Hello all, I just got a new job and therefore decided it's time to reward myself with a new computer. However my computer knowledge is limited to say the least and so I was hoping people could help me out on whether the following would suit my needs.

Primarily it will be for sims. I want it to play well (preferably very well), and perhaps Skyrim in the future.

The computer I'm seriously thinking about at the moment is this one (the Austin home premium).

Intel Core i5 2400 processor, 3.10Ghz
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
8GB RAM (2x4G)
And i'll be upgrading the graphics card to a sapphire ATI 6670 1GB

I want to have a computer which I hopefully wont need to upgrade for a year or so. The above comes to ~$700aus.

My main concern is that the operating system will not be strong enough. It seems that that is a very cheap price compared to everything else I've looked at so is this a dud and I'm just not seeing it?

Also very big question/s about graphics cards. I took the list off MTS in with me to get one that will definatley perform well. Is there much difference between NVIDEA and ATI? If I got say a ATI 6950 or NVIDEA GeForce 465/470/480 would there be a noticable difference?

Any help is much appreciated. I'm still a newbie at this but trying to learn all I can and wrap my head around things is proving to be a bit tough. Hopefully someone here can shed some light on things!

I'll be perfectly honest, I know absolutely nothing about desktops, having only owned laptops, and I'm not an expert on graphics cards. But I did have a question recently about the graphics card on a notebook I was looking into, and one of the sites that they linked me to for help was notebookcheck.net, and it has a graph with info on graphics cards which I thought was pretty helpful, and it shows how they stack up on recent games, including Sims 3 (it's at the end of the list though, second to last) and Skyrim. They had an option where you could check out desktop graphics cards, here's that list. The ATI one you asked about is one of the first five listed, but the NVIDIA ones are probably a bit more scattered.
Hopefully this can help you out a bit until someone who knows more than I do can get back to you (just trying to help out--I don't really get a chance to much in this area ).

Congrats on the new job



Well, Windows 8 is already in the testing stages so in the next 2 years theres a big possibility that it'll be out. I wouldnt worry about that though, unless you're trying to play Battlefield 3 or something REALLY high end like that you wont need to worry about OSs. I play the Sims and (literally) 27 other games on XP 32 bit.. I also do high end audio, video, and photo work on XP 64 bit. And by high end I mean HIGH END. No lag, no need to upgrade, no nothing. My point is, XP is 10 years old and it still runs everything except like 2 programs I know of lol, Windows 7 is good until about 2025 man. Also, I thought everyone knew this nowadays.. But expensive DOESNT mean better lol. Did you know that a 1991 Buick Lesabre that you see all those old people driving around in is more reliable than a 2012 mercedes benz? Think about that lol :D



When it comes to graphics cards always get NVIDEA if you have gaming in mind. In my opinion they make the best cards. I have 2 installed in my computer right now as a matter of fact.



Well you have to start somewhere I hope this helped, and to answer your question short and simple: Its a good comp, go for it. And best of all, in the future if you want to you can upgrade to i7!

Thanks for both your help anothereyjana andkin6x.

Anothereyjana that site has helped me heaps, so thankyou. I'll definitely be saving it to my favorites.

And also kin6x your info was great. What I was really worried about is that I was going to be buying a dud but you've allayed me of those fears. Your info combined with the site Anothereyjana gave me above should help me find a better graphics.
At this stage I'm thinking:
saphire ati 6670 1 gb
radeon hd 6870
nvidea geforce gtx 470
nvidea geforce gtx 560
or nvidea geforce gtx 580

However some of those nvidea's may be a bit out of my price range. I'm slightly leaning towards the radeon hd 6870 except it's not on the rec'd list by mts. Although I think that's only because the list hasn't been updated. I did however find a site that said it worked well with skyrim.
Has anyone had any experience with/of the radeon hd 6870 and sims 3? Work well?

The PC configuration you linked to has an Nvidia G 210 and the Power Supply to match (ie a low 350W), so if you're changing GPU, you need to ensure they swap out the PSU too.

AMD's 6670 System Requirements page states it needs at least a 400W (500W if XFIRE). And you need to check the power requirements of the other cards yourself to be sure, in case you want to swap them out in the future...when you get newly released games.

