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[oceansaway]

Or at least pick out what we want in it anyway...

So my sister wants a new computer to play her games and I just want a new computer. The one we have now is old and slow, and I think it's messed up somehow.

What my sister wants to do is make it "the best gaming comp" in the world. So I thought I'd ask advice for what is the best motherboard, CPU, etc.

Thanks!

[est]

ok, if you want the "best gaming computer evar" you're gonna need a chunk of cash.  i suspect that this isn't the case though.  so i mean, what kind of budget are we looking at here?

[oceansaway]

1500 max.

:/

[neomang5]

Good luck.
1500 can make a decent rig, especially if you find some good deals, but it wont meet her high expectations.

[oceansaway]

What all do we need?

Motherboard
CPU
HD
Memory
Video Card
Sound Card
Case?
Power supply?

[Mad Onion]

Woah. 1500 for a new computer, if your going to get a "super awesome ultra mega never going to need all that power before I have to up grade"  computer. Come on you can porbably easly get what she wants for 1500.

[Se7en]

more to the point, 1500 what? what currency are we talking here?
What your going to need:

Monitor - 19" TFT if you can
Keyboard and mouse - dont buy the cheapest if you want to game, but dont bother blowing loads of cash on silly ones.
Case - i always use horrifically expensive ones, but i dont have to pay for em. What you end up with depends entirely on your budget, how much cooling you need, and how good you want it to look.
Power supply - sometimes comes with the case. You wont need anything too fancy though, but avoid generic brands all the same.
CPU - Its gotta be an athlon 64. Socket 754 sempron if you dont have the budget, or socket 939 if you have the cash.
Graphics card - The most important part of a gaming system. DONT skimp here, whatever you do. The geforce 6600 GT is a good starting point.
Memory - Spec is irrelevant, you just want branded stuff with a warrenty, and a gig of it.
Sound card - you dont need one! nowadays motherboards have onboard sound thats as good as even a rather expensive sound card.
Motherboard - spec depends entirely on the rest of the components you get. I can suggest something later.
Hard drive - Big, SATA, and not a WD or IBM/hitachi.
Optical drive - DVD burners are dirt cheap now.

[SpacemanSpiff]

Se7en basically pointed everything out.
As for the CPU, since you have the budget, I would go with the socket 939. It's the better choice.
Make sure the cooling is silent, a loud computer is extremely annoying. That means: Make sure the CPU cooler, the power supply and video card aren't too noisy.
SATA is good as long as you only want to run Windows.
In case you want recommendations for TFTs and optical drives, I have tons here in a few mags. They were thoroughly tested and so far, their recommendations always turned out to be really good so I trust them.
Right now, I don't have the time, but I'll post something specific later on.

[1patheticloser]

Power supply - sometimes comes with the case. You wont need anything too fancy though, but avoid generic brands all the same.

I dunno. I'm a big fan of larger power supplies, especially if she'll be running SATA and big fuck off graphics cards. Don't get less than a 400 Watt supply. I like Antec power supplies personally.

[SpacemanSpiff]

Getting a powersupply that's larger than what you need is ineffective. Power supplies work effectively if they're under about 80% load, if you don't reach that, you're just inflating your electricity bill without actually getting more out of it. 400W are definitely enough unless you feel like running 4 harddisks and SLi.

Here, I've quickly cobbled a system together using a German online shop, but from what I've seen the prices are roughly the same everywhere so you would probably end up below 1500 bucks as well:
RAM: Kingston Value DDR RAM 1gb kit  - 115€
CPU: AMD Athlon64 Socket 939 3000+ Venice core - 109€
Cooling: Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 - 19,90€ - a very effective, silent cooler that's also cheap
DVD Drive: NEC ND-3450A - 52€
Power supply: Tagan TG420-U1 420W - 79€ - it's silent and stable
HD: 200gb SATA Seagate disk - 109€
Case: Chieftech UNI series - 69€ - not as good-looking, but they're great to handle good quality and cheap
Video: Gigabyte GV-NX66T128D Geforce 6600GT - 159€- good price and rather silent
Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI - 124€ - passively cooled nForce4, good motherboard
Screen: Eizo S1910 19" - 530€ - a great screen, fast and great image quality

A few things: Do not get an actively cooled nForce4, the small coolers on there are annoyingly loud and break easily. Instead, I would get the board I chose plus a one or two case coolers (that would add 20€ or so).
Do not try and get a cheap screen. I find that looking at a screen with bad image quality gives you a headache so I would rather try and save money somewhere else.

