Buying a Gaming PC, help!

[Laughing Man]

where im living theres a shop thats selling gaming computers at £250 with 3gb of RAM and are able to run crysis I really dont get it

Neither do I, their is no way you could run Crysis on a £250 pre built computer. Unless the person selling it is making a huge lose on each unit sold or you have to gimp the games graphics and res to get it to run.

I would be interested to see the spec for this computer.

Oh and to the op, if you think you are up to it then build the PC yourself you'll get a heck lot more for your cash. Mind you if you want a quicker and cheap PC then go for one of the websites that offers pre built gaming machines that allow you to spec the unit yourself.

 

[Bluntknife]

http://www.alienware.com/products/aurora-desktop.aspx?SysCode=PC-AURORA-R5&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT Here's an awesome gaming pc but it's more toward the cheap side. but it's what I'm running and I've had no problems.

for $1000, its a rip off, in my opinion.
Look at the specs on the motherboard, only 4gb supported and at a cap of 800 mhz, thats average, but not at an average price.

2.7Ghz, with a total of 1mb cache. AMD is lagging so far behind Intel on processor tech.

Unfortunatly no matter how you put it, buying a prebuilt rig will always be more expensive and give you limited functionality.
Building one will teach you something (hopefully) and it gives you a sense of achievment and pride over what you have built.

 

[Valiance]

Alienware is horrible. Horrible.

Horrible.

End of discussion.

This.

Newegg and Tigerdirect usually have decent deals. Definitely build your own, as everyone's already said.

 

[SneakyBawls]

http://www.alienware.com/products/aurora-desktop.aspx?SysCode=PC-AURORA-R5&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT Here's an awesome gaming pc but it's more toward the cheap side. but it's what I'm running and I've had no problems.

for $1000, its a rip off, in my opinion.
Look at the specs on the motherboard, only 4gb supported and at a cap of 800 mhz, thats average, but not at an average price.

2.7Ghz, with a total of 1mb cache. AMD is lagging so far behind Intel on processor tech.

Unfortunatly no matter how you put it, buying a prebuilt rig will always be more expensive and give you limited functionality.
Building one will teach you something (hopefully) and it gives you a sense of achievment and pride over what you have built.

Exactly. Prebuilt always skimp on the MOBO. That and the PSU, obviously not in an Alienware, but most others you'll need to replace it if you ever decide to upgrade the graphics card. Sure they don't cost much and you can get a really good MOBO for not a lot of money but why buy replacement parts when you could have just bought it in the first place. I don't know....maybe it's just me, but I'd never go back to prebuilt.

 

[TheButtonMashEffect]

I got lucky my dad brought a really good PC without even thinking.

Parents sometimes they come in handy.

 

[Asehujiko]

Short answer (regarding Crysis): no.

Long answer: Yes, but it won't be pretty. You would have to turn the graphics down really low, and, even though it will still look just as good as the high-end graphics on most other games, your computer will start to lag and freeze when you get to the bigger battles/end-boss.

I'm speaking from experience, as a guy who got an $800 computer and stuck a $300 video card and a $200 power supply inside. On the entire mission preceding the end-boss (and including said end-boss), I had to turn down the graphics to minimum on everything, and it still crashed my computer every time except one (the one time I beat it).

It really depends on how much you want to spend, though. If you have the money, I'd suggest checking out Alienware, as they are renowned for having the best gaming rigs in the business. I have heard good things from people who build their own, so that might be an option, but you'd need the know-how and expertise to get it done (or know someone/pay someone to do it for you).

Either way, though, to get a respectably decent gaming rig, you'll be looking in the range of $1500 to $2000, at the least.

Either update your drivers, dl the patch or run a 32 bit os. That's your top 3 solutions to games behaving shitty. If you did all those, you either own one of the products crysis doesn't support(a list that can only be discovered by trail and error) or you encountered a pathing glitch where somebody got stuck a tiny piece of debris and immediatly devours your entire clock cycles by attempting to calculate an alternate path several billion times a second or something like that(happened to me, restarting game from lvl 1 (often) fixes it, don't use the autosave, it doesn't work).

