Looking for advice.

[Cever]

I'm looking to build a new computer for Generals 2 next year and upgrading what I have is not an option, its a Pentium 4 (from before multicore processors). I'm looking to build this machine over the next few (4-6) months, but this is where we come to the problem... I've been playing on consoles for the last few years, and haven't personally built a computer in ~8 years.

So, I'm looking for recommendations for various parts, with the goal of running Gens2 at max if possible. Also, any sites that can bring me a bit more up to date on current hardware specifications would be great.

I should also state that I'm giving this project a monthly allowance of $200-$300.

[Feloidea]

Hmm, first things first, you should dense up your money expectation. The current room you got goes from 800$ to 1800$ budget from minimum to maximum. You can build good PCs with that money, but if we work out a PC for 800$ and it turns out you have 1800$ worth a budget, all those plans can go to hell.

Second, does that include periphery (monitor, keyboard, mouse, sound) or do you have those already? If you have not, you can easily cut 200-400$ for those things alone, depending on what quality you are looking for.

[Cever]

Ah, I wondered if I had forgotten something. I have a monitor, keyboard and mouse. I'd say $1800 is my upper limit for this computer, but I'll only have $2-300 that I know I can spend on a monthly basis, so I'm looking to do this somewhat piecemeal. My biggest issue is that I'm out of date on hardware specs and the associated terminology.

[Elearen]

Get the video card last because they always get better and come down on price, even sometimes on a monthly basis.

[Cever]

Get the video card last because they always get better and come down on price, even sometimes on a monthly basis.

Alright, that makes a lot of sense. I'm looking to get a case and power supply first. I'm not entirely sure what I need for the power supply though. Is higher wattage better? or am i going to just burn out my new computer on the first activation by going for a higher wattage power supply?

[Feloidea]

Alright, that makes a lot of sense. I'm looking to get a case and power supply first. I'm not entirely sure what I need for the power supply though. Is higher wattage better? or am i going to just burn out my new computer on the first activation by going for a higher wattage power supply?

To stake the grounds:
Unless you plan on getting a high-end gear and overclock it, anything past 650 PSU is overkill. You can run a good quadcore CPU and a pretty good GPU (talking lower high-end GPUs here) with 550 to 650 without problems.

As for the case, as you'll no doubt want to upgrade your PC in the future when it's components are becoming outdated, I'd recommend getting a solid one for sure.

The CoolerMaster HAF 932 Advanced or comparable should do the trick for most stuff or if you really want to go big, then you can dish out the extra money for a HAF X or comparable.
Those big-towers (and especially the ones I named) have plenty of space to place your components into and offer a good airflow and cooling with casefans.

edit://addition
So, ... I can't speak for prices in your region (because I don't know where you live, duh) but for 1500$ (I assume US dollars ~ 1140€) you can get a pretty good desktop PC:

-i5 2500K @3.3Ghz standard / up to 4.0Ghz OC with the right equipment
-nVidia GTX 570 @ 320 Bit/1280MB VRAM (I recommend the MSI TwinFrozr III 570, that thing is a beast!) or ATI 6950 @ 256 Bit/2048MB VRAM (HIS IceQ X Turbo seems a good one) if you wan to spend a bit less but still get a good card
-MSIZ68A-G45 (B3) or Asrock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 are good mainboards.

Those components would be a very good core for the PC you might want to build and building the rest around those with good components should not blow your budget and definately run Generals2 on highest settings.

[Cever]

Oh >.< I'm in the northeast US. I'll start shopping around, see where if I can find any good deals.

Just out of curiosity, what is the difference between i5 and i7 processors besides the price?

EDIT: Is newegg.com still good for prices and deals, or is there somewhere else I should be looking?

[Namechanged]

The difference between i5 and i7 is that the i7s tend to have more speed, cache, and other stats. Which is why they cost more.
Newegg is okay but looking through any computer stores that sell the parts for what is on sale will help.