Total: 1369€.

[Se7en]

Actaully, SATA hard drives use less current than IDE ones. You just want the correct power connector. 400watt is quite adequate for this sort of system, and yes, antec would be fine, but there are better value ones avaliable. I use silverstone power supplies myself, they are hugely expensive, but i get them as freebies.

The only name to really avoid in powersupplies is Q-tec. They have a horrible reliability reputation.

400 watt isnt a large psu these days. My main gaming rig can supply a true 650 watts. You do need to know that most manufacturers quote peak current, not continuous. This means a high quality 300 watt PSU can easily supply more power than a cheap 400 watt model.

Off the top of my head, id recomend tagan, chieftec, and coolermaster as well as antec. I'm a perticular fan of PSUs with 120mm fans, for the same of more efficient and quieter cooling.

[Se7en]

Getting a powersupply that's larger than what you need is ineffective. Power supplies work effectively if they're under about 80% load, if you don't reach that, you're just inflating your electricity bill without actually getting more out of it. 400W are definitely enough unless you feel like running 4 harddisks and SLi.

NONSENSE. Utter, utter nonsense. Whilst it is true that there is little point in having a power supply that is very much overspec, doing so does NOT draw more current off the mains. Power supplies are switch mode units, they work at their most efficient when they are cold. Guess when they are cold? when they are drawing a minimum of current.

It is even possible to "overclock" a power supply, and draw more than its rated current from it without cooking it, by adding better cooling to it.

[Se7en]

Okay, heres another possible idea. Go for a lovely little shuttle PC, opt for the value option on the cpu, and spend the money on a huge hard drive and a beast of a graphics card.

It would go something like this..

Shuttle Inc SpaceCube SK83G AMD Socket 754 Barebone PC system    - £149.95

Kingston 512MB DDR 400MHz Non ECC DIMM CL3 x2 - £59.20

AMD Athlon64 bit 3000+ 754pin OEM CPU ( Newcastle ) - £84.50

Sony Corporation DW-Q28A Dual Layer Black 16X DVD +/-R/RW oem  -£23.50

Okay, thats all the basic parts bar the monitor, hard drive, and graphics card, and thats only about £315 altogether! Then its a matter of using all the spare cash on the important bits. Heres what id get if it fits the budget:

MSI 256MB ATi Radeon X800 AGP 8X VIVO  -£216.25

TFT monitor - Samsung SM913N 19" TFT Silver 8ms  -£170.20

Diamondmax10 300Gb 16Mb Cache 7200rpm SATA OEM HDD   -  £75.30

Now, i have no way of telling if that would fit your budget, but you get the idea. The way to make a value gaming machine is to opt for solid and fairly low spec CPU etc, and then spunk all the cash on the graphics card.

Course, the fact that its a tiny little box that looks like this doesnt hurt. sexeh.

[ramenXnoodles]

Okay, heres another possible idea. Go for a lovely little shuttle PC, opt for the value option on the cpu, and spend the money on a huge hard drive and a beast of a graphics card.

It would go something like this..

Shuttle Inc SpaceCube SK83G AMD Socket 754 Barebone PC system    - £149.95

Kingston 512MB DDR 400MHz Non ECC DIMM CL3 x2 - £59.20

AMD Athlon64 bit 3000+ 754pin OEM CPU ( Newcastle ) - £84.50

Sony Corporation DW-Q28A Dual Layer Black 16X DVD +/-R/RW oem  -£23.50

Okay, thats all the basic parts bar the monitor, hard drive, and graphics card, and thats only about £315 altogether! Then its a matter of using all the spare cash on the important bits. Heres what id get if it fits the budget:

MSI 256MB ATi Radeon X800 AGP 8X VIVO  -£216.25

TFT monitor - Samsung SM913N 19" TFT Silver 8ms  -£170.20

Diamondmax10 300Gb 16Mb Cache 7200rpm SATA OEM HDD   -  £75.30

Now, i have no way of telling if that would fit your budget, but you get the idea. The way to make a value gaming machine is to opt for solid and fairly low spec CPU etc, and then spunk all the cash on the graphics card.

