yasamoka wrotegodfatherdany: he is going to buy a Radeon HD 6850 or GTX 460 (or GTX 560 at most). The sweet spot is 1920 x 1080. I have such a monitor, and I have no problems with GTX 260. It's a matter of preference, however. If Omar is willing to select medium-high details later on (2-3 years??) with a full HD screen, then he should get one. If he wants the absolute best graphics, I suggest he upgrade more frequently (I don't do that). What I mean is, the monitor is the only part in the PC you spend the most time looking at, a higher resolution is where the PC shines. If he wants 720p, he should get a console. We're not talking about 2560 x 1600 here.

If his PC will be struggling with games (which I doubt!) later on, then he can select a lower resolution, provided the upscaling is done over the GPU (not within the monitor). MegaCool does that, and he has a 1080p monitor. MegaCool, how is the experience of running 720p over a 1080p monitor? Do you use GPU scaling, or monitor scaling?
why not get an lcd TV 32 inch if he has the extra bucks and have much larger resolution ? btw , the coming games are gonna kill the pc like dragon age 2 and stuff like that which should have at least a C2Q so i donno it's his choice .
but at 1920x1200 and 1280x1024 (19 inch standard ) , there are frame rates of difference between 10-15 minimum in games tested on tomshardware.com ! But i don't think omar will keep updating because i think he wants to get one and for all times. It's his choice! Good luck omar!
thx danny,no,I won't be updating my system frequently,if i had more money i think that i will get an hd monitor,720p
MegaCool wrote
thegodfatherdany wrotehi,omar.. I agree with Zeraw about getting a console for games and a PC for everything else . I am too a Pc gamer and want the best to play my games on high settings but to achieve this, you need to pay too much money because every time they release a new game , you will need a better graphic card and a better system and better overall performance from your computer. Your to-be computer is quite good BUT : Inno3D Geforce GT430 2GB DDR3 is not a good card for gaming because it has low CUDA cores and it's performance is very limited and plus, it is used mainly for Blu-ray Movies and photo viewing in addition to video playing and poorly for gaming . Believe me , if you get this PC you are building , you are staying in the same place you are because Ram are identical somehow and graphic card is a bit bit more powerful from than your 9500gt.

I wanted to buy a Geforce these days but then i thought that after one week
, it would be old and my budget was about maxim. 200$ ( Nvidia GTX 460 SE ) and that was still not good for these upcoming games.
Just buy a console ( Xbox 360 Pro for 280$) and play your games on HD without having headache from computer games.

If you want help with computers and graphic cards, feel free to message me .
That's a total myth, yes my friend, hardware is always getting updated, just like smartphones these days, but that doesn't mean if there's something new in the market you have to go out and grab it or else your outdated. Totally not! I bought my graphics card 3 years ago for $130 and there's no game I cant play, even the newest titles I can pull decent framerates at 720p resolution.

@Omar
Regarding the PC your building, yes just like thegodfatherdany told you, dont get a gt430, its a low end card. Get yourself a HD 5770 or the HD 5830, and your good to go for at least 3 years if your aiming for medium settings. Good luck!
I am still enjoying my 5 years old 400$ xbox360.
can you honestly say you will stay enjoy the same quality gaming after 5 years on the same hardware on the PC?
on the console you pay for the hardware once every 5+years this is the only difference.
You do not need to pay for every major GFX card, but if you do not upgrade from time to time you fall behind and you need to actually know when you need to upgrade.
ie I bought the x850xt at full price several years ago for 600$.
I did not do any kind of research before getting it and just 3months later it was reduced to 250$.

you have a lot of GFX cards out there, developers support major/latest ones with fallbacks to older ones.
you cannot possibly enjoy 1080p on your graphic card but I am able to enjoy the max of my hardware on the console all the time. This was my point.

if you want to be a PC gamer, it is your choice and taste and I respect it but after many $$$ lost in the PC gaming I switched to console and I couldnt be happier :)
I am still enjoying my 5 years old 400$ xbox360.
Yup, with sub-HD resolutions @30fps with heaps of jaggies and ugly textures.

@ZeRaW I'm a foremost console gamer ever since the NES and SEGA Mega Drive times, but I have to disagree, you're being totally misinformed,again, who says you have to get the most powerful and expensive hardware to keep playing PC games, as I said, my 3 years old $130 card, which is at least twice as powerful as the 360, is still doing great with every single game released so far, (except for Crysis). On PC, you can still benefit from graphics customizations, unlike consoles
you have a lot of GFX cards out there, developers support major/latest ones with fallbacks to older ones.
where did you get that from? developers are still supporting the 10+ years old DX9 API until this day, with the exception of Battlefield 3.

