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The $500 Gaming PC Upgrade

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the more-fps-equals-more-frags dept.

sand writes "Building a powerful PC for gaming doesn't have to be expensive. In this article, FiringSquad spends $500 on a gaming upgrade, and compares its performance to that of a high-end Core 2 Extreme PC. The Core 2 Extreme rig is faster, but you may be surprised by how well the $500 PC is able to hang with it in Crysis, Call of Duty 4, and Unreal Tournament 3."

6 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Duh by BrianRoach · · Score: 4, Insightful


    Newsflash: If you buy the last generation of hardware, and not the top-of-the-line video card, you'll save money!

    I've been keeping my PC about one or two cycles behind the bleeding edge for this reason, and it plays games just fine ... you just can't crank ALL the settings in some of the newer games.

    - Roach

    1. Re:Duh by sm62704 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The people designing these games are losing money (maybe in this case "loosing money" would be appropriate) for what? I just don't get it. The elitist attitude is what got me to stop playing PC games in the first place.

      In 1990 when I first started playing games on a PC, a computer like the one in my living room now took a dedicated building and was called a "supercomputer", yet I can't play a new game on it. And the new game cost sixty bucks.

      Now, I used to be into gaming; some of you may remember the old Quake site th Springfield Fragfest. But here's where the absolutel stupidity of the game designers comes in: they design for the next generation of machines. This gains teh hardware manufacturers dosh, at the expense of game designers who can't even sell me a game any more, let alone Joe Normalguy.

      A game called Screamer 2 is an excellent example of why their designing for the next generation is stupid. When it came out (1997 IIRC), there wasn't a single PC in existance that could run it at its highest resolution. Today it would be a piece of cake - except that it is written for DOS and my Audigy isn't supported. No sound.

      I still get Road Rash (1995) out once in a while. A fun game is fun. Developers, by designing for the next generation of equipment, are shutting out this generation of equipment, as well as most of their possible audience. Design for this generation of equipment and sell the games for $15 instead of $60 and you'll sell a hundred times as many.

      -mcgrew

      --
      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
  2. Re:500$ inexpensive? by ByOhTek · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For a good performing gaming PC, as many have stated, that's downright cheap.

    A bigger complaint would be:

    They chose the AMD690 motherboard chipset. The big reason? The one they went on and on about? Dual digital [video] outputs (DVI + HDMI). They also had a discreet video card. Call me nuts, but if you use the DVI/HDMI output on the motherboard, you aren't going to be getting the goodness from that $250 graphics card you just picked up, are you (barring two monitors I guess).

    Seriously, they could have saved some $$, or gotten a board with a better set of features, excluding it's graphical output.

    --
    Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
  3. It's an upgrade I guess.... by Seakip18 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think they wanted to call this a cheap build, but saw that it equated to another normal build. So they removed things like an optical drive, hard drive, case, power supply, speakers, and a monitor to "reduce the price" and make this an "insanely cheap upgrade!"

    Honestly, I'm sure half the nerds on this site could build an entire SYSTEM that'd put this upgrade to shame at that price.

    --
    import system.cool.Sig;
  4. Who spends $1500 for decent ? by Liquidrage · · Score: 3, Insightful

    FTFA: "There's a silly misconception out there that you need to spend $1,500 or more to own a decent gaming rig. This is just nonsense"

    Sure, I know people that always buy top of the line right when it comes out. They actually care if they're able to get 71 fps in a certain game vs 68 fps. Not because they play it, but because it means something to them to have a high number.
    But that's the exception, not the norm. People building their own systems like was done in the article aren't that retarded.

    I was just forced into upgrading due to a motherboard that went bad on an old Athlon XP 2400 system.
    A few hours of looking and a e4600 Core 2 Duo, 2 gigs of DDR2 667, decent Asus MB, and a 512 meg Nvidia 8600GT...
    $450 shipped. That included seating the processor and having them do the bios upgrade before shipping for $9. This from a reputable online service that many people have used for years. Even if I had to add a case, monitor, hardrive, dvd drive, key board and mouse, you're still looking at under $750 without a problem. And that would certainly qualify as decent.

    Now, I got no doubt they spent a ton of time finding just the right stuff to eeck out all that little bit of tweaking.

    But overall, no one thinks when building a system yourself you need to spend anywhere near that for a decent gaming system. For top of the line to have bragging rights over a meaningless fps score, sure. But not for something that'll play everything new just fine and be fine for years.

  5. Re:500$ inexpensive? by jedidiah · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...not if he finds a girl that likes to play Eve.

    Times are changing. Try not to make yourself look like some bitter old geezer who's behind the times.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.