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**abigsmurf** · 03-07-2010, 10:06

That PC will play it but only just. Not a brilliant graphics card. The graphics card is the most important part of a system for gaming. A rubbish card will bottleneck the whole system.

Check out this system:

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http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/system/Ultra_ATHENA_SE

Custom built systems including Desktop Gaming PCs, Gaming Notebooks, and Workstations. Award winning gaming desktop and laptop with legendary performance.

Change the Graphics card to an ATI 5770, the CPU to the phenom II x550 the power supply to the 600W one and you'll have a base unit with windows 7 for £525.

Can then spend however much you want on a monitor

**elaniel** · 03-07-2010, 11:05

I forgot to add that I'm looking at a dell purely cause of cashback and I have a discount I can apply as well.

Thanks for the recommendation ill look at that one. Its quite close to my budget even before I buy a monitor though as I really want one of the 20 inch ones.

EDIT: I'm looking at the one you linked, do they build it for you?
There's a lot of options there and they're very confusing!

**elaniel** · 03-07-2010, 12:08

So I take it the ATI Radeon? HD 5450 1GB DDR3 is not much better than the bare minimum of 512MB ATI Radeon? HD 2900?

**abigsmurf** · 03-07-2010, 13:31

They'll be built for you at that place. I'll have a look at Dell's system to see if they have any systems around that price with decent graphics cards.

ATI's model naming scheme for the HD range is quite handy

First number = generation (ie how old it is) 5xxx is newest
Second number = product line, bigger number = more powerful
third number = model, generally the difference is the speed and number of stream processors (bigger number = better).

For gaming, don't go for anything lower than an 57XX line if you want to game comfortably for a few years.

I completely lose track of how powerful the various nVidia cards are. Their naming system is designed to confuse than they regularly give old products new names.

Toms Hardware has some good benchmarks, Note how low the FPS goes on the 5550. They don't even test the 5450

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/2010-gaming-graphics-charts-high-quality/Left4Dead-2,2244.html

**elaniel** · 03-07-2010, 14:22

I've just gone through to the end checkout of that one, and it's coming up as £11,000! Something seems to be wrong with the site.

So do all the other specs on the Dell look okay besides the graphics card?

**abigsmurf** · 03-07-2010, 14:58

Unfortunately it's very unlikely you'll be able to upgrade the graphics card in a Dell. It's likely the PSU is the bare minimum you need to run that spec, a better graphics card will draw too much power.

The specs in that dell are otherwise ok although a core i3/i5/i7 system will be more future proofed. The poor graphics card will make it mediocre for gaming though.

**elaniel** · 03-07-2010, 15:11

In all honesty, this will be the first PC game that I've played since FFXI and Rollercoaster Tycoon.

I'm definitely looking more at the cyberpowersystem site, but need to talk to my buddy who's more savvy than me and tell me out of the other specifics what I need and don't

If I can't get what I need reasonably priced, I think I'll have to compromise and go with that Dell and just pray for the best. If it comes to it, I'll only be playing the game for a few months before the PS3 one is released and could probably deal with low spec settings, as you've said it will work at least, but definitely wouldn't be future proof for gaming.

I only really use my laptop at the moment for MSN and music anyway and surfing the web. Just think it would have been nice to get a new gaming PC, but I'll see what I can find out.

I appreciate your help though, I'll definitely keep looking around.

I was bored today and spoke to Dell CS on the live chat, and they linked me to this. http://configure.euro.dell.com/dells...005640&x=0&y=0

It seems to be similar to what I was already looking at, but they were insistent that the graphics card would be perfectly accessible. Although I trust more what I am told here than I am from Dell to be honest.

**abigsmurf** · 03-07-2010, 16:25

With that graphics card it'd be a case of every game on low settings and some struggling even then. You'd also be out of luck on games with poor graphics options (lots of bad console ports suffer from this). There's no garentee that FFXIV will let you turn down the graphics.

Advice if you've someone to talk through customising that build who'll no doubt suggest lots of things (some advice may be better than mine, some may be worse):

Stick to your budget! When building PCs you can always spend a little bit more to make it a little bit better and suddenly your £600 PC turns into a £1000 one.

Also, don't sacrifice your graphics card unless you really have no option to. No other individual component will affect the frame rate as much as that does.

**Hohum** · 03-07-2010, 16:36

The Radeon 5450 just won't cut it. I'm currently using a 4350 as my main graphics card (Nvidia 8800GTS) recently died - both are similar performance as they are aimed at media systems, and I can tell you now that FFXIV will be unplayable on it. Tried the benchmark, and scored around 250 on the 'low' setting... you need at least 1500 to be able to play the game adequately.

Baseline graphics card for adequate performance would be either a 5750 or 5770, anything else will just horribly disappoint you.

**elaniel** · 03-07-2010, 16:42

It's just really annoying that Dell don't seem to sell that card except in the ridiculously expensive machine.

I found a code to use on the site abigsmurf told me about, so I'm going to go through that site and follow his recommendations.

LOL, I keep changing my mind on what I want.

Anything you can add to abigsmurf's recommendations Hohum?

**Number45** · 04-07-2010, 17:49

As a side note, I take it you're building this for FFXIV? Wait until the last possible minute for your build and take advantage of either a: newer hardware available or b: current hardware available with better pricing.

**Hohum** · 04-07-2010, 18:09

Not really anything I can add, no... other than pre-built systems from the big vendors are overpriced to the point that any discount you get becomes mostly meaningless. You can get a PC built with a decent spec from various PC component websites for about ?600 (not including monitor).

**elaniel** · 04-07-2010, 18:35

Good advice Number45. Although, I am impatient, I'll just have to make do for now.

It's just annoying that I have such a low budget, but as it's only one game I'm really gonna use it for (and I may check what all this hype is about regarding Steam) I think I'll stick to that anyway. My friend said that Dell would be fine, but the amount of opposition to his comment, makes me think I'll go for that one in the link with the 5770 card. At least from what I've heard, Dell's aren't upgradable at all.

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