Advice on gaming pc for racing/shooters

[Jim Cole]

Not sure about the rest, but Seagate's R&D money is spend mainly on increasing head density and decreasing it's size to enable more data to be stored per platter. This I got straight from a friend who worked at Seagate in their data head section.

 

[ufunacaoenn]

I happen to stumble across a computer called "Dell Dimension 9200".

After reading the specs it seemed quite intresting but since I am a noob at computers could someone tell me if the PC is good or not worth it.

Link for specs: http://nl.hardware.info/productinfo/1977/dell-dimension-9200#tab:specificaties

 

[Peter Duivelaar]

I'm also not an expert, but those specs are very bad I think. I doubt you will be able to run Race 07 properly on it Georgios.

 

[ufunacaoenn]

I'm also not an expert, but those specs are very bad I think. I doubt you will be able to run Race 07 properly on it Georgios.

Tbh I can barely play any game on my laptop so a gaming PC is important to me but if you say it is bad then I should look into a better PC.

 

[Jim Cole]

If you are going to spend money on a computer, be sure that the system is capable of meeting the needs of what you do with it. If you are going to be using it for games, then look at the recommended specs on the games you play to see if the system will at least meet that. If you choose a system that is under the specs of the recommended, you will not be happy. Make sure that you look at all your games or programs that you plan on using and find the one that has the highest recommended spec to go by.

As for that Dell, I would not waste my money on that one, it is old and out of date by quite a bit. I would recommend at minimum you get a system that has a quad core processor to take care of future needs, and find one with a graphics card that is at least capable of handling hardware shaders as this is become the standard for the gaming industry.

My personal minimum would include a quad core running at least 2.8gig, 4 gigs of ram, an nVidia 250 or ATI HD 5XXX and a 600 watt power supply. Yours might not be quite as high as this, but getting close or over this would ensure that your system would be capable of playing the games you wish to play and have them look nice too.

 

[ufunacaoenn]

If you are going to spend money on a computer, be sure that the system is capable of meeting the needs of what you do with it. If you are going to be using it for games, then look at the recommended specs on the games you play to see if the system will at least meet that. If you choose a system that is under the specs of the recommended, you will not be happy. Make sure that you look at all your games or programs that you plan on using and find the one that has the highest recommended spec to go by.

As for that Dell, I would not waste my money on that one, it is old and out of date by quite a bit. I would recommend at minimum you get a system that has a quad core processor to take care of future needs, and find one with a graphics card that is at least capable of handling hardware shaders as this is become the standard for the gaming industry.

My personal minimum would include a quad core running at least 2.8gig, 4 gigs of ram, an nVidia 250 or ATI HD 5XXX and a 600 watt power supply. Yours might not be quite as high as this, but getting close or over this would ensure that your system would be capable of playing the games you wish to play and have them look nice too.

Thank you for the suggestion. I just happen to find this PC thrown out and thought of giving it a check and if Jim Cole says it is a waste of money then it deffinatly is.

 

[Chris Butcher]

Tbh, I don't even think you need a Quad Core. Most current games don't support the use of multiple cores. You can force rFactor to use them all, but I find performance actually drops.

A decent dual core should be fine, especially if you are budget-concious.

Make sure you get a decent motherboard. There is no point having quick RAM, CPU and a decent Graphics Card if you don't have a motherboard that can make full use of it all. Also, remember if you go with 4GB of RAM, make sure you run a 64-bit operating system.

 

[Christopher Aponte]

I happen to stumble across a computer called "Dell Dimension 9200".

After reading the specs it seemed quite intresting but since I am a noob at computers could someone tell me if the PC is good or not worth it.

Link for specs: http://nl.hardware.info/productinfo/1977/dell-dimension-9200#tab:specificaties

This system is not bad...but it is a system of 2007...
It will run race07 and rfactor, but do not expect awesome magic...
If you are planning to buy it...then do not pay more than 400 euro for it, as a new system
Second hand around 250 max....

Actually for 600 euro you can still get a good system, but as jim said, depending on your requirements.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

I really hope PC's are cheaper in other countries than Norway, I just blew off 3'800 USD/2'700 EUR/2'350 GBP on a computer that doesn't even work...

 

[Jim Cole]

I have been noticing something on a lot of posts in many threads that I just have to correct. I keep seeing people say that if you want to install 4gig of ram that you need to use a 64bit Operating system. This is not correct. Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 32 bit are capable of seeing all 4gig of ram if installed in the system, though they will not see more than that. However, no 32bit operating system can address more than a 3gig chunk of that 4 gig for any single application. This is ok though as the operating system will be using up most of the rest of that 1gig that is left.

 

[Chris Butcher]

This is ok though as the operating system will be using up most of the rest of that 1gig that is left.

Win Xp doesn't use anywhere near that, although it is true of Vista and 7

So technically, the 64-bit comment is still correct.

 

[Jim Cole]

The 32bit comment is correct as well. You may end up with a little free memory while doing things, but if you are like me, I use programs running while I am playing racing games as well, so I use pretty much all my ram. Anything that is launched is going to take up ram. There is no getting away from it. If you have Motec, TS, a browser and apps for your hardware running, they are all chewing up ram. This is not to say that the game is going to use all of the 3 gig that the system can allocate to it, but that it is possible that it can.

Applications that would fall into this category of using up to the 3 gig limit in 32 bit OS's are things like paint programs, music editing software and video editing software. For those the more ram you have the better things work. And this still leaves the 1gig for other apps and the OS.

One special little note on this by the way. The 4gig limit for 32bit operating systems looks at the memory on the graphics card as well as the system memory. That being said, if you are using a graphics setup that has 2 gigs of ram on it, then you would only be able to address 2 gigs of system ram total.