Bunch of CPU and GFX Card questions.......

[Thommo]

I hope someone could help me out on this, but I just wondered what are currently the best CPU's and also the best graphics card to buy for a "gaming rig" - the reason I ask is that there's a ton of CPU's and GFX cards out there that sound the same lol and I'm not much of a tech head to be honest - tit head maybe!

It's also worth mentioning that I currently have 2gb RAM and an AMD dual core 2.2 ghz cpu (cannot remember it's exact title off top of my head) and basically I'm relatively happy with things as they are I mean I certainly cannot complain but I would like to settle on a certain speed or power and for me that would be to be able to play TES Oblivion at a playable level and apparently I hear a 3ghz cpu should achieve this.....so which CPU is the best for a gaming purpose machine ?

Any genuine help is greatly appreciated and noted.

Cheers

PS

Does the graphics card quality/power make a huge different on current cpu speeds ? for example at the moment I have a 512mb nvidia geforce 7100GS, now if I was to upgrade to a £300 odd beast, top of the range graphics card - would that see any major performance improvements with the current AMD dual core processor for example ? how much of an emphasis is a top quality gfx card on pure game performance and smoothness ?

 

[biffo1]

just on past experience mate having a good processor grafix card and 1 to 2 gig of ram will always make gaming a lot better making game play smoother, game play maxing the resolution which is what you always aim to do , u can also tweak ur windows purley for gamming taking out all the fancy crap say xp pc has in it .
Dependes how far u want to go i built a pc a year ago that cost me brother
£2600 , he maxed out on everything , 2 x pcie grafix cards back to back 4 gig of mem top monitor 26 " it was amazing and u no what its old now been surpassed , if u have a half decenect pc that suports
open GL , direct 3d , or 3dfx and the games run smoothly stick with it m8 if ur loaded , fair enough keep changing but most of us arnt .

xp tips & tricks
optimize xp

 

[Thommo]

Yeah I hear what you're saying m8 - you can spend all kinds of money on a top of the line rig and 2 months later it could well be no longer bleeding edge......that is why I asked the question that I asked before - because im usually one of these people who will settle on a certain PC for years before upgrading to a new one and as things are I cannot complain however i do lol but seriously though I have been slowly upgrading bit by bit according to my needs (for example i fairly recently bought a sound card not because i needed one as such but because I wanted one as all I had before ever was on board sound and my sound blaster audigy card for me has been well worth the money I spent on it which wasnt alot) but the point is I know my current PC is good enough as it will play just about anything I chuck on it and if it's anything a couple of years old or more it will play it relatively or completely flawlessly - however I know full well that my current rig will not play Oblivion or games to that effect (barring maybe Prey) particularly well....which for me is a little annoying to be honest, I'm in limbo a little bit I suppose because I know there's sod all wrong with my rig as such but at the same time I know that just a little here and there and I will have a PC that I know I will keep for years and years barring anything catastrophic happening to it's hardware. Anyhow one thing I do know is that because I refuse to overclock then that 700 mhz hike in processor speed that I would require would end up costing me an arm and a leg to aquire. Then again I am probably just being greedy - especially when you consider what I was used to in the past, like our first PC for example....you would not believe how crap that machine was lol honestly it would take about 10 minutes to boot up properly to a useable state and you could NOT do more than one thing at a time like browse the web without your music skipping for example, hard drive was 40 gig, processor speed was in the mghz and RAM didnt amount to a single gig even AFTER an upgrade lol.....it really was the reliant robin of PCs!

Anyhow cheers for the reply mate.

 

[T4i]

2.2hz CPU is fine.

When looking at graphics cards look for the 'CORE SPEED' and 'RAM/MEMORY SPEED'

Obviously faster the better, my current gfx has a core of 560Mhz and 700Mhz memory (1.4Ghz effective cos its DDR2)

This plays BF2142 fine, not sure about the game you mention though....is it quite graphical intense?

 

[T4i]

Recommended:

3 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
1 GB System RAM
ATI X800 series, NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series, or higher video card


you want to be looking for a gfx with a core of 500+ and 700+ memory.