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."
Well mine cost $1000 and will play UK2k4 just fine... so there! :p
"With price tags from US$2,000 to $5,000, the market is luring heavyweights..."
:)
I can't see myself paying that much for a gaming machine. I can buy a PS2/XBOX/GAMECUBE for less than 200 dollars. I could even buy all three and a decent amount of games for each system for less than 2,000. I know, they can only play games but isn't that the point of a gaming pc? I wouldn't want to put my gaming pc on the internet, because then I would have to worry about viruses, which means I have to install a firewall, virus scanner etc which would just slow down my game play. A gaming system works like it should. I don't have to make sure I have the newest video card, all games will work. It plays games with no blue screens, drivers to intall, or patches. Not to mention its easy to stick in my car and play where ever I can find a tv.
I just want my phantom console.
Great, but why did it take them so long to figure out that people don't need new 3GHz Dells just to run word processors and internet explorer (at least until MS Longhorn comes out...)?
Left 4 Dead Gaming Group - http://www.l4dgg.com
It's simple. The people that buy pre-tweaked gaming PCs are people that want to play games but don't want to build the machines themselves. Those people DO exist, you know.
How many people really spend $5,000 on a gaming machine?
It takes a lot of horsepower to run TuxRacer at full speed...
I bought my Athlon XP 2200+ and ECS motherboard for $70 from fry's, 1 gig of ram for $200 after rebates, and a Radeon 9800 non-pro for $150. Overclocked the cpu to 3200+ speed and flashed the 9800 to a pro. A new large hard drive will cost you about $100, a decent case + power supply $50, and all the "other stuff" maybe $100 total.
That's under $800 for a top-of-the-line system, when I got it.
People who spend $400 on a 512 meg ram module because it does 2-2-2 timing are just dumb, and have money to burn.
~Berj
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
About a year ago, I built my own system that was quite comperable for one of the high end Alienware computers of the time, and my cost was about 2000$ less than what Alienware was charging at the time, I don't see why one would pay 5000 for a system they can get for significantly less if they find someone who can put togeather parts for them.
I encrypt all my files with Double XOR Encryption!
Of course, most premade systems are still "lacking" for serious gaming, and not everyone can "roll their own" computer.
Murphy was an optimist.
Perfect timing for that "Hardware will be free" rhetoric of Bill and Scott to take form.
:)
I almost started a business doing this once. Then I saw Falcon Northwest and Alienware and realized that there wasn't room in the market for another one.
I figured that as PCs became commoditized and as commonplace as your average toaster that the elitists of the world would want some way to stratify PC ownership. Same reason that there are Kias, and there are Porsches. The small-penis crowd needs to validate itself through what it owns.
Like in any industry, there will be the ultra-highend enthusiast niche. Alienware, VoodooPC, Falcon NW, and others have been catering to these kind of users for years. Any commentary about pricing is pointless: these people pay big bucks to get bragging rights to the fastest, most tricked out, and beautiful (damn, that alienware case is gorgeous) machines money can buy.
It's the same in many industries, especially the automotive industry. Any commentary about how "it's different with cars, they aren't obselete in 3 years" is pointless: the automotive industry's pace of improvement and innovation is much, much slower than the PC industry's.
And just like with cars, we have nerds who buy honda civics and rice them up with neon lights, big, loud heatsink fans, awesome paintjobs, spoilers, etc etc. (case modders if you're dense).
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
A lot of people have Windows on their PC... :P
Murphy was an optimist.
It's pretty crazy that people spend huge amounts of money like that for a gaming PC. I just built a really damn nice one with an Athlon 64 3200+, GeForce FX5900, 8x dual-format DVD-burner, 1GB of RAM, and 160GB and 120GB hard drives for less than $1000. Even with a brand new ATI X800 XT instead of the 5900, it would be less than $1500 and be able to handle any game out now, next year, the year after, etc.
