PC Upgrade Questions

[Nisse]

The PC I have at the moment is dying. So I am looking around for something new.

Some info:
Price range for new pc is $500 to $1000.
While I don't play Istaria right now, I do still want to return one day. I want to be able to better appreciate it.
I'd like to play WoW on higher settings than I do now. As of now I only have particles turned up. It doesn't do well in places like Dalaran or raid/pvp settings where there's a sea of particles and a lot of player gear. I saw the preview videos for Cataclysm which showed the water being reflective. I'd like to be able to experience that feature.
I like to multitask quite a bit.
A quad core would be nice. I want to do some 3D work eventually.
Other games I have but can't really take in fully are Spore, Half Life 2, Portal, and Fallout 3.

Old PC stats:
1 gig of ram
ATI X1300XT card, with 256 mb of ram. I want to try an NVIDIA card this time around.
Single core 2.26 ghz Intel Pentium 4.

Does anyone have any experience with the iBuypower brand? The reviews I've read on TigerDirect.com and NewEgg.com both have a lot of instances of broken parts and pissy customer service.

[Kalias]

Well, if you're looking to buy an already-built machine rather than building your own, I would recommend signing up for Neweggs newsletter and waiting for a good deal on a desktop machine. That would probably be the cheapest route, and it sounds like you are already familiar with checking reviews so as not to buy a lemon.

As far as things to look for in a comp you want to game with, it gets a little trickier balancing price and performance. Quad core is great, im sure it would help you play WOW better, but unless im mistaken, Istaria doesnt utilize more than 1 core (forget where i heard this, could be wrong).

RAM is essential too, but you have to look past just the amount you are getting (2gb, 4gb, etc.) the speed of the RAM is a better judge of how good it is going to be. When they say its DDR3 1333 RAM, that is much better than DDR2 800 because... well without getting into it, DDR3 is better and the speed [1333] is higher than 800. Don't worry too much about the latency numbers x-x-x-y.
Oh and make sure the motherboard is compatible with the type of memory you decide on, otherwise there may be issues.

Similar idea for the video card, lots of ram on it is good, but the speeds must also be decent.

I'm not too familiar with windows 7 OS, but i've heard good things about it. However, if you are planning on getting more than 4GB of RAM, you will need the 64-bit version.

Hope this helps.

[Spirit]

Just to add to Kalias' post...

As I understand it... a game or any application in 32-bit windows can only use up to 2gb ram, so even if your pc has 4gb a game can only use 2gb of it... arguably you could have two games using 2gb ram each, but it's rather pointless I think.

There's no price difference if you buy 64-bit/32-bit Windows 7 (not in the Uk anyway ... it's on the same disk), so push for 64-bit if possible. The only compatibility problems I've had are with programs that didn't work on 32-bit Vista either. Newer games are really eating ram, so I'd definitely go with 64-bit Windows 7, 4gb ram (fast as Kalias said) and a quad-core (most games support multi-core). Istaria won't use multi-cores, but other games will.

Unfortunately I can't help with graphics as I've not been paying attention with the latest chipsets. In the past I've usually looked for the "best bang for the buck" card ... usually a slightly above average gpu with silly-fast ram, but 1gb ram seems to be the norm now. I've got an aging Ati 3870 with 512mb ddr4, and it's still giving stellar service in an off-the-shelf dell that was selling (end-of-line) for $799 in the states and £697 in the uk (xps 420). All I've done is add another hard drive.

I hope this helps a little.

Rakku

Edit: I for one really like Windows 7. The interface is a bit weird, but it doesn't faff about like Vista did and creates restore points quickly. I'm using an evaluation copy that'll expire in August.

[Nisse]

Thanks for your suggestions, I found a collection of things, and went ahead and ordered it.

[Sunuke]

I know Hz runs on win 7 64bit and it runs really well.

If you want to go for a system to play WoW well then you need to start with atleast a quad core with a fast GPU, atleast 512Mb.

If possible, upgrade your system.

A mainboard, CPU can be replaced rather easy.

So if you have a pc in which you could upgrade then try that instead of buying a new one.

2006 I build my pc and sofar I have kept upgrading it which works very well for me.

Of course I do not know if you have skills to replace parts.

[Nisse]

The old pc is too old to be upgraded, the motherboard simply does not work with newer things. It's only got 1gb total ram capacity, for instance. The only thing to do was to get new things. I've ordered all the parts needed and I'll be building it myself, with the help of my father, who knows quite a bit more than I do.