Question about 4850

All video cards come new with warranty that is probably better than Dells. For that budget, you could do WAY better elsewhere, though.

Buying a system from Dell is a really bad idea if you plan to upgrade it yourself at all. If you know the PC will do what you want and you dont want to tinker yourself then they are not to bad but you could definatly get a better deal elsewhere.

Mactronix

Are you buying a Dell gaming system or starting with a Dell Studio system and trying to upgrade it to a gaming system?

I would not advise the later. For starters, the PSU is too small. Make sure you check the size of the PSU and conmpare it against the recommended system wattage for the video cards you might want - not just now but the utlimate upgrade on the system. Find the fastest card now that you think you might want to be running near the end of the life of your system and make sure the PSU you buy now will handle it - or plan to upgrade the PSU down the road as well.

For your stated budget and applications - going with a i7 CPU is probably not the best choice. The cost of the CPU and supporting components will leave you too few resources dedicated to the graphics card. The i7 is a great CPU and will help futureproof your system. If you want to allocate resources to that now while crippling game play with the hopes of upgrading latter - that is a viable option. But I think you might be ahead if you buy a less expensive CPU and could buy a faster graphics card now - you could still buy an even faster one later that is still not constrained by the CPU.

Dell has great prices for entry level machines, but once you start stepping up higher the added costs escalates quickly - either for upgrades or moving up to their gaming system.

Have you viewed these recent threads about relative costs?

Build-Your-Own or Buy a Dell (July 2009 threads)
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/53575-2-challenge-bui...
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/268819-31-home-build-...


I suggest you also look at some other threads in the Dell forum that deal with budget and sizing a system.

if you build your own on that budget you could get a great i7 system with high end graphics like 4890 or 4870 in crossfire.

The 4350 isn't junk at all. What size monitor do you have and what resolution? The resolution is what matters when choosing a GPU.

BUT, as the others have said, don't buy a Dell for a gaming PC. If you're dead set on buying and not building, there are other options for less money than a Dell.

Its seems there are other systems that are a better value..what else could I get that would work? I am in Canada. send links please

well, that does change things a bit. here are a couple from Canadian builders that are better builds for less money

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-RELEASE-INTEL-I7-HOME-OFFICE-EN...

http://cgi.ebay.com/i7-ULTIMATE-GAMING-COMPUTER-6GB-RAM...

You might want to look at the options available at Velocity Micro and Cyberpower. They both have several options and let you customize it as you like - often with qualtiy, brand name components. I have no idea if delivery to Canda is an issue though.

http://www.velocitymicro.com/index.php
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/

Cyberpower does have a Canadian site, but I do not know the link. I was very happy with my purchase for them.

Doing the replacing yourself would be cheaper.

I configured an example model of what you can get from CyperbowerPC for $1281 (with one $40 rebate to further lower price (please particularly note the quality components used in the mobo, PSU, video card, and CPU heatsink.fan):

CASE: CoolerMaster Centurion 590 RC-590 Mid-Tower Case
Extra Case Fan Upgrade: Maximum 120MM Case Cooling Fans for your selected case
POWER SUPPLY Upgrade: Corsair Power Supplies (650 Watts CMPSU-650TX - Quad SLI Ready)
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-920 2.66 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
COOLING FAN : Xigmatek Dark Knight-S1283V Gaming CPU Cooling Fan (Double layer H.D.T. technology for maximum cooling)
MOTHERBOARD: (3-Way SLI Support) GigaByte GA-EX58-UD4P Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Ultra Durable™3 Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 SATA RAID w/ eSATA, Dual GbLAN, USB2.0, IEEE1394a, &7.1Audio
MEMORY: 6GB (2GBx3) PC1333 DDR3 PC3 10666 Triple Channel Memory (Corsair or Major Brand)
FREEBIES: None
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX275 896MB 16X PCIe Video Card (EVGA Powered by NVIDIA)
Free Game: FREE GAME - Street Fighters IV
HARD DRIVE: Single Hard Drive (1TB (1TBx1) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
Optical Drive: Sony 20X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive (BLACK COLOR)
Optical Drive 2: 16X DVD ROM (BLACK COLOR)
SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
NETWORK: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
KEYBOARD: Xtreme Gear (Black Color) Multimedia/Internet USB Keyboard
MOUSE: XtremeGear Optical USB 3 Buttons Gaming Mouse
OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium w/ Service Pack 1 (64-bit Edition)
SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
RUSH SERVICE: NO; READY TO SHIP IN 5~10 BUSINESS DAYS

The EVGA 275 video card is a faster than the 4870. And when you need more power you just slap in another 275 video card and go to SLI. And should you ever need more memory (which I doubt you will as few applications today will use more than 3 GB and the above has 6GB - but should you need more ---) just had more memory in the avialable slots.

I guess it is possible to get an i7 system build with quality components and a good graphics card that fits within you budget. You could even step up to the GTX 285 and still be withing budget if you chose.