I know little to nothing about computers. My goal is to purchase a computer that I can play games online without lagging and enjoy my experience (World of Warcraft maybe). I want to buy something that can last 2 years.

I have a lot of questions but am more than willing to do the reading myself, I just need to be pointed in the right direction.

First of all desktop or laptop? From what I understand laptops can get hot a lot quicker so a desktop is preferable.

AMD or Intel? Which will as of 3/21/06 give me the biggest bang for my buck? (I would like to spend within the confines of 1000 us dollars.)

Use to be the clock speed was all you woried about now you have memory in the mother board frame rates per second are touted or not... I don't really know what is important to look for when considering a processor.

Motherboard, how important is it?

Video card, Oh lord there seems to be no end to the choices. I don't even know where to start.

Cooling? Is a fan enough for something that isn't overclocked? What kind of fan?

Memory, ram, how much do you need?

DVD burner, I don't know anything about this tech, do you really need it when you have a cd rw and what would be a good buy for a rw I see a lot of speed choices.

Sound, it isn't going to make or break me but its nice to listen to.

modem, I'm guessing a cabel modem is the way to go, what level of connectivity do I need to be at to not experience lag?

I know this is more of a faqs type blitz, and appologise if this is a commond thing you deal with. School me with words or links, but please school me!

D

desktop or laptop?
DESKTOP- REASOND BEING, EASIER TO UPGRADE, KEEP COOL AND REPLACE PARTS
LAPTOP- LIGHTER, EASYER TO MOVE, LESS WIRES

AMD or Intel?
http://www.d-a-l.com/help/showthread...ighlight=intel that may help, there is also something else i was looking for on here

Use to be the clock speed was all you woried about now you have memory in the mother board frame rates per second are touted or not... I don't really know what is important to look for when considering a processor.
CLOCK SPEED, CACHE BAISICALY THE HIGHER THE NUMBERS THE BETTER


Motherboard, how important is it?
QUITE IMPORTANT, ANY NEW MOTHERBOARD SHOULD BE OK BUT OLDER ONES MAY NOT SUPPORT CERTAIN THINGS ECT...
ALSO, THE "SOCKET" IS IMPORTANT, YOU NEED TO MATCH THE SOCKET # OF THE MOTHERBOARD TO THAT OF THE PROCESSOR

Video card
FOR A LOT OF GAMING, 256 OR 512MB GRAPHICS CARD WOULD BE SUFICENT

Cooling? Is a fan enough for something that isn't overclocked? What kind of fan?
JUST 2+ 80MM STANDARD FANS

Memory, ram, how much do you need?
AGAIN, FOR GAMING, I WOULD SAY 1GIG, YOU MAY GET AWAY WITH 512MB

DVD burner, I don't know anything about this tech, do you really need it when you have a cd rw and what would be a good buy for a rw I see a lot of speed choices.
BAISICALY, IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO COPY/BACKUP DVD'S THEN THIS ISNT IMPORTANT

Sound, it isn't going to make or break me but its nice to listen to.
JUST A STANDARD SOUND CARD WILL DO

modem, I'm guessing a cabel modem is the way to go, what level of connectivity do I need to be at to not experience lag?
DONT WORRY YET, YOU WILL MOST PROBABLY GET AN EXTERNAL MODEM IF YOUR NOT ON A NETWORK AND YOU WANT FASTER THAN DIAL-UP (I.E. CABLE, DSL)


anything else just ask
Hope this helps,
Mike

>First of all desktop or laptop? From what I understand laptops can get hot a lot quicker so >a desktop is preferable.

Do you want to sit at your desk all day or move around?

>AMD or Intel? Which will as of 3/21/06 give me the biggest bang for my buck? (I would >like to spend within the confines of 1000 us dollars.)

Here are two articles from this site on the Intel v AMD story:

http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/67.html
http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/36.html

>Use to be the clock speed was all you woried about now you have memory in the mother >board frame rates per second are touted or not... I don't really know what is important to >look for when considering a processor.

not any more

>Motherboard, how important is it?

Depends on what you want to do.

>Video card, Oh lord there seems to be no end to the choices. I don't even know where to >start.

cost is your guide. More expensive better performance.

>Cooling? Is a fan enough for something that isn't overclocked? What kind of fan?

Your best cooling will be with a tower/desktop model. That will give you more options then a laptop. If you are worried about overclocking then you are going Desktop anyway.
Watercooling is your most efficient, but also most costly.

>Memory, ram, how much do you need?

as much as you can afford to fit into your machine.

>DVD burner, I don't know anything about this tech, do you really need it when you have >a cd rw and what would be a good buy for a rw I see a lot of speed choices.

DVD-Burner dual layer is your best choice, does everything a CD-RW can do and has the ability to burn DVDs as well...With the cost of DVD-Rs coming down, its your best choice.

>Sound, it isn't going to make or break me but its nice to listen to.

