Advice about choosing next computer

[Sylphide]

Hello CC, how comforting to know there is a computer expert on the forum who actually knows the Sims

My computer is 6 years old. It is a P4 2,80 GHz, with 1,02 GB RAM, 120 GB hard drive and a NVidia GeForce FX 5600 video card.

At the time it was a pretty powerful machine (my friend's engineer husband used to say I purchased a bomb!) and also very pricey! It cost me close to 3,000$ can. But I had the money in the bank and I think it served me very well.

But now, I can't play the Sims2 with all my EXpacks, it won't support it and I would like to play the Sims3 also.

So I plan on buying a new computer next fall (and although I would like not to spend as much as the last time, the money is in the bank ) but I wonder what would be the best buy in order to be able to play both games?

I usually don't buy a kit. I ask for specifics. The store I used to go to (which had top quality parts) is now closed (they dropped with the stock market last fall). I went to a well known store in Montreal which sells parts. When the tech asked what I used the computer for, you should have seen his face when I answered "the Sims". There was contempt in his face and his tone became condescending. "You don't need much for that..."
This proves to me he does not know the game very well

So my questions are:

1. Which exploitation system (is that the right expression in english?) would you recommand?

I already have Windows XP with SP2 purchased after the fiasco of downloading and installing SP2...
It works fine for me and I like it. Should I stick with this? It would surely bring down the purchase cost! But how long will I be able to keep it? Is Microsoft going to take the rug from under my feet?
Would Vista be better, though I don't really trust it?
I thought I would wait for Windows 7 but with CountessCrazy's problems, I don't think so. She says she went back to XP because Windows 7 couldn't run Sims2!

2. The video card is very important to have clear pictures. Do you have a suggestion or some advice? anything I should stay away from?

I guess a 500 GB hard drive should be enough and I think I would go with 4GB of RAM...

What are your thoughts?

Many thanks!

Margot

[CharlieChomper]

Unfortunately, that tech's attitude regarding Sims I've found is actually not uncommon amongst the tech or techie crowd--even when some independent benchmarking sites used to use Sims2 (when it was first released) amongst the software that was being used to test out certain hardware there has existed that attitude. The hardcore gamer crowd can also be sometimes just as bad, if not worse. I don't agree with it, obviously, but I see it fairly regularly.

1. Are you looking to go with a ready-made/prebuilt system or is someone actually going to be building it for you? I'm admittedly a bit confused on that point.

Semi-related to this, with respect to the copy of XP that you had purchased, is the license/serial key in use on your current computer the same as the boxed copy? The reason I ask is because licensing may become an issue.

Also, with the way things are currently within Microsoft, I would not worry about XP going away anytime soon in terms of support--Windows 7 is still in the development process (the version of Countess Crazy was running was actually a beta release candidate as opposed to the finished product--it still remains rather hazy as to when we might finally see the finished form of Windows 7 released), and the company is unofficially aware that Vista has been a disaster for them in many respects to say nothing of a source of frustration for many users.

The catch comes in that in terms of combined memory (RAM and video RAM) you should not have 4GBs or more if you're running XP (or even a 32-bit version of Vista--it's not a limitation specific to XP or 32-bit forms of Vista, but a physical limitation of all 32-bit operating systems in existence). Having even 4GBs in your system under those circumstances could lead to other problems, including instability issues as well as actually a drop in performance.

2. In terms of video cards, this is one area where Sims2 versus Sims3 becomes an issue. In Sims2, there have been some problems with certain nVidia cards in terms of crashing and random reboots (it does not appear to affect all nVidia cards, however, but as EA and nVidia have ceased investigating the situation, it remains unclear even now what was causing it (ie was it driver-related, card-related, or somehow just Sims2-related)--most people with the newer cards seem to have been less likely to have been affected by it, just as there is some suspicion involving drivers in this matter and changing them versus leaving untouched what they had installed originally.

There is a workaround for the problem in the form of a cheat, but it will leave you unable to view the fish, bumpmaps, or some of the pretty effects involving water that were added with Seasons (along with the ability to find things in snow) as it involves disabling the pixelshaders in the game.

With Sims3, there do not appear to be any issues with either nVidia or AMD/ATI. However, as with last year, out of the current offerings of video cards, the nVidia cards have largely been outperforming the AMD/ATI cards in benchmarking tests, but in this situation, it's hard to properly gage how much of the video card's resources (aside from the amount of RAM on the card--for that, I wouldn't go for anything less than 256MBs-512MBs at minimum) and the impact it will have on Sims3 as it's only just been released.