Lets just not hijack this thread, I think Omar will enjoy PC gaming using a 6850, which is a great DX11 card.
even my system can handle gta iv/battle field BC2/COD:black ops (my VGA is point of view 9500Gt)
so IMO is that even this low-end card can handle those games(at a good fps/graphics btw)..then what about those high-end cards...

Edit:I can't imagine myself holding a PS3 or Xbox controller and playing games on it..it's just wrong...now that's my opinion..since everyone have his own opinion.
hey omar, well I read your post and skimmed the rest of what everyone wrote, anyway if you wanna read about pc vs consoles we discussed it before in this thread...

anyway let me help you out, since you want your pc for gaming, you need to focus on what to buy for graphics card and power supply, the rest is not as important as these are...

my rig is:
2.2ghz dual core
3gb ram ddr2
for vga: 1gb gts 250 (nvidia ofcourse)
and for power supply a thermaltake 600w
I can run any game on max settings on a resolution of 1440x900

now youre old pc is pretty good
-CPU:Intel core2duo e4600 2.4Ghz

-VGA:point of view nvidia geforce 9500Gt 512

-RAM:4gig DDR2
and since you have a 9500gt that means youre motherboard can support pci-express cards,
ok how about you just upgrade your old pc?
youre cpu is great for games, youre not gonna notice any difference in gaming, its just that installing games will be faster on a core i5 but trust me its not worth it, and you wont get any +fps in games, me and my friend have tried this on a corei3 vs a dual core and there was no difference in the fps, even if there is there will be only max +5fps.

for you rams, well there good man you dont need ddr3, what you'll notice the difference between a ddr2 and ddr3 is that the loading times are faster on a ddr3, yeah but just 5 seconds faster, again me and my friend have tried this...

trust me man, you dont need to upgrade youre entire case, just buy a new power supply and a vga and you'll be set for another 4 years, and you could possible need a new ups to support youre power supply if the one you have is weak...
and for the vga here is a chart for a bunch of vga's running crysis on dx10 at a massive resolution of 1920x1200 and with 2xAA , suck on that xbox/ps/console users hahaha :






EDIT: if I were you I would buy the nvidia 1 gb gtx 470 its priced $395.00 at pc and parts, ofcourse 395+39.5(for vat) = 434$ and you would still have 216$ for a decent power supply, if you buy this, you will play any game on max resolution/settings for atleast 6 years...

if you want to see more results like the one above go here
thanks Nemesis-301,that's a neat solution.
I will compare upgrading my PC,or buy a new one..and see what's better.
You guys, do you read reviews before posting??
Omar, check this out, it speaks for itself: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1472067

Basically, the guy there uses a HD5870, which you'll come extremely close to if you buy a GTX 460 and overclock it, an HD6850 and overclock it, or a GTX 470 and overclock it (you'll surpass it then).

The i5 CPU he's using is last gen, so the planned i5 2500 CPU is 50% faster (allows for future proofing).
Please take care not only to check the average framerate, but also the minimum framerate and overall smoothness and framerate dips (these are the most important).

Second, the GTX 560Ti is almost identical in performance to the GTX 470, while consuming less power and releasing less heat. It also has further overclocking headroom since it is further down the bin (560 - 570 - 580 compared to 470 - 480). If you have the money to spring for a GTX 470, spring for the GTX 560Ti. Forget about previous gen cards except if you get a good bargain / receive a price offer.

EDIT: When getting a motherboard,there's no choice between DDR2 and DDR3. They aren't electrically compatible. Boards that support DDR2 don't support DDR3, and vice-versa.
@Nemesis a dual core isnt future proof, his CPU is good for 2006 games - a weak cpu will bottleneck a high-end card, many of the current games are core dependent, people stop pulling stuff out of no where. A friend of mine had a core 2 duo with an HD 5770, he used to get 35fps max in Dirt 2, once he upgraded to an i7 @3.2GHz, he achieved a total boost of 20+fps, he even reached 60fps. So stop deceiving the man without backing it up with proofs, here is a comparison link from anandtech, notice almost the double frame rate difference, and that's between the best Core 2 Duo out there (E600) and an i5 2500k - there's almost a whopping 89fps difference in Dragon Age
the problem is that my CPU is very old,this computer is like 4+ years old.
and some games requires a fast CPU...like GTA IV (I know,it's not coded well)
@megacool and yasamoka

tell me which one of these 2 cases is the best for gaming:

1st: (his old case)
Intel core2duo e4600 2.4Ghz
4gig DDR2
nvidia 1 gb gtx 470 ( for 434$)
XFX Power supply 850W (for 226$)

total=660$

2nd case: (a new case)
-MoBo:Intel DH67CL
-Processor:intel i5-2400
-RAM: 2*2Gb DDR3
-HDD:Western Digital 1TB WD1002FAEX
-VGA:Inno3D Geforce GT430 2GB DDR3

which one would you choose? also notice the gt 430 is not even on the list of vga's that I posted earlier...
@Nemesis what does that graph even stand for? I see nothing but some random numbers.

