Getting a new computer - advice needed!

[Rayea]

Hm...Well, what I allways say to customers is, "If you are happy with <type>, stick with <type>"

Personaly, I found that the listed glitches occuring with ATI (radeon) cards were usualy more than with the Nvidia (in the sims2 read me's)
I have mostly stuck to Nvidia myself, and find that most of those gamer types (the hardcore FPS crowd) tend to get the most their overworked creditcards can pay for *chuckles*

My Sims3 PC is my old World of Warcraft PC, moved downstairs so it is offline. It has a 512 meg Nvidia 7300 in it, and up until I did a DumbThing it ran on high graphics and had little lag.Now, it wont play on my clean installed simsHDD (has sims1 through 3, wil play sims1 happily but just will NOT let me play sims2 at all and now crashes sims3 after installing sims3pack stuff.) And my patched Sims3 that worked fine, has the blue lots of death..i fear i am going to have to uninstall both versions....

However, this is not the Vidcard's fault. it is mine. Human Error strikes again...Well..Sort of...
These days, my boss sells whatever card the customer is willing to pay for, which is usually, as cheap as can possably be bought. Becasue the average customer is too busy on Facebook (use your 360  ) or making copies of movies to need a good card.
Gamers, on the other hand, are very willing to spend, provided they are getting a decent card. We just dont get enough *serious* gamers now...*sigh*

So..My advice is general....Get a 512meg or above card...If possable, get a 1gig memory card, to give you some breathing space for expansions. If you are comfortable with ATI, buy one of their cards.
http://computer-warehouse.biz/product_info.php?cPath=17_79_83&products_id=189
The above is a link to the one my boss sells (i will remove link if this is unacceptable to site)
You can probably get it cheaper from an online store, but it will at least, let you see what the card looks like.
(You did say you are in the UK, Sivany. This one is in pounds not dollars, so should give you a rough estimate as to the price in your area)

[russellcraiger]

Don't buy a duocore processor if you want to play both sims3 and sims2.  I have a good computer with AMD duocore and 4 gigs of ram, fairly good video card, which plays both games well.  However, sims2 only recognizes 1 core instead of both cores so it only runs off that one core.  This makes game slightly slower than I'd hoped for when purchasing a duocore processor.

[RandomInsolence]

A system I built a little over a year ago for about $1100:

Really nice barebones windowed/lighted case with an ASUS SLI motherboard.
AMD Phenom quad 9850 (2.5ghz)
4gb DDR2 1066 (2x2gb)
Nvidia GTX 280
650 watt PSU.
1tb HD (The bottleneck. I'd love a fancy new solid state drive, but those are only for rich people.)

So yeah, I got everything off of Ebay. Still runs like a beast today. So yeah, if I was able to pull that off a year ago, you could probably put together something VERY nice with a grand today. I would definitely suggest going the high end AMD route though, unless you'd rather blow your entire budget out the window on just the CPU.

[Sivany]

Ah perhaps I won't need extra cooling after all since this is England where the thermometer hasn't risen above 5C in weeks, but then again it's probably better to be safe than sorry. Might have a look for that gadget you mentioned, would certainly be interesting to see just how warm things are getting in there when Sims 3 is running.

I'm leaning towards getting a HD4870 myself at the moment. Seems to be in my price range and still considered a decent card.

[witch]

Not sure if the 4870 itself has a 512MB and 1GB RAM version, or whether the model below has the 512MB RAM, but if you can, get 1GB RAM on the card.

I looked at ATI's Crossfire and Nvidia's SLI but didn't see a doubled performance increase for the price of the two cards. I think it's only worth your while if you are playing high end, high framerate games. Even then you're probably better off just buying the best single video card you can afford. YMMV

[SonnetCeles]

Solid state drives are still too new, too expensive, and overrated.  It's something I may buy after the technology has stabilized as the founding principles are solid.  But for something I'd use now, I would much rather use that money on upgraded components more crucial to gaming like a video card.  Or spend more money on a reliable motherboard.

As for video cards, I disagree with Rayea as there are vocal advocates who swear by ATI and feel they are the more preferred and compatible gaming choice.  However, if you know how to work with 3rd party drivers, NVIDIA feels the same to me.

I've never been a fangirl of any particular company anyways.  As long as I can make it work and the reviews are generally favorable I go for it.

1000 Watts is overkill if you're getting a system under 1K.  And Pescado has a point about the OS selection.  I use what works, which in this case is WinXP pro.

Also, if you're a novice don't build your own system.  There are times you will receive a lemon, and when I was troubleshooting my SO's computer the time I spent on that machine would have probably bought me a new one had I been working full time.

The only reason why I would ever recommend a novice build their own system is if the only available OS choice was Vista.  I have not and will not use Windows 7 until it has been fully tested but would choose it over vista if those were my only two selections.

[J. M. Pescado]

1000 Watts is overkill if you're getting a system under 1K.

There is no overkill. There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".

[Avalikia]

In case anyone cares, we finally decided to order a computer from Dell.  We were able to get a pretty good deal on it too, courtesy of the place my dad works at.  Here's some highlights of the specs:

- Windows 7
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 (2.5GHz, 4MB)
- 4GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHZ- 2X2GB DIM M
- 640GB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200RPM
- Nvidia GeForce GTS 240
- 21.5 inch Full HD Widescreen Monitor
- 16X DVD+/-RW Drive

I still don't know what half of that really means, but it comes with all the other stuff (monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.) and I believe it ended up being ~$900 after shipping and whatever.  Thanks for the advice, everyone (whether I took it or not).

[J. M. Pescado]

You bought a Dell, so I'm sure you got gypped somewhere. You'll find out where they cut the corners when you get it, I imagine.