Aastii
VIP Member
You would be surprised. Depending what your idea of "pricey" is that is. You can build a system on par with most of the systems on here for ~$500-600. You have to remember too, a lot of us upgrade rather than do scratch builds, so once you have forked out the initial cost, you can then do upgrades for cheaper to keep it up to date. Spending a couple hundred $ per year ($4-5 per month maybe saving) you can keep your system at "awesome" worthy compared to your average user's system.
For if it is worth it, it depends entirely on your need. The system in my sig is used entirely for gaming, forums and website building, with a bit of programming on the side. I have a netbook, and I have a backup system that, compared to the one in my sig, is a pile of crap, but for browsing the net, speaking to people over VOIP, a bit of light gaming (even with integrated graphics) it is great.
If all you do is browse the net, you will get the same performance out of a $400 system as you will out of a $5000 system, even though the latter has much more power, all because you aren't unleashing said power.
In conclusion, for my needs, the system in my sig is good enough, not perfect by any means, I want a new graphics card and shortly, after some saving, plan on swapping out to a Sandy Bridge system, meaning new mobo + CPU as well, then it will again be up to scratch and able to do anything and everything at the absolute best speed. If I did as I was now and just on the internet, it would most certainly not be worth it
Could not agree more, I haven't had a single problem with Avast, and it appears to be the lightest I have used. I tried Avira, and I don't know if I was an exception and managed to find a bug, but I had it installed on my netbook and it would, maybe once or twice a week, pin my CPU to 100% because of Aviraguard (I think it was called). Even if I disabled it, I still had it at those loads because of the exact same process, so that didn't last long
A little more on topic, for which is better:
Is your PSU from a reputable brand, such as Antec, Corsair, XFX, Be Quiet!, Silverstone, Seasonic or Enermax, and does it have enough power for a dedicated graphics card?
If no, spend your money on a better power supply first, if yes:
Does your motherboard have the appropriate expansion slot, for instance, if you want to get a PCIe card, you must have a free PCIe lane?
If no, get a new mobo first (only if it means going to a board with a PCIe lane). If yes:
Look at your budget, look at what cards are available with in your budget, and then look for benchmarks for the cards, and get whichever gives the best performance with in your budget. The difference between each, there isn't any, it just depends on what you can get for your money
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