(New PC Purchase) advice needed

[Sandain666]

<p>I am in the market for a new gaming PC. I have not purchased a new comp in about 5 years so I wondering what features I should shoot for. I have already decided to go for Vista Ultimate. Right now I am trying to decide where the best place to max out my money is. </p><p>Should I buy the best CPU I can afford or the best Graphics card? ( was thinking maybe buying the best CPU I can afford now and upgrading the graphics card later)</p><p>Does running 2 graphics cards help EQ2 run better or should I just buy one very expensive graphics card?</p><p> I am going to go for a minimum of 2 gig RAM but is EQ2 performace enhanced by 4 gigs? </p><p> Any other suggestions on putting together a great machine to play EQ2 would be aprriciated.</p>

[Winter12345]

<p>It depends on the kind of CPU you have because if you had XP (I HIGHLY recommend getting XP over Vista because you will experiance much less problems. Also the fact that XP is more friendly to games than vista) you will probably run quite fine with just 1 gig of ram. However with Vista, usually users have to add in like 2-3 gigs cuz of all the errors that shoot up with Vista. 4 Graphics card, get the 8800 Nvidida GTX or GT, I'm not sure which one is better but I think they are really just the same thing. Running with 2 Graphic cards i heard is not an advisable thing to do, because apparently it is useless as the EQ2 engine isn't designed to run with 2 graphics cards and just uses one of the two. I found that Core Duo is better than Quad core because again, quad core is new technology and isn't compatible with eq2.</p><p>Of course it doesn't mean you absoulutely can't get a computer with Quad core, 2 graphics cards and etc. it's just that you will find some problems while playing with those features because the game may get confused on how to run on your computer.</p><p> Hope that helped!</p><p>P.S- forgot to add that keep in mind EQ2 is much more CPU dependant and not GPU, so really the processor and CPU type can also play a large part in performance and trying to get eq2 to run on Very-high to Extreme Quality. For example you could have a 8800 gt card and with 4 gigs of ram but have a 2.0 GHZ processor and Vista, probably the highest lvl of graphics you could run and still have lag would be Balanced.</p>

[Miladi]

A couple of points to help out here would be, how much are you looking to spend, pre-built or one you plan on building, AMD or Intel (your preference of course), etc.? Giving us some idea of what you are looking to do would help answer this easier.

[Sandain666]

<p>Thanks for the advice so far. I did not realize EQ2 had such problems with the newer processors. That really good to know.</p><p> as far as how much I am willing to spend. I am hoping to stay between 1500-2000 dollars (US$) I am willing to go up to as much as $2500 if I can get something that will last a few years. I have built PC's in the past so I am sure I can do it again although these days I would much rather buy prebuilt as my time is limited with work, family and running my own business. All my other computers have been Intel based so I would more than likley prefer Intel.  I have been looking at Dell since my company gets a small discount with them and the computers at Fan Faire 2007 running eq2 were Dell and they were pretty good.  The computer I am currently using is an Alienware but I don't want to splurge that kind of money again.</p>

[Sandain666]

Can anyone who works for Sony tell me what type of machines you all use to play test EQ2 on? 

[Miladi]

If you look at my signature, you will see what I have for a set up. I just purchased all the parts from NewEgg and it was under $1000 including a case, ps, keyboard and mouse, which you may or may not need. I get around 60FPS outside of cities at max settings but no shadows or flora with this computer.