Hey guys could you please answer these questions?
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1. I would suggest buying the components first. You may choose a motherboard right away, but by choosing your components first, you get more control. There's a huge variation in motherboards so that helps, just make sure you get things from the same "era" and compatible with each other. That is, don't expect DDR 266 RAM to work with an Intel 2 Duo processor as you'll likely need DDR2 (and a motherboard with such slots).
2. They seem almost identical, but the 2230 version uses less power (38 watts versus 48) and has less powerful speakers. They're otherwise identical. With the 2230 costing about $40 less, I would suggest that. If you need speakers, you can just hook up new ones to your sound card, especially if you want a 5.1 or 7.1 sound system. Do note that LCD's are not strongly in my realm of knowledge (I understand most of the techical terms, I just never really experienced one).
3. I'm not familiar with "Crysis", but the 8800 GTX should power away almost everything with max or near max settings.
4. I would stick with XP for now. Vista has a lot of driver-related issues from what I've seen and I would only recommend upgrading to Vista when at least the first service pack is released which should have most of the bugs patched up.
5. Waiting has many benefits. As early as March from what I've seen, DirectX 10 video cards would be available and the 8800 GTX would be cheaper yet with, perhaps, another more enhanced product line available for the same price you can get the 8800 GTX today.
6. One thing I would suggest is that, instead of getting an LCD monitor, get a CRT as you can get a CRT supporting 1920x1440 resolution for USD$250 including shipping. LCD's only have one native resolution supported and using a resolution other than that could cause an inferior-looking image. CRT's don't have this restriction. I would also suggest a Core 2 Duo for the processor and at least 1 GB of memory (2 GB recommended). Hard drives are cheapest by the unit around the 120 to 250 GB range (lowest price per gigabyte). I would also suggest getting a sound card instead of using onboard sound since a sound card has much better quality and performance. The X-Fi series from Creative are the best sound cards around. I have the X-Fi Platinum, which costs around $180 or so. As to video cards, you can either buy a cheap 7600 GT for around $110 for now (or something cheaper and weaker) and when the DirectX 10 cards come, buy a much more decent DX10 card and sell your old card at around 1/3 to 1/2 the price. Either that, or just wait for the DX10 cards to come out. Other than this, I don't know what else to say.
1. I would suggest buying the components first. You may choose a motherboard right away, but by choosing your components first, you get more control. There's a huge variation in motherboards so that helps, just make sure you get things from the same "era" and compatible with each other. That is, don't expect DDR 266 RAM to work with an Intel 2 Duo processor as you'll likely need DDR2 (and a motherboard with such slots).
2. They seem almost identical, but the 2230 version uses less power (38 watts versus 48) and has less powerful speakers. They're otherwise identical. With the 2230 costing about $40 less, I would suggest that. If you need speakers, you can just hook up new ones to your sound card, especially if you want a 5.1 or 7.1 sound system. Do note that LCD's are not strongly in my realm of knowledge (I understand most of the techical terms, I just never really experienced one).
3. I'm not familiar with "Crysis", but the 8800 GTX should power away almost everything with max or near max settings.
4. I would stick with XP for now. Vista has a lot of driver-related issues from what I've seen and I would only recommend upgrading to Vista when at least the first service pack is released which should have most of the bugs patched up.
5. Waiting has many benefits. As early as March from what I've seen, DirectX 10 video cards would be available and the 8800 GTX would be cheaper yet with, perhaps, another more enhanced product line available for the same price you can get the 8800 GTX today.
6. One thing I would suggest is that, instead of getting an LCD monitor, get a CRT as you can get a CRT supporting 1920x1440 resolution for USD$250 including shipping. LCD's only have one native resolution supported and using a resolution other than that could cause an inferior-looking image. CRT's don't have this restriction. I would also suggest a Core 2 Duo for the processor and at least 1 GB of memory (2 GB recommended). Hard drives are cheapest by the unit around the 120 to 250 GB range (lowest price per gigabyte). I would also suggest getting a sound card instead of using onboard sound since a sound card has much better quality and performance. The X-Fi series from Creative are the best sound cards around. I have the X-Fi Platinum, which costs around $180 or so. As to video cards, you can either buy a cheap 7600 GT for around $110 for now (or something cheaper and weaker) and when the DirectX 10 cards come, buy a much more decent DX10 card and sell your old card at around 1/3 to 1/2 the price. Either that, or just wait for the DX10 cards to come out. Other than this, I don't know what else to say.
You were so helpful.Thanks for the help.
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