Course, the fact that its a tiny little box that looks like this doesnt hurt. sexeh.

You're really gonna want more than 512 ram.

[Se7en]

yeah, didnt you see? that dimm x2, making a gig. That price there is for two.

And fucking hell, theres no need to quote the whole lot, when its the last post as well!

[SpacemanSpiff]

I don't think the Shuttle system is a very good option because of this: It's rather loud, if compared to a normal system, it's harder to upgrade because there's less room in it, the cooling is less efficient and first and foremost, putting it together yourself requires more skill and fiddling than building a computer inside a normal case.
From what I gathered, they are exactly experienced with building computers so we shouldn't make it harder than necessary for them.

NONSENSE. Utter, utter nonsense. Whilst it is true that there is little point in having a power supply that is very much overspec, doing so does NOT draw more current off the mains. Power supplies are switch mode units, they work at their most efficient when they are cold. Guess when they are cold? when they are drawing a minimum of current.

Actually, I'm sorry, but you are wrong. Let me explain it: The degree of efficiency of PSUs isn't constant, it's like a curve that's the highest around 80% load, and to both sides, it decreases (meaning with substantially less load and under full load, which should never happen of course).
Here are some numbers (as can be seen in C'T magazine, 15/04, page 170): A P4 3,6ghz with a Geforce 6800Ultra draws about 230W (on the delivering side of the PSU), which is a lot. An idling Athlon64 with a Geforce 6600GT (which is what you would get while surfing, for example) draws around 100W.
Comparing an Antec TrueP550 (550W) and a Seasonic SS-350FB (350W), here are the results: If both are delivering actual 200W, the Antec is drawing about 270W, the Seasonic is drawing about 245W. If they're delivering actual 84W, they Antec draws 129W, the Seasonic 106W.
Which makes sense, since they both have an effeciency at 60% load of around 65%, whereas they are both in the 75% to 78% area with 80% load.

Apart from that, another point is simply: A more powerful PSU is also usually more expensive.

[oceansaway]

Hmm all interesting points, guys...we'll see! What are the best online stores to buy parts?>

[Se7en]

Oh now that is a ridiculous comparison. I'm sorry, but i know how these magazines do things, ive written for them!

Comparing two power supplies of different brands immediately invalidates the entire process! im suprised that wasnt obvious.

The efficiency of any given power supply depends primarily on the switching frequency used. The Vregs on a motherboard can be upwards of 1 mhz, which is why they can supply such massive wattages to the CPU, and only need passive cooling. Most PSUs will use a freqency in the region of 50 khz, cheaper ones will be lower, and more powerful, more expensive psus will use a higher frequency.
Unless you know this frequency, you cant make any judgement about the efficiency of any power supply.
Also, the current draw matters even less when you consider that the current draw of any given system will be up and down like a whores drawers, according to CPU load and throttling, ditto for the GPU.

Anyway, the shuttle isnt that bad. The cooling is VERY efficient, even if it doesnt maintain very low temps. Heatpipe systems can handle huge wattages, and keep things adequately cool for a standard processor, and thats all you need.

No, they arent any louder than a typical system of the same spec. Obviously if you make an effort to quieten down a system, its going to be quieter than a shuttle, but you can quieten shuttles too! They use a fan that was designed primarily for long life, not airflow or noise levels. It just needs swapping for a good ball bearing fan, and the job is done! The cpu uses a standard 80mm fan, and its not a hard job at all.

I dont think its any harder to put together iether. You are saved the problem of putting the motherboard into the case, which causes the most problems for first time PC builders. Its just small and a little fiddly, but it DOES come with proper instructions, so anyone with a bit of sense and some dexterity could do it.