If they can't put it together themselves, they could hire the local nerd or small computer shop to do it for them. Even if it costs them $250 for the guy to put it together, they still come out WAAAAAAAY ahead.
I really think that people who buy $5000 gaming desktops have too much money and not enough sense.
Console drawback #1: Closed bootloader. Without 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. Imagine a CD player that can't play CDs from outside the RIAA. Modchips violate the DMCA and foreign counterparts, and non-hackers would find it even harder to set up a buffer-overflow exploit (as seen in Phantasy Star Online for GameCube and MechAssault for Xbox) than to set up a dedicated gaming PC.
Console drawback #2: No widespread support for keyboard and mouse. Many players prefer to use a keyboard and mouse for some game genres such as shooters and battlefield simulations, but console games tend not to try to read them, even if you have a keyboard and mouse hooked up through the PS2 or Xbox console's USB port.
I admit, I've bought two Alienware computers in recent years. They're stylish and after years of building and tweaking, I just wanted something cool out of the box.
But I got a link to their new ALX line in my mailbox yesterday and about fainted when I got to the bottom line.
Price: $4,799.00
As low as $144 per month!
For that price it should not only run games well, it should go ahead and finish Half Life 2, Duke Nukem Forever, Doom III and go ahead and port over Halo 2 all while I sleep.
PCs are better than video game consoles for certain types of games, mainly strategy and RPG games.
Until video game consoles come up with good replacements for the keyboard and mouse, that fact will remain.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Admittedly, comparing computers to cars is usually pretty weak. However...
There is a good comparison here. A (new) US$15000 will drive on any road the same as just about any other car.
There are people who just want a car.
There are people who will, as another poster commented, buy Honda Civics and modify them to the point where you can no longer recognize them.
There are also plenty of people who will buy very expensive sports cars that have already been modified. Not every driver who wants to go fast is a mechanic.
Not every teenager who wants a fast gaming machine is a geek either.
What's that smell? Ah, that's my karma burning...
Seriously? I can see $2k or even $3k when you deck everything out.... but all the $5k gaming machines I've seen are either gaming laptops, or have $2k worth of multiple monitors hooked up.
And that brings up the one big difference of computers vs. consoles, if you shell out this kind of cash for a computer, you'll likely be able to re-use several parts of it when it goes by the wayside.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
About 5 years ago, I built a 233 Mhz Pentium II machine for about $500. Each year, I put $100 - $200 into hardware upgrades and I have a machine that will very comfortably play today's games (ex. Tron 2.0, Vice City, UT2K4) and I still haven't spent more than $1500. On top of that, I was able to Frankenstein some parts from the old computer and buy a $30 case/power supply and I now have a spare computer that can read e-mail, surf the net, and play games along the age of RA2, Quake 3, and UT.
My new 10MB hard drive sure beats the hell out of my Tape Drive, and the 64K ram upgrade should be all I ever need, especially since my 8088 comes in at a whopping 4.77 MHz - kick ass! I get 2 FPS on Ultima I, and I just found the EXOTIC ARMOR. Not to mention Zork is as smooth as silk.
Instead of spending 5K over 5 years, spend a steady 1K per year in upgrades. You will be worse off after 1 year, less so after 2 years, and break-even after 3 years. Years 4 and 5 you will be ahead of the game.
And the "badness" of being behind is much greater than the "goodness" of being ahead. Running a current game at 500 FPS does not buy you much when a monitor runs at 75-85 Hz. But in 5 years, your favorite game may be 10 FPS, which would suck big time!
Besides, explaining a 1K purchase to the wife is a LOT easier than explaining a 5K one.
Just my humble opinion. It is worth every penny of what you paid for it.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
HP, on the otherhand, I wouldn't even think about. $diety bless them for continuing with the Compaq Proliant server line, and they make a good printer, but I have never been impressed with an HP desktop machine (or Compaq for that matter). In my mind they can't be viable choice for a super-high performance rig if they can't get a corporate-email-word-processing workstation right.
