Heya,
A little something a wrote the other week elsewhere, but it's current and still applies. I focus on machines with a budget because the computer hardware scene and software scene changes so fast, it seems silly to overspend on brand new tech that isn't even widely supported or in the focus of the media you're running on it anyways. That said, you can build very strong gaming computers in the $700~$1500 ranges. Note, a computer that is only $1000 can easily do just about the same as a $4000 computer when it comes to gaming. There's a cutt off point in games where you just don't get anything more out of having more performance. So, if you have a rig that can play basically all the games you want to play at high resolution (whatever the native or highest resolution is of your display device, either LCD, CRT or even HDTV) and at the quality settings you prefer (ie, maximum textures, shadows, other fun features enabled and maxed out), then you are set and you don't need more. The concept of `future proofing' is also an endless battle to keep up with software (games). It too is not worth it because as software changes, hardware needs to follow. And it all just goes faster and faster every year. We're at the end of DX10 right now, which requires Vista. Within a year or so, we'll be looking at DX11 which means new GPU tech and hardware. It just goes this fast. So instead of overspending, lets look at things you can get for a good price that will boss around today's great games, and tomorrow's.
Source of the following content:
My previous post @ another forum
To help dispell things that may be misleading, a gaming machine really isn't all that different from a normal computer. The difference comes down to the synergy between the components. But, it does not take the absolute latest technology to run these games well. In fact, 3 year old technology still plays todays demanding games (like Crysis) with ease. It all comes down to what you're using and how it works with the other parts--and that's synergy.
Just some notes: budget refers to it being affordable. But gaming means it's not going to be entry level on every component; there will be minimums.
See, gaming machines don't need certain things, and budget systems usually lack what it takes to be a good gaming machine. Mainly, that comes down to the graphics card. Modern games run fine on any old dual core these days. But the newest titles don't run great on just any old videocard. And even more noticeable is that you can't turn on all the eye candy and use higher resolutions in these games on just any old videocard. If you have a big display or you game on an HD capable television (which you can, if you didn't know, just like a console system, at high res!), you'll want those higher resolutions, antialaising, filtering, large textures, etc. They make the new games look so much better. And that's one of the reasons most of us even use PCs for gaming, rather than a console.
Basic minimums and suggestions when it comes to a gaming machine (as of Nov, 2008):
CPU:
Any Dual Core will essentially work for a gaming machine. There is a difference in some titles when it comes to a more powerful CPU (like a Quadcore, or the new i7 and Dragon chips), but we're talking about exclusive titles (like Crysis for example) where building around one game is not wise. The performance difference in your games between a 2.6ghz dual core and a 3.3ghz dual core is insignificant unless using a very high end graphics card or SLI/Crossfire setup. The majority of games are already going to run so blazingly fast and easy with all the bells and whistles on, due to your powerful Graphics Cards, that you won't notice the difference on the CPU side of things. What to take form this is that yes, more powerful CPU's will yield more performance, but that doesn't mean you need them to play your games at higher settings. This is one of the biggest places money is lost in a gaming machine, overspending on more CPU than you actually need. It's good to get as high as you can afford, but there's a limit where you pass over the affordable stuff that performs well, and enter into the expensive stuff that doesn't perform all that much different. And something to always keep in mind is that overclocking is available and you can squeeze more out of cheaper solutions that way, simply by adding a decent but cheap cooling sollution. The best overclocking CPUs are those with unlocked modifiers, which in Intel terms usually results in the term "extreme" and in AMD terms, usually results in the term "black edition."
Minimum CPU: any Dual Core!
Suggestions: AMD5000+ (2.6ghz dual core), AMD6000+ (3.0ghz dual core). If you can get a black edition of either of these CPUs, you're in business. Very cheap and fantastic gaming performance. There's no need to spend twice the money on an Intel equivalent. The Intel equivalent will perform a little better, but not worth twice the price.
