You are thinking about getting a Desktop?

If you run DxDiag you can get more information about your system. You really need to let us know what model CPU and display card you have before we can give you any help, and DxDiag will give that to you.

A laptop with four cores or hyper threading.

I bit the bullet and ordered a new PC

Windows 8.1

Intel i7-4770k 3.5GHz 8MB Cache

ASUS Z87M-Plus

8GB Kingston hyper-x  Dual DDR3

4GB Geforce GTX 770

120GB INTEL 530 SSD

1TB SATA III HDD

I don't even know what half the techie stuff means, but I hope its fast.

After seeing all the configs here, I'm afraid my 2+ year old laptop will not be enough

Win 7 Home Premium (64bits)

i7-2670QM

16GB RAM

1.5GB Geforce GTX 570M

2x500GB 7200RPM (RAID 0)

My laptop, less than 6 months old:

Windows 8.1 64 bit

Intel Core i7-4930MX

8G RAM

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M, 4G VRAM

Drives: 448GB SSD C drive + 1T SATA-III D drive

Looks more than adequate to me. I don't know why you would spend money for a new computer before trying it out.

can i have your laptop? lol. i'll take good care of it.

P8Z68 Deluxe, i7 2700k @4.7GHz, EVGA GTX570HD 314.22s, 16gb DDR3 2130, 1000W PS, Onboard sound, 32" Bravia XBR, Win7Pro64

It has done well by me for the past 15 months.

I'm not even considering buying a new one... This one has to live for at least 3 more years

My point was that I was really impressed with the configurations that people seem to have. 

@EvilMaxWar: thanks for the detailed advice!  I'll have a look around while keeping those specs in mind -- I'm in Ottawa btw. 

@sulley1: thanks for the interesting links, especially the PCPartPicker!  

Edit: +1 karma for you guys

Hey I took a peek at Ottawa CraigList and Kijiji for computer/parts, I could not find a deal that I find worth it. Seriously everything seems overpriced. At least compared to what I can typically find here in Quebec. Well, maybe people here are just more likely to ''Give away'' their stuff.

You might still find some deals on ebay though. Did not check there.

This will pretty much blow away anything that is out right now. You could play Civ 5, BF4, and I would guess GalCiv 3 on high or ultra. You also can overclock the s*** out of that processor. Is this a laptop or desktop? Desktop right? The only thing that might need an upgrade is the ram. I just added 4Gb to my PC so I have 12Gb now.

No problem!

Hey I got a new laptop. It's a HP Envy 17 notebook PC I'll tell the specs about it when I get home, along with the awesome deal I got!

DARCA

When I looked at the Intel website this chip set was described as part of the Desktop processor series, so if he got it on a laptop I would be shocked.

I have no idea how to use windows 8, and I don't know if I have to activate it, but this is what I got.

hp envy windows 8 9200 build

i7-4700 CPU @ 2.40GHz 64bit four cores. I think.

8 GB RAM

1TB hard drive

IDK the graphics card and the DirectX has to be good enough.

It also has a fingerprint reader!

DARCA

she's hot...for a silver medalist. Lol.

My charisma earned me a super deal for 577$

and the consensus I gathered was 3GHz is insane for laptops, and your crazy. Lol.

It's a desktop.

I had a choice of 16GB ram and a 2MB 760 GFX card or 8GB ram and a 4GB 770 GFX card  to max out my budget.

I chose the latter, I figured it would be easier to upgrade the ram latter.

I'm not really into overclocking, does it make all that much difference?

 She's not going to be ready in time for the Alpha

I really don't think so. Many people talk about overclocking their CPUs, but when I watch the monitor for mine, I see the clock speed changing constantly. I don't know what causes this, but the temperature is not the reason, as it is staying below 30 Deg. C.

Intel cpus use a technology that allow the processor speed to dynamically adapt to the workload, that is likely why you see it move around. This is designed as a power saving feature.

Overclocking Can and will provide a significant performance boost none the less. It will raise the max speed.  It does depend on the processor used though, some are bad overclockers, some are good.  I had a 30% speed boost on my last machine due to overclocking.

Another point about overclocking, I have learned that at least some CPU manufacturers (one in particular, Intel) have also put into their circuitry protection against overheating. It reduces clock speed if a certain temperature is reached, usually about 80% of TjMax.

Emm, my laptop is nearly five years old, Intel T4300, 3GB ram, Windows 7.1 64 bit, Directx 11. I will try the alpha on it but even my wife is pushing me to buy a new one.

Ah yes. The Pentium dual core. And at the time, quite fast at 800 Mhz. Certainly it is a bit late to get a new one before the Alpha ships, but since your wife wants a new one anyway, ....

But I think you are going to have a real bottleneck with page swapping with GC3, since you only have 3GB ram.