I am badly in need of a new pc... Just looking at the Dell dimension 3100 sitting beside me makes me depressed. The smudge tool in PS only has a half second delay on good days, Diablo 2 is limited to low-medium... I'm coming from almost nothing and looking for something that'll last a good 3 years with the ability to upgrade easily.
I'm looking to order the parts by next week (after exams) and my budget is around $1000. $900 something would be preferably so the family doesn't get mad at me spending a good chunk of earnings on one thing, only if the performance difference is small though.
I've decided on an AMD build just because of the price/performance difference. Looking around and reading articles it seems Intel is faster, but AMD is more bang for your buck. Although if a cheaper/equivalent Intel build is available I could take that.
I'd like to play games mostly on it, along with office, Illustrator CS4 and Photoshop CS4, which are usable on my current pc so the new one will have no problem.
Won't be needing a keyboard (got a logitechg15) mouse, monitor or speakers.
Current resolution is 1024 X 768... I swear I had it up to 1280 X 1024 though....
Here's what I've gotten so far, I'm in Ontario Canada also so newegg.ca is where I'll be getting parts from.
Looks sweet and I'm hoping the extra fans will save me buying a cpu cooler, I don't plan on OC'ing much other than to experiment. If I like it then I'll go pick up a cooler from a local store.
Apparently it's reliable and reasonably quiet, can't go wrong for $2.49.
The total for all of that is 832$ CAD, plus the 110$ Tax and 65$ comes to $1007.93. For me price is a fairly big thing, but performance has to be good. I don't need something that'll run crysis at 60fps with AA,details, and everything maxed, while encoding video and doing other intensive activities. As long it runs any new games for the next few years at medium-high its good. Starcraft 2, diablo 3, Supreme Commander 2, and Star wars: The old Republic will probably be what I'll be playing. Along with crysis just to show off to friends XD.
Edit: Forgot OS, thinking of going with windows 7 beta until it comes out, as long as it isn't too hard to install as I have no experience whatsoever with OS installs.
Any suggestions/improvements/comments are all appreciated. Thanks in advance;
Ryan
Message edited by dirkpitt45 on 06-15-2009 at 12:38:56 AM
One thing that you could change is the video card choice. Unless Photoshop's GPU processing enhancement tool only works with NVIDIA cards, it's worth getting this HD 4890 since it's the same price, but quite a bit faster than the GTX260 for gaming.
I would recommend a q8200 with a p43 motherboard for not much more, but since the ability to upgrade is very important, that is essentially a dead end path. AM3 should be fine for future AMD cpus.
One thing that you could change is the video card choice. Unless Photoshop's GPU processing enhancement tool only works with NVIDIA cards, it's worth getting this HD 4890 since it's the same price, but quite a bit faster than the GTX260 for gaming.
I would recommend a q8200 with a p43 motherboard for not much more, but since the ability to upgrade is very important, that is essentially a dead end path. AM3 should be fine for future AMD cpus.