Looking for a new computer

[Park Kraken]

I'm pretty sure I'm going to order the parts off of NewEgg and assemble it myself, but I do have some questions about what I should be going after. I do have a budget, and I plan to recycle my hard drive and sound card from my old machine into the new one.

What I will be getting new is the motherboard, processor, RAM, Video card, power supply, and case.

The processor is the thing I have the most questions about. I'm going to be going for a gaming rig, and how much does clock speed matter in newer quad and dual core processors as opposed to the older single core processors? Will say a 1 GHz Quad core processor outperform a 3.0 GHz single core processor when it comes to a single application like a computer game?

As far as RAM goes, I'm eyeing a good deal that provides 2 GB of Corsair RAM with a Cas Latency rating of 4, which I'm told is good as far as computer gaming goes, that you want a lower Cas Latency rating.

Video card, I was looking at NVIDIA GeForce 8600-8800 series cards, but I've also come across quite a few complaints about those cards not working well with some newer RTS games, which is what I mainly play. I was looking at ATI Radeon x1600 cards as well, and those seem to better at handling RTS games. Either way I'm looking for something with at least 512MB memory on it.

Motherboard, well it depends on what processor I get and what video card/RAM etc I'm getting. Depending on what processor/video card I'm getting, but the way things are looking now, I'll probably go for an 850 watt power supply, probably one that comes with a case deal.

So...

Any advice?

[Khendon Sevon]

Will say a 1 GHz Quad core processor outperform a 3.0 GHz single core processor when it comes to a single application like a computer game?

There's more going on in a single application's cycle than a single process/thread.

What's that mean? Multiple cores won't be hurting your performance.


...I'll probably go for an 850 watt power supply, probably one that comes with a case deal.

*blink*

850 watt? Why?

Why don't you give us a $$ range?

[Yog]

Graphic card
Go for a 8800GT 512MB. Excellent performance for the buck. If I were to build a gaming computer now, I would go for this card in almost any scenario, unless I am using dollar bills as toilet paper. Check out the benchmarks (http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html). To get higher performance, you would pretty much have to go for a GTX or an Ultra which are much more expensive. The 9800GT comes out in april and DX 10.1, but should perform worse than the 8800GT.


CPU
Many options here. I would go for an Intel quad processor though. Q6600 is pretty good value, and available right now, at about $240 (you will need a heatsink though, because the factory stock one is crap, and try make sure it has a good stepping.

The Q9xxx series is coming out shortly (the 45nm 'Yorkfield' series) so it would be prudent to watch the prices on those as they emerge in the next month or two (NOT to be confused by the QX9xxx chips, those are the much more expensive Extremes series). The Q9450 should be a sweet spot. Estimated prices: Q9300-$266, 2.5Ghz, 6MB L2 cache, Q9450-$316, 2.66Ghz, 12MB L2 cache. Those chips should be easy to overclock beyond 3GHz and not break a sweat.

As for GHz.. instructions per second is just as important as clock speed. That's why AMD before the Core 2 Duos did as well running at like 2.0ghz as a 3.0ghz intel chip. This has to do with the architecture of the processors. The Core 2 Duo is an incredibly efficient processor. A 2GHz dual core C2D is going to perform better than a single core hypertheaded 3.4GHz Pentium 4 in pretty much everything.

A 2.4 GHz Quadcore is 2.4ghz times x4 which can push out more data than a single chip clocked at 3.6ghz should things be written for it. Something written to only use one core will do worse for the quad than the single 3.6ghz but the quad will be able to alt tab and do other things without a difference in speed.

Basically, with multi core, you could play a game, and have other applications running in the background without a decrease in performance.

What you really should be looking at instead of GHz is benchmarks:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007.html


RAM
What is more important than CAS is the clock rate of the RAM.

PSU
850W is overkill unless you plan to run a couple GX2s in SLI configuration or something crazy and do some hardcore overclocking. I recommend a high quality PSU like Fortron, Seasonic etc, 500-600W should be more than enough.

[Morgan Evanar]

Yog is pretty much right but if you want a really nice PSU look at any of the Corsair units as well.

The real question: how much do you have to spend?