Mid Range Quad Core PC Build

limitbreakerx · February 2008

So I'm transferring to a university after the summer and finally moving away from home. Away from home = plenty of time for games. That and barely being able to play The Witcher and Armed Assault on my current PC, I've decided I want to build a new computer within the next 6 months. Nothing's really set, but I just found out that the Q6600 processor is pretty "cheap" and with the release of the new Geforce 9600 gfx card, suddenly the most expensive components seem to be at a decent price. I've already looked around a little, but before I get started trudging through obscure tech forums and really dive into the whole research process, I was wondering if you guys had some suggestions or guidelines I should start off with.

-Computer mainly for games. I don't program or edit video or have any other tasks that require the computer other than as a word processor.

-I'm looking to spend around $1000-$1500. Hopefully less, but if just a little more $$ provides significant performance boost... then maybe. I'm also gonna buy a cheap laptop for school. So the more money I save on the PC, the better laptop I can get.

-I've read higher clocked dual core processors perform better than slower quad cores for games. This makes sense.. but I've seen that tornado video for Alan Wake.. I WANT TO BE READY. So which should it be? Dual or quad?

-Vista or XP? Heard SP3 is coming out for XP. ..really? GFW games can only run on Vista?

-How many gigs of ram?

Well that's about it I think. I've not been keeping up with the PC tech for about 3-4 years.. so A LOT has changed. Again, I have 6 months so there's not a huge rush so I can wait for price drops, new hardware releases, etc. Also, if it's not a good idea to build a PC now.. why not? If there are compelling reasons, I can wait. With GTA IV, Force Unleashed, Splinter Cell Conviction out for consoles.. I could hold off building a new PC.

Azio · February 2008

Games for Windows games will run on XP unless they have a sticker that says Vista is required. And as far as I know, only Halo 2 has that sticker.

You should maybe wait a couple weeks because there are new geforce cards coming out, but yeah a decent quad-core box can be had for about $1000-1500. The chip itself will only cost you about $250. RAM is dirt right now so you can get 2 or 4 gigs, either way you will be set so it just depends on how much you're willing to spend.

Rakai · February 2008

limitbreakerx wrote: »

So I'm transferring to a university after the summer and finally moving away from home. Away from home = plenty of time for games. That and barely being able to play The Witcher and Armed Assault on my current PC, I've decided I want to build a new computer within the next 6 months. Nothing's really set, but I just found out that the Q6600 processor is pretty "cheap" and with the release of the new Geforce 9600 gfx card, suddenly the most expensive components seem to be at a decent price. I've already looked around a little, but before I get started trudging through obscure tech forums and really dive into the whole research process, I was wondering if you guys had some suggestions or guidelines I should start off with.

-Computer mainly for games. I don't program or edit video or have any other tasks that require the computer other than as a word processor.

-I'm looking to spend around $1000-$1500. Hopefully less, but if just a little more $$ provides significant performance boost... then maybe. I'm also gonna buy a cheap laptop for school. So the more money I save on the PC, the better laptop I can get.

-I've read higher clocked dual core processors perform better than slower quad cores for games. This makes sense.. but I've seen that tornado video for Alan Wake.. I WANT TO BE READY. So which should it be? Dual or quad?

-Vista or XP? Heard SP3 is coming out for XP. ..really? GFW games can only run on Vista?

-How many gigs of ram?

Well that's about it I think. I've not been keeping up with the PC tech for about 3-4 years.. so A LOT has changed. Again, I have 6 months so there's not a huge rush so I can wait for price drops, new hardware releases, etc. Also, if it's not a good idea to build a PC now.. why not? If there are compelling reasons, I can wait. With GTA IV, Force Unleashed, Splinter Cell Conviction out for consoles.. I could hold off building a new PC.

In regards to dual vs. quad, most of the performance advantages of the dual for gaming are in the order of 80fps vs. 90fps or some really high numbers for which you can't tell the difference and this is because the games aren't designed to run on quad cores. However, once games are optimized for quad cores, quads will show a huge boost over dual cores. So if you're looking to future guard yourself, then a quad is the way to go. Also the new yorkfield quad cores are supposed to be coming out next month (unless something has changed) so look at those as well. After the yorkfields Intel isn't releasing an major new processors until the end of 2008 (assuming no delays) so there isn't any big reason to hold out at the moment.

With regards to OS somethings to keep in mind is that 32-bit OS's are limited to 3.5gigs of ram so you might want to look into 64-bit vista. Sp1 is supposed to be coming out soon and should fix a lot of things. My main concern with the 64-bit vista is compatibility issues of which I'm not sure if there are any major ones. Someone else can comment on that. Either way, considering how cheap ram is you might as well look into getting 2 sticks of 2gig even if you only can use 3.5 of the 4 gigs.