[Cever]

Alright, this'll get me started. Thanks all :D I'll update as I get pieces.

[Timmaigh]

The difference between i5 and i7 is that the i7s tend to have more speed, cache, and other stats. Which is why they cost more.
Newegg is okay but looking through any computer stores that sell the parts for what is on sale will help.

The main difference between i7 and i5 is that i5 lack hyperthreading, that means they have 4 physical and 4 logical cores. Hyperthreading means 2 threads per 1 physical core, so when you look into your task manager, you will see 8 performance tables, despite having only quadcore CPU. HT generally adds performance, as it improves the efficiency, but this goes mostly for the most CPU intensive and multi-threaded apps like various renderers and video editing softs. For games its not so needed, actually sometimes it may be slightly detrimental.

If i were you, i would wait for April/May and upcoming intel Ivy Bridge CPUs, which are bound to replace current Sandy Bridge lineup. You will get slightly higher performance for the same money. If you, however do not want to wait, do not worry to get any of the current i5/i7s, i am sure they will provide plenty of performance for Gen2 anyway.

[Cever]

It may be that long before I'm able to start thinking about a motherboard/processor, so waiting sounds like a good idea.

[pinnnacle33]

why dont you go for the AMD instead? its cheaper then Intel

[Feloidea]

why dont you go for the AMD instead? its cheaper then Intel

And slower. It is mostly save to say that the save in money is equal to the loss in processing power in terms of AMD vs Intel. Don't know about their newest CPUs though.

[pinnnacle33]

And slower. It is mostly save to say that the save in money is equal to the loss in processing power in terms of AMD vs Intel. Don't know about their newest CPUs though.

i have AMD FX 8150 which has 8 cores and it plays games pretty fast. and it cost me £197.00 pounds

[Feloidea]

Octacores are a waste of money. They have only nominal better performance than any good quadcores and a standard PC user would never need eight cores to work with. That goes for hexacores just as well.

By the time widespread programs used by normal people can actually benefit enough from those cores or may start being a requirement, the new generation on hexa- or octacores will be magnitudes better than what's currently on the market ... and cheaper.


So unless you are in raw data crunching and running industrial simulations on your PC, you can do EVERYTHING with a good quadcore to its maximum efficiency/effectivity. I'd get a quadcore for the same price of a hexa-/octacore anytime. Don't let yourself fool by raw numbers available to CPUs today.

[pinnnacle33]

i had intel QX6800 which was quad-core but its slower then my AMD FX 8150 dont know about new intel quad cores thought

[Timmaigh]

Octacores are a waste of money. They have only nominal better performance than any good quadcores and a standard PC user would never need eight cores to work with. That goes for hexacores just as well.

By the time widespread programs used by normal people can actually benefit enough from those cores or may start being a requirement, the new generation on hexa- or octacores will be magnitudes better than what's currently on the market ... and cheaper.


So unless you are in raw data crunching and running industrial simulations on your PC, you can do EVERYTHING with a good quadcore to its maximum efficiency/effectivity. I'd get a quadcore for the same price of a hexa-/octacore anytime. Don't let yourself fool by raw numbers available to CPUs today.


AMD 8-cores are not really 8-cores, every 2 cores have shared frontend (AFAIK), creating something called "module". Just FYI...
Bottom line here is, Intel CPUs have higher IPC than their AMD counterparts - that means they can compute more "instructions per cycle" and in turn, when you look at multi-core CPU, single Intel "core" is far more powerful than AMDs one. Because games cant generally use more than 2-3 CPU cores yet, there is no point in buying AMD CPU, even if it comes with "more" cores than similarly priced Intel CPU.
AMD CPU shine really only with heavily-multithreaded apps like various renderers or video editing apps, but even then they cant really beat Intel CPUs with lower core-counts due to their worse IPC. In general the fastest AMD 8-core CPU is about as fast as Intels i7 2500/2600 quadcore CPU. And Intel hexacores are one league above all of them, what is nicely reflected by their brutal prices.