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PC purchasing question
I haven't purchased a PC since 1995. Ever since then my upgrades haqve been via an acquaintance who used to unload his entire system on me every year or so when he'd buy himself a new PC.
It has been some time now since this person moved to a distant corner of the country and my current PC is really showing it's age.
I want to play medieval total war II without noticable lag at minimum graphics settings.
In general I haven't had any appreciation for any development graphics wise since about the time quake I was released.
On the other hand the minimum graphics hardware requirements even for games like civ4 are now becoming possible to not have whereas until recently any svga card was fine for any sort of strategy game.
I assume for anybody buying a system there is a sweet point where buying a system that meets those specs gets you the most entertainment value (which is all my upgrades are any longer about) for each dollar spent.
Is there an obvious system configuration I should shoot for to meet that sweet spot if I'm the sort of gamer who will play Dawn of war with the graphics settings at minimum just on the off chance that it might prevent lag even though I've played at higher settings without lag? (in other words I care so little about graphics that I'll readily knock the settings down even when there is no certain bennefit for doing so). I really want to avoid aiming so low that I find myself unable to meet minimum system requirements for new strategy games again in the next couple of years.
I'm basically looking for general advice on PC purchase since I know my knowledge is *waaaay* out of date on all of the relevant details, but I want to avoid the trap (if it matters) of aiming for a system that's really only appropriate for someone who thinks graphics realism is the most important part of their game playing experience and so waste hundreds of extra dollars trying to meet the tastes of the average computer gamer.
Existing system:
1.6 GHz Athlon Processor
1.0 GB Ram (very old some sort of SDRAM dimm sticks)
GeForce 4MX 440 64 MB
80 GB HD
40 GB HD
Nearly brand new DVD burner
Copy of Windows XP from a PC that was switched to Linux at work. (I took it home legit and through the proper channels)
I'm guessing the only thing worth moving to a new system will be the DVD burner.
Thanks in advance for any useful advice you might have.
Oh and I'm a cheap bastard so I'll probably prefer any solution that costs less than $500 and if I find I must shoot higherthan $500 bucks I'm likely to try to wait even longer in hopes that such a system will eventually drop into the $500 or lower range.
[edit oh yes! I also plan on doing a lot of DVD burning from Tivo files and editing of those Tivo files to remove commercials and changes to the compression of the bitrate of some of the resulting mpegs to fit different numbers of episodes on different DVDs dpending on the quality I'm aiming for.]
It has been some time now since this person moved to a distant corner of the country and my current PC is really showing it's age.
I want to play medieval total war II without noticable lag at minimum graphics settings.
In general I haven't had any appreciation for any development graphics wise since about the time quake I was released.
On the other hand the minimum graphics hardware requirements even for games like civ4 are now becoming possible to not have whereas until recently any svga card was fine for any sort of strategy game.
I assume for anybody buying a system there is a sweet point where buying a system that meets those specs gets you the most entertainment value (which is all my upgrades are any longer about) for each dollar spent.
Is there an obvious system configuration I should shoot for to meet that sweet spot if I'm the sort of gamer who will play Dawn of war with the graphics settings at minimum just on the off chance that it might prevent lag even though I've played at higher settings without lag? (in other words I care so little about graphics that I'll readily knock the settings down even when there is no certain bennefit for doing so). I really want to avoid aiming so low that I find myself unable to meet minimum system requirements for new strategy games again in the next couple of years.
I'm basically looking for general advice on PC purchase since I know my knowledge is *waaaay* out of date on all of the relevant details, but I want to avoid the trap (if it matters) of aiming for a system that's really only appropriate for someone who thinks graphics realism is the most important part of their game playing experience and so waste hundreds of extra dollars trying to meet the tastes of the average computer gamer.
Existing system:
1.6 GHz Athlon Processor
1.0 GB Ram (very old some sort of SDRAM dimm sticks)
GeForce 4MX 440 64 MB
80 GB HD
40 GB HD
Nearly brand new DVD burner
Copy of Windows XP from a PC that was switched to Linux at work. (I took it home legit and through the proper channels)
I'm guessing the only thing worth moving to a new system will be the DVD burner.
Thanks in advance for any useful advice you might have.
Oh and I'm a cheap bastard so I'll probably prefer any solution that costs less than $500 and if I find I must shoot higherthan $500 bucks I'm likely to try to wait even longer in hopes that such a system will eventually drop into the $500 or lower range.
[edit oh yes! I also plan on doing a lot of DVD burning from Tivo files and editing of those Tivo files to remove commercials and changes to the compression of the bitrate of some of the resulting mpegs to fit different numbers of episodes on different DVDs dpending on the quality I'm aiming for.]
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