Techy question !!!

ok, here goes, I have a friend who is goin to build me a PC, and not being very knowledgable, was womdering which graphics card, cpu, ram etc would be best for running SL. I currently using an Imac G5 PPC, but am swapping to PC. My friend be building the computer from scratch, so any info you could supply would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance !!!

I'd vote for an NVidia GeForce 8600GT, or if you are on a tight budget maybe a 7600GT. The 8600 though has better future proofing for DX10 down the road (SL doesn't use DirectX, so not an issue there). It's a reasonable combination of performance vs value. For cpu I would say any Intel Core 2 Duo, though the amd X2s are ok also. Stay away from Celerons and anything "older" than an intel core 2 duo (Like a Pentium 4).For ram, on a new system I'd say 2Gigs and I'm not too fussy on ram companies, corsair value ram is fine if you are not overclocking. If you are overclocking, you'llwant somethig more expensive. And don't skimp on a cheap power supply. Watts are less important than voltages and a good company. A lot of mystery computer issues are caused by cheap flakey power supplies.

(I like Radeon/ATI graphic cards also, but SL seems to favor NVidia so if that is a major application, go with nvidia.)

Without knowing what you're looking to spend, its hard to make a suggestion.

no limit on spending !!!

Also, consider what OS you will be using.

There are many posts about Vista so its advisable to read carefully..

Nvidia seems to be the preffered card with Vista for running SL, there have been many stories on the forum with people running Vista with ATI cards and unable to access SL, I don't know if that still is a problem..

I'd say get an nVidia graphics card with a minimum of 256 DDR onboard ram. I'm using a sort of old nVidia 6200LE with 256 DDR ram........it's supposed to be "low end", but it handles SL quite well. On the CPU I'd say get a dual core Intel........I'm not much on AMD's but I'm sure they are good too (I'm just partial to Intel). I have a P4 dual core 3.06 gig CPU............it works great (SL only uses 50 to 60% of the CPU without setting affinity to a single core). I only say that because someone said to stay away from P4's.....you probably don't have much of a choice since they are being phased out but it's not a bad processor at all. You should get no less than 1 gig of ram..........2 is probably better in the long run. But make sure your motherboard will support at least 4 gigs for future upgrades. I'll go with getting a bigger and better power supply too..........though I tend to not agree that wattage isn't important. A 500 watt daul fan PS would be the minimum I would want. There's a reason for some of the extra wattage........fans!!! Get no less than two case fans and a good CPU fan with ducting to outside air to blow directly on your CPU. Heat kills computers. Get two hard drives that spin at 7200 rpm......keep your main drive lean and clean and use the second drive for the lesser used stuff and archived stuff. Since you are coming from a Mac you will quickly find Windows is a very messy OS and it will clutter up pretty fast............and slow the thing down badly.

Just my advice.......I've built 5 PC's in my life.

Forget what Brash said about the 8600. If you have the cash, go for the far superior 8800 cards. The lower end 8800GTS goes for as little as $280 USD and comes with 320MB GDDR3 video RAM. I really don't recommend the higher end 8800 cards because for SL they are overkill, and can go for as much as $900 USD.

Edit: My fastest machine has two of these:

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0256278

The difference between one of that card in SL and a pair is negligible. On the other hand, this machine runs anything else insanely fast.

I usually start with what I can see as "minimums" to shoot for, and if you can spend more -- than certainly do ^_^ I love my 8800GTX @ 2560x1600

So if you are looking at a $1500-plus system, definately get a 8800GTS instead.

Dual graphic cards is alway a launching pad for some good forum debates =) I much prefer one excellent card, to two lesser cards. I tend to think SLI, Raid setups, raptor drives, and water cooling systems are generally overkill. (I have a 10K raptor drive but frankly can't see much difference between programs loaded onto that vs my bigger 7200RPM drive). I'd rather put that money into more ram, more powerful graphic card, and a faster cpu.

Marry me!

imogen

AH! But there's now the GeForce 8500 and 8600 for those not willing to part with $280. Those are the 8 series entry level & consumer versions.

Still, the 8800 GTS RAWKS!!

Go for at least 2.5 GHZ Dual core. 2 Gig of RAM. Theres a minimum for ya!

No limit on spending, eh? Excellent.

I'd just buy one of these then: http://www.llnl.gov/computing/tutorials/compaq_clusters/images/asciQmachineRoom.jpg

And for a monitor, I've heard that these work well:
http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/2002/09/images/b/formats/large_web.jpg

Raymond

No Price limit eh? This should work out just fine for you, might be a little overkill for SL.

Motherboard - Tyan VX50 8P (B4985) (Rev F)
Processor - 8 x Dual-core AMD Opteron™ Model 8212 - 2.0GHz 2MB Cache (95W)
Memory - 32 x 512MB PC5300 667MHz DDR2 ECC Registered
Video Card - PNY nVidia Quadro FX 4500 512MB DDR3 PCI Express ( 2xDVI )
Sony 18x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer
Controller Card 3ware 9650SE-8LPML 8port (SATA) (MultiLane) (PCIe)
Hard Drive(s) 8 x 500GB Serial ATA 7200 RPM - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10

and I would recommend Vista with Aero enabled

Better let him know you are joshin' before he starts ordering parts ^_^

he did say no price limit.......