Should I buy this pc (spec inc)

MercilessKiller

someone said i should have bought the GTX instead of GTS even tho its double the price... ah well never mind lol!

Psychofly

lol.. yeah but the GTX is a little overkill just now. It's VERY expensive.

MercilessKiller

Just a bit. Nothing stopping me getting it in the future and wacking it in thats the great thing about the spec you've given me tbh..

MercilessKiller

lol missed the edit about the case bundle so ordered them seperately for £4 extraa.. so i emailed them and said is there anyway you can cahnge it without me cancelling and doing it all again and they did sorted!

Psychofly

Nice one... scan are a good company. I like dealing with them. I've PM'd you

MercilessKiller

Ok i'll add you this evening Might be playing a bit tonight too!

Atm though I get a pretty low fps and a bit of gfx choke.. well, it's choke which can be connection or graphics related, and I'm putting money on it being graphics related as a 4meg connection with 400kbps average upload speed should be fine

Psychofly

Make sure your rates are sorted out too. Can cause problems.
What PC spec you running just now ?

If it helps my rates are set to :

cl_cmdrate 100
cl_updaterate 100
rate 25000

donnajunkie

regarding nevidia geforce graphics i have noticed alot of mentions here saying that you should get nothing less than the 8800. is that really necessary because when i have looked at the odd game recently the minimum requirements have been less than that. also alot of games say they require something called direct x and dont mention nevidia geforce, so how would i know if it would work for me if i had nevidia and not direct x?

Psychofly

Graphics is a confusing world. The minimum specs on a game tend to be waaaay lower than is actually sensible for the game. Game companies do this becuase it means they effectively increase the section of the market who can buy the games. Just because it will run doesn't mean it will be enjoyable to play.

An 8600 WILL do most users. It's not a bad card but value for money-wise the 8800 wins hands down. Likewise for those on more of a budget and who play less technically demanding games the ATi x1950xt is an absolutely outstanding bargain these days. It's a fantastic card for the money and I would recommend it over the 8600 any day. The only advantage the 8600 has over the x1950xt is that it's a DirectX 10 capable card.

Which brings me on nicely to your next question. DirectX.

ANY graphics card bought over the past 5 years (if not more) is DirectX compatible. DirectX is basically a programming standard that allows games programmers to talk to the graphics card in the PC easily (and actually the soundcard). The main problem with programming PC games is that there are loads of different configurations of machine out there with different graphics and sound and memory and processor and so on. DirectX is like a common language that lets the programmer write one piece of code that will work on any of these DirectX compatible cards.

DirectX 9 is the most common just now and ANY Windows XP (and most Windows 98 users) will have DirectX 9.0 installed as standard with the operating system. If you run Windows Updates on a regular basis this will keep DirectX up to date.

DirectX 10 is the newest version of the software. It is ONLY available if you have Windows Vista AND a DirectX 10 compatible graphics card. At present the only ones with DX10 are the Nvidia 8000 series and the ATi 2000 series.

It's important to note that (in my opinion) anything below the Nvidia 8600 (ATi I'm unsure as I've never used any of them) is false economy and not much cop for gaming. Anyone with any interest in playing modern games at a decent visual quality with acceptable frame rate is wasting there time cheap graphics card.

My personal preference in reverse order from most powerful down is :

8800GTX 768MB
8800GTS 640MB
8800GTS 320MB
X1950XT

The last card you can get for little over £100 and provides excellent performance. Anything below that I would only recommend for non-gamers or people who only play games older than a year or 2.

Hope that helps... any questions or clarification you want post back.

Psychofly

EDIT :

For true DirectX 10 compatible gaming (cutting edge games like the new Crysis) don't even consider the 8600. It's DirectX 10 COMPATIBLE.. doesn't mean it's playable. Frame rates are very poor in DX10 games.
In truth the 8800 320MB and 640MB varieties will cope but not amazingly well. The best option if DX10 gaming is a must for someone is the 8800GTX 768MB.. and preferably in SLi. The problem is the DX10 cards were released before the DX10 games were meaning that they had no real testing ground to see how good they were. Now that DX10 is a reality they've discovered the cards are barely able to keep up with the games.