Onboard sound is almost as good as expansion sound.

>modem, I'm guessing a cabel modem is the way to go, what level of connectivity do I >need to be at to not experience lag?

Remember that cable broadband shares with its connected users, DSL does not. most broadband providers are now offering tiered service which will cost you extra for any online games that require realtime decisions, like Aceshigh.

Thanks guys for the quick responce.

I don't know enough to overclock so Im not worrying about it.


I was curious if there is a point where you have more ram than you will use. Would it slow down your processing at 1 gig?

Someone was talking about slots on the motherboard, what slots would I want and how many?

AphJN, I didn't really follow your broadband sharing comment.

Do you need a different modem for broadband or cable? or does the same thing work for both?

I was curious if there is a point where you have more ram than you will use.

Yes, if you have alot of ram, when you turn on your computer and everything is loaded then you will have "spare" ram i.e. you will not be using all of it. if you have say 24gig of ram (dont think that is possible) then you will always have alot of spare ram for what you are using it for.

with ram, you also have to consider other things.... DDR2 is newer than DDR, speed: this is written as for example: PC 3200 or DDR2 400 are the same... again, bigger the number the better (i think they are both the speed's)

Would it slow down your processing at 1 gig?
Sorry, i dont understand what you are asking

Do you need a different modem for broadband or cable? or does the same thing work for both?if you are refering to cable broadband against most other broadbands then yes cable modems have different connections to the USB DSL modems.

I think what AphJN was saying, is that you can share a cable connection on a network but not a DSL (digital subscriber line) im not sure about the last part though: most broadband providers are now offering tiered service which will cost you extra for any online games that require realtime decisions, like Aceshigh.

Mike

http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/36.html <<< thats the one i was looking for

Originally Posted by Derrek

Thanks guys for the quick responce.

I don't know enough to overclock so Im not worrying about it.


I was curious if there is a point where you have more ram than you will use. Would it slow down your processing at 1 gig?

Someone was talking about slots on the motherboard, what slots would I want and how many?

AphJN, I didn't really follow your broadband sharing comment.

Do you need a different modem for broadband or cable? or does the same thing work for both?

Glad to hear about the overclocking...not for the squeamish at heart (tried it myself but couldnt handle the risk...)

with the XP OS, no, you will always use your ram. However, there is a limit to how much ram is available to you. Some MBs will say 4 gig is available, but in fact only 2 to 3.5 gig is actually available. Depending on how the BIOS handles the memory locations with XP, you will either lose just about half a gig or a full 1.5 gig. XP uses the last 512Meg of the 4 gig addresses for IO and Interrupt tracking (the terms are escaping me right now!) so on non DDR2 and Dual channel MBs, you will have 3.5 out of 4 gig available. If you have Dual channel or DDR2 (which I think is dual channel by default) you will loose the 1.5 max possible. I have 1gig on my gaming machine and it changed boot speed by less than half a second vs. 512, but increased my gaming performance and load by about 25% over just 512.

Slots, slots, the ever present question of slots. First ISA, the PCI/AGP, now its PCI-Express.

Slots are your expansion capabilities for Desktop/tower chassis. Most Video cards are designed around being replaced at some point. Each MB has a set number of expansion cards, like 4 PCI slots for future expansion to a better sound card, or better Network Card. Adding new features to your computer is done through the PCI or PCI-E slots. Newer Video cards now use the PCI-Express slot versus the old AGP bus slot. Each slot has advantages and dis-advantages. PCI has the advantage of alot of cards are out there that use this standard. The downside is its slower than AGP and PCI-E. AGP used to be the Video card slot standard until PCI-E came out. Its advantage was that its faster than PCI and tied directly to the Processor. The dark side of AGP was that it was was voltage sensitive. Now we have PCI-E, which is so much faster than PCI or AGP. So, the newer better faster video cards are all based on that standard. The downside to PCI-E is that it is newer and so you have the older boards and cards that are cheaper but are not upgradeable to the new standard.

You should look for a board that has atleast 4 PCI and 1 AGP or 4 PCI-Ex1 and 1 to two PCI-Ex16 slots depending on if you want current or cheap.

As far as the broadband goes you have two basic standards. First is ADSL, ,or Aysnchronis Digital Subscriber Line (or just DSL for short) and the second is the Digitial Cable. The Modems are not compatible with each other. A DSL modem will not work with a Digital Cable connection and vice versa. When I was refering to sharing, its not sharing on an internal network (internal to the house) but on the actual Digital Cable loop. The two technologies work differently and have different limitations. DSL has the limitation of the user can not be farther away than 17 miles from the switch or central office while Digitial Cable slows down the more people on the loop (and the loop can be miles and miles long!) The DSL line goes straight through from the switch to your house and back, where as cable is just a branch off from the main loop. Think of Cable broadband as water pipes and DSL as yarn. Once you have broadband, you can then use a router inside your house share the broadband between computers.