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The $500 Gaming PC Upgrade
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."
When many gamers spend $500 for just a gaming GPU, yes $500 for a full gaming upgrade is cheap - if it lives up to the hype.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
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
- Roach
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).
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;
I recently upgraded my machine for playing games. I spent about $450 and built something *significantly* better than what is shown in this article. How? By buying cheap/discount/used hardware off eBay. It's really just that simple. I could have easily spent several hundred more dollars on the same stuff by buying from an actual store.
From TFA:
"The GPU of choice in our upgrade article is without a doubt the recently announced GeForce 8800 GT from NVIDIA. ... ... ... Most of the online retailers sold out of their inventory of GeForce 8800 GT cards within hours of the GPU's release, but hopefully they'll be restocked shortly. EVGA is a great brand, offering goodies like a lifetime warranty and their Step Up trade-in program. We've reviewed their cards in the past quite extensively and always liked them.
Keep in mind that NVIDIA is producing all of the early GeForce 8800 GT cards for their board partners like EVGA anyway, so regardless of the brand of card you choose they're all coming off the same production line. This includes the factory overclocked cards.
Alternatives: Until AMD ships their upcoming RV670 chip, the Radeon HD 3800, there really is no viable alternative to the GeForce 8800 GT that we'd recommend. If you want to save a little money the Radeon X1950 Pro would be an excellent alternative though."
PS3 lacks good games, PC doesn't. It's definitely a downgrade.
Stupidity is the root of all evil.
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.
It's simply about buying mainstream stuff, instead of ultra-high-end stuff. Those high-end buyers PAY for the technology to be developed for all the mainstream users. But, games aren't made for a few people with high-end cards; they're made to play pretty damn well on what most people who bought any decent card/machine recently will have.
For 99.9% of people, buying very high-end stuff is a lot like buying a ferrari. Sure, it looks nice, but what practical use are you going to find for it?
Some people play games, some people drink and smoke. To each their own fun. If you amortize the cost of the 500 dollars over the life of the usefulness of it, you would probably find that it was about the same amount of money other people spent on their hobbies.
Well the best price for that card in the UK (could only find one vendor with the EVGA one) is £172. That's about $350.
Rough figures:
Athton 64 X2 4000 = £42
Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H = £45
2x 1GB PC2-6400 = £80 (kingston, or £60 for cheaper brand)
GPU + CPU + Mobo + RAM = £339 (about $700)
--
http://bridgehosting.net/cheap-gaming-rig ?
These games seem to be heavily GPU bound.
What about a game like Supreme Commander? Which can bring a quad core processor to its knees.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
First, you really can't buy a board for much less than the $80 and expect it to work well. They all come with tons of features these days - you just have to decide which you want. Going cheaper nowadays doesn't mean same quality with less features - it means similar features with lower quality.
Second, there's some very good reasons for going with a board that includes onboard video. It gives you the potential to run more than two monitors (which is, I admit, very unlikely) but more important, if/when your main graphics card bites the dirt, you've got your onboard to fall back on while you wait for your replacement to arrive. That means that while you'll go a week without playing Crysis and UT3 at max settings, you'll still be able to do pretty much everything else.
That said, my take on the article is that they spent way too much on the graphics. You can stretch that $500 quite a bit further by going with a much cheaper card that'll still run the newest games just fine at reduced settings. I'd say this would get the job done, and still give you some space in your budget to upgrade your hard drive and something else, which could be pretty important in that P4/Athlon XP system from 3 years ago.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
...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.
Yes but they go to insane levels.
Unreal tournament 3 plays just fine at sane levels on a Throwaway P4-3.0ghz with a Geforce 7900GS video card, yes the incredibly slow AGP interface as well. I've been playing it on what amounts to a $250.00 computer all week.)
now if I turn on all the goodies I can make it slower on some of the more expansive and detailed arenas.. but some of the simpler short distance line of sight it still plays decently until you have 4-5 bots in the room all firing rockets like madmen.. (override settings and have 30 bots in one of the small 1 on 1 arenas... it's a hoot!)
Am I playing with all setting all the way up and at 1920X1200? not a chance. but it still plays just fine on a 1024X768 15" monitor with enough settings to make it look incredibly good.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
See, that's where they're making their mistake. Not gamers, but developers. The developers are only selling to hobbyists, when they could be selling to people just looking for a little recreation.
I never got into the MMOLPs because I was afreaid of being sucked into the addiction. Instead of selling crack, game developers should be selling twinkies.
With crack in them. They're shooing away many people they could get hooked.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Most people don't seem to see why this number is so special: it's about the cost of an X-Box 360 with all the bells and whistles. Sure, they left out a case, monitor, speakers, and input. But compound to the cost of an X-Box 360 the fact that you have to buy controllers, an HD-TV, and a Live account. The point that should be taken home is that if you put your brain to work, you can build a system that's cheaper, more powerful, and plays better games than the consoles out there right now. This is the first time this has really happened: consoles from a generation or two ago were always rather cheap.