PC to play STALKER: how much?

[MattyD]

How much RAM should the video card I get have, ideally, bearing in mind the max resolution I'll be using is 1366 x 768?

[NemesiS]

Lol, yeah, the 9.6 is a pretty cheap trick to people who dont really understand components. Like Brim said tho, if you build your own, you will cane any of those systems hands down and for a cheaper price. It really is very easy to build a PC these days even for people who are total technophobes.

I do think the way to go processor wise tho is either the Quad Core or a Core 2 Duo as they can be overclocked very easily to rival the speeds of much better processors. Just don't scimp on a cooler or PSU.

The Phenom is ok but gets slapped against any intel CPU of either the same speed or less in most cases. Go to Toms Hardware for a looksee.

If i were you i wouldnt buy a budget system off ebay. I would make a list of the components that you would ideally want then price them and go from there making adjustments according to your budget. You'll be surprised what you can get for £400.

For your GFX card, the absolute min these days is 512MB, but most cards come with 512-1GB as standard anyway now so its what you can best afford.
Always check memory bandwidth on the card as this dictates how fast your card can process the info sent from your GPU to the RAM and vice versa. Bigger bandwidth = better. You can have all the memory in the world on the card but if its throttled by small data transfer bandwidth, its useless, especially if your outputting a display to a high resolution. Admittedly the resolution your after isnt high but you may as well try and get the best bang for your buck.

[MattyD]

Sweet, thanks for your help

[MattyD]

OK, so after a lot of searching this is what I've come up with for the parts to build my own. I have built PCs before (I even did it briefly as a job) so I figure I should be OK to do it. I decided to stick to < &#163;400 total including accessories and an OS. I think this ought to do the trick and at a nice price too, but am I missing anything?

Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 retail box - &#163;100 inc shipping
Asus P5N-MX motherboard: - &#163;34.10
GeForce 9600 GSO* 768Mb (GPU@600Mhz RAM@1,800Mhz) - &#163;77.45
Sony 16x OEM DVD drive - &#163;11
Memory: 2 x 2Gb - &#163;38
Casetec case with 120 / 80mm fans - &#163;18
500w Casetec PSU - &#163;16
HDD - &#163;0 (already got one)

TOTAL: &#163;295

Sources: Case, PSU, MB and DVD: E-Buyer Everything else: Buy-It-Now on eBay

* - FYI, this card is apparently just a renamed 8800

That leaves me plenty of money to get on OEM copy of Windows, thermal grease, extra 80mm fan for the side of the case etc. Sorry to keep indulging people's good will with my n00b questions but is there anything *glaringly* wrong with this setup?

[Matt]

That graphics card is wrong. Firstly, you don't really need 768mb at your res. 512 is fine. Eventually more vid ram will be useful, but by then your card won't hack it. Even right now, I don't think a 9600 is a good buy when you can get an ATi 4850 for &#163;117 inc. &#163;40 more but well, well worth it for the longevity of your system.

And I'd look at a Q6600 instead of the dual core CPU. It's considered the best bet by many people, clocks great, and will scale up nicely as games get better handling multi cores. Around the same price or less as well.

And upgrade the PSU to something half decent.

All in I reckon you need to spend another &#163;80 (&#163;40 more on the GPU, &#163;40 more on the PSU).

[Hohum]

Erm... more or less what Chain said. Don't buy a noname PSU like that though, you will regret it later on. It's dirt cheap for a reason. See http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php...=Story&reid=71 for good reasons to avoid them.

I'm not sure what that motherboard is like, but it does have limited expansion due to being Micro-ATX form factor... plus it comes with onboard graphics, which you won't be using anyway. Also bear in mind that nearly all new motherboards now only come with one IDE port, so you may want to consider getting a SATA optical drive/hard drive (sharing the same IDE cable can reduce performance).

I tried messing with a store basket to create a configuration, but I couldn't get a setup that would pass as decent for less than ?400... so I haven't bothered showing it.

