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[Agent Dormer]

As much as I love my Powerbook, there are something things it can't do. I don't want this to be some Mac/PC hate thread, I just want some advice on what type of system stats I should have to run some upcoming games I'm interested in really well. I'm really interested in Worlds of WarCraft, City of Villains and The Sim 2 and just need to know what specs you all would think I'd need to run this stuff really well. I probably will not build the system for another 6-8 weeks and would like to spend between $700-800 dollars. Thanks in advance for the help, Neo-GAF!

 

[Slo]

Do you have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, OS?

 

[Cerebral Palsy]

WoW, and Sims2 will be released for Mac. City of Heroes sucks ass.

 

[Priz]

I'd say go for a new ASUS, DFI or other Intel-based PCI Express board with on-board Intel Extreme graphics but also has a PCI Express slot. You might pay $25-50 more, but you're getting performance of a current $150-250 video card on board (somewhere between a Geforce 4 ti4600 and ATI Radeon 9800), plus you have the slot to upgrade later. You won't see that much of a speed difference in the processors (unless you spend a lot of money on one of the extreme's) so just get something decent around 2.8 or 3ghz. So you're looking at (roughly) ~$100 to 150 for the mobo, $150-200 for the CPU, $100 for the memory (512mb should be more than enough) and any other stuff you want (the boards should have on-board sound and such but if you want some high end sound card or other stuff...). Plus Hard Drive, CD/DVD Drives and case.

Hope that helps.

 

[Cerebral Palsy]

Intel is overpriced, and the Athlon64s make great gaming rigs. AMD > Intel.

 

[Agent Dormer]

Do you have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, OS?

Yes, yes, yes, yes and a-no.

WoW, and Sims2 will be released for Mac. City of Heroes sucks ass.

The problem is I have a G4 867 so I will not be able to run those games. The WoW beta required 1GHz min.

 

[firex]

Yeah, you probably should just build a gaming PC for WOW instead of trying to run it on that Powerbook. It's got a few graphical bugs on the Mac version anyway.

I don't know about Sims 2's requirements, but if you want a machine that runs WOW get an AMD processor that's between 1.5 ghz and 2 ghz, and get at least 768mb of ram (I have 1 gig and it still lags a bit). Video card doesn't matter a whole lot so far (I get between 30 and 60 fps on a geforce 4 ti4200 running the game in direct3d, and if that fps difference seems big, it's about 30-40 outdoor and 50-60 indoor) but I'd at least get the card I have, or if you want to pay a bit more, get an ATI card that's better.

That's just going by the latest beta client they released, but to be honest it feels like I can't imagine much more improving (graphically at least) for the retail version.

 

[Slo]

Ok, I'll just assume that you'll be able to aquire WinXP and that won't effect your budget. I just put together a system at newegg.com that ran me $750.

Antec Sonata case w/ 380W PS -$99.00
AMD 2800+ XP Barton -$113.00
Asus A7N8X motherboard, onboard lan/audio -$84.00
512 MB Corsair Value RAM PC3200 - $82.00
Saphire ATI 9800 Pro 128mb - $209.00
160 GB Samnsung HD -$92.00
LiteOn DVD +/- R 8X burner -$70.99

Total -$749.99

You'll also need a nice CPU fan, someone else can recommend that for you.