Suggestion for a full Gamer computer

[dlthomas23]

Any recommendations of full gamer systems that have decent prices?

Like: Alienware and Falcon Northwest......

Dell just doesn't have the appeal.......

[J-Excel]

Aren't Alienware and Falcon a little pricey? You could build a decent system for a lot less. Not waiting for the nextgen nVidia card?

[jerrygarcia]

Originally posted by J-Excel
Aren't Alienware and Falcon a little pricey? You could build a decent system for a lot less. Not waiting for the nextgen nVidia card?

You could build one of those computers for close to half price.

[Blac]

Look for:

AMD Athlon 1700+ or above
Pentium 4 1.8Ghz or above
At least 256MB RAM, 512 if you can go for it. Make sure to go for RDRAM or DDRAM, NOT SDRAM.
Grab a 7200RPM drive. If you can afford it, grab two and stripe a RAID array.
I would recommend at least an ATI 9000 Pro or a GeForce3.
then the usuals past that point. Don't forget at least a 400 watt PSU.

[Emc2]

For a gaming machine, go for 512 MB of RAM. While playing counter-strike on a 32-player server (map was de_aztec), CS was using around 160MB of RAM...combine that with about 128MB of system resources, and you'll push over 256MB really fast.

Not to mention, if you play any real-time strategy games, they'll eat up quite a bit of memory. Age of Mythology, 6-player game, medium difficulty took over 400MB alone.

Battlefield 1942...well, let's not mention this one...64-player game and I had a 20-something ping...I either need a better vid. card, or 1 gig of RAM...didn't check to see how much memory was being used while I played it though.

IF you go with a RAID setup, stay away from onboard RAID motherboards that use the Highpoint chip. It's rather slow, and became increasingly buggy on my Iwill board. You'd do better on regular IDE.

AMD XP 2000+ 's seem to be the best bang for the buck right now. And I'd say a 2.0Ghz Intel if you go the P4 route, with 1066Mhz RDRAM (512 MB). The intel setup's pricey though.

And wait until GeForceFX becomes mainstream. That'll drop the GeForce4 Ti-4600 prices. You'll be glad you did, as you'll have ~$60-$100 extra to put somewhere else.