Please hel, advice needed!

[Maberz]

I'm looking at buying the Dell XPS 210, mainly for gaming when I go off to university. This is the spec I'm looking at:

Intel® Viiv™ Core™ 2 Duo E4400 Processor (2.0GHz,800MHz,2MB cache)
Genuine Windows Vistaâ„¢ Home Premium - English
256MB ATI® Radeon® X1300 Pro PCI Express graphics card
2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024]
250GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurstâ„¢ cache

£479

Please can someone tell me whether or not this would be a good buy for a gaming PC, the only that worries me is that Vista does take up a lot of memory and maybe extra RAM is needed.

Thanks in advance

 

[ssc456]

its an ok gaming pc but what kinda games r u talking bout.

also i was gonna suggets buiding your own pc but im assuming you dont have an OS therfore the price would be about the same

 

[Rudster8161]

ram is fine but maybe up the GFX a little.

why not just build it yourself?

 

[ssc456]

why not just build it yourself?

i was thinking that but if he doesnt have an OS then it will prbably be the same amount i mean if he saves £100 on parts he gonna have to buy an OS with that so ......

 

[Tommy Boy]

i was thinking that but if he doesnt have an OS then it will prbably be the same amount i mean if he saves £100 on parts he gonna have to buy an OS with that so ......

Building a computer isn't always about saving money, it's about getting exactly what you want and not having to put up with a company like dell giving you some cheap parts to keep the cost down. A lot of times it is cheaper to just buy a dell for that reason, hell, they have systems for $499 these days.

@the OP, what really matters in gaming is the video card, upgrade the vid card a bit and you should be fine.

 

[Maberz]

OK, so keeping the RAM at 2gb should be fine?

Unfortunately, with regard to building it, someone said it's not always about saving money, for me, I need to save money as I'm heading off to University so if I can buy this PC I gave the spec for, that would be fine, but any more money would mean I won't have much money for anything else

So, if I buy the PC I spec'd, and then a few months down the line, buy another graphics card when I have the cash, it should be alright?

The type of games I'm looking to play are stuff like the GTA games, EA Sports games like FIFA and NHL, UT games and that kinda thing

 

[Celegorm]

Yeah, two gigs will be fine. Like said before I would up the video card. I would also consider upping the processor to anything the the E6XXX line. Shouldn't be more than like $75 to up that, and the performance difference will be noticeable.

 

[esa193]

if you want to game
deff need a better graphics card then that
you wont be able to play any new games
id recomend a x1600 or higher from ati
or a 7600 512 from nvidia or higher

 

[Maberz]

Thanks for all the advice guys

I'm looking at upping the processor to

Intel® Viiv™ Core™ 2 Duo E6420 Processor (2.13GHz,1066MHz,4MB cache)

That's adding £88 to the price which I can afford.

For now, I wont be able to up the GFX card, but it should be OK to get me started, I mean, the only games I own that I will be playing (at first) are Civ III (soon to be getting IV), GTAIII, Football Manager games, and UT 2004.

I'll probably get a new GFX card around XMAS time, which is when I'll have money for the higher end games anyway!

I think this is a good course of action!

 

[Tommy Boy]

That system will be fine for the games you want to play right now, but definitely upgrade that gfx card later. But yes, that system will do for now.