Building a computer. What parts should I get for this?

[Taiwan Legion]

I'm building a new computer soon. Obviously, it's not going to be only used for this, but I'd like to be able to play this without any problems at all.

So what kind of parts should I be looking at?

My budget is 700-800, but that's for only the tower. I don't need things like monitor, printer, mouse, speaker etc cuz I already have those.

Thanks for the help.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

That's such a complex question that no credible answer can be given except in general terms.

I'd recommend for thhat kind of cash to principly focus on the core now. So get a decent motherboard, a high end CPU, harddisk and powersupply. Don't spend much cash on RAM or graphics card as they are easy to add /replace later. Get the basis as good as you can instead.
So for example make do with 2 gig RAM for now, add more later.

Two real recomendations I would make though, though it does depend on gaming habits weither they apply to you:
A high end dual core might be wiser then an average quad core. Quite a lot of games make little or poor use of multiple cores so in games where only one core gets used you are better of having that one core have serious 'oomph'.

Avoid ATI based video cards. They are performing only marginally better then nVidia, typically. But they get that by using some rendering shortcuts (read, a marginally lower quality) But worse, their drivers tend to suck balls and may cause you headaches with issues. True, ever since 8800 series nvidia ain't that great either, though they are getting better again and still not quite as bad as ATI drivers on their worst days.

[pevergreen]

What currency is that 700-800.

Always good to make that clear.

Move to Hardware/Software?

What can you carry over from old system? RAM? Hard Drive?

[Taiwan Legion]

sorry, forgot to mention. 7-800 USD. I don't think I'm gonna carry any old parts over from the old system other than peripherals like mouse/keyboard, monitor, speakers etc. All of my parts are super old (4.5 years old), and it's just not worth parting it when I could have another computer that I could give to my parents since the most intense thing they do is watch 720p movies that I download for them (which my old comp does very well).

I realize it's a pretty general question, but I'm looking for general answers. I know that this game is famous for its problems with hardware, and I just want to know what kind of parts I should avoid. For example, that game Saboteur won't even work on ATI cards. I just want to know what to avoid, what to get etc to maximize my performance on this game.

[antisocialmunky]

Que?

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=3563

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=3610

[Lemur]

This looks tailor-made for you: How to Build an Awesome Gaming PC for $647

Note that $105 of that is for Windows—if you have student access you can cut that down to $65 in the USA, even less elsewhere. And if you already have a legitimate copy of Windows, you can cut that to $0, bringing the cost of the build to $542. (I'd use the savings to move up to a slightly beefier videocard.)

-edit-

I don't understand the ATI hate in this thread. Yes, there are problems with ATI cards, and we all have to wait for a patch/fix. Are you suggesting that this simply does not ever happen with Nvidia cards? Bugs and patches are a feature of modern PC gaming. Driver problems are not unique to any company, and if anything, Nvidia has a richer and more epic history of such problems. If you can't stand that, best to consider moving over to a console.