I'm thinking about buying a new PC

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My current PC is almost 5 years old, so I'm thinking it's time for a new one. The only problem is that I haven't really looked into the latest hardware trends for 5 years, so I don't really know what's on the market today and what's any good. So, could you help me out a bit?

I'm using my pc for regular purposes, like e-mailing, web-surfing, a bit of gaming, some photo enhancement and sometimes listening to music (boring eh? ) I don't really need the most state of the art pc, but I also don't want the most budget pc; I want it to last for the following few years.

Processors - I'm an Intel guy, so I'm primarily looking into an Intel again. From what I've seen so far, Intel has three main processing lines for desktop pc's: Duo's, Quads and Extremes. I don't think an Extreme is anything for me, so that leaves Duo's and Quads. So, do you notice any real difference between them in performance now, or is the Quad processor an investment for the future? And how do the prices compare?

Motherboards - Probably an ASUS or Intel's own motherboard if I'm handpicking a system myself. I'm considering going Dell, so it's not like I would have a choice in the matter then

Memory - I'm thinking about a minimum of 2gb, with possibly more if the budget allows it. DDR2-800 seems to be the standard. I'm seriously thinking about taking the leap and getting... *gasp* Vista, so it needs to run smoothly.

Graphics - I've had an ATI Radeon for the last five years and never had any troubles with it (never updated any drivers in the last five years, where I understand are the most troubles with ). Never needed their support or anything, but perhaps I was lucky and I should try a nVidia this time? The Radeon HD 3870 and the GeForce 8800 GT seem to be popular choices in 512mb video cards, as they offer most bang for buck (at least, that's what I read). The ATI is a bit cheaper, but the nVidia is a bit faster. (They seem to offer dual graphics cards... don't think I'll be needing that )

Sound - How is on-board sound nowadays? I'm thinking about cutting cost on this one. Company's like Dell don't seem to even offer sound cards anymore in their systems, so I might go with whatever is on-board. If that doesn't suffice, I could always take the Creative Audigy 2 card out of my current machine, but would it still be as good as the basic audio cards from nowadays? I'm also keeping my current speakers; a Creative 6.1 system (yes, I got 6.1 sound )

Storage - Whatever is affordable. More is good, but not necessary I still seem to have 40gigs free on my current 120gb HD. My regular hardware info site seems to be a big fan of the Hitachi Deskstar drives nowadays. I have a Western Digital at the moment, but lately it has the habit to turn itself off sometimes... very annoying. My brother has the same drive of the same age with the same problem, so I don't know if I should get WD again...

DVD drive/writer - Does brand still matter that much nowadays? (Like I said, I might buy a Dell, so that means no choice) I'm probably not getting Blu-ray or HD-DVD just yet. I don't have the need (yet) for either one, but getting both is still a bit expensive.

Monitors - I'm thinking about a 20" wide screen, but don't exactly know yet which one. I think a bigger one will become unnecessarily expense, as I don't really need it. I keep hearing a lot of positive things about Samsung, so I might look into that. If I do get a Dell, I will probably get one without a monitor, as at first glance they look pretty expensive and I don't know if they are really that good.

So, what do you think? If I have a bit more info I will probably select a system and ask your advice again, but for now any pointers are welcome

 

CPU - You can get a new Core 2 Duo using the new 45nm process for a good price. They've been smoking AMD since 2006. Just get the fastest that you can afford. You can get a E8400 for about $220.

RAM - 2GB is the sweet spot. And you're correct about DDR2-800.

Videocard - Nvidia is still the king with their 8800 series. But the 8600 GT is a great card too. AMD/ATI has a few contenders that are priced very competitively. Your best bet here is to have a look at Tom's Hardware VGA charts. I'm too lazy to find the link, but a Google search will take you right where you want to go.

Onboard audio still sucks...especially if you buy a brand name PC like Dell. Nothing can compare to a dedicated sound card.

Storage - just get the "free" upgrade that Dell usually offers. IIRC, it's 230GB right now, but I haven't checked in a week, so that could have changed.

Optical - The fasted DVD burners are 16x. I wouldn't waste your time with BR or HD-DVD until one of them is the standard.

Monitor - Dell's monitors are actually quite good. They're usually in the top 5 on the charts. Don't get the "basic" model though.

More thoughts on dell....I go to school with a guy that works for Dell's XPS call center, he told me the XPS All-in-One and the XPS M2010 are pieces of junk. They break more than any other Dell system, and most of the time, they have to replace the entire system. Go with an Inspiron. Or better yet, build it yourself! You'll loose the famous India based tech support, but that's a good thing to many people.

 

I think sound is important and I listen to music quite a bit on my PC, so the sound card and speaker system are important components. I've been using an SB Audigy 4, which is capable, but not outstanding. It runs a logi Z5300 THX speaker system, which has a much better bottom to low-mid than upper-mids and highs. Whille it's not what I would define as HI-FI, It's great for gaming, and pretty good for most music. The high-end, while smooth, is somewhat cold sounding; I like my highs a little warmer in tone. But I think it's the SB that's not really quite warm enough to suit my taste as well as it is the speaker system itself. The mids don't have quite enough presence, and the highs are just a tad too edgy sounding.

