Looking to buy a new rig, advice needed

[nando99]

First off, I really like Dells - my experience with them has been good and their warranties are great.

I'm looking to game, a lot... I'm actually getting rid of my PS3 to concentrate on gaming on the PC...

My question, is this PC worth it for the price?

How soon do you foresee me having to upgrade things on the PC?

The PC:

Studio XPS 9000 Studio XPS 9000
Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
Studio XPS 9000 Intel® Core™ i7-920 processor(8MB L3 Cache, 2.66GHz)
Memory 12GB Tri-Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz - 6 DIMMs
Keyboard Dell Studio Consumer Multimedia Keyboard
Monitor 21.5" Dell ST2210 Full HD Monitor with VGA cable
Video Card nVidia GeForce GTS 240 1024MB
Hard Drives 1TB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
Mouse Dell Studio Optical Mouse
Modem No Modem Option
Adobe Software Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 9.0 Multi-Language
Optical Drives 16X DVD+/-RW Drive
Sound Card Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
Speaker No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system)
Network Integrated 10/1000 Ethernet
Office Productivity Software (Pre-Installed) Microsoft® Office Starter 2010
Security Software McAfee SecurityCenter, 15-Months
Hardware Support Services 3 Year Advanced Service Plan
Datasafe Dell Online Backup 2GB for 1 year


Click on View Configuration Details

All info/help/advice is appreciated, thanks in advance...

 

[mailpup]

My question, is this PC worth it for the price?

What price?

 

[nando99]

lol.. sorry about that...

total price is under $1478...

 

[mailpup]

For gaming the GTS 240 is a lower end card. For that much money I would try to get a better card such as an Radeon HD 5850 or better.

Also, while you might not notice much actual speed difference, the 16X optical drive is a bit old. It has been superceded by first 18X, 22X and, for awhile now, 24X.

 

[slh28]

Downgrade the CPU to an i5 750, downgrade to 4GB RAM and put that money towards something like a Radeon 5850/5870. You will get a much better balance of components and higher frame rates in games.

However I doubt Dell/HP etc. would give you those options (they tend to be very CPU biased) so you could look at some custom system builders - don't know which ones there are in the US but a quick google would do the trick.

 

[Ritwik7]

I absolutely concur with slh28. Also consider building the system yourself and you may save a little bit.