MMORPG gaming system! Star Wars Galaxies, need advice

[Keshin]

Hey all

I play alot of MMORPGs, especially Star Wars Galaxies and alot of other single player games. Basically I'm looking to buy a new custom built system for these purposes,

1st, MMORPG gaming
2nd, Single Player gaming (HL2, Doom 3, Far Cry etc)
3rd, Heavy downloading, internet browsing.

My current system is this:


P4 2.4ghz Northwood
Asus P4s800 Mobo
1gb non-branded DDR3200 ram (It has really high latencies )
80gb HD (Not sure what make, or RPM sticker is unreadable)
Geforce 4 Ti4200 128mb
Broadband
and some really REALLY old COMPAQ 17" monitor with terrible refresh rates.


I find I'm really limited to the amount of stuff I can do with this. I'm always out of HD space, and graphics performance needs to be set at the lowest on most new games, and ALL MMORPGs.

I've been doing my research over the last month or so, and have come up with this system thinking its the best to my current knowledge of PCs.


AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 Processor
Asus A8N-E Premium nForce4 Ultra PCI-Express Mobo
Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200XL Pro TwinX 4x512mb (ExtremeLow 2-5-2-2)
Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA - Harddrive 1
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 300GB 16mb cache SATA - Harddrive 2
ATI Radeon X850 XT PE 256MB PCI-Express
NEC Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2070SB 22"


And thats it. The nForce4 Asus mobo isn't released until Feb in the UK but it looks the best. I didn't got for the SLi... I just thought it would cause to many problems. I've read about it not working with a lot of games, and causing wierd graphics problems. I suppose I'll wait a year or something before I consider SLi (or the ATi equivalent).

With MMORPGs, I've read that the most important thing is the harddrive and RAM. So I picked the Raptor for windows and games, and chose another good harddrive for mass storage (downloading, movies, audio, graphics etc). One thing I'm not quite sure about is RAM. I've read numerous things about it, but there are just too many numbers and stuff that it starts to get confusing. However the RAM I've put in my list seems to be a lot of peoples favorite. What do you think for playing online games? Will the fast latencies help? And the 2GBs? Or will the 4x512mb sticks cause slowdown on the mobo?

With the monitor, I really wanted to get an LCD to save space, help the eyes and basically look cool but I really hate the fact you cant change the resolution. And I enjoy messing with game settings, so I thoguht the old CRT will do, and I've heard the Mitsubishi Diamond Pro's are the best.

The Processor and Video Card choice was made purely after looking at multipule benchmarks and seeing them at the No. 1 spot in the areas that matter to me.

Anyway, I think thats about it (wow wrote alot ) but before I go spending out alot of money, I want other peoples advice. Preferably EXPERTS on PC and online gaming performance. This system is aimed at lasting me over a year (or until some new revolutionary UBBER techo-stuff comes out).

Anyway, I'll shut-up now... piece out peeps (this smily is the best lol)

[dkmech]

You can change resolution on LCDs, it just wont look quite as good as at native res. Before you discount it altogether i suggest you check out for yourself the difference that it makes. The quality on native res (which will probably be fine for 95% of everything you do) will be worth it compared to a crt anyway.

[muddyfox470]

You could save a helluva lot of money by not buying the top spec stuff,

An Athlon64 3500+ will do the same job, albeit quite a bit cheaper, also maybe 1 6800gt will suffice atm, and then you can get an identical later on, down the line to run it in sli?

as surrent games wont need anything more than a 6800gt

so there we are, save yourself £500 by not buying top of the pile?
now for my consultancy fee...

[Stewart]

My gaming rig (for sale did I mention) slices though Half Life II at 1600x1200, max settings, 16AA, 8AF.

I'd say you should buy exactly whats in that.

[Keshin]

You can change resolution on LCDs, it just wont look quite as good as at native res. Before you discount it altogether i suggest you check out for yourself the difference that it makes. The quality on native res (which will probably be fine for 95% of everything you do) will be worth it compared to a crt anyway.

Yeah sorry I said wrong in my first post, I know you can change the res but I dont like the fact the quality is worse (although I dont know by how much).

However, I've heard from people, read reviews and seen LCDs and the actually pin-point quality of picture isn't as good as a Mitsubishi Diamond Pro CRT (and msot decent CRTs). But yeah there are probably well better LCDs than I've saw. I would have to buy one with a native res of 1600 x 1200 and a response time of 16ms max. I've even heard of people getting blur on 16ms response monitors.... so I dunno. I will take your advice though and look around through PC shops. I hear you cant buy LCDs over the net aswell because of the dead pixel thing and I really wouldn't want the hassle of sending things back and stuff

so there we are, save yourself £500 by not buying top of the pile?

I'm a bit of an elitist when it comes to my gaming and stuff heh. I understand the processor saving money, but I'm not sure about the 6800 GT compared to the x850 XT PE..... there is a big difference there IMO (maybe not in Doom 3). But I like playing at high-res and ATi stuff does better than Nvidia there.

If I was an overclocker I probably WOULD go for the Athlon64 3500+, but I dont like overclocking stuff. My goal was to build the best gaming rig money could buy, without overclocking and last me 15 months+. I gues I should have mentioned I'm not an overclocker in my original post.

I'm still unsure abut the RAM though, I really dont understand much about it. I know lower latencies perform faster, but does higher bandwidth matter aswell? Doesn't DDR2 offer higher bandwidth? Which do you think would suit games like Everquest 2, Star Wars Galaxies? WoW etc... I've read that having 2 sticks of 1gb RAM is better than having 4x512mb sticks.

My gaming rig (for sale did I mention) slices though Half Life II at 1600x1200, max settings, 16AA, 8AF.

Lol. Thanks for the offer man (sent you a PM). I'd be interested in seeing any benchmarks? And I'll go have a look for that guide you wrote.

Thanks for your comments so far guys.

[Stewart]

Slice, dices and does other things that end in ices. Its overclocked though, so not what you are looking for.