Best bang-per-buck for low-end gaming PC?

[vanpeebles]

Well I bit the bullet and ordered the dell XPS 720, I had a price list for a home built budget machine that was round 300 to 400 and it didn't touch that at all in spec.

[abigsmurf]

you mean the 710?

[vanpeebles]

No the 720.

1 x , (MD170) Dell Dimension-TW XPS 720/Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX6800 2.93GHz/4096mb Ram/750gb SATA/DVD Drive/DVD-RW Drive/Sound Blaster X-Fi/768mb GeForce 8800GTX

[abigsmurf]

ah, they've taken it off the list

[vanpeebles]

Turned up now so seems a decent shop. All set to put XP on it. Sorry for hijacking the thread!

[capcom_suicide]

No the 720.

1 x , (MD170) Dell Dimension-TW XPS 720/Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX6800 2.93GHz/4096mb Ram/750gb SATA/DVD Drive/DVD-RW Drive/Sound Blaster X-Fi/768mb GeForce 8800GTX

I remember back in 2007 when the 8800GTX ruled the VGA charts!

Are you planning on swapping it out, or keeping it? It still seems to do an OK job on games like crysis:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-charts-q3-2008/Crysis-v1-21,753.html

Have fun with the new rig!

[vanpeebles]

Just leave it in I think. Its a big dude of a card with two psu cables! Pretty cool having an unlocked cpu too, last time I had that was with a Duron 700!

[MattyD]

I've been playing Crysis Warhead with my 8800GT today and although I haven't benchmarked the *Actual* FPS, it's certainly around the level you'd expect from your average 360 shooter and that's with most effects on Gamer (the equivalent of High). The only thing I had to turn down to medium was texture quality (sadly at the loss of parallax mapping) but it looks so damn sweet I've already ordered another 2Gb