Hi folks, was looking for a bit of advice. I've run the beta on mooege and it does run, but barely and is pretty laggy/stuttery on 1680x1050 on low settings. SC2 runs smoothly on low settings, but I'd like to bump that up to ultra and I want to play D3 maxed.
Current rig:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ (3.21 GHz, dual core)
ASUS M2R32-MVP mobo (says it supports two PCI Express x16 ATI Crossfire gfx cards)
Sapphire ATI HD 2600 XT 512MB ($91 4 years ago... good investment)
4GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) dual channel memory
Edit: Thermaltake Toughpower 550w
One thing I've always shunned is the "gaming laptop" but since I've gotten married I'm actually tempted to save up and get a really, really nice gaming laptop so I can game in the living room while my wife watches TV or something instead of me always being holed up in the second bedroom. I already stream movies/shows to the xbox360 in the living room using Tversity, but if I get a laptop this PC would exclusively be a media hub.
So my current goal is to spend as little money as possible to temporarily let me play D3 until I end up getting a laptop. I still want to play it on as high of settings as possible. Would a graphics upgrade suffice? No idea if my mobo will even support recent nVidia cards or if I'm forced to get a high end ATI one.
Further Edit:
Was reading some ASUS boards for this mobo and people talk about running PCI-E 2.1 video cards without issues.
I would look into maybe getting 8 GB memory (2 4gb sticks), but you'd have to make sure the memory you look at fits in your mobo, and upgrading the GPU to something like a 6870 (about $190). your CPU should be ok, if you want to upgrade that i'd look at upgrading the mobo at the same time.
Well, I know that there are processors out with higher ghz then that, but considering it's got eight cores, it should run better, right?
Getting a six core would save like $20 or $30, but I'd have to upgrade eventually.
Looking over reviews of the new Bulldozer chips from AMD, the i7 2600k (4 cores) is better then the AMD chip in most areas. Most games arn't going to take advantage of all the cores anyways. I would stick with an i7 2600k for now as it's a great chip with an amazing price. unless you want to kick up to the new ivy bridge, but like they said it's generally good to wait for the 2nd or 3rd revision.
I would look into maybe getting 8 GB memory (2 4gb sticks), but you'd have to make sure the memory you look at fits in your mobo, and upgrading the GPU to something like a 6870 (about $190). your CPU should be ok, if you want to upgrade that i'd look at upgrading the mobo at the same time.
Looking over reviews of the new Bulldozer chips from AMD, the i7 2600k (4 cores) is better then the AMD chip in most areas. Most games arn't going to take advantage of all the cores anyways. I would stick with an i7 2600k for now as it's a great chip with an amazing price. unless you want to kick up to the new ivy bridge, but like they said it's generally good to wait for the 2nd or 3rd revision.
ASUS p8z68 deluxe
OCZ vertex3 240GB
seagate barracuda 7200RPM 2TB
I7-2600 3.4GHz
2x EVGA GeForce GTX580
16GB Corsair Vengeance
PLEXTOR Blu-ray
Silverstone 1200Watt
Logitech g19
R.A.T. 7 Mouse
ASUS VE278q 27'' LED monitor
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=16660705