Advice please

[cluelessgrandma]

Hi - I'm new here and not sure if this is the right forum or even the right site to get help. We are looing for a new pc for our Grandson when he is visiting. Our current one is 10 years old and cannot cope with the newer games he likes to play - mainly strategy. He can play all the total war games except the Empire one which it wasn't up to and is currently play Evil Genius but this is crashing constantly. I'm afraid I don't know what other games he would want to play.

We have a quote from PC World for a tower only with the following key features at a price of £520. Could you please advise whether this is a good deal and whether it would play the newer games. I don't want to spend all this money on something that will be inadequate in a few months.

Acer Aspire M3802
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 processor (2.5GHz, 4 MN Cache)
Genuine Windows(R) 7 Home Premium
6GB DDR2 memory
640GB hard drive
512MB AT1 Radeon HD4350 graphics
Ble-Ray player and DVD Rewriter
Built in wireless (802.11b/g/n)

There is a lot more information on the printout they gave us so if you need to know anything else please ask and I can probably tell you - I just don't know what any of it means!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Ian]

Hi, sorry for the slow reply - this post ended up in a moderation queue for spam by accident and I've only just seen it.

That PC isn't the best for game playing, as although it has a huge amount of RAM and a good size hard drive, the graphics card is really lacking in power compared to the rest of the machine.

Do you need something from a high-street store or would ordering one online be an option? We can take a look for something that suits if you let us know the budget you have in mind

 

[floppybootstomp]

I'd agree with Ian, if the machine is aimed at gaming then the graphics card lets it down badly.

To stay close to that budget and have a machine that can cope with games, ask PC World for a quote for the same machine with either a 250 or 260 series Nvidia graphics card.

Generally speaking I'd steer clear of PC World as they are a bit rubbish and provide poor backup.

Same goes for Dixons, Currys, The Link and Comet.

Folk here usually recommend Novatech to buy ready made machines from as they offer good service and decent value.

There are others, if you're interested post here again and we'll help.