Working rig(most things on medium): $350+
Good rig(everything exept killer apps on medium high): $800+
Built-to-last rig(everything exept crysis on max): $1100+

Going beyond $1500 is useless as the investment/return curve for hardware flattens extremly quickly.

Whatever you do, DO NOT BUY ALIENWARE. It's a $500 rig with a $1500 brand logo on it.

Running crysis on max is futile on even the best rigs in existance(think 4.2ghz OCed quad core, dual GeForce 280 XXX in SLI also OC and 8GB of 1066mhz RAM) because several of the max option are filled with memory leaks and it will grind itself to a halt no matter what eventualy without fail. Stop trying and hope somebody at crytek remembers to get rid of said memory leaks for crysis 2.

 

[bad rider]

Build. Build. Build.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pWf0R65ULXAn6FdekgrtQTA&gid=0

If you can spare $200 more dollars, I would highly suggest the gaming system in this bracket:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pWf0R65ULXAn6FdekgrtQTA&gid=11

And to the person telling campfire horror stories above: Crysis is a whole lot more manageable now.

Wouldn't it be wiser to get an AMD, I haven't checked but as a rule of thumb the bus speed will most likely be substatially lower for a bit more clock speed.

 

[bad rider]

Short answer (regarding Crysis): no.

Long answer: Yes, but it won't be pretty. You would have to turn the graphics down really low, and, even though it will still look just as good as the high-end graphics on most other games, your computer will start to lag and freeze when you get to the bigger battles/end-boss.

I'm speaking from experience, as a guy who got an $800 computer and stuck a $300 video card and a $200 power supply inside. On the entire mission preceding the end-boss (and including said end-boss), I had to turn down the graphics to minimum on everything, and it still crashed my computer every time except one (the one time I beat it).

It really depends on how much you want to spend, though. If you have the money, I'd suggest checking out Alienware, as they are renowned for having the best gaming rigs in the business. I have heard good things from people who build their own, so that might be an option, but you'd need the know-how and expertise to get it done (or know someone/pay someone to do it for you).

Either way, though, to get a respectably decent gaming rig, you'll be looking in the range of $1500 to $2000, at the least.

Either update your drivers, dl the patch or run a 32 bit os. That's your top 3 solutions to games behaving shitty. If you did all those, you either own one of the products crysis doesn't support(a list that can only be discovered by trail and error) or you encountered a pathing glitch where somebody got stuck a tiny piece of debris and immediatly devours your entire clock cycles by attempting to calculate an alternate path several billion times a second or something like that(happened to me, restarting game from lvl 1 (often) fixes it, don't use the autosave, it doesn't work).

Working rig(most things on medium): $350+
Good rig(everything exept killer apps on medium high): $800+
Built-to-last rig(everything exept crysis on max): $1100+

Going beyond $1500 is useless as the investment/return curve for hardware flattens extremly quickly.

Whatever you do, DO NOT BUY ALIENWARE. It's a $500 rig with a $1500 brand logo on it.

Running crysis on max is futile on even the best rigs in existance(think 4.2ghz OCed quad core, dual GeForce 280 XXX in SLI also OC and 8GB of 1066mhz RAM) because several of the max option are filled with memory leaks and it will grind itself to a halt no matter what eventualy without fail. Stop trying and hope somebody at crytek remembers to get rid of said memory leaks for crysis 2.

Alienware does look spectacular though.

 

[NiceGurl_14]

Well, I don't know how to build my own computer. Not to mention I'm kinda cheap. but a lot of it depends on your prospective and what you like. I've had no problems with it but I guess that it's just me.

 

[Insomniactk]

Don't have time to read all the articles, but as for Crysis: Yes, if you build your own computer. Don't buy Alienware! It's just stupid, they have expensive computers and ugly chassis.

You should be able to run crysis at atleast High if you build your own with the right parts.

