[Spicious]

This one. 550 should work if it's a decent brand, but you'll want to check that it has 2 PCI-E connectors. Yes, gigabit lan indicates an ethernet port.

[ssmit132]

Okay, I'll start shopping around tomorrow. Thanks for all your help guys!

[Grizzly]

7. Cheap PSUs (Power Supplies) WILL **** YOU OVER.  It doesn't have to be modular, but make sure it has enough power and MOST IMPORTANTLY MAKE SURE IT IS RELIABLE!  If the power supply fails, it can either be: a. an annoyance - you have to replace it. b. a problem - it shorted out your motherboard and CPU costing you a couple hundred. c. a massive ****ing emergency - it started smoking and burnt part of your case and shorted out most of the parts in your computer, rendering most of your equipment destroyed.  You don't want to take the time to sue the PSU company (chances are you'll lose anyway) - you'll simply lose that $1,000.

He is absolutely not kidding. We (as a household) lost a kinda expensive graphics card, motherboard, and cpu this way.

[ssmit132]

Well, I went around the three computer shops I knew of today.

The first one, Ed's PCs, they went around the sort of parts I wanted and then found a estimate price for me: $1985 (for everything). This is a bit too expensive, but they did offer to let me have a go of building it myself under their supervision, which I thought was nice.

Next, Micro-Ed. They just added a few things to one of their usual offerings and ended up as $1627 just for the tower.

The last one I went to, Quality Computer Services, was one I only recently remembered when my friend was talking about it. The man that (I believe) owned the store didn't use AMD and Raedon stuff, but that was all right, since he recommended that I not build one myself, because of one thing I overlooked: a warranty. When I thought about that, I realised that was a really good point (so did my mum ). The information he gave was really good.

So when I got home I had a look at my latest PC User magazine, and then I found a gem, the TI Computers TI Deluxe 1500.

description:    PC User fastest gaming PC (page 32)

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 CPU
GA EP43UD3L Motherboard
2G DDR II PC6400 800 Mhz
1TB Samsung SATA II HDD 7200rpm
1G Geforce GTX 275 PCI Express
TI Deluxe Case with 550W Power
Logitech Ps II Keyboard and Mouse
22" LG or ASUS LCD Monitor
22 Speed DVD RW Dual Layer
Windows Vista Basic

Total price is $1,499.00

(option: Upgrade to Vista Home Premium Extra $20)

manufacturer:    TI Computers
Warranty Detail:    All system include 2yr limited RTB Warranty, one year warranty on speaker keyboard mouse & video card.

Now I think that this is what I'm looking for, since it has many of the parts you guys recommended, and PC User says that it played Crysis at almost 50 fps at 1,680 by 1,050 resolution, which is good enough for me (since I know that Crysis seems to be the benchmark for DirectX 10 capable systems).

 I know it's still not being built custom or anything, but since it's basically what I was aiming for anyway I think I might as well get this system. What do you think?

[Bob-san]

Samsung disk, as in hard disk? And as I said, I can be flexible with motherboards and cases, so I'll just keep researching/asking the storepeople (as long as they are the helpful type).

I'll think I'll stick with the AMD Processor and the HD 4890, though. I haven't had any luck finding what kind of power the HD 4890 requires yet, but the Phenom II I chose uses 95W, so will a 550W power supply suffice?

Also, any motherboard that says it has 'Gigabit Lan' or something similar means that it has built-in Ethernet, doesn't it?

I'll suggest you look at the price of the HD 4870. You still get a good-performance card and they can cost a lot less, at least in the USA. Next, a 430W Antec /should/ work with a HD 4770 and even up to a HD 4890, but you'd be close to the limit. It should run just fine but it's something to consider.

[Spicious]

Good luck finding a 430W PSU with two PCI-E connectors.

[Bob-san]

Good luck finding a 430W PSU with two PCI-E connectors.

Molex-to-PEG.

[colecampbell666]

And also, you want at least 4GB of RAM these days.

[General Battuta]

And also, you want at least 4GB of RAM these days.

That. Definitely that.

[High Max]

;-)

[colecampbell666]

Keep in mind that the amount is not everything and the speed of the RAM is important too.

Not at all. The difference between different speeds of RAM is barely noticeable.

One of the major things to look out for is the amount of L2 cache on your processor. A slight increase in that is enough to make your system noticeably faster, according to what I read or heard. I can't remember where I got that info from. But it is much faster than any RAM since it is on the processor. I think my L2 cache is 1MB, but since I have 2 cores, it is 2MBs.

Agreed. Processors with more L2 and L3 cache are going to perform better than those with less. Although it isn't multiplied by cores, so you only have 1MB total.

[Ghostavo]

Keep in mind that the amount is not everything and the speed of the RAM is important too.

Not at all. The difference between different speeds of RAM is barely noticeable.

One of the major things to look out for is the amount of L2 cache on your processor. A slight increase in that is enough to make your system noticeably faster, according to what I read or heard. I can't remember where I got that info from. But it is much faster than any RAM since it is on the processor. I think my L2 cache is 1MB, but since I have 2 cores, it is 2MBs.

Agreed. Processors with more L2 and L3 cache are going to perform better than those with less. Although it isn't multiplied by cores, so you only have 1MB total.

Depends if they advertise the total size of the cache or size per core.

The latest Phenom II and Core i7 have L1 and L2 cache specific to each core and L3 shared between cores. Core 2 seem to have L1 specific to each core and a shared L2 (and no L3 cache, but since their L2 cache is monstrous compared with other processors in the same range, it's not much of a problem).

[colecampbell666]

But if he only has 1-2MB, it's an older CPU, so it probably doesn't share those traits.

[Ghostavo]

A top of the line Core i7 has a total 1 MB of L2 Cache (256KB per core). But yeah, you're right.

[colecampbell666]

Yeah, but that i7 has oodles of L3.

[Bob-san]

DDR2 800 v. DDR3 1600 has /some/ differences. There are a few programs that will benefit but overall overclocking is the best way to improve performance.

[colecampbell666]

Yeah, but is it worth 40$ to the average Gamer Joe?

[High Max]

;-)

[colecampbell666]

It's not that it's a bad CPU, it's that it is several ears old and it doesn't have that feature/construction.

EDIT: And on the laser/light CPUs, Sun has been testing them for several years. They can transfer much more than conventional technologies, but they're still in testing. It'll be many years.

[Spicious]

I have an athlon 6000+ processor. Even by today's standards, I would think it is still a pretty good processor. Here are the specs:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-x2-6000.html

It's kinda obsolete now.

It is a 3GHz processor and I think in this case, since it is 2x, that means I have 6GHz, right? That is the whole point of multi-core.

No, you effectively have two processors each running at 3 GHz which could perhaps produce performance like that of one running at 6 GHz in a linearly parallelisable problem.

We can't make the transistors much smaller because they are pretty much the size of molecules and that means it can't be divided any smaller to where it could function like a transistor, and so in order to increase the speed, they have to give it more processors (cores) in one and use more space.

Where did you get that idea? Sizes are still shrinking. The problem was getting them running faster.