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First Gaming Pc....

meathman 007

meathman 007

meathman 007

Associate
Joined
11 Jun 2007
Posts
128
Hi guys, im a gaming pc virgin so to speak so keep the technical references to the minimum. Basically i have no interest in building my own pc and i am quite happy to buy a fully bulit system from Dell - im hoping some of the experts can run their eye over the specs:

Components :

PROCESSOR Premium Chassis - Intel® 2 Quad-Core™ Processor Q6600 (2.40GHz, 1066MHz, 8MB cache) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium - English edit
HARDWARE SUPPORT Base Warranty - 1 Year XPS Premium Hardware Support (incl. Gaming and On-Site Support) edit
MONITOR Monitor Not included edit
MEMORY 3072MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024/2x512] edit
HARD DRIVE 1TB Dual Hard Drive Raid 0 Stripe (2x500GB - 7200rpm) edit
GRAPHICS CARD SINGLE 768MB nVidia® GeForce® 8800 GTX graphics card edit
TV TUNER & MULTIMEDIA ACCELERATORS TV Tuner and AVIO / Accellerator edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 4x Blu-Ray Disc Drive edit
KEYBOARD Dell™ Enhanced USB Multimedia Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY) edit
MOUSE Dell Optical Scroll Premium Mouse edit

Accessories :

SOUND SOFTWARE Sound Blaster® X-Fi Xtreme Gamer PCI Soundcard edit
SPEAKERS Dell™ A525 Speakers with Subwoofer edit
FLOPPY/MEDIA DRIVES 19-in-1 Bluetooth Media Card Reader edit
MODEMS No Modem edit
MICROSOFT SOFTWARE Microsoft® Works 8.0 - English edit
WIRELESS NETWORKING Internal 802.11b/g Wireless PCI Card edit

Services & Software :

ACCIDENTAL DAMAGE SUPPORT No Accidental Damage Support edit
SECURITY SOFTWARE No Security/Anti-Virus Protection - English edit

Also included with your system :

Shipping Documents XPS 420 English Documentation with UK/Irish Power Cord
Gedis Bundle Reference D01X406
Adobe Reader Adobe Elements Studio Software (incl Photoshop, Premiere and Soundbooth)
Order Information XPS Desktop Order - Ireland
Standard Warranty Base Warranty - 1 Year XPS Premium Hardware Support (incl. Gaming and On-Site Support)
Dell System Media Kit XPS 420 Resource DVD

Total € 1,549.13 including vat


I currently have a decent Dell Dimension c521 which is great for everything except gaming. I have a Dell 2407 monitor which is also great.

Few questions:

1. with the above spec, will i be able to play games lile crysis at high settings?

2. ive never used vista - i know there were a lot of complaints about it when it was first released - have microsoft fixed these problems yet?

3. their is a blu ray drive on the system - can someone briefly explain the merits of this....? i presume i can buy blank blu ray discs and burn large amounts of data onto it? - secondly, could i buy/rent blu ray films etc and watch them on my dell 2407, what would the quality be like?

any other advice would be appreciated...
 
You have come to the forums of one commercial operation to ask for advise in purchasing goods from another company. You will be lucky if this isn't locked.
 
As the guys above said, however it IS a good spec, BUT the same can be had for cheaper elsewhere. The one linked that overclockers sell is a good example. Ok no screen/keyboard/mouse etc, but to be honest, with that £500 you can still buy those if you need them and have some good amount left over.
 
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Why not look at the OCUK systems to compare how much bang for your buck you could get. If you feel like, spec out the cost of individual components (of YOUR choice) as well.
 
Have a word with the builders here at ocuk, and they might instal one for you. A mate of mine bougth a £1000 pc from ocuk not that long ago and its impressive for the money and most important the backup you get from ocuk is very good, you get to speak to someone in stoke on trent, not a foreign country. Well worth considering buiying from here imho.
Alternatively, get a few ppl here to spec you a coupla alternatives, buy the components and build it yourself (if you feel confident enough that is) theres a wealth of knowledge here and ppl are only too pleased to help if needed.
 
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-021-OK&groupid=43&catid=967&subcat=

Thats pretty good in comparison to the Dell system you specced. Its about £60 cheaper with vista home premium and 4 gigs of RAM added and unlike the Dell system from here, ocuk will be able to add a blu-ray drive for its cost i'd imagine. The Dell system on ocuk has a 4 year XPS premium warranty though which is pretty good, but i think that will mean ocuk wont be able to add a blu-ray drive themselves.

edit: The dell system you specced does have a lot of extras though, which adds up. It also has a second hard drive. Delivery is also included. A lot to consider.
 
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thanks for all the replies, im living in Ireland so that is the reason i have normally gone with Dell - they are firmly established over here and is handy for support, delivery etc - never really considered buying elsewhere before.

In regard to the pc specced above, the problem is that there is a 500 euro discount that is ending tonight aparantely, whether that happens or not remains to be seen.

Hopefully someone can answer these questions:

1. with the above spec, will i be able to play games lile crysis at high settings?

2. ive never used vista - i know there were a lot of complaints about it when it was first released - have microsoft fixed these problems yet?