GL HF, there's nothing more fun than building your own computer!

 

[Jursa]

The irony of the entire assembled computer buying thing is that if you gather all the computer pieces randomly and then pay the computer technician at the store to assemble it, it will still cost a lot less than buying the computer in a set box, besides assembled computers often consider it a broken warranty if you open the box, while I sometimes have the lid missing for weeks... Ati and Nvidia are dead rivals between quality and usually there's a nice little highground with rather normal price between em, tho I'm more of the ATI fanboy... Getting a quad core is the new thing, but the problem is that currently there are few games that can actually utilize 4 cores, same with 2 graphics cards at once. I really recommend assembling the thing yourself, because when the strange noises start coming, you kinda need to know what's wrong and what to do...

 

[jahsol]

I would actually suggest Alienware. Their computers are built to run games but the price in a little high but it's worth it. They actually have some of the better Tech support that I've seen. Their quality overall is actually pretty good too.

I would suggest buying an Alienware computer if you really just dislike money.

Anything he/she has posted in this thread

QFT

 

[clarinetJWD]

Build. Build. Build.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pWf0R65ULXAn6FdekgrtQTA&gid=0

If you can spare $200 more dollars, I would highly suggest the gaming system in this bracket:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pWf0R65ULXAn6FdekgrtQTA&gid=11

And to the person telling campfire horror stories above: Crysis is a whole lot more manageable now.

Wouldn't it be wiser to get an AMD, I haven't checked but as a rule of thumb the bus speed will most likely be substantially lower for a bit more clock speed.

AMD right now is in a rut. If you check the tomshardware charts for CPU performance on games, the highest any AMD processor made it was 18th place behind 17 Intels. And this is before i7. (At least this was what it was last time I checked)

And yes, $1000 is more than enough to get a Crysis computer, though resolution plays a major role in it. Hell, a q6600 ATI 4850 rig can do Crysis on High/Highest on low enough resolutions (1440x900), and that's significantly lower.

 

[bad rider]

AMD right now is in a rut. If you check the tomshardware charts for CPU performance on games, the highest any AMD processor made it was 18th place behind 17 Intels. And this is before i7. (At least this was what it was last time I checked)

Link?

 

[gremily]

You need a computer and buy a really good graphics card, a lot of memory, and make sure the motherboard is really good.

 

[clarinetJWD]

AMD right now is in a rut. If you check the tomshardware charts for CPU performance on games, the highest any AMD processor made it was 18th place behind 17 Intels. And this is before i7. (At least this was what it was last time I checked)

Link?

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-q3-2008/Crysis-1680x1050,818.html

Now updated with i7 as well. That benchmark is in Crysis, and AMD is in 26th place...

(Also, I missed Supreme Commander last time I checked, AMD is 14th there, their top Gaming mark)

 

[Lonan]

I just bought http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX22849(ME).aspx for $999. It was able to play Dawn of War: Soulstorm on highest settings and Warhammer Online highest settings NO LAG. Not even on the radar. (I had a Compaq Presario R4000 before, so this was beautiful) It was no problem at all. With Vista 64 bit Premium. I was shown pretty much the same thing but with a E7200 processor for $919 from Dell.(But then the deal expired and it became $999 so the one I gave link for was better deal, plus dell came with keyboard, which I didn't need.) Then you have to get a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers, all of which I already had except monitor, $190, 22 inch Samsung. I have great confidence in my new system, even though there was a problem with sound when I asked then to change OS from Vista to XP(FTW). I remember one game that said 1 GB of RAM for XP, 2 GB for Vista, and that pissed me off. While I am not familiar at all with it, I don't think I would be overly wrong to say it's nothing but more shiny with paranoid security, which does nothing but use more of your precious system resources. I don't think it will improve your game, so go with XP, unless someone proves me wrong. Anyway, that's what I did, and if you have a monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers, it's under $1000. By one dollar. So that what I did, I hope it helps. To all those who think you can't get a good system for $999, I just pwned thine faceith. I think I'm done here.