Help with buying a "gaming" desktop

Trevelyan

Yeah the 4850 im not sure about. To be honest, I do a lot of programming in VS and don't often program with anything that makes my GPU go nuts (unless its using openGL - directX doesnt seem to make it go as crazy). Even so i'd like to give crysis a bash and earn some Xbox Live achievements on Fallout 3 etc.

If it comes to it, it can be an added upgrade in the future (along with more ram and a new mouse/keyboard/monitor)

Wow, not much thermal goo needed, yeah the cooler I went with apparently seemed to have not too bad thermal gunk and sounded ok so that might be fine. Lets just hope I dont forget to touch the case and fry every component in the box. I've seen static bolts (or something blue and glowy) in the dark when I use my polyester duvet cover thing.. its weird as hell.

Thanks!

Lum

I would've sprung for a 4870 personally, and the new 4770 seems to be a better mid-range buy but the 4850 is still a decent card.

What resolution are you going to be running at? I have a 4870 and can run Crysis at 1920x1200, however when I had a GeForce 7900GTX (which is a lot worse than your 4850) and could still run Crysis, but had to set it to 960x600

Fallout 3 shouldn't cause you any problems (It's basically the same engine as Oblivion, but with a bit more details) and will probably last you a lot longer than Crysis anyway. I really liked Crysis but there is so much to do in Fallout 3 that you can get lost in that game for months. I'll await your "called in sick too many times and now I'm getting the sack" thread if you get into that game

RobertoMoir

cooki2222 wrote: »

Alienware were much better before dell took them over imo

They were always overpriced trash, imo. It was just cooler not to say so back before dell took them over.