In the market for a new computer

[lillarryj86]

So I am looking into a new computer. I mainly do gaming; with some browsing, watching videos, and listening to music(usually one at a time). I had wanted to upgrade my RAM but as it turns out my motherboard is maxed out. I feel that it would be a lot easier for me to buy a new computer instead of trying to upgrade my motherboard as well. My budget is around $700-$800. I have found this setup
HP Pavilion p7-1241

Processor	2nd Gen AMD Quad-Core A10-5700 Accelerated Processor
Operating System	Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Memory (RAM)	10GB PC3-10600 DDR3
Hard Drive	2TB (7200RPM) SATA
Wireless	Integrated Bluetooth® and Wireless LAN 802.11b/g/n featuring Single-band (2.4GHz) 2x2 MIMO technology
Optical Drive	SuperMulti DVD Burner
Video Graphics	AMD Radeon™ HD 7660D Discrete Graphics. Up to 4059MB Total Available Graphics Memory as allocated by Windows® 7

My main concern is for gaming, as such, would this be a good rig? Do you have any other suggestions? I have a GeForce 8400 GS 1GB DDR3 that i can put in if need be.

[David (PassMark)]

This isn't a very high end machine. Rather middle of the road.
I would have thought you could do slightly better for $800, but hard to know as you didn't list what monitor is included (if any).

[lillarryj86]

No monitor, planned on using my current one. This particular machine was only $500, I was mainly looking at RAM and hard drive on it as I don't know much about processors. I mainly play WoW and a few other MMOs, nothing super high end. My current machine is about 5 years old so it's getting a bit slow. I guess my biggest question would have to be what should I look for as far as processors and graphics cards performance-wise?

[lillarryj86]

Here are the recommended Specs for WoW, FYI. Obviously the RAM is more than enough but as I said I don't know much about processors and video cards.

Recommended System Specifications

PC
Operating System
Windows 7 64-bit with latest service pack

Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz,
AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.6GHz or better

Video
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT,
ATI Radeon HD 4830 (512 MB) or better

Memory
4 GB RAM

[David (PassMark)]

WoW is an old game now. Pretty much any machine will meet the min specifications.

I would spend a bit more than $500 and get a SSD (solid state drive) as your boot drive.

10GB is plenty for the use you have described. You might find going to 16GB is only $30 more however.

The A10 is a reasonable value for money CPU. There are lots of others that offer better performance however (often at more cost however). Some of the current common ones are,
Intel Core i7-3770
Intel Core i7-3820
Intel Core i7-2600
Intel Core i5-3570K
Intel Core i5-2500K


Same for video cards, there are lots of others that offer better performance.

[lillarryj86]

Ok. I will check those things out. Thanks a bunch for the info!