Recommend me parts for a new computer

I finally got the green light to get a custom built desktop computer. I dont know much about computers, but i want a gaming machine capable of handling big games like the half-life 2 series, gears of war and hopefully gta4.

So, my budget is around 2k, i say around because i'm going to get a discount. :iceslolan (what are friends for?) I'm looking for 2gb of ram, and a processor of at least 2.66ghz. Any less, and i'll be downgrading. Numbers dont really concern me, but half life 2 lags at times on my laptop which is running-

-intel core 2 duo processor T7200 (2.0ghz, 667mhz FSB, 4mb L2 cache)
-Up to 384mb nvdia geforce go 7600
-1gb ddr2
-120gb hdd

so i'd imagine something like gta4 running like a slideshow presentation on those specs.

Also, I'm not really concerned about a cool monitor or a case that doubles as an aquarium, or a big hard drive since a already have an external hard drive. Unless im mistaken and hard drive capacity does affect performance. But i am concerned about keeping things cool, since i dont switch computers off very often. Feel free to blurt out anything that comes to your mind, your dream computer, or your current computer, or somthing. Have fun too.

my dream computer costs about £9000 which equates to about $15-16000 but's a full on professional workstation running xeons.
the graphics card alone is more than your budget.... and way beyond mine.

anyway.
I can give you my spec for my pc which is is brand new and fresh out of the box.

550W PSU
asus sli 650i motherboard
E6600 dual core
2GB@900MHz
640MB geforce 8800gts
320 sata (16MB Buffer)
Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme

add a 19" sony lcd tft and a set of 5.1s and you're looking at a shade over £1100 and so far, its been able to handle everything I chuck at it.
It opens 3DStudio is about 20 secs and happily runs that and Autocad (or Vectorworks for that matter) at the same time.
the graphics card also has two outputs so it's multiple display fun.

considering you can spend more than I did, you can even go for the full on Geforce 768MB 8800GTX for all your gaming needs.

I currently now have:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200 (2.2GHz)
ASUS M2NPV-VM
1 Gig (2 x 512) Corsair XMS2 Series DDR2 RAM
ASUS X1550 PCI-E 256 Mg Video card
250 Gig SATA HDD

It runs good, no glitching, Ive seen frame rates in halo at an average of 130 fps, but have seen round 200 spikes every once in a while. Racing games like NFS series run good, havent ran GTA on it tho, only had it a few weeks.

:crying: If I only had 2k to use, you a lucky dude!!!!!!!! Look at Acer's and Alienware's systems to glean their spec.'s for their gaming machines.

Actually, U have a very nice laptop, but then they just don't game as well as a desktop. I hear the 2g RAM, the more the better, no doubt. Sounds like 250 g is puhlenty hd.

The graphic card, since you seem a serious gamer, well, hoo boy!!!

The 7900 should run close to 113 fps for Half-Life 2, close compare to Halo. Perhaps get 7900 GT Superclocked? An Asus en7950 runs about the same, but is about $200 more than the $200 GT, although it runs 1g RAM over the other's 256. {It's basically a Ram'ed GeForce 7950}.

Lot's of choices in Game video cards, the above are two I like.

ok.

thread hijack and total newbie question.

how do you go about checking the frame rate in games?
when I was shopping around for parts, I always see Farcry being used as a test subject. Well, as luck would have it, I got given a copy of this way before I got my PC and it's installed and I've had a brief mess around in it. I've had it up on "very high" and it all seems happy but it would be nice to get an idea of what's going on.

is there some sort of card performance monitor that i am failing to see?
it'd be nice to know generally how much work is being done by the processor and how much work is being done by the gpu when i've got certain modelling programs running.

3DMark is better for benchmarking.

ok.

thread hijack and total newbie question.

how do you go about checking the frame rate in games?
when I was shopping around for parts, I always see Farcry being used as a test subject. Well, as luck would have it, I got given a copy of this way before I got my PC and it's installed and I've had a brief mess around in it. I've had it up on "very high" and it all seems happy but it would be nice to get an idea of what's going on.

is there some sort of card performance monitor that i am failing to see?
it'd be nice to know generally how much work is being done by the processor and how much work is being done by the gpu when i've got certain modelling programs running.i only know in halo how to check frame rates while in the menu. You have to run halo in console mode, to do this, you must right clickyour halo icon, and go to properties, your target box should say: ["C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Halo\halo.exe" -console] (you will need the quotation marks and no brackets). Then, while in the menu, type: ` (top left button above tab) and you should get a deal up on the bottom of the screen. Type in: "rasterizer_fps true" (no quotation marks). Otherwise Im sure therea are programs.

Go with an Athlon 64 X2 with the AM2 socket. Pick your speed, but I would suggest the 4200+ or the 4600+ right now. They are CHEAP compared to the Core 2 Duo's. Processor speed is not everything. That Athlon X2 running at 2.2 will run circles around a P4 2.66.

Get a decent motherboard. Performance will be similar no matter what you get, just choose the features you want and number of slots.

Hit up 2 GB of RAM atleast, with your budget might as well go for 3.

Hard drive sizes are up to you, but I suggest you get 2 of them whatever you get. Make sure they are SATA II 3.0 GB/second and set them up as one for media files/games and the other for file system and programs. Your preference though.

Spend a chunk of your money on a 8800 GTX. You want a gaming machine...you want this card.

All this and your still under a grand if you play your cards right. Then get a nice LCD monitor, case, power supply, optical drives, etc. and your good to go.

Id recomend the Athlon 64 X2 series too, I just got one and it runs better than the Pentium 4's and Celron's at my school. If you want more speed you could overclock, but I wouldn't recomend it unless you are absaloutly sure what you are doing, you can fry a cpu quickly, I have done that a few times. Like eclipse said, don't worry so much about cpu speed, AMD is better know for there procesing power over speed, they can do more with less speed than a P4 could do.

last post in thread hijcak.

just did a little test in far cry, looks like it can do 120+ fps with everything on very high.
now i got to test it rendering that old Max model animation i did in my 3rd year....

I hope you're not running those games off of that external, if so, that would be why you're having some lag...if you think about it, you have to pull one string of data from the external HD to the USB hub, and then from the USB to the processor, rather than the data coming straight from IDE or SATA to the processor...

Nope, not doing that. Even my abstract understanding of computers tells me that doing that is going to slow something down. I just use it to store music and pictures and other things that i dont want disappearing if my computer dies.

Thanks for all the help guys.