Omar, yes, GTA4 is badly coded, it ran on my old p4 processor @3fps.
MegaCool wrote@Nemesis what does that graph even stand for? I see nothing but some random numbers.

Omar, yes, GTA4 is badly coded, it ran on my old p4 processor @3fps.
link
@megacool and yasamoka

tell me which one of these 2 cases is the best for gaming:

1st: (his old case)
Intel core2duo e4600 2.4Ghz
4gig DDR2
nvidia 1 gb gtx 470 ( for 434$)
XFX Power supply 850W (for 226$)

total=660$

2nd case: (a new case)
-MoBo:Intel DH67CL
-Processor:intel i5-2400
-RAM: 2*2Gb DDR3
-HDD:Western Digital 1TB WD1002FAEX
-VGA:Inno3D Geforce GT430 2GB DDR3

which one would you choose? also notice the gt 430 is not even on the list of vga's that I posted earlier...
Nemesis, I wont plug a beast of an expensive card such as the gtx 470 along with a 6 year old processor, dont get me wrong, its a great cpu, but definitely not future proof, you'll end up changing the whole motherboard because of this ancient processor. Besides, why on earth would someone buy a GTX 470 where the newer 5xx series such as the GTX 560Ti is at least 200 bucks cheaper, more power efficient and outperforms the 470.

And no one would need a massive 850W of power - the GTX 580 consumes almost 150W when idle and 363 when chocking every bit of power, so a decent 550W power supply is more than efficient, he's not like going to tri-sli the GTX 580 on his motherboard.

Do your research before posting random suggestions mate
Dear omar

dont buy a 400 series nvidia cards .. since they cause very high heating and many users complains about that.
cross this line and look for a 500 series with better performance .. less heating problems and for the same prices

if you are planning to buy from pcandparts.com and you are waiting till summer then wait until pcandparts get the 560 ti or gtx 570 of EVGA brand .. it is cheaper than ASUS with the same performance , specialy on pcandparts EVGA brand is cheaper ( dont buy Inno3D )

for now : Asus ENGTX560 Ti DCII ($295) is the top best choice for you .. under that is Gigabyte HD 6850 ($247)

kindly refer to hwcompare.com to compare between gpu's Theoretically

have a nice day ^^
thx ALI-MSTR7,i will go for the hd 6850,but if I had extra $ then I might consider the 500 series cards
Nemesis-301 wrotenotice a huge difference? I dont...


http://i55.tinypic.com/33lcqs4.jpg
Look at the graph carefully...see the framerate go up with the frequency? That's right...that means 2 things: either the cpu is being used 100 percent, or one or two.cores are being used 100 percent

Now when you look at a quad core with a slower clockspeed than a dual core get lower framerates, you probably know that the game is using 1 or 2 cores, right?

Now Far Cry 2, a game from 2008, benefitted massively from a CPU upgrade as you saw in the link I posted. GTA IV uses 3 cores (but not because of bad code), battlefield: BC2 benefits greatly from a Quad, battlefield 3 is coming up too, DIRT 2 benefits greatly, and so on. When you want to measure the difference between the performance of a dual core and a quad core, be sure to get a multithreaded app that takes advantage of multiple cores, or you'll end up with the difference related to clockspeeds only (dual cores are usually higher in clockspeed). Now, with the game developers heading towards parallelization, it now makes sense more than ever to have a good CPU as well. If he blows his budget on a video card and power supply right now, then later finds out that his board and CPU need upgrading, then he has:

1)Bought the card at a higher price without using it to its full potential

2) Blew his budget over an unbalanced system

3) Gets stuck in the upgrade cycle, waiting for new technologies to emerge before upgrading, causing further loss of value of the card

He will also end up having a more powerful CPU than his video card deserves...

Now, I agree he should get a good power supply...he should calculate his max power consumption / average and get a power supply with 30 percent headroom so as not to exceed 70 percent of maximum sustained power draw and shorten its life...it can also be ported over to newer builds or it can stand upgrades...
guys I apologize, that was a huge misatake, the vga that they are using in that test was just a 8800 gt...

omar, why dont you just buy a quad core cpu a vga and psu?
why do you want to buy a core i5?
I'm not sure if youre motherboard can support that, if you can post what youre motherboard is I will tell you,