New PC

[Morphius]

With the release of Age of Conan and the upcoming Warhammer Online I am in need of a new PC. I've been without a MMORPG for a very long time now and as you imagine my old setup is starting to struggle just a little bit.

I have been browsing eBuyer and such trying to piece things together but I need the assistance of someone who understands the art of PC parts, my untrained eye just doesn't cut it.

I'm looking to spend around £600-700 on this set up, I'm non fussed about AMD or Intel but I think I'm swaying slightly in favour of Intel.

Cheers!

 

[old.Tohtori]

If you plan on playing Age of conan, check their boards CAREFULLY for what GFX card to get.

Some get top quality graphics with no lag with the crappiest of machines around the world put together as one ubercrap machine, and some GFX cards can be stuck into the Megalomania Computer 50000! from the Andromeda galaxy and still churn out 1 fps at low settings.

 

[Cadelin]

I suggest you post on Techie Discussion. It seems to have some helpful people who just love trawling the web for the latest bargains.

Are you looking to build your own or buy pre-made (I assume build your own)? and do you need to buget for any software from that £600? Do you want to use any of your old hardware in this new machine or is it all "old"?

 

[pikeh]

from what ive heard , WAR is not very system intensive? or am I wrong?

 

[Morphius]

yeh the thing is though, It's saying minimum requirements "3ghz Processor" my AMD 3500+ is clocking at 2.21ghz and I have a radeon 9200 gfx card which is uber old!

 

[pikeh]

With the release of Age of Conan and the upcoming Warhammer Online I am in need of a new PC. I've been without a MMORPG for a very long time now and as you imagine my old setup is starting to struggle just a little bit.

I have been browsing eBuyer and such trying to piece things together but I need the assistance of someone who understands the art of PC parts, my untrained eye just doesn't cut it.

I'm looking to spend around £600-700 on this set up, I'm non fussed about AMD or Intel but I think I'm swaying slightly in favour of Intel.

Cheers!

PC gamer did a nice article on how to build a gamer beast for under £1000. But they also include stuff like monitor/keyboard/mouse etc. Ill dig out the article, one sec!


/edit

Motherboard - ASUS p5n-E SLI : £70
Processor - Core 2 Quad Q6600 : £140
Memory - OCZ Platinum XTC DDR2 800 Mhz : £38
3d Card - Point Of View 8800GTS - £158
Hard Drive - 2x 500Gb Western Digital Caviar SE16 - £128
Case - Coolermaster CM690 - £38
PSU - PC Power and Cooling 610 - £60

all comes to £632, capable of playing any game in high res, and any on the horizon.

 

[Morphius]

this is what belarc has me as

XP Home

AMD Athlon XP 3500+ (2.20ghz, i'm sure I should be clocking more from this)

Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. nForce
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: Award Software International, Inc. F6 08/22/2005

RADEON 9200 SERIES

1GB Ram - 1x1gb

 

[Morphius]

I'm not planning on "buying" software, I'm sure I can scrape Vista 64-bit from somewhere!

 

[Morphius]

is that mother board this one?

Asus P5N-E SLI 650i Socket 775 PCI-E Onboard Audio ATX Motherboard

 

[ileks]

New nvidia and ATI cards are due for release mid June last i heard, i would wait for those.

 

[Morphius]

brand new cards would be dear though no? I had a peep at the 8800GTX £170 mind but looks solid for the future.

 

[pikeh]

is that mother board this one?

Asus P5N-E SLI 650i Socket 775 PCI-E Onboard Audio ATX Motherboard

I believe so, but its best to check with someone thats an expert on this type of thing. The set-up is from an article in PC gamer, and just says Asus P5N-E SLI.

 

[Morphius]

Cheers mate, i'll see what the Techie's say!

 

[ileks]

I haven't really been keeping up with all this since i bought my PC, but last i read was that the ATI line up will be cheap and will perform well. The nvidia flagship card will probably be an absolute beast but around $600 i guess.

 

[Marc]

Can someone explain to me, the point in buying the latest graphics card for stupid money, when there are graphics cards on the market that are much cheaper and will play every single game that is out and all the games that are due to be released??

It makes no sense to me.

 

[Chronictank]

Wait until June/July, the next Gen cards are out then

 

[Chronictank]

Can someone explain to me, the point in buying the latest graphics card for stupid money, when there are graphics cards on the market that are much cheaper and will play every single game that is out and all the games that are due to be released??

It makes no sense to me.

if you are smart you can sell them on with very little loss, and have the next refresh for a little bit more money
But means you are continually refreshing rather than settling on a single card for months/years

 

[old.Tohtori]

if you are smart you can sell them on with very little loss, and have the next refresh for a little bit more money
But means you are continually refreshing rather than settling on a single card for months/years

and also, not all cards on the amrket(older) run new shiny games SO shiny.

Some people are hifi, and have cash, let 'em buy. Makes it easier for us semi-hifi-poor-a** lot to buy 'em

 

[Helme]

Go with the E8400 rather than the Q6600, it has higher performance overall and lower costs - if you 'must' have a Quad core, go for the new 45nm ones, they aren't much more expensive but the extra performance is huge due to faster FSB and more cache. As for GFX card, get an 8800GTS 512mb, they are currently the kings in terms of price/performance - look for the MSI overclocked version especially as from most tests I've read it's come out ontop with quite abit. If you want an 9000 card look for the GTX, it's the onlyone apart from the 9600GT cards thats actually worth it currently. Regarding RAM, there's really no reason not to go for 4gb currently with the ridicolously cheap prices, get the speed your mobo can handle, 800/1066mhz the price difference is non existant currently. Also go for decent brands ie. OCZ, GEIL and so on.

