OT: Climbing System Requirements and Specs

[Atrocities]

It seems that as technology improves, games improve. What once only required very basic system specs and requirements now requires virtually a new computer with each new game.

Gone are the requirements for a store bought computer, replaced by the need for such high cost video cards and processors as Geforce 7900 SLI's and P5 4.4 ghz CPU's.

Remember the day when a game only needed:
Minimum:
Pentium II 300-600 MHz (depends on video card), 64 MB RAM, Windows 95b/98/2000/ME/NT(SP4), 12 MB video card, DirectX-compatible sound card, 4x CD-ROM drive and 531 hard-disk space.

And this was considered TOP of the line in 2000. I can remember when video cards were only 4 megs and cost $400.00. What a world we live in now when your forced with each new game to upgrade your system to meet the minimum requirments in order to play the game without problems.

I often wonder if I could build my own dual Geforce 7900 GTX SLI system for less than the quoted $3,000.00 prices of such PC builders as Alien, Dell, Gateway, and so on.

What CPU, what mother board, what HD, what memorie, what what what would I have to buy that would work well with a system using dual Geforce 7900 SLI video cards? Would I have to have a monster power supply, oh yes, and what about cooling? God only knows that heat kills a PC faster than 5 year old with an screw driver and an evil disposition.

[Will]

Well, an AMD system board with two PCIx16 slots can be had for 100$, the processor will cost you another 150$-400$, memory will be about 150$ if you go for 2GB, I didn't see any GeForce 7900, but the 7800s will cost you 450$ each. So, taking the lower end prices, you're already at 1300$ without power, case, monitors, hard disks, optical drives, cooling, input devices, sound card, speakers, operating system, etc. Since you got dual video cards, you're going to want dual monitors, so that will be 400$-600$ for LCD, and 200$-400$ for CRT. That bumps the total up to 1700$. Getting a nice sound card and speaker system will run you around 200$, so total is 1900$. The Alienware/Dell and Gateway systems would probably cheap out on HDDs, you're going to want a smaller but really fast drive for OS and swapfile, and a larger drive for programs, data storage, etc. So that will be around 300$, and we're up to 2200$. Case, 100$; Power supply, 100$ for a nice one: 2400$. Optical drives are pretty cheap now, can probably get two for 50$. Gaming keyboard and mouse combos vary, upper-range would be about 75$. Total 2525$. Fans and memory coolers, we'll say about 25$. Windows XP x64 Professional is probably around 200$ retail. So, final price, nice round number of 2750$. Plus tax. Plus shipping. Plus the time to actually assemble everything, install everything, etc...

[Atrocities]

Dell approved me for 1500.00 ROFLMAO - at 29.99% Any one care to check the tempreture in hell for me?

[Saber Cherry]

It's bad that games are advancing in CPU requirements, since CPUs have barely changed in the last 3 years. With a couple of exceptions, games didn't really improve over that time, except graphically... but modern graphics aren't very CPU-dependant - or at least, they don't need to be. Nobody should have to upgrade their CPU to play a game like Doom 3 that is inferior to the ancient Halflife 1 in every way other than graphics (Doom 3 holds the record for "most shades of black in a game"). I can't figure out what the CPU even does in Doom 3 that it didn't do in Halflife (improved Quake 2-engine), since loading areas, loading graphics, and displaying graphics are all CPU-independant DMA or GPU operations. If anything, more hardware acceleration (for geometry and sound) should make it use less CPU time.

[Suicide Junkie]

Quite hot Atrocities.

You'd have to have multiple wives in order keep up with paing arms & legs at 30% interest.

[Renegade 13]

I have a quite satisfactory system that I bought in August for ~$1700 CDN. So about $1450 American. Since then I've sunk another ~$400 into it (upgraded video card, extra Gig RAM, new PSU). So put the total at $1800 American. Ouch. And this isn't a top of the line system, but it is a system that will handle whatever I throw at it...for the time being...then more upgrades :S

[Saber Cherry]

Atrocities, if you want a good, cheap computer, I suggest you go here:
www.newegg.com
...and assemble it yourself. You could easily get a computer for far less than what Dell wants.

Here's a sample shopping cart (and BTW, I'm not suggesting anyone buy these brands! Samsung HDDs are good, AMD CPUs are good, Corsair is good, but the rest are just "average").

I assume you have an optical drive, monitor, speakers, case, operating system, and etc. that you don't really want to waste money on replacing.



Internal Hard Drives
Qty. Product Description Unit Price Savings Total Price

Update
SAMSUNG SpinPoint P Series SP2504C 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
Model #: SP2504C
Item #: N82E16822152025
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$89.99 -$5.00 Instant
$84.99
AMD-compatible Motherboards
Qty. Product Description Unit Price Savings Total Price

Update
ASUS A8N5X Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Model #: A8N5X
Item #: N82E16813131569
** This item is warranted through the product manufacturer only. what's this?
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$80.99 $80.99
Video Cards
Qty. Product Description Unit Price Savings Total Price

Update
SAPPHIRE 100154SR Radeon X1800XT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail
Model #: 100154SR
Item #: N82E16814102008
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$308.00 $308.00
Power Supplies
Qty. Product Description Unit Price Savings Total Price

Update
Thermaltake Silent Purepower W0014RU ATX 480W Power Supply - Retail
Model #: W0014RU
Item #: N82E16817153007
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$59.00 $59.00
Memory - System
Qty. Product Description Unit Price Savings Total Price

Update
CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model VS1GBKIT400 - Retail
Model #: VS1GBKIT400
Item #: N82E16820145440
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$66.00 $66.00
Processors
Qty. Product Description Unit Price Savings Total Price

Update
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 1GHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA4200BVBOX - Retail
Model #: ADA4200BVBOX
Item #: N82E16819103547
** This item is warranted through the product manufacturer only. what's this?
Remove item from Cart Remove Save Save Move To Wish List
$355.00 $355.00
Subtotal: $953.98

[Randallw]

Well I've had the same system for 2-3 years. Upgraded it to play SWG, since then I have played COH, Doom3, and Star Wars battlefront 2. The other day I installed Dungeons and Dragons online (only extra was installing a DVD drive), sure it's not at full settings or high definition graphics but I was pleased to find it was pretty good performance.

[Phoenix-D]

I had the same system for..hmm, 4 years? Until I upgraded recently. It ran pretty much every game I wanted to play until Red Orchestra: Ostfront and Oblivion came out. (even FEAR was playable- on low settings, natch).

I spent $800 on a new system, and lo and behold I can run everything current at high. Except Oblivion, I haven't had a chance to test that yet.

[Fyron]

It's generally a bad idea to spend more than about that $800 on a (custom built) system (assuming you don't do something silly like waste $400 on a new monitor when you already have one from your old PC)... There is no real need to buy the latest and greatest CPUs and video cards when their performance gain over their half-priced breatheren is practically negligible. All of that more expensive will depreciate in value tremendously by the time the $800 machine starts to feel dated. But by that time, you will be able to get away with just updating a part or two to get the performance back up anyways.