Looking to upgrade... Do I build my own, buy off the shelf...?
Mainly want SPEED, MEMORY and GRAPHICS so I can play games and on-line stuff....
Mainly want SPEED, MEMORY and GRAPHICS so I can play games and on-line stuff....
For both desktop and laptops, gaming is about the video cards. Look for a good Nvidia or ATI/AMD card. The 5850 and 5870 video cards from AMD are quite impressive for many titles, and are not that expensive. A top of the line Intel Core i7 processor upgrade can cost over $1000, and it will not make anywhere near the difference in system speed a good video card (or two) does for gaming applications.I don't really have any specs in mind. I think I would prefer to buy 'off the shelf' and just unpack it and plug it in. I started playing some on-line games recently and discovered my current laptop is not quite up to it. Thinking of desktop this time - with all the 'bells and whistles' available.... Need a good monitor too....
I would go with a single ATI 58xx series card. They give pretty almost as much performance as you can easily get with a single card.I'm not a big gamer at all but I'm curious do most games requires SLI based systems these days?