Slashdot Mirror
Gaming PC Makers Take Aim at Lucrative Niche
Cymage writes "Yahoo (Reuters) reports that gaming PCs are now a high profit area, and that the bigger players (Dell, HP) are trying to get into the market: 'In an age when a new PC can cost just a few hundred dollars, an adolescent need for speed is creating a profitable niche for souped-up gaming computers at the ultra-costly end of the market.' How many people really spend $5,000 on a gaming machine? Mine cost less than $2,000, and I can play UT2k4 and others on it just fine."
Yep, thats why I bought my PS2 when my old DVD player broke. I was sick of trying to get games to work under MS Windows, plus my daughter could now play while I got work done on my PC. And considering I have only had something like 3 crashes with the PS2 in the year and a half I have owned it, I am a pretty happy camper. Plus now they are selling the PS2 with a network adapter.......
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Well...honestly the only people I can see doing this are people who aspire to be pro gamers, or people who have TOO much cash on their hands.
The new Alienware ALX systems look really, really nice. Factory overclocked, factory water cooled, and they got some new graphic array where they're having one video card render the top half of the screen abd the other render the bottom, or quadrants or what have you.
They looked great at E3...however...Paying upwards of $4,000 for a machine that's going to be outdated in 2 years ain't my style. I can see people going for it though...max convenience, and max power.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
Yeah, it doesn't really take that much. The computer I have is five years old, and although I've upgraded it over the years... just the thought of a five-year old PC running UT2004 a lot better than most stock store PCs makes me laugh.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
ithout a modchip or a buffer-overflow exploit, the consoles cannot run games from studios that aren't yet big enough to attract a Major Licensed Publisher's attention.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I know many of the wippersnappers here are too young to remember it, but Nintendo began this trend after their original NES system was spammed with tons of crap games. Just about every "game company" was building a boring rip-off game of some sort (anyone remember Karate Kid?) and selling it for $$$.
Nintendo knew that poor quality of titles was what killed the Atari 2600 (E.T. anyone?). Thus they implemented a "Nintendo Seal of Quality" for their NES system. This worked well as a stop-gap measure. Then when Nintendo released the Super-NES, they used a combination of legal and technical tactics to make sure that only games that passed strict Nintendo quality standards were released to the public. This was mostly successful, so Nintendo tightened up again for the N64.
The end result of all this is that there were very few "bad" games released for the Super-NES and N64. Sure, Nintendo pushed a family friendly, "cartoony" style, but the games really were fun. Many other console manufacturers decided that this was a worthwhile strategy and have followed Nintendo's lead with various degrees of success.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Lets see PC computer game problems:
-New games that need patches to run
-Games that copy protection doesn't work with some CD drives
-Games where the copy proection crashes the comp
-Games that don't work with your current Video drivers (need to roll back)
-Games that won't work with your Video card.
-Direct X
Need I go on.. I can think of example for all of these... MechCommander2 was the worst...
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
First, decide what parts to use by looking at Tom's hardware or some other site you trust that builds extreme machines for testing the latest components. This is where you get your template.
Then go to Pricewatch and maybe froogle to find the lowest prices on the components while double checking the vendors reputation on Reseller Ratings.
Finally, have a friend who has a little experience come over and put that beauty together.
I spec'ed out a top of the line Alienware machine against building my own with the same or better components and cut the price by more than half.
Pfff. I can do that with a 2-year-old Radeon 9700 PRO on an Athlon 2200. UT2k4 isn't all that taxing.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Because you have a small penis?
>> -Plainly put, if Max Payne hadn't been made, the Wachowski Brothers, (er, the Wachowski Brother and Sister) wouldn't have made the Matrix at all. ... Except Max Payne was released AFTER the Matrix.
I build PCs, and for $600, I've build some pretty nice machines that are perfectly capable of playing even the latest games - maybe not with everything on, but with a decent feature set at 1024x768. For $600, I have to try to keep the CPU to about $70, HardDisk to $60, Memory to $100, Windows to $100, Video to $150, mobo to $50 (sound and ethernet onboard), and floppy, mouse, keyboard, and case to the other $70. I usually have some give-and-take by scouring pricewatch and Ebay, or saving $20 by using slower memory (one of the lower impacts to games). The sweet-spot is probably closer to $850-$1000 on a new machine, though (spending more on processor, video and hard-disk; for $1000, get a better mobo and case/PSU). After that, you're splurging on stuff you can buy for significantly less in just a few months. Not splurging, however, puts you in the eternal upgrade spiral, which I've been in for about 2 years ;)
In general I agree however there is one minor point I want to make.
Often the FPS they mention in reviews such as on tomshardware, etc are during flyovers on certain maps where nothing is happening. So say for instance your card gets 60FPS and you don't see the point in getting 100FPS with a better card.
In general that makes sense, however when you get 10-15 people on your screen all using weapons with trails and smoke, etc. FPS drops FAST. With your 60FPS, you might drop to 20FPS in a major firefight, and 20FPS is definately noticable. However the better card would drop to say 60FPS, which is still entirely playable.
In other words it is good to have a performance buffer so that you know that your worst case scenario is going to be still playable. I shoot for about 30+FPS as worst case. So I figure I need about 70+ average to get that in most games.
In general though I agree with you. If I was building a machine to play strictly one type of game, which wasn't too taxing I definately would not shoot for 200FPS.