In terms of video card manufacturers, I would avoid anything by PNY as their "lifetime warranty" extends as far as the product's lifetime, so whenever the next series is released, you're without a warranty basically. On a related note, avoid anything that is "overclocked" (BFG is especially known for this) as one of the things people into overclocking won't tell you is in just how badly it can damage hardware--it doesn't matter who actually does the overclocking or how well they do it, it's still going to physically damage the components and "age" them to where you will be more likely to have to replace it sooner than you may have been planning.

In terms of hard drives, in terms of size, it's really a matter of preference. It's actually the manufacturer you have to be more concerned with most of the time. One series to avoid like the plague, however, is Hitachi's infamous "Deskstar" series (also referred to by those aware of its problems or who have had them, as "deathstars")--it is nothing but trouble in the making. You also should not go above 7200RPM in terms of the hard drive speeds--any faster than that and you may find yourself having problems within a couple of years or so (as a result of the excessive heat involved as the faster it spins, the more friction on the platters and the more heat that gets generated).

[Sylphide]

Oh my! CC! I wasn't expecting such a long answer. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Jun 19, 2009 22:18:31 GMT CharlieChomper said:

1. Are you looking to go with a ready-made/prebuilt system or is someone actually going to be building it for you? I'm admittedly a bit confused on that point.

Semi-related to this, with respect to the copy of XP that you had purchased, is the license/serial key in use on your current computer the same as the boxed copy? The reason I ask is because licensing may become an issue.

Please don't worry about being confused. I am french-speaking and sometimes, my english is probably confusing to all of you!
To me, pre-built means that I would go in a shop and just buy one of the computers on display on the shelf. I would not do that.
But I will not have someone (friend) building it for me, instead I would like to go in a shop and tell them what I want, so they will build it for me.
As for my copy of Windows, I am not sure exactly what you mean, so I will say that I purchased this computer with Windows XP on it (I paid for it of course). Then I downloaded and installed the updates until SP2 made a mess.
Then I purchased XP with SP2 included, formatted my hard drive and installed the new version of XP with SP2. Do I make any sense to you?
Does that mean that I would not be able to reinstall it on a new computer???

I think I will wait a bit longer if my computer stays alive... sometimes it just closes down and restarts without me even being in the room... is there a phantom in the appartement? or when I am playing and haven't saved for a long time... . From what I read on the forum, it looks like the Sims3 is a completely different gaming experience, so I won't be tempted to drop my Sims2 for the Sims3. In these conditions, I can be contented with playing the Sims2 on this computer for a while even if I can't install all my Expacks and wait until we have more information on the Sims3 compatibilites with Windows. But I will print out your advice, just in case this one crashes unexpectedly.

Again, thank you so very much for sharing your expertise.

Margot (having her morning coffee)

[CharlieChomper]

My apologies for taking so long in getting back to you. I have been very overwhelmed lately and am lucky sometimes just to get any time in to get online for anything other than checking email of late.

Thank you for the clarification of what you're looking into doing, specifically, in terms of how it's going to be built.

With respect to XP, so long as you have two licenses (ie the one that came with your existing computer as well as that boxed copy), it legally should not pose an issue with Microsoft, just to clear that up.

One very, very crucial piece of advice I have and forgot to mention earlier is that you need to be especially careful as to the motherboard and the chipset manufacturer for it (as well as just the manufacturer for the motherboard, itself).

Avoid any chipset made by a company named Sis as though it were the plague! There's a good reason as to why they're so cheap (aside from manufacturing costs)--they are the most notoriously unreliable to say nothing of proving a headache in other areas as well (including sometimes creating problems in terms of compatibility or performance issues or just sometimes truly bizarre issues that have to be seen to sometimes be believed--the term that often gets used when describing Sis chipets is "flaky" with good reason...). You'd likely end up being forced into replacing that motherboard faster than the next expansion pack or two gets released.

Via is one of those companies that are "hit or miss" in terms of good or bad in terms of chipsets in that some can be very good and reliable and others tend to be truly awful.

In contrast, if you opt for an AMD processor (the most recent offering seems to have been received as a bit of a "mixed bag" as it were of where it's hard to say if it's a good processor or whether Intel won or lost this "round" or not--too many different opinions and not enough evidence or results to say one way or another), I would recommend looking into nVidia's motherboard chipsets which tend to be amongst the best chipsets for AMDs and among the better chipsets out there in general.

With Intel processors, two of the better choices are either Intel's own chipsets or possibly nVidia's chipsets designed to work with Intel processors.

On that note, avoid the motherboard manufacturers DFI, PCchips, ECS (which is the same manufacturer as PCchips, but just a different brand name--it's sometimes written out in full as Elitegroup Computer Systems, or sometimes sold under the label "Elitegroup") as well as Epox. In the case of the first two, again, there is a good reason they are so cheap as they either don't last very long or regardless of chipset, inevitably end up having issues of one sort or another to where they should be avoided at all cost.

