Reasonable Spec for Gaming?

ColourPurple · 9 Dec 2008 at 20:22

It has been a 5 years since I last built a system (XP2200 with Radeon 9700 Pro) that was capable of playing the current games so it is about time I built a complete replacement system. What I am not sure about is what sort of spec is needed for reasonable performance. Currently I run at 1280x1024 on a 19" Viewsonic VX922 but had been planning on getting a 24" 1900x1200 monitor. Is anything below a GTX260 viable at that sort of resolution and what sort of level of processor is needed to keep up with it? How much difference is there in noise level between grapgics card models?

elpedro · 9 Dec 2008 at 20:30

1920x1200 - Looking at nothing lower than a 4870 1GB or GTX 260-216
In general, NVidia is quieter than ATI, varies with non reference designs though.

CPU wise, go all out for gaming an get a E8400/600 or for some future proofing the Q9550 seems pretty good quad that's value for money. Q6600 still has life in it but it's been cheaper and its only getting older.

I'd stick two SATA drives in RAID 0 for some speed boost, RAM dependant on motherboard.

TBH, DDR3 seems pretty pointless unless you are building an i7 rig and using tripple channel. Dual channel DDR3 is pretty much pointless, better off getting some fast Dominator XMS2 which will do 1.1GHz + nicely and save you a bob.

Thatguy119 · 9 Dec 2008 at 20:33

whats your budget?

ColourPurple · 9 Dec 2008 at 21:44

I had not set a budget yet but was hoping for a reasonably priced system that was still capable and was assessing how viable 1900x1200 would be.

postmanfw · 10 Dec 2008 at 16:50

Some of us game at 1900x1200 with lower spec than that and have no problems

All depends how much you want to spend.