Building/Upgrading a PC for TS2
Jarsie:
Thanks for the explanations.
I plan to spend some serious money on geting a new comp when the time comes.
lowlucious:
I was looking into getting a new computer and I am hoping someone could help me with a few things. I love to play different types of games on my computer as well as the sims 2 and expansion packs and on my computer i have now i get a lot of lag so i would like to upgrade to a computer with more than 512mb of memory and 80gb and this is the computer I am looking at right now. I was wondering if this computer would be more than sufficient for running games.
Gateway® FX510XT
Intel® Core™2 Extreme processor X6800 (2.93GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB cache)3
Genuine Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 (Update Rollup 2) w/ XP Media Center Backup2
Microsoft® Office Basic Edition 2003 (Includes Word, Excel and Outlook)2
Intel® 975X Chipset with DDR2 and Intel® Core Duo support
4096MB PC5300 Dual-Channel DDR2 667MHz SDRAM (4-1024MB modules)
1000GB (1TB) Serial ATA II/300 7200RPM with Raid 0 (2-500GB hard drives - striping)4
9-in-1 media card reader
16x Double-Layer Multi-Format DVD Writer (DVD±/R±RW/CD-R/RW) and 48X/32X/48X CD-RW Drive
Desktop Value Service Plan -- 1 year parts/labor/no on-site/1 year technical support5
Gateway 7-bay tower case
Integrated Serial ATA Controller
(2) PCI expansion slots (filled), (1) PCI-E x1 expansion slot (available). (1) PCI-E x16 expansion slot (available)
(6) USB 2.0 (2 in front and 4 in back), (3) IEEE 1394 Firewire (2 in front and 1 in back), (1) Serial, (2) PS/2, (1) RJ-45 Integrated LAN, (1) VGA, (1) Microphone, front audio ports
Energy Star® compliant
FPD2185W 21" Black Widescreen High-Definition LCD Analog/Digital Performance Flat Panel Display with 4 Powered USB Ports (Includes height-adjustable stand)
Dual card ATI Radeon® X1900 XT CrossFire™ solution w/512MB DDR3 memory (per card), DVI, VGA (via adapter), & TV-Out
Gateway® elite multimedia keyboard and soft-touch USB optical wheel mouse (no mouse pad included)
2-piece speaker solution
Hegelian:
This would be more than sufficient for running just about anything you can load under WinXP.
Unless you're editing video, buying this in anticipation of Vista, or intend to upgrade to the 64-bit version of WinXP Pro, 4 GM of RAM is a waste of money. In extreme circumstances, WinXP can use 4 GB of RAM, but individual processes (such as games) can only have up to 2 GB. If you do stick with the 4 GB, don't be surprised if Windows reports only 3 GB in your PC; see here for more.
I would be a bit skeptical of the 1000 GB RAID 0 drive array. Unless you're doing video editing or archiving every MP3 in the known universe (and if you are, you should be archiving to DVD and not your hard drive), that's more space than you can possibly use. Also, by striping with a RAID 0 array, there is no data redundancy so if one drive goes down your whole installation is hosed.
For the amount of money you would be spending on this, you'd be better off with four smaller drives in a RAID 5 array (three data drives and one parity drive for data integrity). For best performance you'd put the OS and applications on 10K RPM drives, and have large 7200 RPM drives for storage. An example would be a single Western Digital 150-GB Raptor (10K RPM) for the boot drive (or a pair in RAID 0) plus large-capacity (≥ 250 GB) drives in RAID 5 (two striped plus parity drive for data integrity); you lose the capacity of the parity drive but if one of the other fails, you can rebuilt your data on a replacement drive without having to reinstall anything. Of course, you don't protect your OS installation in this configuration, but it is less expensive than a RAID 5 array using five 10K RPM drives. ;D
If it's an option, forget Media Center and get WinXP Pro, especially if you plan on doing any networking.
This system could be enhanced by the addition of a Sound Blaster audio board, but I see that both PCI slots are used, so that's not an option. It might be useful to find out what is in those slots, because if you want to add wireless networking, you're probably better off using a PCI adapter than a USB adapter.
Don't get the McAfee security software—it's junk. For antivirus, do a Web search for AVG Free Edition by Grisoft. If you need a stand-alone firewall, try Zone Alarm (if you're going to be using a router, you don't really need a software firewall, but sometimes WinXP's networking seems to function better with the Windows firewall activated). The utilities in Norton Systemworks still work very well, and are worthwhile (SpeedDisk, Disk Doctor, Win Doctor). The Norton anti-virus works well but isn't worth the cost of the subscription renewal as long as AVG Free is available. Also, some viruses are designed to by-pass or break Norton AV (while the Norton products are still quite good, they aren't what they were when it was still Peter Norton's company).
lowlucious:
I am not that computer literate ;). I really would like a computer that handles the sims games really well and a few other programs that run in the background. I tend to have a problem with my virtual memory and that is the basis of me wanting more space and memory. That particular computer would run me almost $4500.
Hegelian:
Keep in mind that for best performance, the more physical RAM you have, the lower your paging file (virtual memory) settings should be. With 4 GB RAM, your paging file should be quite small—probably under 500 MB.
The primary factor in TS2 performance is the CPU, followed by the graphics board and physical RAM.
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