Quadcore systems can be had for cheap. There are two awesome chips for the price that can be had in a gaming machine on the cheap side of things. Quadcores at their base clock are actually not much better, and often times worse than a higher clocked dual core when it comes to games (due to games not all supporting multicores like this quite yet, but more will as time goes by). The two chips to look at are the Intel Q6600 and the AMD 9850 Black Edition. Both are highly overclockable. The Q6600 is more difficult to overclock because it has a locked CPU modifier (at 9x) which means you can only overclock it by increasing the FSB speed (which also effects your RAM timings, and thus requires all parts of the system to be tweaked or it will be unstable). The 9850 black edition has an unlocked modifier however, meaning, you can overclock it without having to change any other parts of your system or worry about timings. You can just clock it up an additional 400mhz to 600mhz on base air cooling just by setting it's clock modifier to 15x for example; so long it's properly cooled, it'll be stable and the rest of your system won't be affected by the overclock (much easier, less stability problems). Cost wise, the AMD setup actually rings in a bit cheaper now (due to motherboards costing less on AMD's side of things). Both require better motherboards for the overclocks, but it's well worth it if you want a mid-range to near high-end gaming machine but still keeping it on the cheaper side of things. The Quadcore systems will generally run you around $1,000 for a good gaming machine with the proper components simply with the more potent CPU power.
Suggested: The AMD 9850 Black Edition Phenom (125watt) and a 3rd party cooler (MaxOrb comes to mind). Here at CyberPower, it's only $130 more than a Dualcore system with the exact same components, but you get an easy to overclock Quadcore instead. Highly recommended. And this is a high end CPU.
Graphics Card:
The most critical component of your gaming machine is the graphics card. This is where we do not get the cheapest thing that `works' but rather the best performer in it's price range. This changes constantly as prices fluctuate rapidly. However, certain cards will simply always be the best performer for their cost. There's a difference between budget cards and muscle cards and the aboslute most high end cards. We want muscle cards. They're the best bang for the buck. ATI & nVidia are your choices here, and neither are `better' than the other strictly.
ATI: The minimum card you shoot look at from ATI is the HD4850. For the money, anything less is a waste. You do not need the 1gig version, get the 512mb version (which is about $130, $119 currently at NewEgg). No other single card in it's price range can beat it. If you need something less costly in your gaming machine, consider not building a gaming machine and go console. At the $200 range, the HD4870 finally is available (NewEgg). Again, go with what you can afford, so if you can actually get the HD4870, go for it. It's a great card. The HD4870x2 is the beastiest card from ATI at this moment, but it comes at a price that is not reasonable (close to $500) for the performance gain--it's overkill on the majority of games (meaning, it will not make any noticable difference compared to the HD4850 in most games), and the few that it does outperform everything in a noticable way, are not worth spending this much money on in the first place (ie, Crysis). Do not bother with any card under the HD4850 (ie, nothing below this number, ATI has an easy to follow card name progression, if the card's number is less than 4850, do not bother with it). If you do, consider this: many motherboards come with an onboard video chipset, the Radeon 3200/3300. This chipset will play WoW and other games just fine, and it comes on the motherboard already. So if you're truly looking for the cheapest sollution for simple games like that, save your money and use a motherboard chipset. But if you ever plan to play future games and current games with higher graphical demands; the HD4850 is the minimum, and a great card. Go for the HD4870 if you can swing the extra cost. Above that, and you're not on a budget anymore.
nVidia: Here, we have a larger specturm of cards because nVidia released a lot of budget cards and then slapped their flagship card from each release series. To make it simple, we'll just list the minimum muscle cards that are recommended. The 8800GT is the old muscle card and is still worth buying today. The 9800GT is the exact same card, rereleased. Literally, the same card. These cards still pump out the performance in today's demanding titles, like Crysis. That's testament as to how powerful they are, even being 2~3 years old. For example, at $89 retail for the 9800GT @ TigerDirect, this is one of the best performance cards per cost, especially if you're considering SLI as an option for high resolution gaming. Beyond this, the next step is the GTX260. For the money, the GTX260 is the best performer per cost. It recent hit the $200ish area @ NewEgg. The current flaship is the GTX280, and it is a powerful card, but you pay for it, and it's actually not significantly (read: real world noticably) faster than the GTX260 in current tites. Do not go below the 9800gt or 8800gt, ie, do not bother with the 9600, 9400, 8600 nor 8400. Do not buy those cards. So for the money, the 9800GT is your minimum buy, and the GTX260 is the recommended.
