On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 3:12 PM, PICdude wrote: > Perhaps an odd place to ask, but I suspect many of you will know > still... I'm not a gamer, but I need to get a PC for setting up a > racing simulator game. However, I'm out of touch with current PC > hardware, especially graphics cards, sound cards, etc. > > I'm looking at one of a few racing games, such as LFS. I expect I'll > go with an i5 processor, perhaps 4 or 8GB RAM, and WinXP, but can any > of you recommend a decent graphics card and sound card for this? I > understand some mobos come with 5.1 sound on-board nowadays, so > perhaps that enough, but I expect I'd need way more than anything > on-board for graphics. > > Also, though I'd prefer individual components (no case) so I can mount > directly into the simulator seat/dash, would I be better getting > something COTS/consumer from a chain store, etc? > > I can tell you exactly what to get, and it can all be had for much less than $1000. Currently, as much as I'd hate to say it, Intel is producing slightly "faster" CPUs than AMD. The newer Intel motherboard chipsets are also doing quite well. What I have (just for reference): CPU: Intel Core i7 2600k Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 PRO (the P67 chipset is pretty good). RAM: 24GB (I need to run several VMs, and I don't want to be swapping do disk). Mass storage: 2 x OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SSDs in motherboard RAID 0 configuration. The motherboard "fake" RAID on the P67 chipset is reliable. If your motherboard fails, any standard Intel RST capable board (like the P67) will be able to use your drives without any problem. The performance is excellent. Video Card: AMD HD6950 What I recommend you should get: OS: Don't use Windows XP. It's unsupported by Microsoft and a lot of software is abandoning support for it. If you insist on Windows, get Windows 7 or 8 which will be released in a few weeks. CPU: I recommend you get an i7, but an i5 is fine for your application. Video Card: Graphics processing is the most important thing for gaming, so get an AMD HD7970 which costs about $400. It's the top of the line single GPU card from AMD. If you want to go nVidia, get the GTX680. They're comparable in performance for gaming, but the AMD card is far better for GPU programming. I don't like nVidia due to their business practices, so I always recommend AMD. Motherboard: It's always good to get a board with SLI capability in my opinion, so you can stick a second video card in there for double the performance down the road. Mass storage: SSDs are always good. OCZ Vertex 4s are excellent. You don't need a separate sound card. Any half decent motherboard will have more than sufficient integrated surround sound. --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .