Hello everyone

Havent really been keeping up with gaming hardware for a while now, but I have a customer who is after a PC for home, that can be used as an all in one machine for work & gaming for his kids. They mainly play Warhammer type games, dont think theres anything like crysis to handle! He's also after a nice 22" widescreen monitor to go with it, so i was looking at the Full HD range for him. He wants to stick with Dell as that is what he has now. I've managed to find 4 suitable XPS PCs, all of which are Core i7, but there is a range of graphics cards & i dont know which one is best!

GTS240
GTX260
ATi 3650
ATi 4850

If someone could point me in the right direction it would be much appreciated.

ta

GTX260 (216sp) from those choices for me. Is there nothing newer than those listed here though?

no, thats the only options i get. Which is better after the GTX260?

Also, what is the order of processors out of these?

Core i7 920 2.66
Core i7 940 2.9
Core i7 950 3.06
Core i7 870 2.9

He wont do any overclocking or anything like that.

Thanks

The Ati4850

I'm not an i7 expert but I think the 870 runs on a 1156 socket whereas the 9xx run on 1366 - this could be important for upgrade paths and triple channel DDR3 support. On that basis I would probably chose one of the 9xx chips for the higher memory bandwidth. As overclocking isnt an option locically the higher stock clock speed looks the most obvious but then I guess this is also dependant on price?

My choice the i7 950 or the 920 if it saves any significant money. How much cheaper is the i7 870 (is at all?). I guess I could go back on everything I've just said and go for that depending on his planned usage. Its not like it will be slow with any of the three choices.

Ok these are the choices:

XPS 8000
Core i7 860 2.8Ghz
6Gb RAM
1Gb GTS240 Graphics
£854.79

Studio XPS
i7 920 2.66
6Gb RAM
1Gb GTS240/GTX 260/ATI 4850
£900.86 / £979.12 / £750.00

Studio XPS
i7 940 2.93
6Gb RAM
Bluray
ATI 3650
£1000.00

Studio XPS
i7 950 3.06
6Gb RAM
GTS240 or GTX 260
£1059.12 or £1137.38

Sorry for the big list of options!!! I guess looking at that list the 2nd Studio down with the ATI 4850 is probably the best way to go for price/performance? He was looking at spending about £1000

Thanks

If you dont need a monster gaming card then the 4850 will do fine. They all seem a little expensive to me though to be honest but then I havent bought an off the shelf PC for a long time.

Have a look at Cyberpowersystem maybe? I've never used them myself but a quick fiddle with their configuration and for £800 I specced and i7 920 with Coolermaster 500w PSU, 6GB G.Skill 1600MHz RAM, a nice looking case and a 500GB hard drive but with an nVidia GTX260 or ATi 4890, maybe around £100 cheaper than the comparable Dell if you factor in a bigger harddrive?? There's loads of configurable options if you want a cheaper graphics card too.

Ive gone for the machine with the 4850, his kids dont do too much gaming on it so it should be fine. Its the warranty you get with them that does it, 3 years next business day & he's used to Dell now.

Thanks for all your advice!