Find me a decent PC!

[Spoo]

I'm pretty much fed up with Microsoft and their extreme desire for money, so I'm going back to PC (Don't say anything PS3 fans (That means you Jbrist). Unfortunately, PC gaming has moved on, and my old Compaq is in it's last days. I'm looking for a pretty good PC on a budget. Right now I'm looking at around $300 - $450. The details are below.

Musts

Have at least 150GB of HDD space
Have at least 2GB or RAM
Be new; no used please

Wants

A good video/sound/graphics card
An okay monitor (this can be used, but I may just find this myself)


I'm also pretty curious about the new OS. I've used windows all my life, but I've heard a lot of crap about vista and I'm not sure at all about Windows 7. If anyone could give me the lowdown on this It'd be much appriciated. I'd also like to know about Mac and Linux, too.

 

[psiclone]

Try www.ibuypower.com . That's where I get my computers from, never had a problem.

Also, there's nothing really wrong with Vista. If all you want to do is just browse the net, then it'll do that.

 

[Spoo]

Yeah, but I'm not just browsing the net; It's a computer for gaming, and doesn't Vista have some compatibility issues?

 

[psiclone]

Not unless you want to play DOS games, and even then, a program called DOSBOX can fix all that.

 

[Jason]

HAHAHA MICROSOFT ARE SHIT 360 IS A PIECE OF SHIT YOU'VE DONE A GOOD THING WOO WELCOME TO THE CLUB...

... But seriously, yeah I'd use the link that Matty linked, one of my mates imported from there, and to be honest, it was pretty cheap, excluding shipping fees, but meh...

 

[moog]

dude there is a wal-mart pc by e-machines that has 6gb ram, 750gb hd and a nividia geforce 9100 gfx card if im not mistaken. I saw it today at the store, and it retails for 400 bucks. Thats an amazing deal for a pc, and it comes with windows 7. You should look into that bro.

 

[Venetia]

a geforce 9100 is terrible :x

when playing games you'd be bottlenecking your ram on a card so far from the stone ages. it'd make way more sense to have less ram and HDD and a better card. if you bought that though and sold the vidcard and bought a new one though you'd end up pretty ok. though you'd probably have to go $100-200 over your budget. idk, it might have a shit mobo or a teensy case/cooling system you'd have to upgrade though, adding even more to your expenses (9100's have itty bitty fans and can really squeeze into tight spaces--making them a favorite for pre-mades boasting tiny compact chassis, which are a hit with the common consumer, a retarded trend).

you gotta be real careful with pre-mades because they gyp you in a whole bunch of ways to boost the shit out of the 3 things anyone ever actually pretends they know about: ram, hard drive space, and operating system. (though the average person will never need that much ram and it'd be smarter to opt for a more balanced system that can handle more tasks).

 

[psiclone]

As far as I know, you can't do anything with 6g of ram on a 32-bit system, you have to have a 64-bit system to use anything above 3.2(possibly 4)g so you're wasting/losing 2.8(possibly 2)g. It's just simply the limitation of a 32-bit system. Unless they figured out a way to make more than 4g usable in 32-bit Windows 7, you're wasting your money. Plus.. that video card is teh gayness. At least get an Nvidia 9800GT.

 

[Venetia]

it doesn't even matter because no game or app that i know of uses more than 4. that extra ram may as well just be paperweights.

i have 3.2gb of ram (O/C'd from 2.8) and i can play crysis at max settings with 4x antialiasing so ram just isn't important to gaming!!! unless you are doing -HEAVY- video editing ram is just the least of your worries.

it's cheap as shit too to add more, not like vid cards--the decent of which will cut $2-600 from your wallet

 

[arev]

Ven, how the hell do you overclock RAM to grow from 2,8 to 3,2 GB? I need to know that!

 

[moog]

yeah i know but my point is that its cheap as hell.

 

[Spoo]

Well I don't even know anymore. I'm almost to the point of getting a PS3...Flipping Uncharted 2 looks so great.

 

[moog]

Well I don't even know anymore. I'm almost to the point of getting a PS3...Flipping Uncharted 2 looks so great.

thats a better decision anyways

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

$450 huh? You're not likely to be able to get something that will play the newer games for $450. I think your best bet is to go check out http://www.newegg.com and build the machine. Core 2 Quad processors are pretty cheap nowadays. Get a previous-gen video card like ATI Radeon HD 4850 or somewhere around there. RAM is really cheap if you are going for DDR2 (If you get Core 2 Quad, you'd need DDR2) you can get 4GB (2 x 2GB) for maybe $50. HDDs are cheap too.

 

[Venetia]

Ven, how the hell do you overclock RAM to grow from 2,8 to 3,2 GB? I need to know that!

my mobo does it! if you get a nVIDIA nForce line of motherboards they make it SUPER EASY to clock your ram from the bios. i had to look up what exact settings i needed on the internet (idr what they are atm). but basically i kept kicking it up little by little, tested it, a little more, tested it, etc. i got real scared about it becoming unstable but it's run for over a year on those settings with no problems.

i tried O/C'ing Corsair sticks a while back but it wasn't as flexible. Traded them in for OCZ. That brand is known to be incredibly O/C flexible. I heard Mushkin was good too but I havent tried them.

my system just hit two years old though so my information is probably very outdated! i cried a little when demonfire said the 4850 was previous-gen; i got that when it first came out and everyone was talking about how it beat the tar out of everything ;o;.

it sucks having expensive hobbies ;o;

 

[Jason]

Lol yeah, Ven, OCZ is a great brand for overclocking, not to mention the RAM sticks themselves look fucking sexy, well... the gold editions anyways, lol

Spoiler: OCZ Gold Edition Pic

 

[moog]

thats some pretty ram.

 

[arev]

Overclocking RAM is pretty common, but it only speeds it up, doesn't give you more of it. Ven, you sure this isn't just remapping the memory for 32-bit systems to use a bit more of it?
I have something like this in my mobo. With option turned off my system only sees 5GB (I have x64), and when I turn it on it uses full 6GB. Or maybe you have some integrated video card with shared memory?

 

[Venetia]

irdk HOW it does it or what the methodology behind it is, i just know the steps towards and the tools for making it happen. and the system's ram was tested as being faster and the comp seemed to run faster so that's all i'm really concerned with :x

 

[rey meustrus]

An explanation of the memory limit, by a computer scientist:

32-bit systems are capable of using more than 2.8gb of RAM (Windows Server has done it since 2003) but at a cost of inefficiency. In order to have more capacity at large, the OS needs to read/write larger chunks at once, meaning if you have 2 bytes of memory, you have to stick it in an 8 byte memory address and (probably) just throw away the other 6 bytes. In system memory, the numbers are larger (divide your total RAM, in bits [for gb, your divisor is 1024 (mb) * 1024 (kb) * 1024 (bytes) * 8 (bits)], by 2^32 or 65536, and you have the size of a single address space). In 64 bit systems this is no longer a problem because instead of having 2^32 (65536) possible memory addresses, you have 2^64 (65536 * 65536) possible addresses.

As for your computer, if you want serious PC gaming your nVidia options are in the GT 210 to GTX 280 range, and your ATI options are at 4650 or higher. I would recommend an ATI 4770, because it is their newest card before their 5000 series. The Core 2 processors are also defunct, replaced with newer technology, so I would recommend getting that new technology (Core i3, i5, or i7) or going with AMD for a desktop system if you're poor.