PICdude wrote:

> Perhaps an odd place to ask, but I suspect many of you will know =20
> still... I'm not a gamer, but I need to get a PC for setting up a =20
> racing simulator game.  However, I'm out of touch with current PC =20
> hardware, especially graphics cards, sound cards, etc.
>
> I'm looking at one of a few racing games, such as LFS.  I expect I'll =20
> go with an i5 processor,=20
Sounds reasonable though perhaps a little overkill. I personally
game on a pentium G850 (not sure of the exact model offhand) at the=20
moment.

>perhaps 4 or 8GB RAM,=20
It's overkill but ram is so cheap now I don't see a lot of point
in dropping in less than 8GB nowadays unless you are really tight
on money.


> and WinXP,=20
I wouldn't generally reccomend XP for a new gaming build at this=20
point. XP 32-bit is limited to 4GB of physical address space This=20
means you end up with less than 4GB of usable ram. How much less=20
depends on how much address space other hardware takes up. I've
seen one system where it was only 2.5GB due to the graphics card
eating up a lot of address space. Windows XP proffessional x64
edition (which is really a version of windows 2003 under the hood)=20
while a fine OS was not so widely supported.=20

Also be aware that the gaming world is moving towards directx=20
10 or 11 and XP only supports directx 9. Most games do still h
ave a directx 9 rendering mode but some are now increasing the=20
minimum OS requirement to vista or even win7.

On the other hand if your games and associated software aren't
too memory hungry, you already have a suitable XP license
and you either know you will never be changing games or you=20
are prepared to do a full reinstall if you do need a newer=20
game then you may be ok with XP.


> but can any =20
> of you recommend a decent graphics card and sound card for this?  I =20
> understand some mobos come with 5.1 sound on-board nowadays, so =20
> perhaps that enough,
Yeah, the days when games could get significant benefit from hardware=20
mixing in soundcards are over. Onboard is fine nowadays unless you
need super high quality output.

>  but I expect I'd need way more than anything on-board for graphics.
>  =20
What I generally do is look at the "reccomended" specs for the games=20
I want to play and aim slightly above them. I don't go too overboard
on the graphics because they are easy to upgrade later.

Unfortunately graphics cards are a mess of inconsistent naming, so=20
once you decide roughly what price/capability range you want to be=20
in you will spend a lot of time looking at benchmarks and suppliers
websites figuring out which cards are good value in that range Back
when I last bought a card I found the geforce GT 430 was a good=20
budget option but things may well have changed since then.

Also note that intels graphics are now integrated in the CPU so the
CPU you choose determined what integrated graphics you get. The have
also been getting better recently . The GT 430 I mentioned above is=20
about 40% better than intel's best integrated graphics (the HD 4000).

http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Intel-Core-i73770K-Ivy-Bridge-Processor-Revi=
ew/?page=3D11

Another component you didn't mention but I will is the power supply.
I'd generally be looking in the 600W range from a reputable vendor
like corsair, antec or seasonic. This will give you the headroom
to use pretty much any single socket graphics card now or in the
future without worrying about it's power requirements.=20
..

--=20
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist
.