Graphics Card/cpu opinions wanted

I'm currently looking into building a new pooter, I basically want it to be geared to playing SL as smoothly as possible and I was wondering if anyone out there could tell me what cpu's (AMD vs Intel, dual core or not) perform best in their experience.

Ditto the same for graphics cards! I'm particularly interested in what the best PCI Express Graphics card for around $150 is in SL.

Hugs and thanks

Ok, I will try to answer this to the best of my ability based on what I know/have seen in these forums.

When it comes to a CPU, Dual Core does NOTHING for SL at this point since SL does not support Dual Core... meaning those of us with DC CPU's have to manually set the affinity the SL client recognises to a single core everytime we start the game (or use a 3rd party program to do this for us).

That being said, I would still invest in a DC CPU because everything else you do will be happier!

Intel vs. AMD: My personal preference is Intel. I've owned 3 AMD CPU's in my life and each one of them was a bigger disaster than the previous where as my Intel CPU's were always solid. Intel Core Duo2 CPU's are rated as the best CPU's ever on many of the hardware review websites.

Check out www.tomshardware.com for real world benchmarks/reviews of 'puter hardware.


As for the best video card for around $150 US...
Depending on if you time it right or not you should be able to find a Gforce 7900GT or 7950GT around that pricepoint after rebate. Check out deal sites such as www.slickdeals.net or www.fatwallet.com to keep an eye out for great prices on components.


I hope this helps a little.

I agree with overlord, although a Dual core pc won't help you much as far as the SL viewer it will make multi-tasking attainable while your logged on, the Video card is also a very good recommedation, I spent a little over $500 when the 7900GTX came out to later find out that I could've gotten away with the GT and saved alot of money, no regrets though it is a very powerful card. If you do purchase a DC pc remember to use the VBO setting in the client menu on the top of your screen. When your logged on,look at the top of your screen, if you don't see the client menu, hold ctrl-shift-alt-D and you'll see it, click on Client then Render and check off "USE VBO", it make's a huge difference and I haven't had to touch affinity settings at all running over 40-60FPS with a draw rate of 256.
The links above are great places to find good deals heres another: www.newegg.com

Let us know what you decide to get and how it works out for you.

Dual core processors are the way to go nowdays, they cost the same or less than a single core and the ability to run Photoshop and play SL at full speed is well worth having plus there are plans in the works at LL to offload some functions to the second core to boost performance so you can't go wrong if you want to be ready for the future. The affinity thing is minor and easily corrected.

With the release of the 8800 series cards, the 7800 and 7900 series cards are dropping in price pretty steadily yet offer superb performance for SL.