It's tax and bonus time soon for me, so I thought I'd go out and buy a replacement for my four year old laptop. Currently, I've got to leave it plugged in, or it will die within five minutes. Also, the fan is on right now, because it's running hot, and I've only got one window open, and some background programs.

I'll disclaim further text by saying I really don't know much about computers, except how to use them. I understand storage space, but not RAM, or if one processor is vastly different than having two. I know nothing at all about graphics cards.

My current specs are:

Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop computer
Mobile Intel Pentium Processor (4 - M CPU 2.00GHz 717 MHz), 256 MB of RAM, 27GB hard drive

I want something fancy, something fast, and something affordable (we're probably talking $1500 max, but with what I saw at Best Buy the other day, it doesn't look too bad). I don't want to build a computer, even if it is cheaper. The computer will be used mostly for web browsing and gaming: I can see me playing . I'd prefer a PC over a Mac unless there's some huge way in which the pros outweigh the cons.

Sooo... where to start? I could go down to Best Buy and have a geek show me a newfangled computer. They had some computers with quad core processors, 3MB of ram, and about 750GB hard drives, might swap out the monitor for a 20"+ HD monitor. Any ideas?

Get a refurbished laptop. You'll get more bang for your buck automatically.

What sort of components you want depends heavily on what sort of things you want to do with the computer. For a laptop, since they're not really geared towards FPSes etc. I'd just stick with the very basics. Since I prefer XP I got 1.6ghz dual core at 2000mhz (IIRC) a gig of ram, and as most laptops come with, a sufficient built in video card 256mb nothing special, 14 inch screen (for better battery life). 500 bucks a while back.

It gets everything I need done very well and quickly, and the battery is a good 4-5 hours, can watch a full feature DVD on it. I'd recommend a similar build. Put the rest in your pocket.

Build your own! Better specs and cheaper. You could make an epic laptop for $1500.

Edit: oh this is all desktop stuff, not sure if that makes it irrelevant or not

I'm looking at building a computer myself in the (somewhat) near future. I haven't built a computer before but everything I've heard and seen makes it seem relatively easy so I'm going for it.

Dual core processors are much better than single core processors, and the new Intel processors just came out. They are a big improvement over the previous ones and not too expensive. Here's what I'm looking at now: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115037
Quad core processors aren't worth it yet as the only (I think) game that can use them is Crysis and that's just silly anyway. Dual cores are still the best for price/performance.

You mean 3GBs of ram but 2GBs should be fine for anything you're doing. Desktop RAM is cheap, as are the hard drives. 750 is a ridiculous amount of space so unless you're going to be storing hundreds of movies and thousands and thousands of songs don't worry about it, anything above 320 should be fine. Here's what I'm looking at.
Hard drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...;ATT=22-136-074
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...;ATT=20-145-098

You'll need a graphics card if you want to play games because most will need more than what comes with the computer. I've heard great things about this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130318) so I'll probably try to get one of those at some point. They can be sort of hard to find apparently.

Those are all newegg links because they generally have decent prices but I'm really just using them for reference, I haven't looked at any of the parts seriously yet.

Also here are some helpful links.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/13671
http://techreport.com/articles.x/13660

All of what I'm looking at will be around $1000 and that includes a monitor. You should be able to get what you need for less than $1500 easily.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Quad-core processors are at least the same, if not better, price/performance than dual-core if you buy from Intel (Intel has pretty cheap ones that OC nicely, not sure about AMD but their quads suck anyway). A couple dozen games from 2007 take advantage of the technology, too, afaik, and that number is only going to increase in the future.

The rest is decent advice, although one can never have too much/high of any specific spec.

Mac!!!

It's so cute when they do that.

Quad cores are ok but unless you're running other programs at the same time as the game and switching between them a lot..

Richter do a little research and decide for yourself!

Actually was thinking of running Crysis at full speed.

And probably no mac, although there is that new one with two quad cores and 1TB hard drive...

Lastly, about doing the research, that's why I'm asking the forum geeks here.

