What is the best choice for a new PC

[Ghost]

Hello all,

As my current system is getting a bit older I am planning to upgrade to a new machine, as my motherboard is incompatible with some of the new technologies now out I can't upgrade this one further so I plan to sell it in the papers or online after I have transferred all my files to the new machine.

I don't have much knowledge about putting together a good system that can last a couple of years and is compatible to all the new technology still to come, perhaps some of you could help me with assembling a 'dream machine'.

Also, something I am also a bit stuck with is what kind of OS I should have on the new computer, I shall be honest; I don't have a legal version of Windows XP on my computer.
When I get a new computer I will probably need to get myself a legal version of Windows but I am not sure which to get.

Things will probably be all Vista in the future but on the moment there are still to much complaints and I am not sure that programs I use like Dosbox are compatible with it, but XP is almost out and I would find it a waste if I would have to buy that and later Vista legally.
Any suggestion

[AlexJ]

Hello all,

As my current system is getting a bit older I am planning to upgrade to a new machine, as my motherboard is incompatible with some of the new technologies now out I can't upgrade this one further so I plan to sell it in the papers or online after I have transferred all my files to the new machine.

I don't have much knowledge about putting together a good system that can last a couple of years and is compatible to all the new technology still to come, perhaps some of you could help me with assembling a 'dream machine'.

Also, something I am also a bit stuck with is what kind of OS I should have on the new computer, I shall be honest; I don't have a legal version of Windows XP on my computer.
When I get a new computer I will probably need to get myself a legal version of Windows but I am not sure which to get.

Things will probably be all Vista in the future but on the moment there are still to much complaints and I am not sure that programs I use like Dosbox are compatible with it, but XP is almost out and I would find it a waste if I would have to buy that and later Vista legally.
Any suggestion

I'd stick with the not quite legal XP for the moment, and wait until Vista stabilises before buying it. My Vista PC (bought brand new ready built with it pre-installed incidentally, so it's not my poor design) crashes with a Blue screen of death more often than Windows ME used to.

As for spec, Harrison will probably be along shortly to give you advice on that (no doubt with an AMD processor at it's core )

[Harrison]

As for spec, Harrison will probably be along shortly to give you advice on that (no doubt with an AMD processor at it's core )

You know me too well!

Ghost, what price range are you looking to spend on a new PC? If you tell me that I can do you a list of components to recommend to you that fit into that price range.

Personally though I would say to hold on for a bit longer if you can and purchase a new PC, or the parts to build one, at the end of August. The reason is that Direct X 10 graphics cards haven't been out very long, and neither has Windows Vista. The instability within Vista at the moment is due to hardware drivers. By the summer the drivers will have matured enough to make for a more stable system and the Direct X 10 graphics cards will have started to drop in price allowing you to get a bargain.

As for the OS to choose. If you are looking to legally purchase one then definitely wait a bit longer and then get Vista once the instabilities have been fixed. Waiting for the first Service Pack to be released for any Microsoft OS is always the best thing to do before using it as a main OS.

As for compatibility with existing software. It is true that Vista is not as compatible as XP and 2000 have been with older software, but the simple solution to that problem is to setup the PC to dual boot so you can load XP or Vista. To do that make sure you install XP first before Vista or it won't work.

[Ghost]

Hello Harrison,

Do you know if there has been any progress on Vista drivers and the service pack?
October is approaching and I would have liked to buy a new PC this year without running into annoying OS related problems.

I already have a couple of games I haven'tbeen able to play yet and in October Half Life 2 Episode 2 will be released which I really would like to play.

Back here someone I know has already suggested that I could better wait until next year with the purchase of a new PC but that would mean I won't be able to enjoy the game releases during Christmas.

[Harrison]

There hasn't been any news of a Vista service pack yet, but I don't expect one to be released until at least the end of this year. As for Vista drivers I think the situation is improving, but the graphics drivers especially are still far from perfect.

The current best solution is as I mentioned before, to do a dual boot XP/Vista setup to have compatibility for all games. That situation will not likely change either because due to the changes in the way graphics and audio work in Vista older software will never work properly.

