Recommended PC for SL?

I'm thinking of buying a PC purely for running SL, as at the moment I'm using a laptop.

In SLers' experience, what components would give me good performance, without spending a huge amout of money? I've heard that Nvidia graphics cards and Athlon CPUs are recommended, but which types, and what accompanying motherboard and RAM amount would benefit SL?

I don't want to overspend unnecessarily, but neither do I want to cut corners for the sake of a few pounds. After all, I want my friends to look as good as possible And I do a lot of ballooning, so a long draw distance would be lovely!

(If I've missed a link to a recommended PC somewhere else, please just point me in that direction.)

Thanks, Freya.

This is the system I built for myself, with everything except the heatsink sourced from newegg:

1. ASUS P4P800 Deluxe motherboard (dual-channel, i865 Northbridge)
   
2. Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz CPU
   
3. 1GB SDRAM from ASUS' certified RAM list
   
4. Nexus copper CPU heatsink (the stock heatsink ain't good enough, and this one is reeeeeal quiet, runs at ~2500RPM) from QuietPC
   
5. nVidia GeForce FX5900 non-ultra
   

The mobo is great, I just told it to overclock the system by 10% (to 3.3GHz) and it figured out all the multipliers for me. It's real stable. The heatsink is necessary because the stock one is utter crap, but it runs quiet. I've got the FX5900 clocked at 425MHz CPU/700MHz RAM, as this delivers the best settings according to 3DMark 2003. (Better than 450.) A 5900 Ultra runs at 450 from the factory and is a somewhat better card, and a 5950 Ultra is better still.

The mobo has a Turbo mode that enables the Northbridge to run a lot faster. I got an extra 500 3DMarks just from turning it on, and it doesn't seem to have an adverse effect on stability. This system hangs only on rare occasions. An i875 Northbridge is even better, but tends to add $50ish (about 30 GBP I think) to the price of the motherboard.

I built the entire system last November for about $800, using the hard drive, sound card, and chassis from the previous machine. Should be a hundred bucks cheaper (maybe more) by now.

One thing I'll tell you, I've heard that ATI + AMD = bad news. I've had real good luck running Intel CPUs on ASUS motherboards since 1998, so I have no real incentive to change to AMD, but everyone seems to think choice of CPU is supposed to be like a religion, so do whatever you want. Obviously an ATI card was out of the question for SL. Maybe in the near future that will change.

The most important thing for SL is bandwidth. After that, memory and graphics card are important, and I tend to like getting fast harddrives on the offchance it speeds up those harddrive thrashing moments.

As a rule, for games CPU is not that important. Stuff that needs CPU is anything involving video-compilation, cos this tends to require stuff that cant be done by the graphics card.

Just to put things in perspective, Im using a PC right now with 256MB Ram and a GeForce 440MX 64MB (this is an oolllddd card), and it runs acceptably, surprisingly.

Azelda

This doesn't really hold true for SL. Other "games" have the advantage of being pre-optimized (BSPs, zone portals, precalculated lights, etc.) SL has none of this. CPU and RAM are the heavy hitters when it comes to performance. Better video cards yield only a slight performance improvement, unless you're moving up from something really old or crappy. The chief advantage to them is that they make SL look prettier.

Thank you, I'm learning...

Bearing all that in mind, can you tell if it's actually worth me trying to make things better? I'm currently using:

Dell D600 laptop, which includes
Radeon Mobility 9000, 350MHz DAC and 32MB memory
512MB system RAM
Pentium M processor 1600MHz
and a connection which averages just over 400kb/sec.

I have no idea what the hard disk is, but when running SL it's insanely busy. In fact the whole keyboard area gets very hot!

So, should I splash out on a new PC?

F.

You might get a significant boost with more memory, since you say the hard drive is insanely busy. You'd also get a speed boost from a faster CPU, but since you say the laptop gets quite hot as-is, I doubt the cooling could handle a 2GHz+ CPU.

As a rule of thumb:
A faster hard drive will boost object/texture load times when moving around in an area you've visited recently.
More memory will boost framerate in built-up areas, and boost object/texture load times in areas you've visited very recently.
A faster CPU will boost overall framerates.
A graphics card with more memory will boost framerates in areas with large numbers of textures.

Avoid ATI video cards as if they were a horde of hungry ghosts. Get the best Nvidia you can afford.

As much RAM as possible, with the fastest possible bus speed. It makes a huge difference.

All Athlons and Pentiums out there are good enough to run SL. I run SL in a 3 year old computer and it works great with the default configuration. This old box is a whole lot worse than anything you can currently find for sale.
If saving money is an issue, and SL is your primary concern, then bear in mind that SL runs and looks great on my 1333 MHz Athlon CPU, with "only" 256 megs of RAM and a measly nVidia FX5200.