Been years since ive been on... need comp help

Im building a new computer for the purpose of gaming ONLY... i just have no clue where to start. I used to know everything about computers but now everything has moved passed my understanding lol

Component / Brand/Model / Price

CPU / Core 2 Duo E6300 / $185


Motherboard / ASUS P5N SLI / $103


Memory / OCZ Gold PC-6400 512MB x2 / $88


Graphics / XFX GeForce 7600 GT / $109


Sound card / Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Value / $53


Keyboard / Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 / $15


Mouse / Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical / $14


Hard drives / Seagate 7200.9 160GB / $58


Optical drive / Pioneer DVR-111D / $30


Case / Antec TX-640B with 400W PS / $77

OS / Windows XP Home / $74 (check prices)


Total / / $806


So Thats my 800 dollar computer, a setup i found online. I want a pretty damn god gaming computer, i just really dont need so much power... If i can play SWG or WOW online, without any lag, im happy

Thats just for instance, and no i dont play those games

What should i upgrade or change? I have more money than just 800, but i still would like to keep it as low as possible.

 

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graphing card...get a better one

 

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Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX

 

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Radeon™ X1950 Graphics Technology - GPU Specifications
Features
384 million transistors on 90nm fabrication process
Up to 48 pixel shader processors
8 vertex shader processors
Up to 256-bit 8-channel GDDR4 memory interface
Native PCI Express x16 bus interface
Ring Bus Memory Controller
Up to 512-bit internal ring bus for memory reads
Fully associative texture, color, and Z/stencil cache designs
Hierarchical Z-buffer with Early Z test
Lossless Z Compression (up to 48:1)
Fast Z-Buffer Clear
Optimized for performance at high display resolutions, including widescreen HDTV resolutions
Ultra-Threaded Shader Engine
Support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware
Full speed 128-bit floating point processing for all shader operations
Up to 512 simultaneous pixel threads
Dedicated branch execution units for high performance dynamic branching and flow control
Dedicated texture address units for improved efficiency
3Dc+ texture compression o High quality 4:1 compression for normal maps and two-channel data formats
High quality 2:1 compression for luminance maps and single-channel data formats
Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® 2.0
Advanced Image Quality Features
64-bit floating point HDR rendering supported throughout the pipeline
Includes support for blending and multi-sample anti-aliasing
32-bit integer HDR (10:10:10:2) format supported throughout the pipeline
Includes support for blending and multi-sample anti-aliasing
2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing modes
Multi-sample algorithm with gamma correction, programmable sparse sample patterns, and centroid sampling
New Adaptive Anti-Aliasing feature with Performance and Quality modes
Temporal Anti-Aliasing mode
Lossless Color Compression (up to 6:1) at all resolutions, including widescreen HDTV resolutions
2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes
Up to 128-tap texture filtering
Adaptive algorithm with Performance and Quality options
High resolution texture support (up to 4k x 4k)
Avivo™ Video and Display Platform
High performance programmable video processor
Accelerated MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264 decoding and transcoding
DXVA support
De-blocking and noise reduction filtering
Motion compensation, IDCT, DCT and color space conversion
Vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing
3:2 pulldown (frame rate conversion)
Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
HDR tone mapping acceleration
Maps any input format to 10 bit per channel output
Flexible display support
Dual integrated dual-link DVI transmitters
DVI 1.0 compliant / HDMI interoperable and HDCP ready*
Dual integrated 10 bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
16 bit per channel floating point HDR and 10 bit per channel DVI output
Programmable piecewise linear gamma correction, color correction, and color space conversion (10 bits per color)
Complete, independent color controls and video overlays for each display
High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all outputs
Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays
Xilleon™ TV encoder for high quality analog output
YPrPb component output for direct drive of HDTV displays
Spatial/temporal dithering enables 10-bit color quality on 8-bit and 6-bit displays
Fast, glitch-free mode switching
VGA mode support on all outputs
Drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions and refresh rates
Compatible with ATI TV/Video encoder products, including Theater 550
* Playing HDCP content requires additional HDCP ready components, including but not limited to an HDCP ready monitor, disc drive, multimedia application and computer operating system.

CrossFire™
Multi-GPU technology


Four modes of operation:
Alternate Frame Rendering (maximum performance)
Supertiling (optimal load-balancing)
Scissor (compatibility)
Super AA 8x/10x/12x/14x (maximum image quality)

 

^^ YEah but how much?

 

409.99

http://computers.pricegrabber.com/video-cards/m/36646778/search=Radeon™ X1950

 

Thats half his budget isnt it??

 

He can get it with a 256 or 512 instead for about 200.00.

 

the 8800 GTX(768meg) is only useful on high AA settings at 1600X1200 or more resolutions.

In his budget, I would suggest a 8800 GTS(NVIDIAmidrange - it's actually equal to the high end ATI card)

About $320

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143091

 

Well my only advice is to make sure you get decent speakers and a good sub-woofer. Especially if it's for games, no point having great visuals and a great sound card if you have ordinary speakers.

 

i have not kept up with this stuff either but you may 2 gigs is nice to have and another 160 GIG to run the games from or a smaller than 160gig to install OS because cut scenes and most of the code will run off the other drive as opposed to OS drive. If i was playing games on PC i would want to have a few apps open, even just a web browser wothout crashing or else i would just get a console.

 

get a better graphics card

 

I have a 4 gig SDRAM, with a duel core 2.6 gig AMD 64 FX -53 processor and 512MB Raedon graphic card on an ASUS AV8 MoBO and it SIZZLES!!

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You fry bacon on it too?

 

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Its says opps image not found.

 

no opps now....darn webmasters...

 

man the 7600 GT will play most anything you want. It just wont be as pretty.

 

ahhhhhhhhh here is where the boys start to disagree! LOL
The battle has begun. Who will take the Sci forums Computer Geek award, in making the;
ULITMATE MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE UBER GAMING MACHINE!! (for the least amount of $$)

LOL

 

I'm not a geek. I'm a nerd.