Advice about a possible upgrade from laptop to desktop.

[GSDog]

About 10 months ago I sold my desktop PC and bought a laptop as a desktop replacment.

The thing is, 10 months later and I am really missing having a desktop PC. Also, my current laptop is really starting to struggle with new games. I can't even play Crysis on low settings as it has a huge resolution of 1920x1200 and a 7900GS which just can't handle Crysis.
I also very rarely take this laptop around the house, or on holiday, etc. It usually just sits on my desk, which I think is a bit of a waste.

So I am thinking about possibly selling this laptop sometime after Christmas and building my own Desktop PC again. I have built them before so I know roughly what to do.

I haven't been looking at hardware recently so I have no idea what is the best CPU, RAM, etc. I reckon I should be able to get at least £500 for this laptop in a month or two and I should be able to put an extra £500 towards the desktop PC bringing the total to £1k max. This has to include a monitor and a keyboard.

The PC needs to be able to cope with games like Crysis, and I will also be using it for photography, browsing, etc, etc. It will also need to be future-proof, so maybe SLi so I can add another GFX card later on if I need to. I want it to last as long as possible.

Any advice on this would be very much appreciated. Also, if some new hardware is about to come out that might be worth waiting for please let me know. I want to buy the hardware at exactly the right time.

 

[Skeeter]

Personally, I think SLi is a waste unless your going to buy 2 top end cards. It seems a single next gen card beats the older 2 (i.e. 2 7800GTX's would get beaten by a single 8800GTX), so unless you want to buy 2 cards now, I wouldnt bother. I think im safe in saying an nVidia 8800GT will be a good card, or the newer GTS and GTX that will be out by the time youu come to building.

For gaming, a TFt monitor kinda shoots you in the foot, but its all you can buy. Ive got a 19" Widescreen at 1440x900 res and thats fine, the next level up (20 and 22") goes up a res to 1680x1050, which will limit you when your card starts to struggle to run at that res in x number of years, voiding the futureproof. Sating that tho, a 22" should be fine.

Im a little behind on CPUs, the Core 2 Duo 21xx series appear to be uber overclockers if thats what your into, if not, ill let a pro fill you in on the best out of the box performer.

Again, mobo im a bit behind on, but i think the highest speced ones at the moment are nVidia 680i chipset ones, or Intel P35 or X38 chipsets.

Then from there on its quite simple, buy as many hard drives as you need, a case that looks nice and works well, and a power supply that isnt Hiper! (Corsairs seem to be popular)

Oh, and for future proffing people are going to say Vista..... Im afraid I refuse to recomend this to anyone at any point untill I see any real reason to use it! DX10 featurs in Crysis are working in XP, so there goes the single most important selling point......

p.s. there is no 'exactly the right time'. The moment you purchase something you can guarantee a newer better thing will be announced to come out soon!

 

[GSDog]

Thank you for that replay Skeet, that is a great help.

I can see what you are saying about SLI. It would probably be better to just buy a single good card, wait until it is outdated and simply replace it. I think I will do that.
I have been reading reviews about the 8800GT and it looks awsome! It seems to perform better than the GTS, but it is cheaper?

I am thinking about possible buying 2 X 19" TFT monitor's, but I am not sure yet. I don't understand enough about using two monitor's, but I think they would come in handy and look nice. I didn't realise TFT's had come down in price so much since I last bought one a few years ago. The response times seems to have improved quite a bit since I last had a TFT.

As for the CPU's, I see the Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 seems very popular. Do AMD64 not make an equivalent? or are they falling behind a bit?
When I had a desktop PC, AMD64 seemed to be better for gaming, but now it looks like Intel seems to be more popular?

I was looking at the Intel P35 mobo's, they look good and the price seems around my budget.

I pretty much know which case, HDD, etc I want. But will a Corsair HX 520W PSU be able to run the CPU above, with an 8800GT, etc?

I have used Vista before which was given as an upgrade with my Laptop from the manufacturer, but I hated it. Games did suffer quite a bit and I found it offered nothing more that I needed. It might have looked a little better, but it was certainly slower than XP at loading, etc. I moved back to XP and I think I am going to stay with XP for a few more months before deciding to give Vista another try.

Thanks agiain for your help.

 

[semi-pro waster]

There seems to be a little bit of debate about exactly how good the 8800GT is but it is certainly a very good card for the price.

It probably wouldn't cost you that much more to get 2x 20" monitors and that would expand your resolution quite significantly, from 2x 1280x1024 or 2x 1440x900 to 2x 1680x1050 but maybe you don't have the desktop space.

AMD don't have quad cores for sale to retail at the moment as far as I am aware, Intel CPUs also tend to be the best overclockers at present. Quite a few people are running E2x00 CPUs with 100% overclocks on.

P35 motherboards are probably the best way to go at the moment, support quad core and reasonably priced plus they have been out for a while so all major niggles should be ironed out.

A Corsair HX 520w is easily sufficient for what you describe.

Vista appears to like a lot of Ram so that might be why you were struggling before.

 

[GSDog]

Thank you SPW. I remember you on here from years ago and it's good to see you still on here helping people out.

 

[Skeeter]

If youve got the money, get 2x20" widescreens, but expect your GFX card updates to be 6months earlier due to having to run at the higher resolutions.

Dual monitors are awsome! If youve got a laptop and a spare monitor lying around plug it in and have a play. Maximise things on sperate screens, watch movies and work, play games and monitor other things... for working they are especially helpfull, 2 fullscreen docs or spreadsheets is much better than one!