Should I buy a new PC?

[sam_smith]

I've got £1000-£1500 to spend on a PC (probably a Core 2 Duo one) but i'm not sure if I should buy it now or wait, what with Vista, Direct X 10 and HD discs just around the corner. What do you guys think?
Also, should I decide to buy a PC, where should I buy it from? I'm tempted to go with Mesh, seeing as i've used them before and been happy with the service, but i'm open to suggestions.

Thanks for your help,

Sam

[Games Guru]

If you can, wait until direct x 10 comes out along with quad core.

I couldn't wait :grin:

[Games Guru]

mesh look fantastic. Great computers at a great price.

Don't use aria though, look at my thread for why! :eek:

[Dazzyman]

Mesh dont seem much good either at the moment though! I nearly bought one from them about 6weeks ago and in the end gave up. I bought my last one from them after building my own for years before that and even got 3 other friends to buy from them (last was 1yr ago). Mine is coming up to around 4yrs old now so I sent them enquiries on their forum (hexus I think it is there on same with scans support) and after being promised a response of the actual specs and even a voucher for loyaltyI got ignored. Then I asked again and I sent another email to sales to get no response (the gentleman on their kept trying for us as well to get them to respond to me). This was for a spend of around £2700 (as I wanted to put tow GX2 cards in it put wanted to check if the PSU would be up to it). In the end I gave up and decided to back off wait until the nividia g80 card comes out and spend around £1300 on building my own and the rest on a new Sharp 46" 1080p telly.

From what I read about Mesh on that forum though theres a lot of faults now with customers (their even using higher speed memory as a compensation for the boards there using). 4yrs ago there support was brilliant as was sales but it left a lot to be desired recently!

[sam_smith]

Thanks for the replies guys, I'll probably buy my PC now. Sorry to ask more questions but which CPU do you think I should go with? It's between the E6600 or the E6700, is it worth the extra for the E6700? Also, which graphics card do you think i should go for? I was thinking of a 512mb 7900 GTX but i've heard that they're not very reliable.

Thanks for any help you can give me,
Sam

[Games Guru]

I have a radeon x1900xt 512mb and it is the mutts nuts. Allegedly the 7900 series of gpus are unreliable, but i don't have one, so can't speak from experience.

If you get a good cpu fan, the e6600 will do 3.2ghz at stock voltage as long as you have 800mhz + ram, and overclocking it is supposed to be a breeze, just up the fsb from the bios. Absolutely no probs.

The e6700 isn't worth it for the money and the x6800 is ridiculously priced, but insanely powerful.

[grimoor]

Have you not thought about building your own machine? You get a better specced machine for your money. And you may be able to use a few parts from your old machine (Monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc) if you not going to use it.

[Mooky55]

Hey,

my take on it all is as follows:

Reasons for not waiting for Quad Core:
No games are really multithreaded - and its not likely that any are going to be soon. I think you are definitely safe buying a dual core now.

I would get the E6700 its worth it. But then it depends on how much you want to spend on which components.

Regarding GPUS - the 7950GX2 are certainly the fastest "single" card at the moment though the new x1950xt (Not 1900) which uses GDDR4 ram is probably better when used in a cross fire configuration (again it depends on what cost you are going for on which components - its probably good to have crossfire or SLI on 22Inch plus monitors at max resolution).

I think the 7950gx2 is good value for what you are getting and blindingly fast.

Also I agree with the previous post - building your own is the way to go if you want amazingly fast without the huge cost.

[Dazzyman]

GTX2 is having problems. Currently its better to SLI two standard GTX cards than use a quad because of the drivers and will soon be outdated anyway. Theres also problems with the quad nvidias with compatibility

New NV80 is due out on November 11th so wait (nvidias direct x 10 card). Same with new motherboards which include 3 pci-e slots.

Quad cores are due soon but the price will be around £700 as its taking the place of the current extreme model (and also theres new chips due out at 1333 bus). Quad cores are backward compatible by all acounts so your better off buying one for about £200-£300 and then at least you can do the same in 1yr when prices stabalise. Quad core and duo need to be programmed to get the most out of them so you get a throttling speed with CPU's. You will get more speed increase from a faster graphics card so your better off putting the money to that instead (I was going to spend silly money on the extreme cpu but now only going to get the cheapest 4mb E6600 2.6ghz as the fps diffence in games is small between them which is what counts for me but you do want the 4mb versions at the very least).

[Mooky55]

I agree with the QUAD SLI being problematic, just a single GX2 is faster than a x1950xtx so its worth getting a higher clocked single GX2 and you can realistically go quad SLI if an when games demand it.

Re waiting for the 8800 series and DirectX10 - Again here I see no advantage going for DirectX10 until late next year since few if any games are coming out on DirectX10 or Smarshader 4.0.

The next big games out (for me) are Battlefield 2142, Unreal Tournament 2007 and Crysis none of which are confirmed to support either. UT will support it with a patch:

The only reason to wait for the 8800 is because the 7950gx2 will be cheaper and you dont have to pay as much to get a great card.

Personally I will look to go toward the DirectX10 and SS4.0 cards toward the middle end of next year.

Get a great Mobo, great RAM and a CPU that will last for a while. The rest?

Probably better to wait....