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pabosher

Buying a New PC

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Oh hey there you! Thanks for clicking and possibly helping me out. You're special, you know that?

I know we had a thread similar to this recently, but I can't find it for the life of me, and I'm kinda curious about it now.

So I've been on a Thumbs-kick lately, and when I was playing Darkspore yesterday/chatting with one of the RPS freelancers, I suddenly realised how much more kickass the PC is for video games. Could anyone give hints/tips as to where to buy a good rig, price range etc? I don't want the best of the best of the best, but something that is a good quality rig, and can play most things at a good level would be nice.

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Build it, prices vary, I'd say £400 plus is the minimum, give us a figure and We'll see what's best.

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Build it, prices vary, I'd say £400 plus is the minimum, give us a figure and We'll see what's best.

Yeah, I'd say maybe around £600? I don't want to break the bank completely, but I know that good stuff isn't cheap.

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Thanks man. Could you give me an idea of how well it'll run things? I know it's stupid, but I really am a noob when it comes to PCs. I know how to buy a better graphics card, and more RAM= better, but apart from that...

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Thanks man. Could you give me an idea of how well it'll run things? I know it's stupid, but I really am a noob when it comes to PCs. I know how to buy a better graphics card, and more RAM= better, but apart from that...

Very, the 2500K is at the sweet spot for price to performance, as is the 460.

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If you're not into nVidia for some reason and you want more power, the Radeon HD6950 2Gb is a good option. It can be "unlocked" and become a 6970 with a simple firmware update.

Have in mind that the choice of GPU is directly related to the max resolution of your monitor. If you're playing at 1680x1050 for example, you can even shoot for a cheaper card. However if you have a 30" monitor you might want to get a better card to take advantage of the higher native resolution (where it will look the best).

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Alternatively, there's the new 560 Ti. It runs about 40-50 pounds more expensive (200), but you get a bit more power out of it.

Here is a rundown on it, and it also shows some benchmarks for the 460 Patters posted above.

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If you hate having AMD shit all over your face when manually installing drivers, you should avoid Radeon. The Steam update thing is pretty cool.

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BTW. Is the choice of socket / chipset important at all today? One can never keep up with that stuff. There are like 50 possible chipsets in a local price comparison site. I probably want an Intel i7 and a NVIDIA 560, but don't know about the other stuff. Budget is probably 1000-1200€ or maybe more if there's a good reason to spend more.

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Also, are any of you using 64-bit OS-s?

Is there any point in installing a 64-bit OS? Without it you can't go over 4GB of RAM, but is 4GB enough? I know 2GB isn't really enough for my everyday work, and maybe in a year 4GB won't be either...

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Erkki, you need a very good reason for not running 64bit today. It's practically the standard. I'd say 4GB is the minimum amount of RAM you'd want, but I'd get 8GB if possible.

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I've got Win7 running on 64-bit and it's working really smoothly.

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I think I've entered this mode i.e. I've postponed this upgrade for almost a year, but now that I started planning it I want it TODAY! Ideally I'd get an Intel Sandy Bridge based mobo/CPU, but not sure since all the MOBO-s supposedly have SATA issues (but not in the two main ports and I don't plan on having more than two hard drives in there).

This is what I'm thinking of getting:

Intel Core i7 2600K

Some motherboard that goes with it from Asus, Gigabyte, MSI

NVIDIA 570 (or maybe 560 Ti, depending on what the other costs will be)

8GB RAM

Cooler Master HAF 932 case or something of similar price range

750W PSU

1TB 7200RPM HDD

I'm going with the manufacturer suggestions that were in the huge table in one of the older threads.

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Erkki, you need a very good reason for not running 64bit today. It's practically the standard. I'd say 4GB is the minimum amount of RAM you'd want, but I'd get 8GB if possible.

Surely this can't be right? 8GB? Why would anyone need 8GB? Even in a x64 operating system most applications won't ever address anything that high... right? (Am I totally wrong here?)

Also, running x64 as standard? I think it depends on your hardware and software, doesn't it? I was just thinking of making the switch to x64 myself, but I play a lot of older games... and I understand this would make it harder for them to run. Plus, if there's no 64 bit drivers for your hardware, you basically can't use it.

Interesting.

Anyone else using a x64 OS?

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I do, on both my desktop and laptop, without fault so far. I don't know a lot about this, but I'm fairly certain that every program that doesn't have a 64-bit version just runs in 32.

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Surely this can't be right? 8GB? Why would anyone need 8GB? Even in a x64 operating system most applications won't ever address anything that high... right? (Am I totally wrong here?)

The applications address whatever they need. You're right in saying most applications won't use 8GB, but if you're running more than one application at a time – and I know I am! – it adds up. As I said, you'll get by with 4GB, but it's not hugely difficult to hit that limit if you're running, say, a bloated web browser with a couple of open tabs and a little flash, maybe Photoshop or whatever, maybe a media player, etc., and then you want to fire up a game on top of that...

Also, running x64 as standard? I think it depends on your hardware and software, doesn't it? I was just thinking of making the switch to x64 myself, but I play a lot of older games... and I understand this would make it harder for them to run. Plus, if there's no 64 bit drivers for your hardware, you basically can't use it.
True, but if you're buying a new computer right now, it's 64bit all the way unless you need to run some seriously weird old hardware. All CPUs, motherboards, graphics and sound cards etc that are sold today have 64bit drivers.

Also, there shouldn't be any issue with running older stuff on a 64 bit OS, and if you do get issues you can just fire up a 32bit virtual box.

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I'm fairly certain that every program that doesn't have a 64-bit version just runs in 32.

Unless they're horribly programmed, there shouldn't be any problems.

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Here's a great breakdown of the benefits of x64 over x86:

http://superuser.com/questions/56540/32-bit-vs-64-bit-systems

The applications address whatever they need. You're right in saying most applications won't use 8GB, but if you're running more than one application at a time – and I know I am! – it adds up. As I said, you'll get by with 4GB, but it's not hugely difficult to hit that limit if you're running, say, a bloated web browser with a couple of open tabs and a little flash, maybe Photoshop or whatever, maybe a media player, etc., and then you want to fire up a game on top of that...

Actually, I don't believe that 32-bit applications can make use of the extra RAM.

Edit: It appears that I am wrong. While a 32-bit application cannot use more than 2GB of RAM without special tricks (so 99.999% games or apps would not benefit from having extra RAM directly) -- If you were running several of 32-bit apps, then the extra RAM would be of use. (No idea why you wouldn't just close Photoshop if you were running Mass Effect, though...)

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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Also, are any of you using 64-bit OS-s?

Is there any point in installing a 64-bit OS? Without it you can't go over 4GB of RAM, but is 4GB enough? I know 2GB isn't really enough for my everyday work, and maybe in a year 4GB won't be either...

Surely this can't be right? 8GB? Why would anyone need 8GB? Even in a x64 operating system most applications won't ever address anything that high... right? (Am I totally wrong here?)

Also, running x64 as standard? I think it depends on your hardware and software, doesn't it? I was just thinking of making the switch to x64 myself, but I play a lot of older games... and I understand this would make it harder for them to run. Plus, if there's no 64 bit drivers for your hardware, you basically can't use it.

Interesting.

Anyone else using a x64 OS?

With x86 you will only get a total of just below 4Gb of ram, which includes your GPU, you'd be pretty stupid to run a brand new x86 machine. Driver problems are pretty much non existent now. Also with GOG, dosbox and the OSes own emulation you won't have that many problems, if you do it's due to the game itself.

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