Cool_Freaker

That's a low end card. It will probably play todays games, such as Oblivion, but you're looking at lowest settings. Seeing as this is a whole new system I would be recommending at least a GeForce 7600GT for gaming (especially GPU intensive Oblivion). Dells are good if you can't build it yourself, or don't know a good shop (or friend) who can. I find though usually budget systems are a much better deal with Dell (ie you get an LCD screen and XP Home included in an already cheap package) - the higher end stuff seems overpriced. If you want a decent gaming PC I would still say find someone to build it. I only just upgraded from my 1.2ghz Athlon in December, and there was really nothing salvagable apart from the floppy drive. Even the CD-RW drive wasn't worth taking out considering I've got a DVD burner in this system, whilst the hardrive is old. Anyway, as T100 said, Vista will be coming, though it's touted to not be for a while. I would still recommend waiting until the new AMD chips come out (AM2), and if you're willing to wait even longer the Intel Conroe chip should be coming this year. The Conroe, anyway, will offer some significant performance gains if you want to hold off (or even instigate some price drops over the CPU range)

Yes, it's rather terrible. Then again, they have your attention, don't they? Who knows, once Wii get past all the Wii Wii jokes it might just stick. I wonder if it'll come in yellow...Some people are saying its because the Revolution was rather similar to the Xbox 360 namely because 360 is a revolution. "ii" means good in Japanese too I believe. It really does sound rather kidified, but console names have never been amazingly flash. Just look at "Gameboy". I reckon that sounds as corny as corn on a cob, but people have gotten used to it. I just hope Nintendo can bring out some good games - I'll definitely buy one if there's some good innovative stuff on it, regardless of the name.

What really annoys me about Runescape is all of my little cousins (about 5 of them around 12 years of age) play it. No matter how much I try convincing them otherwise, their life is devoted to the Jagex Cashcow. For some reason their disillusioned friends all play it also, and its extremely hard for me to pull them off it. I fail to see the logic in a game which looks bad, plays bad, sounds bad and has one of the worst online communities, comparable to Counter-Strike.Paying membership for Runescape makes absolutely no sense at all to me. As others have said - WoW surely is better and if its too expensive Guild Wars offers just the one off game purchase option, which I believe is awesome (though I have yet to try either - I know it will suck too much of my time).Because MMORPGs are such a social nature, a game populated by immature brats, spammers, scammers and every other abhorid thing you can think of is something you really would want to stay away from. What peeves me even more is how a lot of the topics in the Gaming section of Xisto (especially the Clan Recruiting) are FILLED with random Runescapers posting with a lack of grammar advertising some crapped up guild. Puhleez - I really...don't...want....to...know... your....freaking....level... of....every...single...profession....

The old Athlons did have a tendancy to overheat for sure, but I believe they were the old Thunderbirds? That's probably what its referring to - the XP chips are *newer* (everything Socket A is becoming obsolete these days) and probably don't run as hot. The new chips, that is just about all the socket 939 cores out now and the socket 754's are running much much cooler, even cooler than their Intel counterparts. I don't believe that putting your heatsink on upside down counts as overheating moldboy <_<Anyway, my old Socket A CPU used to get rather hot, but never burnt out - instead my motherboard killed itself.

Yeah I saw the announcement and I'm excited already. A return to the original GDI vs NOD conflict is great - a shame about cutscenes though. There are even rumours of a third race, which could be exciting, or extremely disappointing.Unfortunately it's going to be an EA game, as the Westwood team have been absorbed into the main body of EA... so we'll have to hope its up to scratch and not like some of the other crap they sometimes release...

Yep, as most people have said Need for Speed: Most Wanted is great - it keeps the street racing of Underground 1/2 but adds the cops, which was awesome in Hot Pursuit. Has some great presentation in music, and menus are nicely done...Graphics looks quite good too... I just need to get a steering wheel to replace my keyboard...

