Well, limited resources. I went to Our Guy locally 'cause he gives us great deals and builds solid systems. Told him I needed it to run EQ2 better than "balanced" video wise, be cool, and try not to break 1200 bucks. Here's what he came back with:
Antec NineHundred Gamer Case with 550 Watt Power Supply
Lights (Blue, Green, or Red)
Asus M2N-E motherboard ,with 8 USB ports and integrated networking
Athlon 64 X2 5000+(2.8GHz,512KBx2)
2GB,800MHz DDR2
eVGA Geforce 8600 NVIDIA Graphics with 512 MB
250GB SATA,7200 RPM Hard Drive
16X DVD+/-RW SATA, with Nero burning software
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1
I said to avoid the Geforce 8800 as I read of all kinds of issues with it, and I was willing to brave Vista but I'm reading there's a performance loss with Vista and EQ2, and that if I go Vista I should get a faster processor. This is coming in at $1100 'cause we've bought a system from him before.
Opinions please?
PS - I asked about SLIing a couple 7600's, which is what he did for Hubby, and he said "I am recommending the nVidia GeForce 8600 GT as it performs a little better than two GeForce 7600 video cards"
PPS - dammit, I'm reading the tech support forums and getting all wishy-washy. I'm thinking XP and an 8800, since I'm only reading about the stuttering issue on SLI'd 8800's.
Edited, Apr 16th 2008 11:09pm by Calthine
Edited, Apr 16th 2008 11:13pm by Calthine