computer people, i gots a question:

I need a new pc ( i just have an ibook)

I am mainly going to use it for gaming, so what are some good specs to have so that it can play current ( doom 3) and future releases well.

i dont want to spend more that$2000.

thanks

dude for $2k you can get the best of everything. just go down the list and grab the best item of said list and you will probably come in at under 2k (unless you start looking at the "just a little nicer for all you rich assholes" parts. not worth it).

do you need a new monitor as well? you might have to cut back with you also want a good 21" monitor or something.

Athlon 64 3000+ or faster
NVidia 6800 GT or faster
1GB of decent RAM

Storage, etc will be up to you but the other stuff will ensure proper gaming.

B

the 4 most important things:

#1
ABIT AV8 VIA K8T800 Motherboard
or
ASUS A8V DELUXE VIA K8T800 Motherboard

#2
Athlon 64 3500+[socket 939]

#3
at least 1GB of Memory
Kingston HyperX[cheapest], or Crucial Ballistix[2nd], or Corsair XMS2[most expensive].

#4
Radeon X800 Pro[or higher], or GeForce FX 6800GT[or higher]


other then that get whatever. no biggie. although Hard Drive-wise, make sure you at least get 7200RPM/8MB.. Serial ATA is pretty cool to, although i believe you need a identical pair[and SCSI is way too pricey].. avoid USB drives!

Radeon X800 Pro[or higher], or GeForce FX 6800GT[or higher]

If your just going to play Doom 3 only buy the Geforce it was built for doom 3( although this card also takes a beating from doom)... If you would like to play every other game made buy the Radeon. Doom was really created for next generation 512mb cards in mind so don't expect to be able to run it at ultra high settings with everything turn all the way up, even if you spend $600 on your video card.

In my opinion building a computer just to play doom 3 is not such a good idea, the game doesn't really live up to the hype( I know I did the same thing).

Your building a computer in kind of a weird time in the market place... Manufacters are starting to put the new PCI-Express on their motherboards and both intel and amd are changing their pinouts on the chips.

PCI-Express is supposed to be faster in the long run but from the tests that I've seen on the express cards out now, they are about the same as a normal agp cards. But, if you get a motherboard with PCI-Express you will be able to upgrade with the market(which just happens to be around every 4 months). On the other hand, I read the current amd chip pinout [socket 939] is only going to last about a year from now until they change it again(damn you amd your following the intel trend!)

So you have a real decision to make, are you going to wait on the next gen graphics cards to come out as well as PCI-Express to become a little more mainstream, or are you just going to splurge right now? If you ask me a you should just build a pc for around $500 to play UT2k4 and other games out now, then in a few months sell that one and build a system that can really handle Doom 3.


I almost forgot, stay away from 10,000 rpm western digital raptor hard drives running a MSI motherboards... I've already had 3 go out, plus tons of other people are having the same troubles.

Cheapest way to play Doom3.
X-Box -$150
Doom3 - $50

gamejunkie said:

Radeon X800 Pro[or higher], or GeForce FX 6800GT[or higher]

If your just going to play Doom 3 only buy the Geforce it was built for doom 3( although this card also takes a beating from doom)... If you would like to play every other game made buy the Radeon.

Click to expand...

Of course like all things there's room for debate there... And this isn't the place for it. Suffice it to say that when you move away from Doom3 the top ATI and top Nvidia cards are in neck and neck and it's possible to put the cards into situations where one or the other will typically win.

Of course what do I know. I have had a pair of Raptor HDs running 24x7 on an MSI board since they were first released. Then again, before that I used an Abit board and had 4 WD hard drives die within a year (not Raptors).

B

Ok let me clarify. I have MSI's 64bit motherboard, I can't remember the name of it. But this motherboard is known to have troubles with raptor hard drives.

gamejunkie said:

I almost forgot, stay away from 10,000 rpm western digital raptor hard drives running a MSI motherboards... I've already had 3 go out, plus tons of other people are having the same troubles.

Click to expand...

Does your case have good air flow? A hard drive cooler could probably prevent some of these failures.

I built my latest machine for around $1,000 about three months ago. You could build the same PC now for even less, assuming you already have a monitor. I wish I had 2k to put into mine, but for what I spent I am quite happy.

Intel Pentium 4 "Prescott" 2.8Ghz, 1MB Cache, 800Mhz Bus
Abit IS7 Motherboard, 800mhz Bus, Serial ATA, Dual Channel RAM support, all toys..
2x512MB DDR400 RAM, running in dual channel mode (1GB total).
Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB DDR video card, 256-bit pipeline.
Lite-On CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive.
Seagate Barracuda 80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive
Raidmax Dragon Case, x5 80mm fans, lots of LED's, clear side panel.

It plays Doom III with amazing performance (with the ATI beta drivers), and just about every other game I've tried with awesome fluidity. I scored over 100 average frames per second on the Half-Life 2 stress test. I kind of regret not buying an x800 card for my machine, but when I built it they were very scarce anyway. With $2000 you could build a beast of a machine..

twalden said:

Does your case have good air flow? A hard drive cooler could probably prevent some of these failures.

Click to expand...

Does my case have good airflow? It has the best possible air flow of any case on earth! I a superlanboy antec case and stripped all the gay blue plasic off the front:



Then I took the hard drive rack out:



I replaced the horrible 120mm antec fans with 120mm Sunon that moves 108cfm, then hanging from below floppy rack I placed a 93mm vantec tornado moving 119cfm through ducting to my processor that has thermaltake heatsink and fan moving 73cfm. The ducting is set back far enough to allow the air to flow throughout to entire case.

On my video card I have this cooler with the optional fan:



Inside my case feels like winter, like frosty winter. I would post pics but the card reader on my media center pc is freaking out.

Btw I also put a gamecube in the cdrow bays, its being powered by the pc's powersupply and is outputing to my monitor.

Abasuto said:

Cheapest way to play Doom3.
X-Box -$150
Doom3 - $50

Click to expand...

I'm thinking that'll be the 2nd worst way to play that game.

And yea, as others have said, 2k will get you pretty much anything you need to have a badass pc.