I believe they have acquired Alienware already? (And Goosetaf seemed to be hinting at it too). Dell is currently the best in terms of price/performance out of the computer makers - though the components tend to be rather... erm... average.I'd have to agree and say Alienware is far overpriced - and for anyone who's enough of a computer enthusiast to want quad-core... they could probably do it themselves...

Hamtaro, that software list looks pretty good actually. A number of the Business/IT teachers at my school could only use the Microsoft Office Suite and do some minimal browsing and MYOB. It was rather pathetic, but I guess the course only required them to know this - apparantly the basics of computing comprise of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and IE.Anyway, best of luck with getting your internet at school back...

If you're looking at Intels, a *slower* clock speed Core Duo notebook still runs faster than the same speed single core Pentium M, not to mention multitasking is much better on dual-cores. If you can afford it, it's the way to go.

I think you have to start again - from what I recall none of the FF games allow you to change your name after the beginning?

The dubs will probably ruin it. In FFX the mouth movements as opposed to the actual speech really peeved me - I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of the same when the dub is released. Besides, it's not really an anime, but a CGI Movie... As for release date, I believe a US release is coming within the next week or so, and according to http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ the Australian release should be on May 3. It will be good, that's for sure

Just about any video card that you can buy new (that's compatible with your computer) should be good enough. What exactly are you getting AD?

Yeah, and if your integrated graphics shares the RAM, then you don't even have 256mb when you're playing WoW. With integrated graphics I see little point in runnning 3dMark on it though Inspiron? We know it's not going to yield a very good score at all... I would actually recommend the '05 test - many are saying it provides a more accurate benchmark than the '06 one still.In terms of "technicality" I believe your integrated graphics would suffice (once you got the recommended RAM), though you are still much better off buying a $50 card (if you're using a desktop that is) - for games a dedicated GPU is the way to go

Well, from what I gathered you want to start a computer shop? In which case you should be able to buy wholesale - what kind of shop buys at retail prices?As a package you'll probably need to include a keyboard, mouse and monitor. Go for a cheapy mouse/keyboard combo, and chuck in a 17" LCD like the BenQ FP71G+S.

I think it means you have integrated graphics (ie the motherboard has a graphics chip.) It probably shares memory with your RAM or something... I believe you should be able to play WoW, but most likely you'll have to do it on the lowest settings.WoW only requires a GeForce2 card anyway - you can easily get any bottom range graphics card out now and be able to play no problems.

Oh, then you should be able to buy wholesale price... in which case just put on a % markup?Is there going to be a keyboard/mouse and monitor included as well?

Actually, it's a boy. Looks good SM - the roughish papery look fits the render, as opposed to the Jessica Alba one you did before IMO.

Well, say with CPU speeds - it's increasingly getting hard for manufacturers to increase the speeds, as the chips are really damn tiny. So instead of designing a new architechture which takes away the importance of the CPU they do a workaround by having stuff like Dual-Cores like you see now.And I don't think the current generation of GFX cards are that awesome? I mean yeah they're great, but I'm waiting for the DirectX10 Generation cards to come out before I'm in awe

Nah, I'm not an extreme gamer - I'm on a budget gaming system as well, with a 6600GT. As for price, I think $1500 is quite steep, even if you're not getting wholesale. Definitely shop around more. I know my computer from 5 months ago is similar (albiet one less hard-drive, and with a cheaper case) cost AU$1200, which should be less than $1000 USD (Try getting it about $1000). That is, of course, if you're not including the monitor in the price - are you? (What monitor, by the way?)Oh and as for the GFX card, it seems the good budget buy these days is the 7600GS - try looking for that. It's cheaper than the 6800GS, but performs better than the 6600GT.

I do, though not all that often - I tend to get scared when big bloody zombies pop out of corners in the dark. I guess Quake 4 was released a while later than Doom 3, but offered very little in the way of innovation. The great thing about Quake has been its multiplayer (well at least in Quake 3), which was the selling point of the game. With Quake 4, however, they moved back to a single player focus, with a rather elementary online mode. In essence, they turned away from the concepts that made Quake 3 great. Also, it's probably why it seems "no-one" plays it - probably because they only play it offline.

