Gaming Computers

I have about $2500 to spend on a PC. I am debating on whether to
just buy a gaming computer or build one myself. If I decide to build
one. Which parts will give me the most "bang for my buck"? Any help
is much appreciated.

On or about Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:41:24 -0700 (PDT) did Ian
<Ian.Dozier@gmail.com> dribble thusly:

>I have about $2500 to spend on a PC. I am debating on whether to
>just buy a gaming computer or build one myself. If I decide to build
>one. Which parts will give me the most "bang for my buck"? Any help
>is much appreciated.

Intel's Core 2 line is the fastest, but not the best bang for the buck. The
Core 2 Duo E6700 is about the same speed as the AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+, but
about twice the price ($320 vs $160, lowest prices for each). If you want
more speed than that, however, you'll have to go with Intel for the forseeable
future. And it won't be cheap.

For graphics, if you go under $200, the best choice is AMD/ATI. For over
$200, the best choice is nVidia.

Don't go cheap on the PSU, but don't go crazy, either. Expect to pay at least
$75 for a decent PSU. Don't bother going over $150.

For memory, don't bother with anything marketed to gamers with crazy heatsinks
and a grossly inflated price. Look for good latency figures with
normal-looking heatsinks, and price a fair amount above the cheapest stuff.

An Athlon 6400+ with 4GB RAM and something like an 8800GTS would be about $1K,
before add-ons like DVD drive, keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc.
--
- Mike

Ignore the Python in me to send e-mail.

Ian wrote:
> I have about $2500 to spend on a PC. I am debating on whether to
> just buy a gaming computer or build one myself. If I decide to build
> one. Which parts will give me the most "bang for my buck"? Any help
> is much appreciated.

For the most part, when buying cheapo systems, it's best to go with a
pre-built computer. But when going with gaming systems, then most likely
you can build yourself a good-value system for half the price of buying
one of the pre-built gaming systems. That's because the pre-built gaming
systems are overkill systems, and you can go with components half their
price and still delivering over 90% of the gaming power.

Make sure you skew your spending towards the video cards rather than the
processor; central processors are much less involved in the gaming
experience than the graphics processors. Multi-GPU video systems now
come in one card (e.g. AMD 3870X2 or nVidia 9800GX2), you don't even
have to buy two cards to get multi-GPU advantages anymore. Quad-core is
nice to have but completely unnecessary as it has been mentioned that
GPUs are more important than CPUs; that being said, if you can get a
quad-core for not much more than what you paid for a dual, then go for it.

Yousuf Khan

Mike Ruskai wrote:

>On or about Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:41:24 -0700 (PDT) did Ian
><Ian.Dozier@gmail.com> dribble thusly:
>
>>I have about $2500 to spend on a PC. I am debating on whether to
>>just buy a gaming computer or build one myself. If I decide to build
>>one. Which parts will give me the most "bang for my buck"? Any help
>>is much appreciated.
>
>Intel's Core 2 line is the fastest, but not the best bang for the buck. The
>Core 2 Duo E6700 is about the same speed as the AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+, but
>about twice the price ($320 vs $160, lowest prices for each).

Umm... If the E6700 costs $320, it's because it's no longer being
made. It's replacement, the E6750, is $180.