Gaming Computer recomendations

[Midna]

Looking to buy myself a new computer. Problem is, my budget's a little low at the moment and I want advice on the best desktop I could get for 700 dollars (Canadian with 13% tax). Been looking at This and this but I don't really know the difference performance wise between quad core and dual core. Also, is Acer a good brand?

Any advice would be welcome.

 

[Scorpei]

Currently quad core is still relativly less powered for gaming (AFAIK). This because games are written with not all that many threads. Therefor the speed of the cores you have becomes more important (ie 2 faster cores can perform more then 4 slower cores).

Think of it of having 2 factories to produce for example bottles of orange juice. Say you get an order for 1 orange juice bottle (crappy order I know

). That means you have no use of the second factory because you only have on thread (only one bottle to make) (unless one factory of course can make the bottle while the other can make the juice, aka you have 2 threads). Now if you get an order for say 4 bottles, that is something you can handle quicker as you can now use both factories (in theory you can be done 2x fast). If you had 4 factories you could do that order in 4x the speed as when having one factory. The problem however remains, which order are you getting.

At which point in time we are, I'm not sure, but I do know that 2 core chips are cheaper and clock better / higher. As for your budget/brand question: Why not build your system yourself? Second how long are you planning on working on the system (for gaming or typewriting and such). Personally would go with the quadcore Intel proc (but that is partly because I am unsure how the AMD will perform, I have the feeling it is quite old...).

Acer isn;t too bad though (not to fond of them myself but I know several of my friends who have Acers and are fond of em)

BTW if you are going to buy these for gaming, forget it

:
Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 7100 / ATI Radeon 2100

 

[Midna]

Currently quad core is still relativly less powered for gaming (AFAIK). This because games are written with not all that many threads. Therefor the speed of the cores you have becomes more important (ie 2 faster cores can perform more then 4 slower cores).

Think of it of having 2 factories to produce for example bottles of orange juice. Say you get an order for 1 orange juice bottle (crappy order I know

). That means you have no use of the second factory because you only have on thread (only one bottle to make) (unless one factory of course can make the bottle while the other can make the juice, aka you have 2 threads). Now if you get an order for say 4 bottles, that is something you can handle quicker as you can now use both factories (in theory you can be done 2x fast). If you had 4 factories you could do that order in 4x the speed as when having one factory. The problem however remains, which order are you getting.

At which point in time we are, I'm not sure, but I do know that 2 core chips are cheaper and clock better / higher. As for your budget/brand question: Why not build your system yourself? Second how long are you planning on working on the system (for gaming or typewriting and such). Personally would go with the quadcore Intel proc (but that is partly because I am unsure how the AMD will perform, I have the feeling it is quite old...).

Acer isn;t too bad though (not to fond of them myself but I know several of my friends who have Acers and are fond of em)

BTW if you are going to buy these for gaming, forget it

:
Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 7100 / ATI Radeon 2100

Thanks for the answer.

What do you mean about the graphics cards?

 

[Raki]

it's an integrated graphics card (built into the northbridge), whic isn't made for gaming - just office work
they doesn't feature own graphics ram, which is normally GDDR3 up to GDDR5, so they can just share it with the PCs main RAM , which is DDR2 + the graphic processor is lame as hell because of it's small size.

maybe those PCs feature a PCI-E Slot, so you could at least buy a real graphics cart and pop it in, if you aren't low on money. But I woud recommend to build up a PC yourself (or ask a friend for advice). It would be cheaper than prebuild systems.

 

[Midna]

it's an integrated graphics card (built into the northbridge), whic isn't made for gaming - just office work
they doesn't feature own graphics ram, which is normally GDDR3 up to GDDR5, so they can just share it with the PCs main RAM , which is DDR2 + the graphic processor is lame as hell because of it's small size.

maybe those PCs feature a PCI-E Slot, so you could at least buy a real graphics cart and pop it in, if you aren't low on money. But I woud recommend to build up a PC yourself (or ask a friend for advice). It would be cheaper than prebuild systems.

I've never built a PC before and don't know how I would go about it. Sounds difficult to me.

 

[Isaiah]

not really if you have all the parts motherboard, processor, heatsink, fan, graphics card, sound card, 4gb of ram (2x2gb), hard drive, optical drive and a power source but a case usually comes with a power source. Just find a guide on youtube or find one on google and read it. PLUS YOU MUST GROUND YOURSELF TO REMOVE ANY STATIC ELECTRICITY ON YOU because static electricity will fuck up the hardware that got shocked. so do fuck around rubbing a balloon on your head.

 

[Scorpei]

but a case usually comes with a power source

Which tend to suck

. Anyway just get someone who has done it before to help you out (Especially with socket 775 installs).

 

[UltraMagnus]

It would probably be best to build your own PC, if you are determined to go with a desktop.

its quite easy, I built my first one when i was like 13. at least it was easy 4-5 years ago..., mainly a laptop user now so don't have a lot of experience of modern desktop hardware.

 

[MicShadow]

+1 for the custom build option. Get a friend who is experienced to build it for you. Make sure to thank him/her

It is cheaper, and theres better potiential for upgrades and such