Upgrades arnt much of an issue. By the time you get to upgrade time with any PC, most of it is obselete, and you end up replacing almost the entire thing. Upgradability is only an issue when you upgrade every 6 months, rather than every 2 or 3 years.

[TheCourtJester]

Hmm all interesting points, guys...we'll see! What are the best online stores to buy parts?>

For 'round here (US and I'm sure the UK an dmost of Europe, too) you can't beat Newegg.com...excellent prices, unbeatable customer service, and very fast shipping.

No, they didn't pay me to say that

[5thWheel]

For 'round here (US and I'm sure the UK an dmost of Europe, too) you can't beat Newegg.com

"Newegg.com does not currently ship internationally; we only deliver to locations within the United States and to Puerto Rico."
In the UK I have bought lots from Insight in the past, couldn't say if they are especially cheap, however.  I usually use them to give me an idea how much stuff costs and use froogle to compare.
& Since ppl have been talking about tiny PCs, gamespy just ran this article which may be of interest.  Unfortunately I knew PC hardware back in the days when a meg of ram would cost you £100UKP 2nd hand, I've no idea about this newfangled modern stuff so I don't know if the article is useful or driven by their sponsors somewhat.  I do have an absolute horror of buying incompatible kit (i.e., stuff that *should* work but because of a particular combo, doesn't) so I'm prolly about to buy the stuff listed in the gamespy article (with the nVidia card cos I detest ATI). & I agree with Se7en about upgrades, I'm upgrading my games PC ATM and the only component worth retaining is the DVD drive.

[SpacemanSpiff]

Oh now that is a ridiculous comparison. I'm sorry, but i know how these magazines do things, ive written for them!

Comparing two power supplies of different brands immediately invalidates the entire process! im suprised that wasnt obvious.

The efficiency of any given power supply depends primarily on the switching frequency used. The Vregs on a motherboard can be upwards of 1 mhz, which is why they can supply such massive wattages to the CPU, and only need passive cooling. Most PSUs will use a freqency in the region of 50 khz, cheaper ones will be lower, and more powerful, more expensive psus will use a higher frequency.
Unless you know this frequency, you cant make any judgement about the efficiency of any power supply.
Also, the current draw matters even less when you consider that the current draw of any given system will be up and down like a whores drawers, according to CPU load and throttling, ditto for the GPU.

I know all that, and I know the comparison wasn't supposed to be objective, it was simply an example of comparing a smaller PSU with a bigger PSU.
The point here is just that the efficiency is not constant and using a 550W PSU (Not that a 550W PSU delivers actual 550W, but still) for a system that never draws more than 200W is idiotic and not efficient. That was my entire point.
The part of the ATX12V v.2.2 specification regarding minimum efficiency should give you a hint at what I'm aiming at: They want at least 70% efficiency at full load, 72% at typical (~50% load) and 65% at light (~20% load). My point is simply: Get a PSU that fits your system, not one that's ridiculously overpowered.
Unless you have a dualcore CPU and/or SLi, using more than 420W is usually not necessary.

Of course, if you buy the Shuttle, it isn't necessary anyway, from what I know they come with a PSU anyway, right?

[Se7en]

The shuttle does indeed come with a PSU. Its a mere 230watt one, but very high quality, so produces damn near what it should. It has proved adequate for some pretty powerfull systems. I built one a while back for a friend with a 3.8ghz p4 prescott, a radeon x800 XT PE, and an inert carbon compound liquid cooling system. It survived happily with the standard PSU at 3.4ghz, but needed an upgrade to a whopping 300 watts to handle the 3.8 clock.

Actually, i have seen plenty of 550 watt psus that are built to exactly the same specs as another rated at 300 watts. These ratings are so spurious, and the efficiencies so hard to find out, that the best way to buy a PSU is on price and quality alone. You cant trust the quoted wattage at all in many cases. For a system like this however, ANY power supply that isnt the cheapest generic brand going will do the trick. I would pay more attention to the dbA ratings!