Regarding mobo, almost all the P5's from Asus are good, Gigabyte has some awesome motherboards aswell.

Anyways final spec would be something like this;
CPU
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.00GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
OR
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 LGA775 'Yorkfield' 2.66GHz 12MB-cache (1333FSB) Processor - OEM
OR as previously mentioned
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
GFX
MSI GeForce 8800 GTS OC 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
OR
BFG GeForce 9800 GTX OCX 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Motherboard
Asus P5K Premium/WiFi-AP Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
This card is a solid choice as it allows you to go for 1066mhz memory for that little extra performance, else just use its 'stats' to compare other cards.
RAM
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-8500C5 1066MHz SLI-Ready Edition Dual Channel DDR2 (OCZ2N1066SR2GK))
2 of those.
Chassi+PSU
Personally I couldn't care less what my case looks like aslong as its got plenty of room and decent cooling so my options would be biased towards that
Coolermaster CM-690 Dominator - Black (No PSU))
This is a solid case, roomy, decent looking and with 3 fans from the start, with room for 2 more.
OCZ StealthXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply
Seems pretty solid to me
HDD & DVD
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKS))
500GB should last you a few months atleast, and then it's just to buy anotherone.
Samsung SH-S203D/BEBN 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM
Any cheap DVD-rw drive should last you fine tbh, I've had my LG one for 3 years now and it's never fucked up a disc - reason I bought it? it was the cheapest.

This should run you in total:£580ish +VAT, for the 8800 and E8400, can easily cut down on prices by removing 2gb ram or just changing the site(heard OC.co.uk is quite expensive, but it was the only site I could find that actually showed items not in stock currently).

 

[tris-]

check out bigpockets for some of the stuff.

 

[Helme]

Oh and I hope you have a proper monitor! Else most of that stuff is just gonna get wasted as you can't run any decent resolutions

 

[ileks]

I would seriously wait. Look at the 8800 GTX, that card is what almost 2 years old now? and it is still quite a lot better than the newer 8800 GTS, which will struggle with conan in Dx10 believe me. Don't bother with a 9800 GTX either, it's just an 8800 GTS. If you game at above 1600x1000 you will be disappointed with the performance.

New info will come out more rapidly as time goes by. You could be looking at treble the performance of the current top end cards for £100 more.

 

[ileks]

Can someone explain to me, the point in buying the latest graphics card for stupid money, when there are graphics cards on the market that are much cheaper and will play every single game that is out and all the games that are due to be released??

It makes no sense to me.

The people who bought the 8800 GTX upon release probably paid about £350 for it, but it is still the best single card on the market. So they have had about 18 months of enjoyment and can still play every game out atm like a dream.
Also, if you play on a high resolution, most cards will struggle with games like AoC and crysis.

 

[Helme]

SweClockers.com - Artikel: Stort grafikkortstest – uppdaterat

'Nästa sida' = next page
'Överklockning' = oc'd.
'Bilder per sekund' = FPS.

The MSI 8800GTS 512mb version is constantly outperforming, or equal to the 8800GTX, infact it's the only card that manages Crysis on 'high' in 1600 resolution with playable FPS. You will have no problems whatsoever running AoC on a decent resolution with maxed graphics with this card, especially if you get the 8400 CPU to go along with it and 4gb of 1066mhz ram, yes the 10 series will be alot better, but to be quite honest I can see it getting the same 'remake' the 8800s got at release, ie the 8800GT 512mb, which was far better price/performance, making it a better choice to wait - and until then, well the OP can't exactly run AoC at all with his current computer...

 

[cHodAX]

You need a big PC for Conan, even it even gives my monster machine a good workout. I suggest

Either a dual or even better a quad core Intel running at 3Ghz, that will blow Conan away.

4gb of memory minimum, if you are going Vista64 and you should then this is a no-brainer.

Grab an nvidia 8800GT 512mb and you are laughing, it can quite easily sustain the game at maximum settings with a 1680x1050 resolution.

 

[Lamp]

Good call, Helme

 

[Helme]

I'd just like to add that almost all the stuff I mentioned I can safely back up their performance with multiple tests from very reliable sources, it really is the best you can get in your pricerange, reason I probably have spent so much time in doing this is that I've been looking for parts myself for that price and this is what I've come up with from looking at the future and the now for over 3 months... now I just need a bloody job so I can buy it all

 

[Raven]

brand new cards would be dear though no? I had a peep at the 8800GTX £170 mind but looks solid for the future.

Correct but when they come out you can expect a drop in price on current cards.

 

[Iceforge]

brand new cards would be dear though no? I had a peep at the 8800GTX £170 mind but looks solid for the future.

Yes, but usually within a week of a brand new card being released, the prices on the old cards will go down quite a bit, so even if you are not really interested in brand new high-end equipment, waiting a few weeks on a new release might be a sweet way to get a more affordable deal and save some bucks.

 

[Morphius]

Just like buying last seasons skis!

I'll take the advice!