You results may vary.
Intel Pentium 4/ 2.8C GHz 800MHz FSB, 512K Cache $180
ATI RADEON 9800PRO Video Card, 128MB DDR $222
1Gb RAM Corsair TwinX1024-4400 $435
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum $165
Maxtor 250GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive $207
ASUS "P4C800-E DELUXE" i875P Chipset Motherboard $179
SubTotal: 1388
Add the case, the keyboard and the mouse... I really don't see how you can get a gaming maching for more than 3k...
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
I think the same philosophy goes to having a comfortable bed, chair, etc. Money's made to be spent, and what better place to spend it than on something I use most every day?
This attitude seems to be floating around a lot, but WHY??? Why does the desire to play games at high resolution with high frame rates necessarily equal a person whith a high GQ (geek quotient)?
I can easily see somebody who works as a carpenter for a living wanting to come home and frag a little. Maybe they want more than what a PS2 or suXBox can provide. Maybe they would be a little nervous at providing their own tech support. Maybe they have more money than time.
But I must admit that I would have trouble spending $2K on a machine if I tried, much less $5K.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
I just a bought a new graphics card and ended up choosing a low end card that seems to work great.
Part of my decision to not buy something better was basic psychology.. It's like how the average human brain can't percieve the difference between a 90watt and a 100watt light bulb.
Sure the high end card can pump out a shit load more FPS - BUT.. can my brain detect that difference? While the difference might be apparent between a really low-end vs. a really high-end, what about between two cards toward the high-end? Is it really worth the extra $100 for the best card on the market if a cheaper card differs by less than 10% FPS and consequently you don't notice that difference?
I've always stayed toward the lower end because I don't think the performance gains in a high end machine are worth the extra $$$ especially at the current rate of obsolescence. I upgrade when the cost of doing so falls to less than a $100.
I'm not a psychologist though and my understanding is really limited to the classroom discussion of lightbulbs. I would be really interested if a more knowledge person replied and explained if I'm on the right track or pulling thoughts out of my ass.
Lets say Dell actually started funding video game development. IT would be a friggin disaster.
They would force they programmers to ensure that new games don't run on old hardware, so DELL could bundle crap, and cram $4000 dollar PCs down peoples throats who are intested in playing the awesome new game.
Pretty much what MS did with Halo.
Who needs a hummer?
Every single male on this planet.....
oh wait... are you talking about the truck with that name?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
...
[somewebsite.com]
Post From: Berj
Subject: PC Freezes and textures tear
Hi guys, I recently bought Doom3 and my system is having trouble after I ran it. Now the rest of my games seem to lock up more often and I never had any problems before installing Doom3. I have the latest drivers and DirectX installed and working properly.
Is anyone else having this problem?
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.
Gamer's penis envy.
A big, simple reason innovation in cars (or airplanes, or coffee makers) is slower than that in computers: computers are still a young industry. Bill Gates likes to use this sort of comparison by way of arguing that MS hasn't stifled innovation: "If airplanes had changed as much between 1980 and today as computers, they'd fly us cross-country for 50 cents in ten minutes," that kind of thing. But all those other industries changed at a vastly higher rate when they were young too. Flying machines changed an awful lot from Santos-Dumont's balloons to World War I to the German jets at the end of WWII, in every imaginable way, right?
But back to your point: Cars won't be obsolete in 3 or 5 years, and that difference really isn't "pointless." If I trick up my Civic, it'll be out-of-style in three years, but it'll get me there on the gas they sell at SA. With a gaming computer, I can spend through the nose and be below box specs for some of the games that come out next year. Partly that's just the young industry again. But you know, you can still find places to land your biplane.
