Expert: Bobbert - 11/11/2006

Question
Hello,
I've been tricked in the past into buying shoddy computers which are not ideal for playing PC games(Time computers is, thankfully, long out of business). A recent reading of an article by a well-liked small manufacturer of computers(CUbe247 on Ebay) indicated that larger PC-manufacturers tend to offer a high clocking speed, but very little RAM memory to go with it,in order to cut down on costs and cheat the customer, and that RAM memory was equally important. My old computer is a 2 GHZ/128 RAM/80 GB Hard-drive/either 128 or 256 MB graphics card, and I need to buy a new computer to play the more recent PC games out there. I would like to buy a 4600 GHZ, dual-core/4098 MB  DDRII(RAM?)/300 GB hard-drive/512 MB graphics card from Cube 247 - the standard model has only 2048 MB DDRII/RAM but if DDRII/RAM is more important for gaming than the actual speed of the computer, then I want the best. Would 4098 MB RAM be too much for a 4600 GHZ , dual-core computer? And, for future reference, what is the ideal ratio between all the various components of a PC(re graphics card/speed of computer/RAM etc.) if one wants to buy the best gaming PC out there?
Thanks
Geoff

Answer
Ok, 4600GHZ is impossibly high speeds, and there are no 4.6GHZ dual core processors on the market, so either way that's a farse if someone is saying they have that. Now an Athlon64 x2 4600+ is a different thing, because its model # is 4600, its clock speed is actually closer to 2.5GHZ.

I'd say 4GB of RAM is a bit excessive, WindowsXP won't even address all of it (Windows Vista will, and WindowsXP 64-bit Professional edition will, and afaik Windows Server 2003 (some rendition thereof) will) while 2GB is mostly ideal, you could do 3GB if you wanted to have more RAM.

As far as the whole processor/graphics cards/RAM thing, it really comes down to how much you want to spend, and what performance you want.

This seller isn't lying in saying that a lot of large manufacturers (as far as I know its basically a direct stab a Dell) "oversell" the processor, for example a 3.2GHZ Pentium 4 in a $400 system with 128MB of RAM and a 40GB HD, that isn't an uncommon style of system from Dell, because 3.2GHZ Pentium 4 looks good on paper, and they just avoid the other specs.

I'd personally suggest custom building your own system if you're somewhat weary of OEM manufacturers, as far as individual hardware, you want to buy the best available processor, or at least into its family of processors. For example, the Intel Core 2 Duo is currently the best consumer grade microprocessor on the market (soon to be knocked off the top by its bigger brother the Core 2 Quadro (yes, 4 cores)) but you don't have to buy the Extreme Edition X6800, when the E6300 is probably fine for most conventional applications.

As far as a graphics card, you want to look at both the GPU, and the available memory, for most modern gaming, 128MB of graphics RAM is a minimum, 256MB should be standard, and 512MB+ should be considered enthusiast grade.
However, some low level GPU's are fitted with 512MB of RAM, just to look "better" to uneducated consumers.

As far as buying a graphics card, I'd suggest buying in the upper mid range to the lower high range, currenlty that would be cards like the GeForce 7600GT, GeForce 7900GT, GeForce 7900 GX2 from nVidia, etc, or from ATI, Radeon X1650XT, Radeon X1800XT, Radeon X1900GT, etc

You also want to get a good mainboard, as its the foundation of the system, most manufacturers will skimp on this because it saves money, but it also costs features to the consumer, you shoudl choose the processor you want, and then research mainboards that are compatable with it (for example, the Core 2 Duo uses Socket T (aka LGA 775) so you would want to find a good LGA 775 mainboard which supports the Core 2 Duo (not all of them do, most of the newer ones will however)) then after finding a mainboard, you want to find compatable RAM, likely to be DDR2, but some Athlon64 Socket 939 solutions will still use DDR.

The most overlooked part in computers, one thing that Dell actually doesn't skimp on, is the power supply, I cannot stress enough how important buying a good PSU is, I would suggest that you ONLY buy from known good manufacturers, because if a PSU blows after the system is built around it, it could take the system with it.

Good manufacturers of PSU's include:
Antec
Enermax
PC Power & Cooling (often considered the best, the price reflects this)
OCZ Technology
Fortron Source Power/Sparkle Power (not all are decent, so don't buy the super cheap ones)
and most Thermaltake units are decent (basically don't buy the $25 stuff)

Most people don't think spending $100-$250 on a power supply is justified, but when you consider that this little box's job is to make EVERYTHING else in the system (which is between $500 and $10,000 of hardware) work, by providing it stable electricity, it is rather important.

Some good resources for reading up on various hardware would include websites like www.tomshardware.com or www.beyond3d.com (only graphics cards though, and some of the reading is rather technical and can get rather dry).

I would suggest reading up on whats current, on whats good, as far as hardware manufacturers, some good vendors in general would be Asus, MSI, Abit (although I've heard of varrying issues on some of their mainboard offerings), Gigabyte Technologies, and some manufacturers to avoid would include PC Chips and ECS Technologies (i've seen products from the later actually light fire when powered on).

A few graphics board builders which maintain good reputation include:

nVidia:
eVGA
BFG Tech
Asus
Chaintech
Leadtek Research

ATi:
PowerColor
Sapphire
Asus
Abit
HIS Tech(can run expensive)

I wouldn't suggest buying the S3 Chrome based S27 boards, its a good GPU but it isn't good for gaming, and the Matrox Parhelia is more for display walls, not video games, its also rather dated.

If you have more questions I'd be glad to answer them, and I apologize for the extensive length of the above.

-bob