Gaming system under $550.00?

[Rea¦per]

It'd be nice if they would update the game engine to that of Ep 1 or 2, In CS my avrg is about 15-20 regardless of graphics settings, in Episode 1 about 60+ with every thing maxed and enabled, highest aliasing and anistrophic. Rarely drops to 15, heavy ass firefights and the darkmatter grenade I think it was called.

[£cho]

It has nothing to do with the engine. It's the fact that in multiplayer, there's 2x the things your computer is required to render that it doesn't have to in any singleplayer game. One major difference, and major cause for poor FPS, is client animation, which measures and attempts to calculate and predict other players' movements and what they look like in real-time and about one frame for every second before it actually occurs. This can lower FPS by as much as 50%, and you can only blame the Source engine as a whole for that.

[Kennith]

I got max settings, with 1280x1024 resolution, rates at 25000, cl rates both at 66, and I still run a steady 80-120 FPS and this is in "laggy" areas. I see it go as high as 240.

[Silent]

I recommend a NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT.. It's not too expensive because it's last edition its only like $150.00. I got this video card and my ping is usually 5.

[Haggard]

Ok after some help from Jager (the hardware whore) we managed to make the system a lot better and lower the price 15 bucks. Here is the rig I will be buying. This is a budget system because I dont like to blow to much money on things I dont need, but in the end im pretty happy with the cost/performance of this one.

[Zero001]

I agree with Jager on this one. Never EVER! buy a micro ATX motherboard unless you're building a small portable LAN box. Also, never buy a power supply just because of price. Buy something of quality because if the power supply goes it can take out other parts with it.

 

Added: You might also want to invest a few more dollars ($4-10) on a SATA DVD burner instead of IDE. I think the ECS mobo only comes with 1 SATA cable so you'll need to order an extra cable (one for the Hard Drive and one for the DVD drive).

 

And if you're planning to go SLI you'll have to buy a motherboard using a NVIDIA chipset capable of SLI. Intel and ATI chipsets are only capable of crossfire.

[Haggard]

I agree with Jager on this one. Never EVER! buy a micro ATX motherboard unless you're building a small portable LAN box. Also, never buy a power supply just because of price. Buy something of quality because if the power supply goes it can take out other parts with it.

 

Added: You might also want to invest a few more dollars ($4-10) on a SATA DVD burner instead of IDE. I think the ECS mobo only comes with 1 SATA cable so you'll need to order an extra cable (one for the Hard Drive and one for the DVD drive).

 

And if you're planning to go SLI you'll have to buy a motherboard using a NVIDIA chipset capable of SLI. Intel and ATI chipsets are only capable of crossfire.

 

I agreed with Jager as well which is why you can see a lot of changes in my final config, which I ordered last night. I personally dont care about the sata dvd. My wife burns 2 movies a week with it and has all the free time in the world, so no big deal there. Also I have no intent of SLI atm just figured since I have to buy a good video card might as well get another of what I already have and I will be ready for SLI the next time I build a system.

[SDtielvdeo]

I agreed with Jager as well which is why you can see a lot of changes in my final config, which I ordered last night. I personally dont care about the sata dvd. My wife burns 2 movies a week with it and has all the free time in the world, so no big deal there. Also I have no intent of SLI atm just figured since I have to buy a good video card might as well get another of what I already have and I will be ready for SLI the next time I build a system.

Unless you want to buy an SLI motherboard later in the future and Rebuild the whole thing again, dunno, might be better to just get one now. The ram is decent for the price.... But in my opinion, The processor kinda sux... lol.

 

Heres a better ram.... well a bit better than the other and cheaper (after rebate).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145034

 

Dunno if you're interested, but I got this for my sister, works great for its price. ($109, 2.8GHz, 2x 2mb L2 Cache, Duo-Core Processor)

That processor you're buying for $90, is a rip off >.>. 2.0GHz and 1mb L2 cache, that really sux ass...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116237

 

Also.... The video cards(2) I'm getting, $109 after rebate. Same price basically as yours, but better.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150229

 

And just like Zero said, Power supply matters a lot, better trust a good company... like this. (Rosewill)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182030

[Haggard]

Your kinda missing the point in what I was doing. My goal was to build a good system for a certain price, with your changes I would have paid alot more total. The config I bought last night is more then acceptable to me. Ofcourse it sucks compared to what is availible, but im not someone to blow $2000 on a sytem just to say I have it. If I can play all current games and run them smooth I have accomplished my goal and saved a lot of money. The system I have at home is probably half the specs of the one I just bought and I can play CSS and tf2 without lag at around 80-120 FPS. I guess I just dont see the point in over kill, but I always see the point in not wasting money :-).

[£cho]

The AMD processor was a hell of a lot better than the Intel one you have picked out here.