As the notebookcheck.net shows, the 67xxM range (Mobile version though) is gonna be fine for Sims 3 but probably not for SkyRim. It is considered a mid-range card on a mid-range PC configuration. So, expectations have got to match. AUD700 is considered to be an entry level price bracket for "gaming-calibre" computer configurations.
What size and resolution monitor do you have? If you have the average 21"-24", midrange cards are fine; if you have bigger 27", you probably need a high-range GPU (with the price-range to match).
In any case, midrange or highrange is not gonna help with TS3 in terms of playing it "very well" - as the shortcomings are in the coding - in won't ever be able to compare to a DX11 game just released, for example. A highrange does help with fewer crashings and freezings, but these problems won't ever be eliminated; so like I mentioned expectations have to be adjusted.

Strong enough to do what? Or, compared to what?
I think I either misunderstood this sentence or you misunderstood the terms. Windows Operating System (Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit-OEM is currently priced at US$99.99; Upgrade versions range from US$69.99-139.99 for single licenses), is the most expensive and confusing to upgrade to compared to the (US$29.99) Mac OS X and (free) Linux distributions.
It is important to learn and understand the meaning of the terms, so that you know what you're getting and at the very least, not to get swindled by unscrupulous sales-persons.

[eta]In answering another post, just saw the 68xx series is indeed in the wiki. But my point below (on the extrapolation) still applies, for future reference. I just haven't had time to update that page. But you should be able to extrapolate upwards just fine. If a 6670 is all green, anything higher in the 6xxx series should be the same.

When using notebookcheck, remember that the TS3 entry on their performance chart is for just the basegame, with no patches.

Thanks for your help again peeps, I really appreciate it.

Now, if I upgrade to an AMD radeon HD 6870 ( a higher end graphics apparently?) and upgrade power supply to 500w or 600W (it's not that much more) will I be good? That's in the sense that I don't have to upgrade anything else like I had to upgrade the power supply to 'match' it?

Edit: Ok, so apparently the HD 6870 is discontinued and they can't get it in. Again the AMD HD 7770 isn't on the rec'd list. Would the 7000 series work just fine you think?

I just got my new laptop on Wednesday, with the same specs as the desktop you want to purchase, but I only have 6g ram and AMD Radeon™ HD 6470M, so far its just so smooth with Win7, haven't played TS3 yet (installing as we speak) so I cant say how the graphics look with in the game. but right now my issues is trying to find my TS3 folder that would normally be in Documents but its not there, so I am stuck trying to find this EA folder. Any one have any ideas.

EDIT:The folder finally game up in the documents folder, I guess starting up the launcher fixed it so it would no longer be hidden....lol (NEW COMPUTERS gotta love em)

Ooh, good to hear voiletlass! Hows it been with TS3?

The one thing I'm really not sure about at this stage is that graphics. Once I know that the orders placed baby!

Oop, scrub that. New plan is to revert to the old plan. By that I mean get that system I first showed with an upgraded power and upgrade to a XFX ATI RADEON HD 6850 1GB.

Please people, I really need your thoughts on this. I noticed that some of the later videocards are listed as incompatible (eg radeon 6990, GTX 590). I would have thought these would have worked. Could some one tell me why not so I could avoid buying that. And would there be similar problems with the HD 6850.

I would really, really appreciate your input on this people!

The x9xx / x90 series work.
Just that they are 2 chips on one board - versus SLI/CrossFire where you get 2 physical boards and plug into 2 PCI slots.

So, sometimes the drivers for them do not work as intended. And for the average user, this is an issue if they do not know the difference and thus unaware of the loopholes needed to troubleshoot any problems. Therefore, to play it safe, I follow the trend for Sims 2. They are also cost-prohibitive (and have heat issues) for the average Sims-gamer. Most of the folks (who are into overclocking) who get these series to match their extreme CPUs, do water-cooled systems.
And I've seen lots of ironic cases where extremely high-end systems have issues while the slightly above mid-range ones just sailed through. Save your money, and get the highest model in that hierarchy chart you can afford, preferably the ones from the Green rows.

The 7000 series are new boards and supposedly better than 6000 series in every way (heat, performance, power usage). However since they are so new, few people have had the chance to actually use one and test them extensively. Nvidia is expected to launch a competing series of video cards in about 6 months, so you can expect the 7000 series to drop in price in order to compete.

Right. New computer is signed, sealed, and ordered!

Thanks for all of your input people. I ended up going with a GTX 560 1 gb.

Thankyou, much appreciated!

Great choice!

Locking.