Between the gaming wonks trying to one-up each other and the game studios whose idea of innovation is better texture effects in FPS titles, the lack of imagination is pretty amazing. You'd think this would be such a creative thing, games, but instead we get the equivalent of U.S. blockbuster movies over and over again. You'd think the wonks would at least show some individuality in their tastes... Car geeks and EAA airplane kit builders are a lot more interesting, for my two cents.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
For the past 20 years, I have been an avid computer gamer and have had countless hours of fun playing games from Manic Miner and Jetpac, through Speedball 2 and Alien Breed, to Doom(s), Civilization(s), Half-Life & Unreal (Tournament(s)).
Today, I still play all of those games, some through the marvels of emulators. All of them, and more, are as immersive now as they were then.
However, I think we would be in agreement that playing Manic Miner at a higher frame rate or resolution would not enhance, in any way, the excellent playability of the original game.
Carrying this forward through my list of games, whilst many of them enjoy 3D rendering technology and first-person perspective, they all have one thing in common - they are all just games.
What I mean by this statement is that I do not need to be immersed in lifelike graphics in order to enjoy gaming - that's because I am possessed of an intellect that tells me that when I am staring at a PC monitor blasting aliens/jumping ledges, I am in a fantasy state of conciousness. At this level of conciousness, I immerse myself (thank you very much) into a game - sure, graphics will assist in my self-propelled immersion but the main catalyst for rocketing me into that world of make believe will be... and allow me to blow the dust off of this word as it has not one that is often used... gameplay.
Now, call me revolutionary but I don't actually give a tinker's nostril about a game that is whizzing past me at 50000 frames per second at 20480 x 10240 resolution if I have to keep simultaneously poking my brain through my earhole to stop it going comatose through lack of stimulation.
Therefore, if you don't mind, I think I'd rather stay just here, building my bland white-coloured PCs with 100 pound/euro/dollar graphic cards for 1/4 of the cost of one of your "HumungoFastPenileViper GX" gaming PCs, secure in the knowledge that I retain enough currency to enjoy financing some social contact and interaction in the real world also.
Good day to you.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
A high powered rig *will* make you perform better in a resource intensive game such as Dark Age of Camelot, where the computer must render hundreds of characters and effects simultaniously at a high framerate to keep you in the battle. I play on a 3GHz P4 with a gig of ram and a Radeon 9800 pro, and I still have some trouble in certain situations with a large number of players. And yes, my system is *very* clean.
I keep forgetting my place. Jesus is for losers. Why do I still play to the crowd?
While many hard core gamers and definitely the slashdot crowd knows how to put together a good gaming PC on the cheap, the majority of the people who are going to be buying these machines really don't understand the difference between a hard drive and a video card.
My cousin bought an hp pavillion about a year ago (against my recommendation, but that's irrelevant now) the specs on it were:
- 1.2gz celeron
- 128meg PC100 SDRAM
- 56k v90 modem
- 20gb hard drive
- some sort of non-3d accellerated 8mb video card
- yadda yadda yadda
well the other day he went and got Final Fantasy XI and couldn't understand why it wouldn't run. Instead of calling me, they decided that they needed a faster "modem" and "more hard drive" so they went and paid some exorbant amount of money to have a v.92 modem and a 250gb hard drive installed.When the game still wouldn't install, they finally called me because someone had told them to go buy a new Alienware machine so they could play final fantasy on it, and they wanted to know which one to buy.
I ended up going over and just upgrading the ram to 512meg and trading them the GeForce 4 I had in one of my machines that is now a server for the cheapo video card.
The point is, I suspect that a lot of high end gaming rig sales come from consumers who really have no idea what they need.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
A friend of mine spent closer to $10K on his gaming rig, buying not only a completely new system from the ground up using only the newest and highest-end (read: most pricey) hardware, but also the highest end set of 7.1 surround speakers he could get.
I believe he's running an Athlon 64 FX processor but other than that I don't know too much about his system.
Here's the best part:
We're having a LAN party at his place this weekend and he's not even going to be playing. He very rarely uses his PC at all, let alone to play games.