In the case of Epox, I have also had some personal experience in dealing with them. They remain amongst those companies which has its fanbase amongst some techs and techies as well as some gamers--however, overwhelmingly, those same people do find out first-hand why they are to be avoided (and usually when things go horribly awry).

At the time I had purchased one of their motherboards, they were still fairly new as a company (or, at least, had only gained any sort of notice around that time) and had generated considerable amounts of good reviews amongst the independent hardware sites of the day and quite a bit of "buzz", so neither I nor anyone else I know who purchased them back then had any idea into the issues that would await us in the future. The short version of what happened was that the motherboard (if you're familiar with this term and the context) decided to do a kamikaze on me and was not content to just go a quiet death but take as much as my other hardware along with it as was possible ("fortunately" it only took out my processor, which was also thankfully still under warranty at that time). I've since read that I was far from the only one to experience such problems and can almost consider myself "lucky" in a sense that it was just that. I also know someone else who bought a motherboard by them sometime well after I had who began having another very odd issue: the motherboard was "underclocking" their processor (ie causing it to appear and run much, much slower than it was capable of or should have)--this didn't happen, however, until sometime into their owning it. It came out that the power leads (not quite sure how best to really describe their purpose, really) on the motherboard were about to go--which is something that's honestly almost unheard of really for a motherboard to have happen.

There are other issues as well with them including something of an annoyance of where they have some issues with certain power supplies (something one of their own techs/now-former techs has admitted the company appears to be aware of and even keep an internal list of), but they never bother to disclose this nor which power supplies to avoid (it should also be noted that this is in addition to the other host of issues with those motherboards) as well as a failure more often than not to honor the warranty (or a refusal to even acknowledge it at times).

Two other important things to mention are to be very careful as to which memory/RAM manufacturer you go with (it goes more into quality control issues--different manufacturers not only have different standards, but when they outsource the manufacturing to the fabrication facilities ("fabs" for short and as they are often referred to in the industry), the fabs also have different standards when it comes to quality control and assurance--some RAM manufacturers do a good job in monitoring this and can guarantee the work whereas others go along with the fab facilitiy's standards (for better or worse)--there are also certain manufacturers (Rosewill immediately comes to mind) who just purchase no-name components of varying qualities or without checking into them at all directly from the fabs themselves and then put their name on it to sell and more often than not, it often seems to lead to problems in the form of shoddy workmanship or just other issues with the components or problems caused to the user) as well as in if you opt to purchase a motherboard that uses "dual channel" be aware that there are very specific configurations that need to be adhered to, to avoid any problems (it is also not necessary to go with what's known as "kitted" memory for that--some memory manufacturers have been playing off the confusions with the more specific/finicky SLI issues (graphics/video cards) and attempting to make more money off of people by way of it).

The other thing is to not skimp on the power supply! I don't mean that in terms of wattage. What you want to look into, partly depends upon the processor you choose to go with (for an AMD system, you must make certain it is fully AMD-compatible!), but also you want to look into the voltage readings and make certain they're not only "stable", but within certain amounts (different "rails" provide power for different devices and this is one area where your video card or processor are the most likely to become not only the most vocal in complaining if there's a problem, but if the power supply can't handle the load properly or is faulty or bad in some way, it could likewise cause damage to your hardware).

It's also part of the reason why having a good, reliable motherboard can make a difference as while the power supply, supplies the actual power to the system, it's the motherboard that actually distributes the (electrical) "load" to the different hardware so a bad or faulty power supply or one that isn't capable of handling the load put upon it (or just isn't compatible with the hardware), can render the motherboard unable to properly divert the power where it needs to go which can then cause damage to the hardware.

In terms of your current system though and with respect to the random restarts and shutdowns, does it only happen in certain circumstances (ie only when playing Sims2?) or does it just happen randomly, period, even you haven't been playing?

[xmasqueen]

Mine was doing that too Margot and it was my motherboard. It finally gave up the ghost and wouldn't start at all. I have an AMD processor but not everyone likes those...I've had them for years and love it. I only have 2 gigs of RAM and everything runs ok but I would love to have 4 on my PC. My laptop has 4 and it seems to run better. I never thought I could fill up a 250 g harddrive but I am about halfway there, fortunately I have to 250 harddrives so I put Sims3 on the 2nd one which is not anywhere near full. Good luck finding a PC....and tell that geek that he doesn't know what he is talking about and then ask if he plays WOW. Almost a guarante that he does and thinks he's superior to the Sims. And no I don't think everyone who plays WOW is like that, I'm just saying I bet he does.