In DX9 with a laptop, prepare to spend that full $1500, even if you build it yourself. In DX10 with a laptop, prepare to spend two or three times that much.

Crysis is a computer killer. A laptop running it at full speed would be, like, the rich boy's wet dream. However, quad-core will definitely help!

Laptops are generally not for the hardcore gaming, gaming, yes, but you're not going to really get to play any of the latest games up on full blast. (The Witcher, Crysis)

However, some general advice to follow:

Hard-drive: Get a good, high number of Gigs, nowadays games eat Gigs for breakfast.

RAM: 2-3 GB RAM is good. More is better.

Graphics Card: Aim for something like an nVidia 8400 M or something.

Since you want to buy one and not build your own laptop, I'd suggest a Dell laptop. Especially one of the XPS editions. For your price range?

http://www.dell.com/content/products/produ...s=bsd&cs=04

This looks like a good 'un.

Select that, then look at the one on the right hand side. That's about.. $1420 dollars. That has..

Duo core processor. Not too bad.
2GB Ram. S'not too shabby.
250 GB HDD. That's good.
256MB nVidia 8600m GT. This, is good. Whereas the GS is better than the GT, the 8600m is a overall great graphics card for a laptop. (EDIT: This graphics card is also a DX10 Shader Version 4.0 graphics card, which is gud. And it does HDR, so pretty lights.)
Comes wireless as standard.. Mmkay, to be expected.

You can customize as you like, but you might go overbudget. Either way, that seems like a fine, nice laptop for what you might want. You won't play Crysis at full blast, that's a given, since a laptop that could play Crysis at full blast is well.. Thousands.

One little tip. Make sure whatever you do you get 7200RPM Hard Disks. A lot of laptops just come with 5400RPM disks, so if you choose an on-line vendor, make sure you get the faster disks (they don't make 10000RPM disks for laptops yet). The speed makes all the difference, especially when dealing with swap files.

I'm planning to get this bad boy from alienware if all goes well.

I'd probably look at Alienware over Dell (which is another division of Dell Ironically), for one important thing. At Dell, they don't let you download the latest video drivers for their cards if it's laptop, sometimes they make their own, which means if there's a shiny new game that requires downloading the latest driver, sometimes Dell doesn't want to provide it and actually prevents you from running any upgrade driver outside of their own custom-built OEM versions.

I know this because I have a Dell Latitude at work and they haven't updated the Video Card driver in months, even though ATI has done so.

ahhh alienware. AHHH

And if you're planning on playing Crysis prepare to purchase a supercomputer.

Main point in building desktop pc for gaming is that you should be prepared to replace parts every year or so, not buy a supercomputer for insane money that will be too old after 2 years anyway.

Taking that into account, Rakor is correct about quads - they are not worth it atm.

And all you really need for Crysis is GF 8800, 2GB RAM and modern CPU. Have you seen requirements for Assassin's Creed for PC? Much higher.

They really aren't that expensive, and that's a few bucks cheaper than when I looked a couple of days ago. Yes, they are better than dual-core, and yes, they overclock well (not that OCing really matters on a quad). The Kentsfield is basically two dual-cores in one, remember.

Games don't utilize 4 cores, they don't even utilize 2 well yet. You won't see much performance increase on quad, while they're at least 50% more expensive. And overclocking always matters.

Best route now is to buy used Core2 that will run over 3GHz for cheap and replace it with quad in like a year, when they will: 1. Cost much less. 2. All cores will be used by games (maybe).

@Richter
Have you considered buying a gaming desktop and a cheaper notebook? It really is the best way to go, though it costs more. Notebooks and high-end gaming are mutually exclusive, kinda.

I actually agree with Rakor and Kashim. Quads aren't worth it yet. They are faster, yes. And they are cheaper than they used to be. In reality, though, the practical performance boost you get is not much to speak of. A good dual-core is generally good enough to keep up with anything you need to be doing; if you are running something like Crysis, the bottleneck is probably going to be in the video card or memory, not in the processor. They are nice, but the software just doesn't require them yet, so there's no point in spending the extra money.



