What should I do!?

[BeukStylez03]

Ok, I am going to save some money from my birthday from what I get from the family.  :)  basically, when im home this summer I want to be able to spend my time playing FS on a REAL machine and not this laptop!

So, here's the deal-- i don't know much about computers...

I don't want to spend more than $2,000 dollars on a new computer...maybe I'll go to $2,500 but thats the highest.

can anyone recommend a good system for that rpice?  I would like to get it custom built to my specs because it'll basically be a gaming machine.  if anyone could help, i would totally appreciate it!  Thanks!

[asda_price]

Hi there.

If you look at my sig, you will see that I have a good system. It is an Alienware who completely customize it to your own needs. They make PC's espeically for games. I first thought about getting the Dell Dimension 8300, but the Alienware Area-51 is absolutely wonderful, I'll never look back! However, it cost something like

[Rivers]

With that budget you can make a very nice gaming machine, I saw the prices on a website and here is what you can get.

Asus P4C800-E Deluxe Motherboard
Intel Pentium 4 Prescot 3Ghz Prescot FSB 800Mhz 1 MB L2 Cache
Corsair TWINX1024RE 1GB DDR400
Seagate 160GB HD Serial ATA 7200RPM
ATI Radeon 9800XT 256mb Video Card
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card 7.1
Creative LAbs Inspire T7700 7.1 speakers
LG DVD+-RW
Cooler Master Aluminium case
Enermax 550W power supply
Logitech Cordless MX Duo Elite Keyboard with MX700 optical mouse.
Windows XP Professional
zipzoomfly.com =US$ 2109
newegg.com =US$2149

PS:There is no monitor because that site didn

[BeukStylez03]

guys,

thanks for the help!  but $8,000 for the alienware?  i was looking at alienwares a few weeks ago and the area 51 was like 2500, no?

[Delta_]

I built my comp.  If you are loooking to save money on that system listed above change to a AMD and get a 9800pro.  Changing to AMD will encure no performance loss, and changing to 9800pro will cause a small loss, but will not be massively significant.

[Rivers]

You can get Alienwares for 8000 or 2500 but the performance is proportional to the price.

[Rivers]

If you are considering the system I suggested I think a P4 3,2Ghz Northwood FSB 800 512K L2 cache would be better if you want to overclock it because the new Prescott gets very hot and this is bad for overclocking, And maybe the additional 200mhz will give you better performance then the larger cache.

[Delta_]

If you want to play games or simulators get an AMD, they are far faster in games than the Intel offering, and are cheaper.

[Rivers]

If you want to play games or simulators get an AMD, they are far faster in games than the Intel offering, and are cheaper

I disagree the Athlon XP cannot compete with the latest P4 neither gaming nor heavy tasks like video and audio editing, the Athlon 64 FX-51 and 53 surely puts the P4 on its knees when the subject is gaming only for a slight margin, but they are very expensive US$750 only for the processor. So it

[Rivers]

ASUS SK8V Via K8T800
AMD Atlhon 64 FX-51
Corsair TWINX1024RE 1GB DDR400

[Delta_]

I don't trust tomshardware when they compare AMD to Intel because of what they did and is noticeable they still do.  They are very biased, they like Intel to much so i don't trust their CPU benchmarks.