If you want to current good gaming PC then you will still have to pay quite a lot for a decent Direct X 10 graphics card (£200+). nVidia DX10 cards are still currently the best to go for, as AMD cards are still lagging behind in performance. But it isn't worth going for the budget end of DX10 cards as they just cannot perform well enough for gaming. Some of the recent budget cards cannot even manage to run Call of Duty 2 in double figure frame rates which is no good.

But for the CPU it isn't the best time to buy. AMD are currently completing development on their next CPU and we won't know how good that is until it launches. If you did want to buy now then an Intel Core 2 Duo is probably the best way to go, or a Quad core if you can afford the extra. I personally would still buy an AMD dual core, but that is just because I prefer how AMD chips work and run cooler.

[Sharingan]

Myself, I've been leaning towards upgrading to a Core 2 Duo E6600. The E6600 is oft-lauded as being the Intel chip that currently has the best price/performance ratio. It has good gaming performance, can be overclocked quite a bit (on air-cooling), and is supposed to run cool, too (compared to the Prescott P4, anyway). I have no idea how it compares to the latest AMD processors, though.

The thing that bothers me most about PC gaming hardware is just how quickly it becomes outdated. It seems that as soon as you order a piece of kit, something new and 50% faster will have come out. That wouldn't be a big problem in itself, were it not for the fact that developers often want to take advantage of newer hardware, creating games that require more and more power to run well. Want to play Game X, but don't have a DirectX 15 card? Too bad, sucks for you.

That's why I generally tend to stick to consoles for gaming.

[AlexJ]

There hasn't been any news of a Vista service pack yet, but I don't expect one to be released until at least the end of this year. As for Vista drivers I think the situation is improving, but the graphics drivers especially are still far from perfect.

The current best solution is as I mentioned before, to do a dual boot XP/Vista setup to have compatibility for all games. That situation will not likely change either because due to the changes in the way graphics and audio work in Vista older software will never work properly.

Vague dates have been released for the service packs - Vista will have one in Q3/Q4 2007 around the same time Longhorn Server is released and XP will have it's final SP3 sometime in 2008. The problem at the moment is still with the graphics drivers, BSODs are still quite common although less thanks to recent NVidia updates. Now it's more likely for Aero to stop working instead and go back to basic mode which while annoying is definitely preferred to the whole thing crashing.

On the games not working, I've had surprisingly little problem getting XP games to work on it, even older 9x titles seem OK if they worked on XP. I'd imagine in the future (but not short-term) we'll see a Dosbox style emulator for 9x/XP games.

[Harrison]

I read last week that the next Windows server release may be put back to next year, because M$ have had to devote more developers to other projects such as Silverlight and continuing Vista development. I expect they will release Vista SP1 either the end of November so that PCs sold during the Christmas period will come with it preinstalled, or at the very start of the new year.

[Ghost]

Hello all,

I am a bit ignorant on this subject but if I understand well Harrison, you would recommend that I wait another while until the problems are solved with Vista and that new CPU is out?

[Harrison]

Yes. It is just a time of transition for Windows and the PC at the moment. Due to Vista not being out that long it hasn't had time to mature. It isn't so much hardware, but software and driver support that we still need to wait a bit longer for.

The Direct X 10 graphics cards are still also very new and require time for their drivers to become stable and work well with Vista's desktop features. They will also start to drop in price towards the end of the year and we should start to see more affordable cards with power closer to the top end cards currently out.

There is also currently still the issue with Audio cards that isn't completely resolved by Creative, or the developers of on-board audio drivers. This issue is due to Microsoft dropping all support for DirectSound 3D in Vista. This is actually one of the biggest compatibility problems for Vista as many older games completely rely on this for their audio to work. If you try to run a game that needs DirectSound 3D to work propery Vista will jus disable the audio. Creative have now released a beta of a DirectSound 3D emulation layer for their newer sound cards but that still isn't perfect. Also this means that any games with EAX audio to not work as they did in XP.

So it isn't so much waiting for hardware to come out as you could constantly be in that situation. You just need to say, right I'm buying a PC, and select the best hardware available for your budget at that time. It is instead just waiting for the hardware manufacturers to get fully up to speed with Vista and for them to release stable hardware drivers that support legacy emulation so that older software and games will all run better than they currently do.