Hi Ian, > I need to buy a new PC. Aside from the usual browsing, word processing > watching streaming, the only heavy use I'm likely to give it is backgammon > rollouts. > > Assuming that cores and processor speed are still the main drivers of > performance, does anybody have any recommendations for a moderate spec > set-up? I've not kept up to date with the processor world.
any moderate fast PC will do. I would only strongly recommend against a separate GPU. The latency until the (little) data reached the GPU is so high that the CPU has already computed it. It is a bit different for a fast integrated GPU (e.g. M4 from Apple, or Ryzen AI ) but the effect is optimistically 15-20% if perfectly supported. A Ryzen 6 9600(x), 16 BG Memory and 1 TB SSD, a 350-450 Watt power supply is probably a reasonable choice. If you want to spend a little more a Ryzen 9700x is *pretty* fast and still reasonable priced. A Ryzen 9 9900X or 9950X is very fast, but unless time is very critical I wouldn’t recommend it. Depending on your noise tolerance a bigger case is more silent than a small device but that might fit behind your monitor... best Frank