I would recommend against Dell; I have constant trouble with them. Alienware is, like Phred said, a better alternative, even though they are related to Dell. I personally like Sonys and Gateways. If you are set on a laptop, maybe something like one of these could do what you need:

Systemax
This one is build-to-order. You can get this setup for a total of about $1600:
- 17" screen
- Intel Core2 Duo T7500 2.2GHz 800FSB 4M Processor
- 2GB PC5300 DDR2 667MHz Dual Channel
- 250GB 2.5" 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
- SuperMulti DVDRW Drive
- nVidia GeForce 8600M GT 512MB Discrete Video RAM

You could also drop back to a 160 gig hard drive and save about $120 off of that, to get closer to your limit. You can also get it with XP for the same price.

This HP is another possibility. The processor isn't quite as good, but it is also a bit cheaper.

If you are willing to go with a desktop, you can do even better for the same price or less. This one is one I've had my eye on. A 7200RPM 500gb HD, a very nice Intel Core 2 Duo E6850, Dual NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT for graphics, all for under $1150. That leaves you some money for a relatively nice 19-20" monitor to go with it, and/or some software to put on it.

I wanna piggyback off this thread. Thanks Richter!

So.. It's about time for me to get a new computer, too.. I bought an EXPENSIVE Alienware in 2004, and it's about time to replace it. I had some heartattacks last night when I picked up WoW again for the first time in a few months, with some kind of overheating issue or something along those lines. Suffice to say, I freaked out. I got it to work again, but I'm not sure how long it'll last.

I don't think it's a problem with the hard drives, seems to be an issue before it even gets there.

I definitely want the data in my 2 hard drives, provided they're still good (one's just an extra for TV shows/anime, etc, so it really shouldn't have any problems), if possible, so I'm not sure how to work with that.

If I bought a new computer, could I get them to put in my 2 hard drives (provided they're up to par) on top of the new one that would come with said computer? (yes, I don't mind having 3 hard drives, I'm about to need a third anyway)

If so, who is "them"?

What're my options, what're your thoughts? I'd like to continue to be able to play WoW and other such games, without much lag but still with good graphics.

Thanks in advance!

Mitbulls: Yes, GPUs are more important than CPUs, these days. For example: The machine I'm on right now is a P4 3.2ghz HT, and that processor can still run Crysis. It does a really, really, really bad job.



You obviously aren't playing new games. Most of the ones that I've been playing utilize, if not take full advantage of, 4 cores, yet alone 2. I'm not playing that many games, but still. If overclocking really matters (it doesn't with applications that fully utilize quad-core, you have four processors splitting up any of the tasks that need to be done so actual speed is pretty irrelevant past a certain point), then you should be in love with quad-cores. The newer technology on the Kentsfields (forgot the name) overclocks extremely well compared to how the temperature increases, so you can have a quad with superior clock speed than a dual even ignoring the extra two cores. Quads are also severely underclocked when you buy them stock, and (like I've been saying) they aren't that much more expensive. A 3.0ghz intel dual will set you back about the same as a 2.4ghz quad, for comparison.

There's no point in upgrading along the way instead of buying a really good computer, either. Why buy sub-par parts each year and play current games on mediocre to good settings when you can buy good parts every two and play current games on high/highest and year 2 games mediocre/good? It just doesn't make sense, you're going to end up spending the same money anyway. I will admit, though, that the very highest quality parts are always a waste (8800 ultra, intel extreme, etc). But buying a quad-core lets you future-proof for a while (2-4 years, unless an amazing new technology comes out), whereas a dual-core means you will have to switch to quad once the majority of software developers get with the times (should be this year) if you want decent performance from your PC.

Man, I need to learn to be concise.

Myndaen: Yeah, you can probably use the same harddrives, though if they're slower you'll want your OS on the new harddrive(s).

Whom to/where do I go to get this done?