3. their is a blu ray drive on the system - can someone briefly explain the merits of this....? i presume i can buy blank blu ray discs and burn large amounts of data onto it? - secondly, could i buy/rent blu ray films etc and watch them on my dell 2407, what would the quality be like

4. I recently bought a new pc and i have installed a lot of stuff on it - is it possible to literally copy everything from my old hardrive onto a new hardrive on the new pc? - i know its easy to copy music/videos etc, however i have licensed programs like anti-virus software, pokertracker etc on my pc - is it possible to literaly move that stuff over to the new pc?

any advice appreciated
 
Just a quick note on the Blu-ray drive as I don't think anyone has answered that.... The Blu-ray drive will likely be Blu-ray rom meaning that it can read Blu-ray discs but not write to them. I suspect it will also be able to write to CD & DVD but you should check this. To be honest Blu-ray writing is not advisable at the moment as the discs are quite expensive, so although the extra storage over DVD is nice; it is a complete false economy. As you are probably aware there are 2 competing high definition optical formats i.e. Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Although it looks like blu-ray may eventually win, at this stage I would advise paying slightly extra and getting a drive that can play both HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs just incase a film you really want is only available on 1 of the formats. I think LG do a a couple of nice combi drives if you look on the main overclockers website (one is a blu-ray writer too!)

HD Blu-ray should look decent on your monitor, I think it is capable of doing 1080p which is a bonus but if not 720p will look just fine... It probably won't look a huge amount better than DVD quality but you will see a noticeable improvement.

As others have said I would forget about the Dell and see if overclockers can make you up a custom rig... Their customer support is great and they provide these lovely forums so are well worthy of your custom IMO.
 
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To answer your other questions

Vista is fine, I doubt you will have any problems. Despite being an XP fan I would certainly recommend Vista for any new machines.

You will be able to copy documents, picture, videos and music from your old computer to your new one very easily. Any installed applications however will have to be installed seperately on your new machine. With regards to Licensed software that will depend on the nature of the license as to whether it can be installed on a new machine... Some licenses will be for 1 machine only, others will mean that you can install it on as many machines as you like as long as it is for personnal use.
 
meathman 007 said:
1. with the above spec, will i be able to play games lile crysis at high settings?
Click to expand...

G'wan the Meath! Yes you will be able to play Crysis at High settings but you will probably get low framerates in certain sections because . . . well that's a whole other discussion More Here. If you drop Shadows and Post-Processing etc. down to Medium, you can play it ok.

meathman 007 said:
2. ive never used vista - i know there were a lot of complaints about it when it was first released - have microsoft fixed these problems yet?
Click to expand...
No. It has DX10 and translucent windows but compared to XP, Vista is about as stable as a neurotic bunny boiler whose boyfirend's just left her and taken all her pills on the same day her cat died.
 
Rezident said:
No. It has DX10 and translucent windows but compared to XP, Vista is about as stable as a neurotic bunny boiler whose boyfirend's just left her and taken all her pills on the same day her cat died.
Click to expand...

Hello Rezident, sorry but that just isn't true. Windows Vista has improved massively since when it was first released. If meathman 007 is looking to buy a new system and a Operating System with it, then quite honestly, their is no reason not to get Windows Vista. :)
 
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Rezident said:
G'wan the Meath! Yes you will be able to play Crysis at High settings but you will probably get low framerates in certain sections because . . . well that's a whole other discussion More Here. If you drop Shadows and Post-Processing etc. down to Medium, you can play it ok.


No. It has DX10 and translucent windows but compared to XP, Vista is about as stable as a neurotic bunny boiler whose boyfirend's just left her and taken all her pills on the same day her cat died.
Click to expand...


You haven't used Vista have you? Please don't post stupid comments like this. Overclockers' forums should be a place where people can get helpful advice, lets not ruin it eh?
 
pre1twa said:
You haven't used Vista have you? Please don't post stupid comments like this. Overclockers' forums should be a place where people can get helpful advice, lets not ruin it eh?
Click to expand...

Agreed he obviously hasent tried Vista. Vista is faster at loading than XP and a lot of people agree.
 
Fire Wizard said:
Hello Rezident, sorry but that just isn't true. Windows Vista has improved massively since when it was first released. If meathman 007 is looking to buy a new system and a Operating System with it, then quitw honestly, their is no reason not to get Windows Vista. :)
Click to expand...

Hi Fire Wizard, I'm running XP and Vista and XP is more stable. Vista crashed AGAIN two days ago and I'm still annoyed about it. I don't see why we needed it over XP ,other than that MS have decided to release a new operating every three years, to make more money.

We're still on Windows 2000 in work (stop laughing) and evn it's more stable than Vista. I only got Vista a few months ago, what was it like when it was first released?
 
Vista is far more stable than the likes of XP, I thought Vista was more stable months ago, one thing I've noticed is I NEVER get "Windows Explorer has stopped working" or whatever like I used to on XP now and then.
 
Rezident said:
Hi Fire Wizard, I'm running XP and Vista and XP is more stable. Vista crashed AGAIN two days ago and I'm still annoyed about it. I don't see why we needed it over XP ,other than that MS have decided to release a new operating every three years, to make more money.

We're still on Windows 2000 in work (stop laughing) and evn it's more stable than Vista. I only got Vista a few months ago, what was it like when it was first released?
Click to expand...
hi

every system is different. maybe one of your hardware doesn't like vista so it's making it unstabe. it doesn't mean vista will be unstable on all system. i run xp,vista32 ,vista64 on my main system and both vista's are very stable.. my girlfriend system doesn't like vista as it crashs a lot because of one hardware in her system so shes running xp...
 
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