[jhocking]

I'm about to order a Shuttle PC.  It's a good machine (yeah, you could build something slightly better from scratch, but it's already a better deal than Dell,) plus it has at least one huge advantage over its competitors. Y'see, one major factor to consider is size; if you're going to buy the PC and then never move it for the life of the machine then I suppose maybe size isn't a huge issue for you, but even then it makes a big difference to have as small a machine as possible.  Space is always at a premium (desk space, space within your room, etc.) so minimizing the size of your computer is vital.  Frankly, the only part of your computer that you want to be big is the screen.

That brings me to my advice: order a Shuttle PC without a monitor, and then buy a 19" TFT on sale from Circuit City.

[ThatGuy]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1825672,00.asp

Total comes to $1700 but thats with a 19inc LCD and personally I think LCD's are overrated(especially for gaming) so you can save a huge chunk of cash by buying a CRT or just keeping your current monitor.

[Se7en]

Have you ever USED an LCD for gaming? trust me, they bloody well rock. Back in the day i had a 15" lcd with a huge response rate for gaming, and everyone slagged it off, but i was an unbeatable sniper thanks to the sharpness, and i never found the 25ms response time holding me back.

Now you can get 8ms LCDs easily. The one i suggested had an 8ms response time, which translates as an equivelent of 125 htz, which is higher than even graphics drivers support, let alone CRT monitors! Since its still being driven at 75 or 85 htz, response time is a non issue.

I use 19" LCDs exclusively now. I like the pixel density, and using a pair of them as i am now, utterly rocks.

I wouldnt recomend that extremetech spec, its a very slapdash effort, and doesnt focus well enough on the essentials, and its too expensive, both for this budget, and for what it is.

[ASturge]

Girls?

Building com-pyu-tars!?

DON'T MAKE ME LAUGH!!!

[jhocking]

while you can talk barrier-to-entry and sexual objectification in games to death, the reason more women don't play games is because things that have electronics break when women touch them.

[Digs]

TFTs? Really? Isn't Microsoft punching people who dig TFT monitors in the stomach in a year or so with Vista?

[oceansaway]

My sister loves her games. I just want a new computer and I got dragged along. 90 percent of this thread doesn't make sense to me.

[Switchblade]

It's mostly just been a list of components, thus far.

In general, the larger the number after the odd word, the better the component is. (not always true, however). Also, the more expensive, though they do depreciate fairly quickly.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned during my scan of this thread is cooling. plenty of people mentioning power supplies, graphics cards, CPU's and so on, but here's something to remember - the more tech there is inside it, and the more power running through it, the more heat your PC will generate. Basically, the bigger the power supply, and the faster the clocks speeds on the processers, the more heat your PC generates and needs to cope with.

typically, this means fans to blow air in from outside the case and across the various boards and components to cool them down, and then vent it out again.

Insufficient cooling can result in heat damage, which is no fun (I know a guy who once burnt his foot on his case, it got so hot...) Normally, though, it just means that the fan kicks up to high speed periodically, making a lot of noise and basically being all irritating. Most decent cases (especially the ones designed for gamers) come with plenty of big fans (three or more in some cases) that should keep lots of nice cool air moving around inside the case. you can also improve the air flow inside (and thus bring the temperature down) by using rounded cables instead of ribbon cables.

[Se7en]

Heat damage isnt a problem anymore. EVERYTHING has proper clock throttling now, nothing is physically capable of overheating.

However, the sort of system spec we are talking about, standard cooling is perfectly adequate for standard clock speeds. I think there isnt much point getting into overclocking, thats a bit too scary for most people.

Rounded cables only help in very cramped cases, or in situations where you have no choise but to run a cable right across the front of a fan. In the vast majority of situations, the difference they make is unmeasurable.

Everyone has been recomending AMD processors, for good reason. These just dont put out much heat, and have sophisticated fan control and dynamic clock speeds, like a laptop processor. They also offer better value for money, and are even easier to install, so theres no contest.

Your after something from the Athlon 64 range, iether socket 754, or socket 939 (more expensive, faster, but less value for money)

I would still strongly recomend the shuttle. It removes a lot of guessing from the equation, and simplifies things nicely.

