Alright. I am thinking of buying a new PC for gaming and also some work and I was wondering if anyone with experience in buying them could help me out.
Does anyone know what would be required of the PC to run a game like Star Wars The Old Republic?
Anyone know of any decent websites with guides to these sort of things on?
You really won't need much to run SWTOR, you could build a PC for around £300 -£500 that would easily, easily handle it. But SWTOR isn't a particularly demanding game. If you want a benchmark for a decent PC that will run anything you throw at it, decide what monitor size you want first, then find a card that will run something like Crysis to at 60+ FPS with all the bells and whistles consistently at that particular resolution.
My personal advice for budget quality gaming would be to get yourself a 1680x1050 monitor - 20" widescreen is the max I think - then find a card that will run all games at that resolution very nicely. It's really the monitor that ends up costing you - once because bigger ones get so much more expensive, twice because the GFX card you need ends up being so much more expensive. For example my GFX card would be about £100-£150 now, can still handle games easily at 1900 x 1200 (but not newer ones with all the bells and whistles) but at 1680x1050 resolution it would easily, easily handle everything with all the bells and whistles and with a bit of room to spare.
Processor, Monitor, GFX card -- those are your big expenses. Decide what you need for those and build everything else around them. Final point - don't skimp on RAM. It's relatively cheap but makes a massive difference to a hell of a lot of things, or rather if you don't have quite enough your computer will run very slowly and crappily regardless of how much you've spent on processor and GFX. 4GB RAM is the minimum I'd get these days, but you might as well get 6 or even 8 because it really won't cost you that much more.
