Expert: Bobbert - 8/29/2011

Question
I curios if this will make a good gaming computer or not and if so how good and what i should expect out of it like graphics wise and how fast it is wise. its going to be mainly gaming though. below are the stats of the computer. thank you-Jon

Hp pavilion a1720 desktop pc
Intel core 2 Duo E6300 1.86 GHz Socket 775
Chipset 945G
Asus motherboard P5LP-LE
4 GB ram
320 GB sata hard drive, 3.0 gb a sec, 7200rpm
16X DVD(+/-)R/RW RAM (+/-)R DL LightScribe drive
Windows 7 64 bit installed
Muti SD card readers on front
8800gts graphics card

Answer
That system is rather dated - at least a couple of years. Depending on the games you'd like to play, it shouldn't have a problem though. If you're looking at older titles (like The Elder Scrolls 4), or titles based on older code bases (like Fallout: New Vegas or many shooters), it should have no problems. If you're looking at "avant garde" titles (like Crysis 2, Metro 2033, etc) it may require the reduction of image quality settings and/or DirectX options (it will not support DirectX 11, and DirectX 10 performance may be severely limited) in order to maintain a consistent frame-rate. For other tasks, such as office work, it should have no trouble.

-bob