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PC - Top of the line - View Post

Soleron on 10 February 2009
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General advice:

- Always spend the most on the graphics card. Spend a lot more on the graphics card than the CPU as most games are GPU-limited. Since this is the most important part, choose a budget for this and then design your PC around it.

- 4GB of RAM is sufficient for anyone. Don't worry about the speed or brand of the memory unless you're overclocking. DDR2 is much cheaper than DDR3 at the moment, and DDR3 provides little benefit, so DDR3 platforms are not good value even for high-end systems.

- Any motherboard will do. The features and so forth don't really affect performance. Just make sure it supports the CPU you want to buy. You should probably buy a motherboard without integrated graphics but with integrated sound.

- Buy Vista 64-bit for 4GB of RAM, or 32-bit for 3GB or less. There is no compelling reason to buy 64-bit except for the RAM limitation. XP isn't really an option anymore, despite its better performance, because it's eight years old.

- Beyond the CPU and Graphics card, there is nothing worth spending money on. Any spare cash could always be used to improve the CPU.

- If you are going to be doing multimedia encoding or other CPU-intensive work, a quadc-re is appropriate. For gaming alone, it is MUCH better value to get a dual-core - they tend to be both faster and cheaper.

- Multiple-card Crossfire or SLI is not worth it. If you have a huge monitor, then it can be worth it to get two-on-one card. The HD4850X2, HD4870X2 or GTX295 are the options there depending on price point.

- For a high-end gaming PC, you want Radeon HD48xx or Geforce GTX2xx graphics.. For dual-core CPUs, the Athlon X2 7xxx or any Intel Core 2 Duo E5xxx, E7xxx or E8xxx will do. For quad-cores, the AMD Phenom II 9xx or Core 2 Quad Q9xxx are the best choices.

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With that in mind, here are my suggestions, depending on dual or quad choice per above:

AMD Phenom II X4 920 or Intel Core 2 Duo E8400. The Intel will be faster in dual-threaded apps; the Phenom faster in quad-threaded. These are the best options at a reasonable price point; there are diminishing returns above this.

ATI Radeon HD4870 graphics. If you can go higher, my limit for a sane value would be the HD4850 X2.