system advice on gaming

Hi all, i am a bit stuck with a choice to make between to desktop systems and the best choice to make. ill start of by saying i need a system for playing wow, and my options are as folows, option 1 is the dell inspirion 580 cpu (2,9Intel® Core™ i3-530 Processor (2.93GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB Cache)
Ram (6GB (3X2GB) DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz Memory
+NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) G310 512MB DDR3.

the second option is the Gts gamer (AMD 3.0 GHZ dual core)
Ram (4gb ddr3 1333MHZ)
video card (gt240 1gb)

i know the intel cpu probally is the better choice, but which graphics card is better? (or the newer of the 2?)

pls some advice would be greatly apreciated.
:confused

 

Well as far as I can tell (this would depend on the package you choose I think) but the Dell 580 has intergrated graphics (onboard) so I personally wouldn't even consider it for a gaming machine.

The Gamer machine sounds better depending on price, do you have a link to where you are looking at these machines?

 

Hi ty for your reply , the 2 links to the places im looking at are

for the gts gamer $1195

the second link is
for the inspirion 580

 

I think the gfx card in the inspirion 580 is a stand alone independent card but i have provided the 2 links. i just wonderd also why the g310 geforce card doesnt show up when i visit the nvidia site, unless the model is pretty obselete now tbh, hence the gt240
model show up in the list table

 

Hmmm, I've searched the G310 and everything points to it being an onboard card, but there is also evidence to the contrary.

Either way the G310 aparently is a rehash of the G210 and is not much higher spec and is not near as powerful as the ads say it is, in fact it's pretty weak.

The GT240 will blow it out of the water.

The Dual core AMD is a good CPU, doesn't quite stand up to the i3 but it's a double edge sword.

Do you have any experience building PC's?

You could get a LOT more for your money by building your own.

You say you want to play WOW, is that the only game you are interested in? and are you wanting to play it on Max settings?

The problem with games like wow is they rely q lot on CPU as well as graphics, so an even mix of the 2 is needed, out of the 2 you've found I personally would go with the GTS Gamer for 2 reasons.

1: I prefer AMD and they are more stable when it comes to overclocking.
2: The GT240 is a pretty good card and will stand up to a lot more than the G310.

But thats my personal opinion.

To give you an idea of the kind of money required to play wow, have a look here http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=210299
We gave advice to Bio on the premis he wanted to play wow, as we moved on more things came to light. You don't have to read it all obviously, but it may give you some insight. the thread starts off about a case and develops into a complete system build.

Also, read this http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=215030 a post by a member here that is very useful. You need to understand as much as you can before dropping lots of money into something that wont do what you want it to.

 

One more thing to keep in mind with the Dell computer is, first of all, they tend to skimp on their power supplies. While they might let you upgrade the CPU and video card later on, the power supply might be too weak to handle it and that one might also be proprietary and keep you from upgrading.

Also, to be honest, if all you want to play is WoW you might actually be over-doing it with both these systems. WoW runs well on much lower specs. If on the other hand you want to play other games as well, that changes things.

Let's try and figure out what you're going to use the system for, and go from there.

 

Just to add my $.02,

Every indication outside of the dell site is that the G310 is an onboard gpu. I use Nvidia cards exclusively and have never heard of a dedicated G310 before reading this thread. The GT240 should be the better of the 2 probably by leaps and bounds.

I might be nuts but the url <http://pcland.com.au/index.cgi> takes me to the pcland homepage instead of the puter you're looking at.

As Nedlamar said, the AMD won't clock as high as the i3, but I've always had the experience of AMD being the more stable chipset.

What Mimsy said about Dell and proprietary, weak power supplies is something I have ran into myself working with friends' comps in the past and is a part of the reason I have a pretty low opinion of them these days. Also very true is that you don't need a $1000 system to make WoW roar, it is not terribly demanding and will max out without killer specs!

 

You have to mouse over the swf at the top and move it to the right to see the GTS Gamer.

Personally I think the best idea in this case is for thaught to think about how far into gaming he/she wants to go. If sticking with wow as Mimsy and Scooby said, those machines are OTT. But if you are looking to play the latest and greatest they are over priced and underpowered.

I'm sure with a bit more info from you thaught with regaurds to what you think you might want to do with it now and in future, then I'm sure between us we could come up with a machine in your price range that suits your needs/wants.

 

Hi ty for your gye's response to my post.
Yeah I'm basically just going to be playing wow full time and not relay looking to playing any other latest/greatest stuff tbh.

With regards to building a pc, I'm pretty amateur , the only stuff i can do is seat ram and install a gfx card but when it comes down to stuff like seating a cpu , hdd , optical drive and p/w supply i haven't had any experience in with installing them.

 

Ok, well I have to go to work shortly but will have a look later on.
Meanwhile it might be worth you looking into how to build a PC, if you already know how to seat RAM and cards then you're halfway there, seating a CPU isn't hard, just need a gentle touch and HDD's are easy.
The hardest thing is hooking up the case to the motherboard, but almost all mobo's come with a map explaining what to hook up where. Unless you're unluck enough to get an awkward mobo, everything is marked and most stuff can only go in 1 place, 1 way.
Have a look on you tube for some instructional videos and decide if you feel comfortable building your own.

The advantages are huge, not only can you pick and choose your system hardware, you can also future proof yourself AND get more for your money.

Don't think I'm trying to push you into it, if you don't want to thats fine, I just want to make sure you have the option and let you know it's not near as difficult as it may look.

The dissadvantage is you can come up against compatability issues etc, but you're on MG's now and if it can't be answered here.... chances are it can't be answered lol