how good is this setup?

im thinking of getting an Asus S96S with the following specs:

T7700 2.4GHz
8600 GS card
160GB 7200 rpm HD
4 gb of ram.

$1285
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i was also looking at the C90s i had customized it with all same specs as above, expect for the 8600 GT card and only 3 gb of ram. the price jumped to $1625. why is the C90 so much more expensive? the ram is less, and the only difference is the card, and the difference in that isn't even that great is it? seems like the computers would be about the same right? is the $340 jump worth it for heavy gaming?

 

For heavy gaming, the GT is the better choice, 4GB ram wouldn't do you much good yet. Unless you intend to have 64 bit vista. But 340$ is a lot of money. What games did you see you will be playing?

 

mainly WoW and oblivion. could it handle crysis?

i know the GT can handle crysis on med settings, but i heard someone on this forum say that the GT is 33% better than the GS. if that's true, then it seems like crysis at all would be kind of iffy.

 

8600GS will run WoW smoothly, without any problems. But Oblivion and especially Crysis? NO
To run oblivion you'll need to turn off all eye candy, AA & AF and run at a low resolution.
I think crysis on the GS would be too laggy, but not quite sure :S

If you can, change your configuration. You don't need 4GB for Vista, swap that for a GT card!

 

I could run WoW at max settings with 30+ FPS on an 8400M GS.

You're not going to be able to run a game like Crysis on either cards, but a 8600 GT will improve performance significnatly over a GS.

If you're buying this for gaming, get a 17+ inch that was designed for it.

 

Wrong, I can run oblivion @ 1280x800 on medium overall settings, with HDR off and no AA/AF on my system, and thats a 7400. Hes getting an 8600GS or the GT. You should have no problem getting high settings out of Oblivion with that rig, especially with that processor and that RAM (Oblivion is a RAM hog)

As for Crysis, I would expect medium settings from that system. The GT would only make things better though, so its up to you. As for WoW, I top it out on my system, again at 1280x800, so you will have 0 problems running it.

 

And how many frames do you get?

The only game worth playing at less than 60 FPS is probably RTS. Everything else would look like crap.

 

Thats an opinion statement. Honestly, for most people, the human eye cant really notice much past 30FPS, thats fact. And It was running outdoors at high 20's (fine for me) and inside I was around 30-40, depending.

Your system will be able to run Oblivion great.

 

Yes, if you had a MINIMUM of 30 frames, then the game would run ok. However, if you're getting 30 frames on average, certain parts of the game will drop FPS significantly, even if it's for just a fraction of a second, creating very noticible lag.

Try looking around really quickly outdoors.