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."

Comments

Duh

[BrianRoach]

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

Re:Duh

[Corwn of Amber]

The best hardware for the price is always, always 'top-of-the-line minus ONE'.

As in, only desperately lobotomized morons would buy an Intel Extreme for $1000, when there are Intel Quads with as much cache and the same FSB for one fourth that, and frequency means zilch when the price difference allows you to buy liquid cooling. Now how's that 4x 4,8 GHz with 2x 4Mbyte cache sound?

As for GPUs, well, just buy the last-gen Ultra. An ATI X1950Pro 256M is now $200, anything really more powerful is at least $500. And it will run any recent game at decent speed.

Re:Duh

[sm62704]

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

Re:Duh

[ameoba]

Most of time when you see a game that can't be played on maximum settings with current hardware there's a good reason for it.

In many cases, such as Quake 3 and, more recently, Crysis, it's because the game engine is designed as a licensable asset that will be reused by other game studios for a number of years & they want it to remain relevant. Game engines are expensive to produce so once you've written a good one, there's few reasons not to license it out. If you plan on licensing the system & you want it to be relevant in 2-3 years, you not only need to be able to support todays top-of-the-line hardware but also be able to produce respectable results in two years when derivative titles are being released.

The other case is when you anticipate games to be played for long periods of time. A great example of this is Everquest 2 - SOE knew that they could expect the game to be actively played for 5 years or more. Given an anticipated lifespan like this you face 2 options - produce an engine with room to grow or plan on rewriting the engine so that 3 years in you can continue to meet player expectations.

Unimpressive

[Kenoli]

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.

A big HOWEVER, perhaps...

[Cragen]

The recommended GPU is not currently available. I wonder if it will be available in time for XMas for (^h^h^hfrom) St. Nick?

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."