Looking to buy a new PC... help?

[detourne_me]

Well,  I figured it's time I upgraded my PC to be able to play some of the latest games, like Batman and Dragon Age at a good setting.
umm...  could anyone help me with what I'm looking for?
I think I need a dual-core processor with an i5 cpu... at umm 2.6Ghz or higher right?
What sort of video card should I get?   I heard the new ATI HD5800  or something like that....
hmm, I'm looking to spend around a thousand dollars, and I've already got a nice monitor, 23" Samsung.

[detourne_me]

Hmm. I'm still humming and hawing about the PC.
These are my current specs:

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+ 2.4Ghz
RAM: 4Gb
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9300 GS

Maybe my problem is just the Graphics card. It's a 256Mb card.
Would I be able to get a 512Mb low-profile card and be able to play Dragon Age with decent settings?

[BWPS]

You sure you can't run it as-is? You seem to surpass all the recommended system requirements.

[detourne_me]

I'm not too sure.  I play Fallout 3, Mass Effect and a few other games no problem. but Batman stutters, and Champions Online has to be turned way down for me to even play it.   (but I'm also wondering if that is a server issue for me,  maybe there aren't any Australian or Asian servers for the game...)
On another forum, a guy pointed me to some nice graphics cards,  I'll probably pick one up tomorrow or thursday... fingers crossed!

[77]

My brother and his wife build PCs and sell them online, the great thing about it is.

1. they are cheap.
2. you can basically pick and choose what you want, either "prefab kit" or pick your own parts.

If you want to check them out go here http://www.anguszone.com/

EDIT: Called my brother about a custom PC, just send them an Email with what you want and how much you got to spend. You can probably  save some $$ but reusing some of your old parts if they are still good like cd/dvd rom.

[Tomato]

I'm not too sure.  I play Fallout 3, Mass Effect and a few other games no problem. but Batman stutters, and Champions Online has to be turned way down for me to even play it.   (but I'm also wondering if that is a server issue for me,  maybe there aren't any Australian or Asian servers for the game...)

Not really. I have a 512 graphics card and 4gb of memory on my laptop and I had to turn down Champions as well. It seems to be fairly graphic intensive.

[detourne_me]

Thanks for all the help guys.
It's a shame about CO being so graphics intensive....

I think I figured out what I'm going to do.
I'll get a new graphics card, probably this one: http://www.icoda.co.kr/i_product/pro_view.html?it_num=119852
Then upgrade to 64-bit Windows 7.
Altogether should cost me around $400.
This should put me in the mid-line range for game playing, which is good enough for me, and I'll save some money too.

[stumpy]

The graphics card upgrade may well put you in gaming range by itself. But, I wonder what version of Windows you are running now? If you are running 32-bit XP, it seems unlikely that switching to Vista or 7 would do anything but slow you down. Unless, of course, the games you want to play have 64-bit clients that run faster under a 64 bit OS...

[detourne_me]

Well, my upgrades are complete.
I was running 32-bit Korean Vista - and I hadn't really used Vista before, do I was really limited in what I wanted to do (limited knowledge of Korean + limited knowledge of Vista)  and I hadn't realized, but 32-bit OS cap the RAM at 3.2 gigs, So I was pretty much wasting a lot of memory.
The switch to 64bit Windows 7 has gone pretty smoothly, but I lost save files on some of my games. (it's ok i guess, I'll just have to play them through again)
I really love the new OS now, and it was super easy to get the Korean language pack working (much simpler than the global IME's in XP)

Also, the new graphics card is amazing. And I'm happy that the games I'm playing aren't even pushing the card.
I can play Champions Online now at max settings and it runs 100% smoother than when i was playing on play-doh graphics with the old card.

In short, I'm a happy man right now.

[Tomato]

If you're happy with Vista, you should look into 7. It's vista cleaned out and made shiney. I use about half a gb less on average on 7 then I did on vista