HDD:
The hard drive is way too often neglected when it comes to a gaming computer. On a casual machine, any modern drive will work perfectly. But in a gaming machine, everything is stored on the drive, accesed from the drive, and games per-load most of their content: hence their loading screens. Hard drive technology in terms of speed has not changed hardly at all over the past decade, while the other components have changed drastically over the years in speed. There are two very popular and easy options to address here though, and that's RAID0 (minimum) and Raptor. For the money, RAID0 is the best performance option. However, if you can afford the Raptor series drives (10,000rpm drives), they are faster per drive. Note that you can RAID0 with Raptors, to have the fastest consumer level drives--though it is very costly, and not recommended. A note on why RAID0 is faster and why it's cheaper. RAID0 takes a minimum of 2 drives, but has no maximum other than it's controller's maximum (and you won't be using more than 3 or 4 drives anyways, most folk just use 2 drives, and this is perfectly fine). RAID0 works by taking two or more drives and separates the data across the drives. Each drive works independently of the other, but to the system, they work as "one drive." Because the drives do separate work at the same time, the result is much faster performance. You will get noticable load time decreases in games. This is especially important in online games where timing and loading is critical.
Suggested minimum is to get RAID0 with two drives. The actual capacity (storage size) is up to you. For a gaming machine, you don't need 1tb for example. Anything in the 160gig to 500gig should be perfectly fine. If you don't want to deal with RAID, the Raptor is the next recommended minimum. A single Raptor will do. The 150gig version is perfectly good for the money. The thing to take from this part is never to get just a single 7200rpm normal drive. RAID0 or Raptor minimum.
The Rest: Everything else you choose will not have as much of an impact on performance. The rest is essentially what will tie these components together. Having a good power supply, good motherboard (one that will allow you to update components for example) and a solid amount of RAM (2 gigs is fine, but 4 gigs is better, and more is always better anwyays in memory), etc, will all be easy to keep cheap and still have a great performance computer for gaming.
Notes on SLI and CrossFire:
SLI and CrossFire are options for enthusiasts who are willing to spend twice the money on their videocards by purchasing two of them (identical) in order to get more performance from this option. This is actually not cost effective for the most part. But, depending on what kind of gaming you will be doing, is a real option and great for some application. The minimum requirements for SLI and CrossFire though assume the following:
1. Do you have a high resolution monitor or HD tv? If so, SLI and CrossFire are an option for you. High resolution suggests resolutions above 1600x1200 and more likely upwards of 1920x1080, or 1080i/p if referring to a TV. If you game at lower resolutions than this on your display device, you will not receive hardly any gain in SLI or CrossFire and thus should not waste your money on it. But, if you do game at these resolutions, SLI and CrossFire can have large impacts and let you game at these high resolutions with all the quality settings pumped up.
2. Power Supply has to support the power requirements of the cards. The HD4850 and 9800GT for example only require a single 6 pin power connection from the PSU, so a PSU with 2 x 6pin connectors will work for SLI or CrossFire on these cards. However, the moment you jump up to the HD4870, GTX260, and other cards between, you'll notice they require two 6 pin connectors each, which means two of these cards would need four total 6 pin power connectors. So pay attention to this when selecting a PSU. Just because something says it's SLI/Crossfire ready, even Quad ready, doesn't mean it will actually work on every set of cards. There are definite connection requirements that you must meet in order for it to work.
Finally, note that not all games will actually benefit from SLI and CrossFire in a dramatic way, and in fact, some will actually perform worse. This is due to coding and drivers essentially. But know that the majority of modern games benefit from SLI and CrossFire at high resolutions.
What to take home from this:
In the $700~900 range, look at the following for a good gaming machine:
CPU: AMD6000+
4gigs of DDR2 800 RAM
GPU: HD4870 or GTX260
You'll game on everything with that core system perfectly fine, with room to grow in the future when you need it (if you feel the need).
If you want to jump up into the $1200~1500 range and get more power:
CPU: AMD9850BE or Intel Q6600
4gigs of DDR2 1066 RAM
GPU: HD4870x2 or GTX295
That system will have you play any game, maxed out, with all settings maxed out, and at the highest res your display can muster. It's absolute overkill for about 90% of the games out there, even latest releases. But it will boss future games around just fine too.
Note: It's absolutely cheaper to build it yourself with a website like NewEgg than to get the same thing prebuilt for you. If a prebuilt system has the same exact stuff you can get from NewEgg for a cheaper price, it's because those parts are likely repacked used things or they `fell off a truck.' That, and NewEgg's return policies are absolute top notch; no fear buying from NewEgg.
Very best,
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