Maybe it would be best if you got your sis to join the forum?  Id imagine shes going to be asking on some gaming forums, and they spout an awful lot of bollocks on those places.

[jhocking]

On a gaming forum, I was once told that I shouldn't even think about playing any games on a rig that cost less than $10,000 to put together.  Then a bunch of other people agreed, and barely anyone disagreed.

I don't listen much anymore to what other people tell me about computers.

[Se7en]

I understand your problem. I encountered a LOT of that sort of stuff when i was first trying to learn about computers. Now im the one dishing out the advice via the magazine articles i do, i get my info straight out of the horses mouth. Tech info comes direct from the company that built it, and all performance and value judgements come from actual testing.
Of course, thats beyond the reach of most people to arrange, which is why responsible IT journalism is so important. Theres still an awful lot of misinformation and general bollocks going round, especially on game forums i have to say.

Hell, my own gaming rig would probably have cost about...£2000 if that, (its cobbled together from test sample kit) and thats almost as fast as single core single GPU systems get, whilst remaining quiet.

[est]

i've got an Athlon XP 2100+ with 1ghz ram & an old 9800 pro.  depending on the part you're looking at there it's somewhere between two and three years old (i think) and was only a middling-power system at the time i started putting it together.  i can still play pretty much anything that's been released with it.

i have another system that is a p3 600, 256mb ram and an onboard intel gfx card that can play most non-3d games, so it really depends on the type of games that your sister is gonna be playing.  here we are giving you all these suggestions, and your sister might be really into card games or something.

in any case, i'd say that basically any recent cpu (i'd go Athlon 64 for price vs performance) + 1ghz ram + a gf6600+ graphics card would play basically anything released for the next few years.

my advice would be to buy what you can afford based around that, because pretty much the all of the rest of it is a taste thing.

as an aside, almost every time someone asks for opinions on a new system people seem to get into a fight to show how much they know about bits and pieces, and we get into arguments over which graphics card to use, how much power you'll need, etc.

the better way to handle these would probably be to take those arguments outside and link back to that thread in a post.  that way if anyone else wants to talk about the power you need to have for a modern system etc they can join in, and we'll have something we can easily refer back to if people start talking about the same thing later.

also, Se7en, this isn't a personal dig because i've never read any of your published stuff & the things that you say in here mostly seem really good, but most PC Mags i've read in the past have been out of date (which i guess is kinda understandable with the release schedule of most magazines), grossly inaccurate, or notably biased towards certain manufacturers.

this is in Australia, so maybe we're behind the 8ball down here (which is very possible), but it's gotten to a point where i just don't trust any published PC mags and tend to try to get my information from multiple sources online, then read between the lines to avoid hyperbole and bias toward manufacturers.

[jhocking]

1ghz ram... 1ghz ram...

*cough GB cough*

[est]

um, shit.  how the hell did that happen?

thanks for the pick up.

[Se7en]

I cant belive the press are that bad in oz. PC mags are quite a competitive market in the UK, and they are always bang up to date, with very short lead times. They get in pre-production product samples for review, so the magazine hits the stands as the product reaches the shops.
Bias in a PC magazine is seen as horribly unprofessional here, it just doesnt happen. Innacuracies do creep in, but they are usually for the sake of simplification. Blatant misinformation isnt common.

Web review sites have historically been pretty awful, but now big publishing houses are putting money into them, and some good ones are cropping up. The site i wrote for was one of the very first to use content from professionals, presented in a concise magazine style.

[SpacemanSpiff]

TFTs? Really? Isn't Microsoft punching people who dig TFT monitors in the stomach in a year or so with Vista?

Every monitor, actually.
But as far as I'm aware that will only stop you from playing HD-DVDs (and maybe BluRay disks) from being played on your comp. Otherwise, Vista will work with a normal screen.

My sister loves her games. I just want a new computer and I got dragged along. 90 percent of this thread doesn't make sense to me.

Basically, before this thread developed into a geek discussion, there were two systems up there and I think both would do the job. Mine and Se7en's.

