Upgrading... Again.

NoLonger

Oi, PC gaming is a pain in the ass. Anyways, I wasn't much of a PC gamer before, but anymore anything short of top-of-the-line is basically useless for new games. In other words, I need to move from my non-upgradable gaming laptop, to a high-powered, ultra-cool, completely upgradable, enormous case, whatever is necessary desktop. DUN Dun dun.

Anyways, I really want to be able to play this game, so when I say anything short of top-of-the-line is too little, I mean it.

So, any of you peeps know about any kickass deals gaming PC wise? Any good suggestions? T'would be appreciated.

Serephel

I think most people here would tell you to build your own computer, as you can make something more powerful for less cash. But I don't know how to do that.

X'o'Lore

I keep wanting to reply to this but I gave up after my attempted reply started turning into some huge computer-buyer guide.

As a computer builder rather than a computer buyer I don't know any specific deals on complete systems. I DO know a good bit about what kind of parts are on the market, and can offer advice and part recommendations. So the question is how much info do you want?

EDIT: Ha! I wonder if novel-sized forum posts count toward nanowrimo?

mario

I definitely say build your own. It honestly isn't a difficult endeavor, it's a fun project, and knowing your computer internals so well goes a long way when you later start looking toward upgrading the guts for future high-performance games. My primary usage of the Mac platform leaves me somewhat ill-equipped to recommend PC hardware specifics, but your slant should be toward expandability as the need dictates. Plenty of RAM slots, multiple hard drive bays in the tower enclosure, a decent array of internal slots... in general I'd suggest leaning toward current connection standards to ensure your computer remains viable as long as possible (SATA over IDE, PCIe over PCI/PCI-X, etc) and to handle higher-bandwidth data transfers inherently necessary for superior graphics performance.

I'm sure other folks can go into more detail than I regarding specific brands to purchase, though I will say NVIDIA is the hot shit for graphics cards.

X'o'Lore

...And I will say that NVIDIA being "the hot shit" is a lie. ATi (or AMD since the buyout a few years ago) currently offers good choices in graphics cards as well depending on your price range and purposes. The recent launch of the Radeon 5000 series actually gives them a leg-up at the moment on the very high end since NVIDIA is running late with their newer graphics architecture which probably won't see much availability until 2010 even if they get it launched this year. That said, you shouldn't need the very high end stuff unless you have something like a 30" LCD monitor.

Drooling Iguana

NVIDIA cards have much better Linux drivers, though.

X'o'Lore

Probably true, but Shattered Horizon isn't a Linux game. What it IS is a "The Way It's Meant to Played" game, so chances are it WILL favor nVidia anyhow in this case, although that's not a guarantee. I'm just saying it's a fallacy to assume nVidia is "the hot shit". Looking at prices and benchmarks and even power consumption, ATi has some very real benefits in some cases at this time.

mario

That's what I get for making assertions, I suppose.

NoLonger

Besides, I've always liked ATi for some arbitrary reason anyways. It's basically no question for me...

Drooling Iguana

XoLore wrote: »

Probably true, but Shattered Horizon isn't a Linux game.

And unfortunately it doesn't have a Wine AppDB entry yet. I actually re-installed Steam to see if there was a demo so I could test it myself (Steam itself runs perfectly in Linux, but there's no guarantee that its games will) but apparently there isn't.

deku12345

There are currently no Nvidia cards that support DX 11. So for the moment, ATi is probably the way to go.