What do you need for a good gaming pc??

[wow12blake]

Hey, I am a REAL hard core gamer and I am new to building pcs.
I want to know what would be best with an Athlon 2800 or 2600.

[72montecarlo]

The best what? Motherboard...graphics card...hard drive setup... or everything? The best is usually what you can afford

[wow12blake]

I am 14 and all I do is clean houses and make $80 a month. I need to know what

video card and how much RAM I need. I already decided I was going to get a 120gig hard Drive and I already have a 450watt power supply and a case.

[CmdrFly]

The smartest thing I ever did was spend $700 on a video card... I've had the same computer for 2 years, and it still chews apart all the latest games. The CPU needs to be replaced, but anyways...

ATI is generally the better deal, but I don't want to force you into one vendor's playground. Nvidia has some excellent cards as well. You'd be looking at either a Radeon 9600 (ATI) or a GeForceFX 5200 (Nvidia). Both are very good cards and will run new games at decent resolutions. Both cards go for under $200.

RAM, you want 512mb. A motherboard of that era is likely going to be based on the KT400a chipset, so get DDR400 RAM if possible. 512mb will be less than $200 also.

[renegade600]

check out alienware.com. IMO, they have the best gaming systems. Check what they use in their systems and it will give you ideas of what you would need to build your gaming system.

[72montecarlo]

Yes you will want 512mb minimum of pc3200 or pc2700 ram. A mobo such as Asus or Msi with the Nforce2 chipset supporting 333 and 400fsb. a radeon 9600 would be decent but a 5200 nvidia would be very lacking. my 5500 doesnt keep up with games i like to play such as far cry. At least a 5700 would be considered a moderate card these days with 128mb of onboard video minimum.

[wow12blake]

Thanks everybody for the help.