Originally posted by B.Charlton
Hello everyone.
First off I would like your guidence\preferences on these things when buying a new PC for games like Half Life 2 and Doom 3:
wich one should be sufficient a AMD Athlon XP 2400/2600/2800/3000 with Quantispeed Technology.
Although modern games do assume a newish CPU and graphics card, no games developer in his or her right mind releases a game that only people with machines bought in the last month can play.
I imagine that any one of these processors will run these games, and probably do OK with them if the overall quality of the rest of the machine is good, but you would always try to get the best processor that you can for the money. If you look at processor prices, there is usually a new, state of the art processor that's a fair chunk more expensive than even another slightly slower one. If money is not too much of a problem then get that one, however if you are on a budget aim for the "next best thing" which will likely be nearly as good but a lot cheaper.
512mb RAM or 1024mb RAM (both are PC 2700 DDR 333mhz)
You could get 512MB, see how that is, and then think about upgrading again if you want to. Try to get a motherboard that has at least 3 DIMM slots, and try to get your memory as 1 x 512MB module, instead of 2 x 256 MB.
512MB is kind of becomming the standard now. I'd say start with that and upgrade later if you feel that its necessary. There will still be memory around to buy in the future - its not like you have to get it all now. And it will likely drop in price later as well.
A 120GB Ultrafast with 2mb buffer or 120GB Ultrafast with 8mb buffer (both are 7200rpm).
You do see performance boosts from a bigger hard drive buffer. The hard drive is basically what slows a modern machine down. Its partially mechanical, therefore access times move from nanoseconds to milliseconds, etc. The buffer helps to speed things up by placing frequently accessed data into a memory location onboard the HDD that is much faster than the HDD itself. Again, get the best that you can afford but both of those drives sounds like excellent, fast HDDs. If the price difference is not big, go for the better one.
A 128mb ATI Radeon 9600 with TV out and DVI or a 128mb NVidia GeForce FX 5600 with TV out and DVI or the 256mb version of the FX 5600 stated before.
No comment, really. We could debate "ATI vs nVidia" all day. They probably both kick ***.
Overall, you have specced a very good, fast and modern machine that even if you went with all of the cheaper choices would be just fine.
When buying a computer, or building one, future upgradability is the key. Try for a case that can hold additional, extra HDDs. Look for motherboards that can accept as much additional memory as possible, and have lots of free PCI slots. Get a good quality, high wattage PSU. Get case fans and if necessary, hard drive coolers. Ensure that your system is flexible, changeable and has plenty of scope for alteration.