First Gaming Pc....

[meathman 007]

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...

 

[meathman 007]

apologies, feel free to delete the thread if its deemed inapropriate....to be honest ive always viewed overclockers as a forum and had never seen the online shop, anyway i see overclockers have now stocked a similar specked model, except it does not come with the blu ray drive...

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-000-DE

 

[meathman 007]

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

 

[meathman 007]

lol this thread turned into a vista battlethread! - anyway im really undecided about getting a new pc, the main reason is that i like xp and i have a lot of software installed on this pc that i dont want to lose/couldnt be arsed finding and installing on a new pc. So somebody told me about a program called norton ghost, which i could use to literally 'copy and paste' my old pc onto a new pc. Eg would this be possible?

The new pc i am looking at has windows vista installed and it will not allow me to select windows xp. As far as i know the pc has 2 x 500gb hardrives

My current pc has windows xp media center - could I by using a program like norton ghost, install my old pc on one of the 500gb hardrives on the new pc and then use the other 500gb hardrive for windows vista? i.e a dual boot

?