New PC - rough idea of spec for reasonable gaming performance?

[valve90210]

Hi All

I'm helping my girlfriends parents buy a new computer this evening, sadly they are going to the purple people, despite my advice to buy online, because they don't want the hassle of having to wait for delivery etc etc.

For the most part they use the pc for basic stuff like facebook, ebay and a bit of online shopping and some browsing.

However, my girlfriends dad like his games and would like to be able to play games on the pc (as well as his xbox which is in a different room from the pc).

At this stage I don't know what sort of budget he is thinking of which I know makes things very hard when it comes to looking at speccing anything but can anyone give me a rough idea of what sort of spec would play modern/new games at a reasonable resolution (not sure what size monitor he is looking at the moment) and reasonable performance.

If it's any help he likes rpg games like Fallout 3 etc.

I know it's hard but if anyone can give me an idea of what sort of processor I should be looking at (i5, i7 or anything AMD?) what sort of generation of graphics card etc that would be great. I don't think he'll be wanting a super top spec machine and he certainly won't be overclocking.

Thanks in advance

 

[Redmint]

Phenom II chip or i3/i5 would be good. Graphics wise GTX 460 or 5770 or higher really, assuming he doesn't have a massively high resolution screen.

 

[Luke_Bowman]

This is a good value Quad core and should suit any of his gaming needs. Especially that its on offer this week. Great value with AMD

 

[valve90210]

Phenom II chip or i3/i5 would be good. Graphics wise GTX 460 or 5770 or higher really, assuming he doesn't have a massively high resolution screen.

Thanks, l that gives me a reasonable Idea what to look for, I'm so out of touch with new hardware I had no idea what graphics cards etc are worth looking at, this gives me a starting point!