The Best Gaming PC Money Can Buy

SlappingOysters writes "Gameplayer has gone live with their best PC hardware configurations for Q3 2008. They've broken it into three tiers depending on the investor's budget. And while the prices are regional, it is comparative across the globe. 'In order to play these slices of gaming goodness, you're going to need a decent rig, and we sent our PC hardware guru in search of maximum frames in maximum detail, but at a minimum cost. We have three tiers for the three levels of PC gamers out there and all the detail you could possibly want on where, why and what to buy. So choose your poison and get amongst it.'"

Comments

The investor's budget?

[llamalad]

Buying a pc is an investment now?

Re:The investor's budget?

[ivan256]

  investment
              n 1: the act of investing; laying out money or capital in an
                        enterprise with the expectation of profit

No. No it is not. And every computer and used car salesman that refers to the purchase of something guaranteed to decrease in value over time should be sued for false advertising.

Re:The investor's budget?

[Atlantis-Rising]

Are you telling me that as a computer geek, when you lay out money to purchase a computer you do not expect profit to arise from it?

I think that's a very dangerous statement. Everyone who uses their computer for work 'invests' in it. Everyone who uses their second-hand car to drive to work 'invests' in it.

It is not solely necessary for the capital expense to appreciate for it to be an investment.

Re:The investor's budget?

[Atlantis-Rising]

That's a complicated question. There are basically three answers:

1: It may make your work faster and more efficient.
2: It may require less maintenance than your old computer.
3: It won't, but that's not necessary; it's like asking a workman whether a new hammer would make his job any more profitable. That doesn't mean it's not an investment anyway.

Re:The investor's budget?

[p0tat03]

How would buying a screaming fast computer for work make my job any more profitable?

Depends on what you do. For a 3D artist, for example, a faster machine means shorter rendering times. This creates less downtime, moves the design-render-refine cycle faster, and also opens more possibilities to allow the client to tweak the final product with you.

For a coder who's working on a massive code base, we're looking at shorter compile times. Cutting compiles from 4 hours to 1 is a pretty significant gain that will likewise see a rise in productivity. Having a blazing server-class workstation also allows you to test your code in conditions that are more similar to what your code would be running once deployed.

For an artist, a massively fast computer (or really just one with an assload of RAM) allows more multitasking. Having Photoshop, Illustrator, a compositing app, etc etc, open all at once is great for productivity, and it allows you to bounce between apps without huge downtime.

But a few examples of why speed is still important in computing.

$10K US for a gaming rig?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a fool would spend that much money on something that will cost 1/3 that in 18 months.

Just another hardware guide

[Anonymous Coward]

So hardware guides are post worthy now?

Then let me submit the Ars System Guide ... every time they update it!

Give a hoot! Recycle!

[RingDev]

More so Reuse!

I usually run a 2 year cycle.

Year 1, I build a new PC. Although, I already have a nice monitor, a nice case, a large hard drive, an optical drive, and all the other fixings. So all a new PC is, is a CPU, motherboard, memory and graphics card. No need to replace everything else.

Year 2 I upgrade my existing PC. Add a bit of memory, get a larger hard drive, get the latest generation of graphic card. All for a budget well under $500.

Next year I give my now 'old' PC to my wife (mounting all the components into her perfectly fine case) and buy myself a new pile.

Sure, I'm not going bleeding edge with my stuff. But I just priced out a new PC for this fall. A Core 2 Duo @ 3ghz, 2Gigs of 1200 memory, new mobo, and an NVidia 8800GT. With tax and shipping it comes in right at $500, and will be more than enough machine to handle the next generation of games. Although I think I'll try to hold out just a hair longer for one last price cut on the Core 2 Duo chip. But the Wife's machine is going to need an upgrade for the next set of titles coming out.

-Rick

Re:Yes, but...

[Bacon Bits]

You say that like it's a bad thing. If I need telnet I'll just get PuTTY anyways. The only thing telnet is good for anymore is checking to make sure SMTP traffic works and configuring devices that won't talk with anything else. Otherwise you *don't* use it any more that you use rsh or rcp.

Frankly, I'm more irritated that Windows doesn't ship with a built-in ssh and sshd. And no, remote desktop does not count.