Evaluate gaming pc for me plz

Patricide

Ok im finally getting a new pc after my old pc which at the time was used for gaming(way back in 98,450 mhz man,what a powerhouse it was) has well died.Anyways i was first thinking of building one but then after thinking about it i just figured it was too much hassle for me so i went to dell.ie and i managed to find a dimension 9100 with theese specs for about 1500

Processor: Intel® Pentium® D 830 (3.00GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2MB cache)
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition SP2 - English
Memory: 1024mb PC-3200 Dual Channel DDR2 400MHZ (2x512)
Monitor: Dell E193FP 19" Flat Panel Monitor
Video Card: 256MB: nVidia GeForce 6800 (DVI/VGA/TV-out)
Hard Drive: 160GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst™ cache
CD/DVD Drives: 16x max. DVD+/-RW and 48 x CDRW
Sound Cards: Sound Blaster® Live! 24-bit ADVANCED HD™ Sound Card
Speakers: Dell 5650 5.1 Surround Speaker System

I was wondering if this system would be powerfull enough to run games such as doom 3 and half life 2 on full detail??

Also I was wondering if anyone out there had any experiance with the pentium "D" processer? i was told it was pretty good especially for games and puts the pentium 4 to shame, anyone out there that can compare the two for me.

O yea and one more question, what is the big deal with cooling when building a custom pc, i just wondered that for ages and i said id stick it in.

Giblet

Yep that's a pretty good rig for games. Very expensive though, reconsider building it yourself. Might take some time and extra reading, but the savings would justify it.

Cooling: Well, if you want to overclock your pc, you'd want something a bit better than stock heatsinks, otherwise you don't have to worry too much about it.

Mutant_Fruit

I'll offer to build it for you if you're interested. Any RMA's i can handle aswell (until its built and delivered, then its up to you). It'd work out cheaper and better than dell.

DemonOfTheFall

Dont buy a Dell with Intel for gaming. Bout the most that can be said on it really... AMD own Intel in every single gaming related thing (except 3dmark05 CPU test but thats BS anyway)

davie_b

yep amd processors are the way to go esp for gaming
to help you build 1 here is some good websites

www.prosoft.de
www.kaseking.de

then the overclockers.co.uk
variety of websites should keep you in good sted with the lord!!!!

Mutant_Fruit

One thing i'd beg you not to do... DON'T GET A DELL!

They are a &£$)* to upgrade. Non-standard PSU's, non-standard Mobos and non-standard cases.

If you want to upgrade, you'll probably have to either buy from dell (and pay over the odds) or buy a new case, psu and mobo, and then buy what you need with regards to a new cpu/ram etc.

Sebzy

Apart from not buying a dell
There is one thing you could do

Buy an extra 160GB SATA drive and setup Raid (Striped) wiich should double the speed of your transfers from disk to ram or from disk to disk. It's quite inportant when playing games which have to load large resource files into mem.


Seb

DemonOfTheFall

It won't double the transfer speeds in any situation really. There is an improvement, but not that much. Numerous benchmarks around the net show that it helps but not really worth the hassle of RAID boot floppies and doubling the chance of losing all your files. I have a RAID stripe and im going back to 2 seperate hard drives this weekend. Now I just have to shunt 250 gigs of files around between a few pcs. *Weeps*

Patricide

to be honest i couldnt be arsed building my own for the reasons like i dont have a soldering iron or any of that, i dont know much about setting computers up, im no good with setting up computers basicly as a whole, unless there is a site out there that would assemble it for me then im gonna go for a dell, just out of convienience to myself.most importantly how well would it run half life 2 and doom 3?

Giblet

You don't need a soldering iron!

It's just like lego!

Aupster

Hey man go to marxcomputers.ie its in fairview just got a new pc there yesterday picked out all the juicy parts i wanted ,came to 1150 euro and it is a power house + They put it togather for me wich was sweet cause i dont have a clue , want it plainnly for gamming , well happy with them

Mutant_Fruit

If you don't want to build it yourself, you can still get the seperate parts off komplett.ie, and tell them to assemble it for you. I think they add about €100 to build it, but at least you don't have to worry about RMA'ing dead parts. It'll still work out cheaper than dell, and you are guaranteed upgradability on the PSU and case. You won't have to worry about non-standard mobo's or PSU's or case's.

That means if you want to upgrade in future (even if you're going from an AMD to Intel) you get to keep your PSU and case. Instant saving right there. If you go with socket 939 AMD now, you can also keep your ram and mobo, and you'd only have to upgrade the CPU at a later date (and possibly add more ram).

Of course, you can do all this with a Dell machine, but you have to buy from dell to get parts that'll fit. And that costs over-the-odds.

Patricide

ok might check that out but someone please answer my question of how well will the specs i mentioned play doom 3 and half life 2, o yea and if anyone knows when the hell stalker:oblivion lost is gonna be out?

DemonOfTheFall

Yeah that pc will play HL2 and Doom 3 just fine. Just not the best value for money really. That LCD youve chosen isnt good for gaming. Either get one of the dell ultrasharp screens or one of the good CRTs. The value LCDs suck balls

Vikings

Get the machine from hell from jes.de man! It's good for the price (1,199) and will be easily upgradeable.

Patricide

Can someone give me a link to said machine from hell?,i think ive seen it before though and the specs on the comp from dell are way better,not sure though.

Ive had a thought though is anyone out there willing to go to komplett.ie(komplette cus i cant speak german and to be honest i dont want the hasstle of any .de sites) and find me all the parts for a kickass comp for around the same price,i dont need a moniter like cus i allready got a good one from my old comp i do however need a new mouse (not a keyboard allready got one of those too)O yea i need windows aswell and works and all the basic utilitys.

Im not at all fussed on looks either im just looking for all the components for a monster machine, however it must have surround sound and a good dvd and cd burner. the budget im on is 1500 but itd be nice to get a printer and a scanner too as well as a powerhouse pc.