My gamer aspect wins me with cost advantages of Desktops

I’ve decided to trade my slightly used laptop for a new desktop PC because that’s where the high end hardware is. A dual core 64-bit processor will let me play games without drops in frame rate while compressing video/downloading files, but that’s only possible in a PC price for an asking price of $2000 so I am picking out this SystemMax Hellcat (assembled in the USA…. I feel so patriotic). I spend 75% using 2D applications (IE: Firefox, Opera Browser, Winamp 5, MS-Word 2003, Trillian, Irfanview), but don’t wish to compensate the GB/s on my GPU. Athlon 64 x2 4400 excels at desktop performance over 3D performance. I expect first person shooters to run high definition. My PC must run Unreal Tournament 2007 (or games using Unreal Engine 3.0 technology) The Unreal Tournament franchise is one of my favorite PC franchises cos I remember having fun playing all of them. My former friend Bob got me into it. I rediscovered first person shooters for PC two weeks ago.

I decided it was important to have a BFG Geforce 7800 GTX more than an Nvidia Geforce 6600 GT. The difference with texture bandwidth is a staggering 18 GB/sec difference. My PC will get great frame rates with the BFG Geforce 7800 GTX on modern games. Right now I am playing First Encounter Assault Recon after I bought it for $50 at Target 4 hrs ago. Target had 4 copies left. This game came out in October so I am not playing it when it was immensely popular. I am having a hard time running F.E.A.R. on my two year old PC at 1200x960. The only way F.E.A.R. runs at a decent frame rate is by setting the “ATI Display Preferences” to application preference.



Submitted Specs to dad.

Full Size Tower
450 Watt power supply
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400
- clock speed 2.2 GHz
- HyperTransport technology
Microsoft Windows Pro SP2
Kingston Hyper X 1 GB Memory (512 x 2)
250GB Serial ATA 7200RPM
16X DVD+R/RW-R/RW Dual Layer Drive
BFG 7800 GTX OC 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express
- 41.6 GB/s texture bandwidth
- 460 MHz
- RAMDAC Dual 400 MHz
- 920 million vertices/sec
Integrated motherboard soundchip
Integrated Gigabit Network Adapter

What I can put to good use from my other computers (X86 Clones)

Sparing 1 GB of RAM dual channel PC3200 (Dell Dimension XPS)
108 Mbit WiFi PCI (custom-assembled PC)
Extra drive: DVD/CDRW-ROM (custom-assembled PC)
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 24-bit EAX Surround Sound (Dell Dimension XPS)
Inexpensive, but rock solid CA 5.1 surround flat speakers
Generic keyboard
19” Dell 75 Hz CRT computer monitor

On a further note, the X2 4400 has come down in price, but so has the X2 4800. This means I can add such luxuries as a Soundblaster Xtreme 24-bit 192 kbps soundcard and another 250 GB 7200 RPM hard drive. The question is do those advantages outbalance 200 MHz extra that an X2 4800 CPU will give me?

I already have an answer to this question. It’s smarter to go with the X2 4800 because heck, I can afford 250 GB hard drive ($100) myself and can install a fully functional Sound Blaster Audigy 2 out of my Dimension XPS. I imagine the extra HDD would show up as a “D Drive” like my USB 80 GB external HDD. I know in the real world money is a problem and I can’t throw $250 at my PC.

Here are videogames I chosen in the last 25 days excluding Mario Kart DS and Mario and Luigi 2. Spent $300 on software this month. Software is expensive, but I am a serious software collector.