[Matt]

Good article. People always seem to think a cheap 500w &#163;15 PSU would be the same as a 500w &#163;100 one. I read sometime back that a poor PSU may be the result for 90&#37; BSOD. Plus of course, I'd rather not take any chances with PSUs - I've cheap ones go up in sparks before!

[MattyD]

Thanks for the advice chaps, I'll be getting a better PSU and another motherboard. I hadn't noticed it said mATX on the site

I can't really afford to upgrade the processor and 3D card though as I'm trying to keep the cost down, and I still need to buy an OS and all the ancillaries (cables, KB+M etc etc). Cost is more important than future-proofing for me ATM.

[Kit]

I bought a Mesh pc years ago and the PSU in that was a disgrace - I couldn?t even find the manufacturer on the net.

How much RAM should the video card I get have, ideally, bearing in mind the max resolution I'll be using is 1366 x 768?

I thought you?d be gaming at a lot higher resolution.

Something in the ?400 range:

Motherboard, CPU, Ram bundle.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-038-OK

Case plus PSU - Silentium T2 550W. One of the few cases that comes with a decent PSU.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Miditower-Arctic-Cooling-Silentium-Eco80/dp/B000Y7V7GA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1224428255&sr =8-1

XFX GeForce 8800 GT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-103-XF

Pretty damn rocking PC for ?400.

[MattyD]

You sir are diamond. That bundle is out of stock but I found the board cheap on ebay and Overclockers have the energy-efficient version of the Q6600 on weekly special so quad-core GET!

That case is a bit more than I can afford but I think if I buy an Akasa Zen (&#163;35ish) and that 3D card I'll still have plenty to get a decent PSU.

EDIT:

OK this is what I've bought (prices inc. VAT and shipping):

Q6600 and GeForce 8800 from overclockers.co.uk (-6&#37; with code) - 205.98
Case, DVD, 2Gb Kingstom RAM and Antec 500w PSU from eBuyer - 96.45
Asus P5K mainboard from eBay (2nd hand) - 48.65

TOTAL: &#163;351.08

I might go a touch over my &#163;400 self-imposed limit when I get an OS but that depends on how much an OEM licence will cost me (I have a friend in the biz who can get these). Not paying >&#163;60 for a retail boxed one that's for sure!

Thanks to everyone who's helped me out with advice and suggestions.

[Hohum]

Bear in mind that a OEM version will be tied to the hardware it's activated on, so if you built another PC at a later date then you'd have to buy another copy. This isn't the case with retail versions, although you can still only use it on one machine at a time.

[MattyD]

All the parts for my rig arrived yesterday so I built the machine and got everything working first time

After updating the drivers and getting patches etc I naturally had to install Stalker for test purposes and I'm pleased to say I was getting around 150 FPS on the standard settings I had to turn up all the detail sliders to max, toggle all graphics options on and finally turn grass shadows on to get a frame rate that didn't make me want to puke. It settled in at around 70fps after that

The only concern I have at the moment is that my BIOS is reporting my CPU as running what I consider quite hot - around 55-60 C. That can't be right, surely? The heatsink doesn't feel hot to the touch - certainly nowhere near as hot as the graphics card - and I'm pretty sure it would have crashed and died or even blown up at that temperature, but all is well. Unless anyone knows better I'm inclined to think the sensor is faulty.

[Hohum]

If you're using a quad core chip, then that's about right. If you're sure that you've secured all four pegs on the heatsink properly (bloody tough aren't they? thought I was going to break the motherboard with the force needed), then you should have nothing to worry about.

[Kit]

Try reapplying the thermal paste in two separate blobs.

http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/appinstruct/as5/ins_as5_intel_quad_wcap.pdf

[MattyD]

Well that's reassuring I suppose.

RE: the thermal grease, there were three streaks of it already on the heatsink but I smothered the damn thing with some thermal paste I got from Maplins. Reading that PDF makes it sound like I should have cleaned the existing stuff off first so I'll do that later.