Will a 8600gt do for me...........

I am not not what you call a hardcore pc gamer(most of gaming on 360) i play footie manager most of the time and the odd shooter older ones,cs,half life 2.My question is i am not to fussed about jaw dropping eye candy on my games.so will this do me for most games on medium settings say,also i am getting a CD2 2.2 chip with it with 2 gig ram.Thanks fo your help peeps.......................

 

even a 8400M GS with a 1.6 C2D can play the games you listed on high or maximum settings just fine.

 

8600GT sounds like your perfect card.

 

Since eye candy isn't that important to you, 8600gt is way too powerful and expensive. It can actually play most games with maximum graphics settings. You should realize that you can save lot's of money by buying a machine with a lesser card, like GeForce 7600, 7700 or ATI X1600 or X1700. They can play most games with medium settings. Also, though I don't know what tasks you planning to use your machine for, but if you meant getting C2D 2.2 GHz, you are not getting much out of it if gaming is your computer's most CPU intensive task. So the C2D 1.8 GHz is a lot cheaper and in regular use or gaming it's pretty much as fast as the higher clocked core duos. For example very frequent video editing/decoding might be a reason to get faster processor, but still there's no totally outstanding differences.

 

Likely the 8600GT is above and beyond what you actually need.

The 8700 (essentially a factory overclocked 8600 GDDR3) plays even Oblivion at 1440x900 with almost everything turned all the way up with stock hardware settings and drivers.

The 8400 series would likely be a cheaper alternative for the gaming you are describing, but the 8600 certainly wouldn't hurt you. (except perhaps your wallet)