Model 551, Chambered in 6mm
Not having a wife can save you 5K per year, I'd bet.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
You are either genuine in your beliefs and a bit naive or you are master at the subtle troll message and are in fact mocking the clueless among DIY builders (of the type who might make a career of selling at Future Shop/Best Buy).
...Radeon 9800 non-pro for $150...
I bought my Athlon XP 2200+ and ECS motherboard for $70 from fry's
An Athlon XP 2200+ is certainly an adequate performer and an ECS motherboard will do the job, but the old adage "you get what you pay for" still applies. Buying most ECS boards is like buyng generic at the grocery store--it offers a value price but most often is a pale or slightly-off imitation of a top-tier brand and there will be greater variances in quality. Although the risk is still small, you stand a slightly greater chance of relibility problems (dried out capacitors, cooling problems, etc) and will never win a performance contest with higher quality PCs even with an identical processor.
1 gig of ram for $200 after rebates
A good price yes, but the quality argument could be made again. I myself have had little problem with cheap memory--it works well in an office system or a developmetn database machine. However, if performance and reliability were important I'd spring for faster RAM or ECC RAM from a source with a reputation for quality.
Sounds like a fine choice, but...
Overclocked the cpu to 3200+ speed and flashed the 9800 to a pro.
Sound to me to be "just dumb". I've always thought that in most cases overclocking and modding is of dubious economy, although there are certain times when the argument can be made for its value. The whole point of the art of overclocking is to find good quality components with reputations for having a high tolerance for punishment and push them to their maximums.
Judging from the prices I'd say you probably didn't splurge on cooling, and budget components work fine when used as prescribed but they are cheap because there is less room to manoeuvre--if it is supposed to run at speed 'x' then 'x * 1.1' will be unstable. The same goes with the graphics card. The reason it wasn't sold as a pro with pro firmware is because the hardware either failed tests at that level or wasn't tested at tlat level at all. At any rate, it might be fun to do but you obviously care not a whit about stability and have alot of time to deal with intermittent, annoying glitches.
a decent case + power supply $50,
In this case "decent" and "$50" do not compute. I'm sure it would work fine for a budget PC with onboard graphics and sound and no extra toys (I use such case/power supply deals myself) but if you want high-performance this is a bad choice. If you have extra fans (for overclocking you'd have to at least think of it), add-on cards for high-performance graphics and sound, toys like glowing front panels etc etc. then the power supply is going to fall flat. Plus if you are using quality parts you wouln't house them in a cheap tin box--it'd be like putting a hemi in a K-car.
That's under $800 for a top-of-the-line system, when I got it.
That not a real bad price for a PC, but it's far from top-of-the-line. That and I'd have serious doubts about it's dependability for serious applications with the overclocking and firmware mods you made. Even for gaming, if you were a competitive sort you'd get frustrated when it overheats and locks up or get blown to smithereens because of distorted graphics.
I'd say ditch the hardware/firmware mods and the delusions of high-performance you have and just enjoy your machine for what it is: a pedestrian, mid/value range beige box.
Just yesterday I priced out a very high end gaming machine for $3k (the CPU alone, no monitor / keyboard / mouse etc -- sweet p4 3.4 EE / 2 GB corsair / 2x200GB SATA Raid 0 / heatsink etc. / sweet case / 550 Power / ATI x800 256MB)
That $3k computer worth of parts can only be made possible by knowledge of the system and optimized for performance by mastery of hardware tweaking and overclocking.
The $400 machines for sale on Dell take relatively little knowledge to put together. The expensive machiens by vendors such as Alienware include much more knowledge about the interworkings and optimizations of the individual parts.
Since duplicating this knowledge is free, that is where the profit to be made is.
The only problem I would have with this is the people who will be wasting their money buying these high end gaming machines when they only need the mid range Dell machines.
>> -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 ;)