Hi,

I'm a new member to the forum and I am looking at purchasing a new gaming PC but don't really know what to buy, I was looking at a Dell XPS gen 5.

Here are the specs I can afford:
Pentium D 840 (3.2GHz) Dual Core or Pentium 4 660 (3.60GHz)
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Sound Card THX cert.
19 in Digital Flat Panel Display
ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition PCI Express x16
Dual 160GB Serial ATA HDD in RAID 0 configuration plus a 80GB Serial ATA 3rd HDD to store my data, etc.
2GB DDR2 RAM at 667MHz
XP Pro, Dell 5650 5.1 speakers etc.

I am looking to play all the latest games and hopefully the new games coming out for the next year before I upgrade again.

Any advice, comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in Advance.

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=pee840&page=8&cookie%5Ftest=1

I know most people strongly warn against a dual core processor for gaming but won’t most of the new games coming out in the future be able to take advantage of a dual core chip? And even if today’s games won't use it isn't the 3.2GHz clock speed on the Pentium 840 chip fast enough to play most games on high settings with a Radeon X850 XT Platinum and 2GB of RAM?

Just Wondering

Your RAM is great, the X850XT PE is the latest/greatest minus going to SLI. I have that vid card coming the mail in the next day or two. Can't wait!

But I would say, if you plan on gaming, you might switch and look in to AMD products instead.
Get a Athlon 939 San Diego on an nForce4 chipset.

Definitely go AMD S939..One thing is they use much less power than the Intel which equates to less heat!