I would recommend one of the newer SB X-Fi cards, but the more desirable cards have the ability to off-load a lot of the sound processing off the main processor. It will speed things up a bit. Also, the M-Audio Revolution cards are worth a look as well. But I have no experience with them. The onboard audio has improved a great deal, but you have to look carefully at what your OEM mainboard provider is giving you. Playback software is almost as important as the hardware. I've been using Winamp, and it's very good, IMHO.

 

While many people say that can't hear the electrical noise generated by onboard audio, if you have some noise-canceling headphones (preferably the ear bud style), plug them in to the rear audio port while nothing is playing. Even if you turn the system volume all the way down, you can still hear the noise....or "white-noise"...or whatever it's called.

My laptop is actually the worst example of this. When I plugged my $200 headphones directly in to the headphone jack, I was assaulted with noise. However, once I switched my Creative Audigy NX (an external soundcard for laptops) back on, and plugged my headphones in to that, I could not hear the noise. I've also tested the computers I've built for my dad and my brother. They have the same motherboard, and both have discernable levels of noise. My brother's computer however has a Creative X-Fi card, and when I plugged my headphones in to that, there was no noise what-so-ever.

That's what I use. Winamp is the best player I've ever used, and it can convert files to other formats if you have a easy to configure plugin. I used Winamp to convert all my lossless FLAC files to 192kbps Mp3 files for my Mp3 player.

 

Thanks for the replies everybody. The Dell XPS series (the more basic machines) looked pretty cool, but I'm not so sure about them now. I'm still not so sure about getting any Dell... I like knowing what they put in my machine, but if they prices are good enough...

And I don't listen to that much music on my pc. When I do, it is usually streams (pretty low quality, so I doubt any system can make them sound good) or just listening to one song (I converted many of my albums to mp3, to upload them to my portable player. When I need to listen to a single song I often play the mp3 instead of putting on the cd). I have a better sound system for really listening to music or watching movies, so I usually don't use my pc for that (I always think music sounds rather harsh and flat on computers, probably because of the lower bit rates of most mp3's). What I do like decent (surround sound) audio for is for gaming, so I'm wondering if a on-board sound system can pull that off. The Gigabyte P35 motherboards are praised for their excellent on-board sound, but if I'm not going with on-board, I will likely look into the SB X-Fi cards (even tough I just heard that Vista doesn't take the maximum out of sound cards).

 

Please dont get an 8600GT. It really is a terrible card. A 7600GT is faster than it in most cases, though it lacks DX10. Rather buy a 3850 or 3870, they are great cards.

I like the idea of buying a soundcard, because you get higher quality sound and a performance improvement (since onboard sounds steals CPU cycles). the problem is, if you go with Vista, you wont be able to use hardware sound acceleration, unless you use OpenAL, and Alchemy. Both of which are available for Creative X FI cards only.

Buy an Asus mobo based on the P35 chipset, you wont regret it.

 

Ummm....Look here, here, and here. While the 7600GT is ~60MHz faster than the 8600GT, it's the *core* that matters. Just like a 2GHz Core 2 Duo will smoke a 3GHz P4...the 8600 cards are based on Nvidia's G80 chip, while the 7600 is based on the G73 chip.

I don't know where you're getting your info from, but everyone I know is raving about the 8600GT. Every review I've read on it has given it high praise too.

 

You selected the 8800GTS in those tests Kitrax , but yeah looks like the 8600GTS beats the 7600GT by around 30-80%. When the 8600GT was released it was kind of seen as a disappointment on the basis that it wasn't much better than the older 7600GT's and cost a hell of a lot more. They've come down in price and revised them a little since then and now they fare a lot better (and moreso than I expected in those tom's hardware charts).
If you're into gaming and can spare the money I'd go for a either a 3850 or a 3870 from AMD, or an 8800GT from nVIDIA (the AMD's are slower but offer slighly more frames per second per dollar than the 8800GT). The Best Gaming Graphics: January 2008 by tom's hardware is a pretty good guide, though it's also a good idea to compare cards using the chart Kitrax linked to above (since prices may vary by region).

You can get SATA dvd burners now which max out at 20x, 18x pretty common too. But 16x should be plenty fast - most disks max out here anyway and it might be useful keeping a SATA port free for an extra hard drive.

I've always found on-board sound to be fine, using a decent set of cans gives me great sound quality (having said that I'm not much of an audiophile). One thing you might want to look for is how many speaker ports the motherboard supports - after my last motherboard broke I replaced it with a cheapy that supported 5.1 fine, but only had 3 audio ports - it meant I could have 5.1 sound or a microphone, but not both (didn't matter too much as my mic is attached to my headphones). So yeah, something to ask about i guess.

