This PC any good?

[Malc]

are these Specs that decent, enough to run B&W2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Half life 2. - That kind of era of games decently?

And also would i be able to upgrade with this sort of PC which is from Dell?

PROCESSORAMD:® Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+

OPERATING SYSTEM: Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Basic - English

MEMORY: 1024MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x512]

HARD DRIVE: 160GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst™ cache

GRAPHICS CARD: 256 MB ATI® Radeon® X1300 PCI Express graphics card

OPTICAL DRIVE: 16x DVD +/- RW Drive

Cheers!

[sj33]

How much are you paying for it?

It's not bad as a general purpose machine, 1GB RAM is a little low for a machine running Vista though, you want 2GB minimum really, and the Radeon X1300 is a low end graphics card... I reckon if your serious about gaming on the machine, those will be the first things you'll end up swapping out.

In general, your better off building one yourself, but if you can't, I'm sure some other people here can point you in the direction of sites that can build you a machine with a bit more gaming grunt.

The likes of PC World, Dell etc seem to define a high end machine as anything using better than onboard video!

[Malc]

around ?330 (thats just for the PC)

When you say serious gaming, well i'm not that serious, i don't want to play crysis or anything brand new, just some older games like Half life 2, black and white 2. And maybe upgrade in the distant future.

[sj33]

I do feel you would be wise paying about £50 more and going for this...

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/pcrange.html?ISP

It kills that Dell PC on all fronts.

[elkatas]

It kills that Dell PC on all fronts.

I agree with Shakey. Computer that he linked is easily worth additional 50 £, and would last much longer than computer that you listed. Plus it would run even Bioshock.

[in5ane]

I'd say take your budget up to £500 and get something really decent. I was speccing a PC for a friend the other day, and that would get you a 512mb ATI gfx card, Intel Quad core, 2gb 800mhz RAM, and a legit copy of Vista Premium- it would wipe the floor with that dell and Novatech put together.

[elkatas]

I'd say take your budget up to ?500 and get something really decent.

Yeah, but 500 ? is 500 ?. Probably little too much for Malc's budget, especially when he isn't going to do that much gaming with his computer.

[mezzanine]

Avoid the X1300 graphics card at all costs. Mine wouldn't even play Giants (late 2000) at an acceptable framerate - paired with a E6600 and 2 gigs. Half Life 2 will run... but probably only with min settings and at a mediocre res.

[in5ane]

Yeah, but 500 ? is 500 ?. Probably little too much for Malc's budget, especially when he isn't going to do that much gaming with his computer.

This is the classic mistake people make with PCs. The more money you put in gets you an increasingly better PC. A ?500 pc isn't twice as good as a ?250 PC, it's probably ten times better. He also mentions upgrades in the future, this is the worst path to go down, as you just spend money that could have gone onto something better to begin with.

Of course if Malc just doesn't want to spend that much, fair dos, but simply dismissing PCs because of price is a false economy. PC hardware has settled down a fair bit, and paying the extra now will mean his PC will last for years longer (not including gaming).

From my experience, I've always got fed up with pre-built PCs in less than two years (a Dell (2000) and a Gateway (1998)). My two home builds have still been kicking ass 3-4 years after being built

[sj33]

You really do have to set yourself a budget with building a PC though, since you can pretty much spend however much you want.

I built mine last October, and gave myself a £500 budget - that ended up being £1600!

Mind you, I built it as a HD media machine, and the fact that HD-DVD's play on it without the thing breaking a sweat makes it worth it

But what I'm saying is that you shouldn't fall into the trap of giving yourself a crazy budget thinking your futureproofing yourself and investing for tomorrow. because tomorrow will always have something newer, faster and better. You cannot futureproof with PC's, you really gotta build for today.
I had rather specific needs which don't necessarily rely on keeping up with tech like gaming arguably does.

[Magnakai]

Malc, I specced you out a seriously decent PC for under £450 not two weeks ago: http://ntsc-uk.domino.org/showthread.php?t=77270

Anything as new as STALKER will simply not run with that graphics card. If you're looking to do any gaming at all, you'd be well advised to save a little more and spend a little more. It'll make the difference between throwing away £350 and investing £450. Like I said, the best value for money is building your own.

[in5ane]

But what I'm saying is that you shouldn't fall into the trap of giving yourself a crazy budget thinking your futureproofing yourself and investing for tomorrow. because tomorrow will always have something newer, faster and better.

This doesn't really hold true anymore. My 'old' PC last year played HD content without breaking a sweat, and that's because it was the very best of the best when it was built. It sounds like yours is good now, so it'll still be doing well in 2-3 years time. (Games are usually the exception, but even these are progressing more 'slowly')

My new PC this year cost just over a grand (not inc. monitors, keyboards, etc) and it can play STALKER at over 100fps at full everything- i'm pretty sure I'm futureproofed for the next 12-18 months, and the PC specced at the top of this thread probably wouldn't even run STALKER today.

At the moment, buying cheap and upgrading often doesn't really suit how the market is. Getting the best PC you can and sticking with it make more financial sense.

[sj33]

I guess if people really are building a machine with the intent of milking it dry for a few years like I am, then your right!

I do think that many people who are into PC gaming build 'for the future', but only end up buying the next new GPU or whatever when it comes out anyway. So you could end up paying £1600, then another good £400 in a few months time when you want GeForce9 or whatever (and so on)!

Guess it depends on the person, of course.

[in5ane]

Thats a good point actually- I waited a long time before buying, to make sure I was getting in at the right time. I could have bought a PC a few months prior for the same price but soon to be superseded tech.

[Malc]

allright my choices are completely crap...

It's just that i could have got that PC much quiker, but i'll have to wait in order to get a decent one.

O well, i'll keep my PC researching in my original thread, sorry