Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRubix
Is all that stuff top of the line?
What's the best video card out there? The best processors? The most memory? Are we still in quad cores? lmao.
I'm a hardware noob.
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Quad core is the "in" thing for processors right now. We haven't necessarily made software that would actually warrant the use of all 4 cores yet, but it certainly secures you for the future when we may have more advanced software. "Quad core" is Intel's thing, and I don't know too much about AMD. They seem to flip flop back in forth about who has the better processor. I think AMD has some Phenom thing that is similar to Intel's Quad Core. Now that I think of it, my friend does have an AMD Phenom processor.
The nVidia GTX 295 is (I believe) the best mainstream graphics card you can purchase from nVidia. You can look at ATI Radeon, but I am not so familiar with them. I'm sure they have something near the level of the 295 though. One thing you'll want to look into is having graphics cards running in SLI (or Crossfire if they are ATI cards). Simply put, you can have multiple graphics cards running simultaneously. I would recommend getting two graphics cards that are slightly worse than the 295 that are SLI Enabled and run them together. The only thing is, obviously, you're purchasing two graphics cards as opposed to one, so price does become an issue, especially since the performance edge may not warrant the extra couple hundred bucks. For a safe bet, I would stick with what my friend did and get a single GTX 295. It's a pretty expensive card, but I can tell you from experience that it is DEFINITELY worth it. If you have more cash to dispense, look into SLI/Crossfire stuff to see which cards running in either outperform the 295. Just a FYI, you have to have the exact same cards to run them simultaneously.
4 GB of Ram is decent, but 6 GB is preferred. If you can actually afford it, go to 8. I don't think you'll really need anything above that. I don't have any experience with anything above 8, so I can't tell you if it's uber amazing, or if it's just a burnt hole in your wallet.
I don't know too terribly much about all this stuff, so don't take my word as holy. I had to try to learn up on this mumbo jumbo because my friend wanted my help getting a badass PC a few weeks ago, and he thought I already knew this stuff lol.