[Sylphide]

CharlieChomper! I had not seen your second reply. I apologize for not saying thank you earlier...

This is so much information, I can't believe you took all the time needed to write such a long post. Thank you, thank you, thank you

I am going to copy/paste everything to read it and always have it handy when I start shopping.

Thank you so much.

Margot

Oh! I forgot! about the shutting down and restarting by itself. It happens sometimes when I am playing the Sims2 but also it happened a couple of times, when the computer was opened but with no program running and I was in another room. I heard the sound. Pretty weird...

[Sylphide]

Carol, I am very afraid this is what is going to happen to me...

I have to make a backup of my hard drive. I have an external one. I should do it pretty soon or else... I will cry tears of blood!

Margot

[CharlieChomper]

A computer shutting itself down like that could actually point to one of four likely/possible culprits (it actually isn't always just a sign of a bad motherboard): overheating (which is also a good reason to always clean fans), a motherboard that's about to go (as had happened to Xmasqueen), a problem with the processor, or a power supply-related problem (including not being able to properly handle the load demanded of it).

Believe it or not, more often than not, the problem usually lies with the power supply--but again, not always (which is why it's important that everything be looked into as a problem like that could also lead to damage of other hardware).

A competent tech would look into each of those factors (overheating--after looking into the fans and how well they're functioning as well as any other cooling devices, etc.--is usually the first step in the process of troubleshooting the problem) and not just single out any one component to investigate.

Usually what happens in situations like that is that if overheating can definitely be ruled out, the next step often involves stripping the system completely to what's known as the "bare bones" (ie video card, a single stick of RAM--which a competent and reliable tech would look check out prior to inserting it into the system regardless--the processor/heatsink, motherboard, and power supply) and let it run to rule out any other hardware serving as a contributing factor as well as to look into the load-bearing issue with the power supply.

With a processor, the heatsink sealant may also be looked into for signs of dissolving or any required reapplication (two very important notes about this which apply just as importantly toward new systems as well with respect to this--any tech who makes use of what's known as a thermal pad and then applies thermal paste atop that should be avoided as it actually can increase, unnecessarily, the heat factor that is generated and potentially "age"/cause damage to the processor. It's an "either/or" situation--either a thermal pad (the ideal method as it "coats" more evenly and therefore provides a better adhesive, in addition to allowing the heat to dissipate more evenly--it is also not as easy to find, however, making thermal paste the more likely method to be used) or thermal "paste"/"compound" (there is one brand in particular that basically any good tech or engineer involved in any way with hardware would swear by, historically, but there has also been some question in the past few years if the company who makes it may have somehow changed the formula for the worse, which is why I'm reluctant to name them). Related to the subject of thermal paste, a good tech would also know not to use more than the size of a grain of rice and to spread it as evenly as possible to coat the surface of the processor (some people use the toothpick method of taking that small amount of thermal paste and attempting to spread it about--absolutely nothing metallic must be used in any way for this process, nor anything that contains cloth such as even a cotton swab)).

The other note regarding the heatsink/processor sealant--if it's an AMD processor (and this is something I have even heard from people within AMD as well over the years), under no circumstances should nail polish remover be used to remove the remnants of the sealant. It used to be said amongst some tech/techie circles it was supposedly the "best" or "most gentle" method of removing the remnants of the thermal compound/pad, but in actuality, it is actually much more harmful as it also can strip the surface off the processor (and always has been--yet, you still sadly hear this myth being passed along even now). In AMD's case, for processors that are still somehow under warranty (either directly through AMD if it's retail, or through a vendor if it's a system built by a company), it can also actually cause the warranty to be voided to attempt this (one thing most people seem to be largely unaware of with processor warranties and AMD is that they actually have looked into processors that were sent back to them to investigate them sometimes--if someone did something that would in some way void a warranty, for example, such as either what I just mentioned or something such as overclocking, they could say a definite farewell to the remainder of their warranty and it may raise some question into whether the person would be getting a replacement or not.

Instead, even though it is not that much better, it's sometimes better just to rely upon rubbing alcohol instead (although, again, it is not that much safer) to remove whatever is left of the sealant.

In terms of the AMD versus Intel debate, I'm not even going to get into it or into which one I think is "better" or "worse"--as with everything else in life, they each have their pros and cons--just as it often depends upon the "round" or generation one is speaking of in terms of technology and sometimes even cores. At present, there is quite a bit of mixed sentiment into AMD's current processors (including just the results at times) to where it's hard to comment on it one way or another.

However, there is another layer to this subject that I can't get into that involves certain aspects of one of those two companies.

[Sylphide]

Thank you so much for all this helpful information.

Margot

[CharlieChomper]

You're very welcome! Let me know how things go.