1
emthup.gif
 
T

Toreador93

macrumors regular
Sep 14, 2003
190
0
From the prices I see, AMD is cheaper at the same performance level of current Intels.

I don't think you need to worry about a soundcard too much. I use on-board sound, and don't take a big enough performance hit to warrant one. However, I may invest in one after I get better speakers.

That HP is a pretty good price. I'm actually surprised it's that cheap. You can get a 6800 GT or X800 XT and still be within budget. I have a 6800 GT, and I get 40-50 fps (rarely dipping below 40) on Doom 3 with 1680x1050 resolution and settings on high.
 
blitzkrieg79

blitzkrieg79

macrumors 6502
Mar 9, 2005
422
0
currently USA
Eversince Gateway purchased E-Machines, E-Machines are decent PCs considering they are rather priced cheap, so you could get that and put in a $200 video card and you will have money for a decent monitor too...

Memory wise you need at least 512MBs (1 GB would be great), actually I play Half-Life 2 on my P4 2.53GHZ rig with a GeForce 4600Ti Graphics card and 512MB of RAM at medium settings and the game runs flawlessly, so does Warcraft 3 (which may be a bit outdated but still one of my favorites), and so does Hitman: Contracts...

As far as sound cards go, 5.1 sound on PC is overrated, onboard sound found in todays systems is more than enough for todays games... I bought a Sound Blaster 2 sound card for my PC and quite frankly I dont think the cost of it justified any benefits in gaming...

And another thing, as much as people say that AMD is superior to Intel, I tend to slightly disagree from personal experience. Sure maybe AMD is a bit faster but either I had really bad luck or what because everytime I had an experience with an AMD based PC it was prone to crashing/freezing quite more frequently than my Intel based PCs... To put it in one sentence: AMD based PCs dont seem to be as reliable as Intel based ones...
 
G5Unit

G5Unit

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 3, 2005
2,107
10
I'm calling the cops
Yeh I also have money aside for a 24 inch dell. Yeh I want to play games listed above at at least 30fps max settings. and maybe some AA and AF.
 
G5Unit

G5Unit

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 3, 2005
2,107
10
I'm calling the cops
Well ok. Here is what I want:
-256 mb Graphics Card(PCI Express, well... better than my X800XT right now in my mac)
-At least 160gb HD.
-AMD 3500+ at least(Maybe even an X2 but only if it's REALLY better.)
-At least 1gb ram(DDR2 or something like that.)
-A 5.1 sound card at least(Not integrated)
-Monitor for later(Might get one later, but if it comes with one, sweet.)
 
Veritas&Equitas

Veritas&Equitas

macrumors 68000
Oct 31, 2005
1,528
1
Twin Cities, MN
I'd really look at either of the desktops I have (check sig). I built the more powerful one in late August, and I've been really happy with it so far. If you have any specific questions, let me know/pm me.
 
G

Gohan

macrumors member
Jan 3, 2004
60
0
Get a motherboard based on the NF4 Ultra chipset. Add a AMD A64 3000+ Venice or faster, and to save money get a Connect 3D X800GTO (these will softmod to X850XTPE's)

If you wan't to play games like BF2 go with 2gig or RAM, The Geil vaule stuff isn't bad. However if your overclocking go with some TCCD RAM.

A Good spec would be somthing like this:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice
Asus A8N-SLi Premium nForce4 SLi
ThermalRight XP-120
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC4000 Ultra Platinum CAS2.5
Connect3D ATI Radeon X800 GTO 256MB DDR3 VIVO TV-Out
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 300GB
NEC 3500A 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2
Antec P180
Seasonic S12 430W
 
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