Basically, from what I gathered, the system I picked has a slightly faster CPU (though you won't notice the difference, really) and has a bigger case, which means it's less fiddly to install. I also picked the better screen.
His system on the other hand looks a lot better and is smaller, has a faster video card, a bigger HD though it's a bit more fiddly to install (though Se7en claims it's not that bad and I personally don't have a lot experience with XPCs).
I figure both are rather silent and both should definitely get the job done.

I could explain my choices in a more detail fashion if you want to.

[McTaggart]

I <3 my CRT. It's nothing special but it beats the hell out of every tft I've ever used.  Why? Because it's using the same icc profile as my camera and my printer. I haven't found a way to properly manage colours on the tft's I've used. To me that matters a lot, except that my printer is crap.

If you don't kow what I'm on about go with the tft.

[ThatGuy]

I <3 my CRT. It's nothing special but it beats the hell out of every tft I've ever used.  Why? Because it's using the same icc profile as my camera and my printer. I haven't found a way to properly manage colours on the tft's I've used. To me that matters a lot, except that my printer is crap.

If you don't kow what I'm on about go with the tft.

It's a problem with all LCD monitors they can't accurately display tru colors.

The other huge drawback is that you are stuck with a "Native Resolution" which is the only resolution the the monitor will be able to display correctly so  if you don't have the latest and greates vid card out and you want to lower your resolution for better framerates you can't.

I would recomend you go with a AMD 3500+ CPU(around $220 right now) and a ATI X800XL($250 or less) for good gaming performance on a budget

[jhocking]

The other huge drawback is that you are stuck with a "Native Resolution" which is the only resolution the the monitor will be able to display correctly so  if you don't have the latest and greates vid card out and you want to lower your resolution for better framerates you can't.

I wouldn't exactly describe that as a "huge" drawback.  I mean, it is true that LCD monitors have a native resolution that they are best at.  However, you can use lower resolutions, and the slight degradation of image quality is not noticeable to most people (especially considering that loss is  minor compared to the image quality loss from switching to a lower resolution.)

[Se7en]

First of all, unless your working with colour artwork thats going to be printed, the slightly worse colour replication is no issue at all. Artists whos work only ends up on the web dont have to worry in the least, since whatever they draw is going to be viewed on exactly the same sort of screen.

Actually, resolutions lower than native ARE very noticable, at least in 2d mode. Once you get used to the incredible crispness of a TFT, you wont want to compromise it.

However, when playing games your going to be hard pressed to tell the difference. The lack of extremely hard, high contrast lines covers it up nicely. Its noticable with windows, since often text can be made up of lines just one pixel wide. You dont have this in games, so as jhocking says, the lower res in itself is more noticable than the artifacts.

But even a TFT running at the wrong resolution is sharper and clearer than a CRT monitor!

[SpacemanSpiff]

Also, in games, you can use interpolation as a cheap substitute for anti-aliasing.

Go with a TFT, definitely, they're a lot better. And they don't take up as much space, which comes in really handy.

And McTaggart: Actually, there are TFTs who can work with ICC profiles and will display it properly. However, they're rather expensive. Like 2000€ or something like that.

[jhocking]

I'm not getting a Shuttle PC after all.  I just ordered a LAN Party Special from these guys:
www.cyberpowersystem.com

Small case, Athlon64 CPU, 1GB RAM, 19" TFT, etc. for under $1100, with free shipping.

[McTaggart]

And McTaggart: Actually, there are TFTs who can work with ICC profiles and will display it properly. However, they're rather expensive. Like 2000€ or something like that.

I had my eye on an Apple Cinema Display until I looked in my wallet, once. The small ones if I recall correctly are actually affordable if you've got a reason to change monitors (or get a second:P).

[Se7en]

If you do graphics work, the best solution is to go dual monitor. A good 19" CRT and a 19" TFT side by side. You get the best of both worlds, and easier multitasking.

[McTaggart]

The problem is when you're used to that and have to go back to one for some reason (ie. sister wants her damn screen back).

[jhocking]

solution: kill her.