Much better this time JC05. ($AU = Australian Dollars - these days it's hovering at about AU$1 to about US$.072) It would depend though on what you've got to spend on your computer as to what I recommend. Budget (yours is quite good - but this would be my recommendations): - AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Venice) socket 939 - ASUS A8N-E s939 Motherboard - Asus is quite well known for their motherboards which are generally fairly good with some overclocking potential. Also has the nForce4 mobo chipset which is said to be good for gaming. - 1 x 1gb DDR400 RAM - Just one stick for now, so you can get another stick later when you upgrade - then you can run your RAM in Dual Channel (brands, most are fine, just don't get Generic) - Leadtek 128mb 6600GT PCI-e - Budget card (getting on in age), but still one of the good value cards around - Leadtek is 6600GT's with a fan - good for overclocking again, not to mention it comes with a good software bundle - 2 x 250gb Seagate NCQ 7200.9 HDD's - Seagate is a good brand, try and get the ".9" ones - they're SATA II. (Though it's still a lot of HDD space) - Antec Sonata II Case (and PSU) - Logitech X-530 Speakers You won't need a sound card, as I think the ASUS has decent on board sound - anything that sounds better than that would cost you quite a bit, and the Logitech X-530's are good, but are still budget, not high end and a good sound card would be wasted on them. The 512mb GeForce 6600 is a bit of a gimmick? I guess it depends if you need the HDTV - if it's just for games the 6600GT is much better. Instead of the 6600GT you could also go for a 6800GS which is about AU$80 more, but offers a worthwhile performance boost, or if you want to go to the high-midrange get a 7600GT. Again, if you have the cash, a dual core processor like the AMD X2 3800+ is getting cheaper and will be good for future applications, multitasking, and is currently used in games such as Quake 4 and Call of Duty 2. You could also change the motherboard to something like the ASUS A8N-SLI if you had plans to get a second (note it has to be the same) graphics card for another performance boost - though generally it's not recommended for the price.

I don't really like the square imprint thing on the sig, and whilst you chose the Halo font, it doesn't really fit in well. I can see you spent a long time blending though - try blending the text as well

To be honest, that's more of a budget computer in my opinion. It's still using the old 754 socket, rather than the 939 one. The video card is VERY basic; the 256mb memory on it is a gimmick rather than an indication of performance. I believe it's the lowest performing ATi card widely available now, not to mention it's using an AGP slot, rather than PCI-e (which limits upgrade potentional, as AGP GPU's are starting to slow in production). For a computer like this (especially as socket 754 doesn't support dual channel), you probably don't need more than 1gb RAM - 2gb is on the higher end these days, and is more for higher end computer (which this one doesn't seem to be).. also is it just for Macs? Case choice is excellent though, Antec make good cases, as well as good PSU's. Also good is the large HDD size, though personally I'd be more inclined to get 2x250gb drives, so one can be backup if one fails, or you can put them in a RAID array (RAID 0 for striping which makes it faster). Sony DVD-RW drives don't have the best reputation; a BenQ or a Pioneer would probably be better. Any information on the 5.1 speaker system? They can range from the cheap - Logitech X530's (AU$99) to something more than 5x that.As it stands I wouldn't be looking at more than about AU$1000 for it...

Is it really "millions"? Anyway, I *stopped* playing CS1.6 because I was finding too many of my favourite servers were switched to CSS. My computer can easily run HL2/CSS but it's a matter of going out and buying the game again - not to mention a lot of the CS community (at least initially) said that CSS was rather buggy. One of my friends claimed to have killed 5 people through a solid wall once. I haven't found HL2 to be all that cheap to buy yet, even though it's been out a while. Apparantly DoD:S hasn't managed to pull the expected numbers either - all in all a disappointment perhaps?

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