The power of CPU's is getting a lot more confusing than it used to be. Quad Cores will be a lot faster when it comes to running multiple applications or programs that can make the most out of the 4 cores. Most games do not see much of a performance boost out of 4 cores, and in many cases it is better to save the money and go for dual. A good example is a comparison between the Intel Q6600 (quad core) and the AMD X2 6000+; while the 6000 gets absolutely destroyed in many of the CPU tests (we're talking about a 50-100% discrepancy), it is only around 13% slower in games. Seeing as the 6000+ is 56% cheaper it isn't too bad a buy (the same can be said for Intel dual cores). Play around with tom's cpu charts and have a look at how different cores perform with the applications you're most likely to use.

Also shop around a bit, try getting a few quotes from some of the smaller retailers - you're likely to get a cheaper price and faster/friendlier support should anything break.

 

I like to add one thing about graphics cards. the testsystem used has a huge impact on the card. A lot of different results from different sites give a distorted view. take the one whit a test system closest to yours. The drivers use are a major factor also. In case of ati, some use 8.1 ohters a beta 8.2. ati. do not pin yourself down to one testresult. I agree whit Tom's Gpu test. (yes the 3850 is also in agp).

On board sound is good, at least as good as your motherboard. the sound is done by a piece of hardware that is called the south-bridge. cheap models have an cheap southbridge. If sound is an issue, and you have VISTA, take a board whit the intel ich9r southbrigde. Why not an audio card like the famous Creative XIFI? because Vista uses a sorftware emulatiuon for sounds, negating the better part of the quality that the XIFI can offer. If xp, nothing beats a soundcard made by a top brand.

If you really want to know more, wiki it.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southbridge_(computing)

 

QFT - the results from review site charts will rarely translate into actual performance gains in your own system, they will however give you an idea of the performance of cards *relative* to one another (provided the system isn't bottlenecked by other pieces of hardware).

toms reference system is pretty high end, though not outrageously so, the processor and graphics card are certainly within reach of a consumer level system.
Asus P5E3 Deluxe (X38 Chipset)
Intel Core2 Duo E6850 (3.0GHz)
2gb DDR3-1600
Radeon HD3850

 

Yes I know quite well that its the core that matters. I studied CPU architecture. Have a look here: http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=637&p=2

And dont compare the 8600GTS to the 7600GT. Compare the 8600GT to the 7600GT, and you will see the 7600GT is faster. That is the mark of a bad card - the next generation card marketed at the same price point is slower.

 

Kit - Once you converted your FLACS to MP3s, how much difference did you notice in the sound quality? A lot of audiophiles swear by lossless compression, while technophiles claim that there is little difference at 192kbps and above in MP3 or standard AAC. I have no experience with losseless files, since my library of some 7000 tracks are all MP3 or VBR MP3.

 

For a budget config for games, one can get a Dual Core AMD processor with a matching motherboard from Gigabyte or something (not meaning a noname one for sure), 2*1GB RAM on DDR2 chips at 800 MHz, a GeForce 8600GT card - preferably the Sonic version from Palit (Palit is already good these days and Sonic costs about the same as regular, while being overclocked - though it's hard to find a 512 MB version if they even exist). You then put it in a nice case, buy a nice gaming mouse (I suggest the Fatal1ty product with FireWire and golden plugs plus changeable weights for all your gaming needs) and keyboard... The onboard sound will already be something HD, so better than many stand-alone cards. Also, a SATA hard and DVD drive - don't skimp, just get something fast and silent and with a reputation for stability. With that you buy an LCD 19'' at some promo and you're set. For a small price you have a computer perfectly able to play new games and without any skimping. Sure, no biggy, no 8800GTX Quad Core 4 GB RAM kind of stuff, but for the price you can get it for... If I weren't out of money, I'd be getting it myself.

 

My own collection is being completly re-ripped in eAAC+, and 96KBPS eAAC+ sounds great. I re-ripped from 320 KBPS MP3, and I don't see much of a difference between 320 KBPS MP3 and 96 KBPS eAAC+, TBH.

And definitively go for the SATA DVD drive.

 

Thanks, Tal. I did not think there would be much of a difference at the higher bit-rates.
I wish I had more time to reference the different types of files against the originals on my main audio system, but to do it properly would be too much of a chore.

DotW - Yes, but if there is no difference in sound quality then all you are really achieving is saving some real estate on your storage devices. You are achieving a substantial reduction in file size, but as Tal points out, mass storage is no longer much of an issue, unless you are working with a smaller, portable device.

BTW, I think eAAC+ files are still lossys though. But I may be wrong.

 

Space is not an issue on my comp - 620GB - but it is on my phone. I currently have a 512 MB microSD in it and it's pretty much full. The card is shared by the music player, themes, photos and videos, so all the space I can save on this card is not unwelcome at all.

And you mentioned standard AAC - eAAC+ is a lossy format, yes, but it's much, much better than regular AAC.