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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.'"
Just like you can spend months clacking away on a mouse when you can join the REAL army, and kill REAL people right?
Or spinning a plastic wheel and driving 200km/h when you can be REALLY going that fast in a REAL car, right?
I learned to play Guitar Hero fairly well over the course of a week. I've been playing real guitar for about 4 or 5 months now. I can play most Rock Band songs on expert, and I can play most of Neil Young's Heart of Gold on real guitar.
There's a very large difference between a video game and a musical instrument. A video game can be learned quickly and easily, without a huge time commitment. An instrument takes years to learn how to play. Now in my case, I also thought my hands were too small to play guitar, but Guitar Hero convinced me that I might be able to do it. I don't think I'll ever be able to play an F chord, but I can play a lot of songs anyway. I'm good at Guitar Hero/Rock Band. I'll likely never be as good at real guitar.
If you're running Vista, none (at least by default). Seriously it's not in the default install, you have to add it later.
I find that dual monitors are probably the single most useful thing in programming, at least for me. This is mainly web based applications.. but even then having email/im etc open on a secondary screen helps a lot in maximizing workspace/flow. And monitors really get used for the life of said monitor, unlike a lot of other hardware. As to more ram, that is usually second most important, at least 2-4GB (4+ if you run VMs)... CPU, GPU etc depend on your uses... but that's just me, and again, monitors will generally get a long life.. and ram tends to extend the usable life of a computer in general... Beyond that, depending on what you are using, you can often get something faster pretty cheap... Hell, a new MSI Wind barebones is almost as fast as that 3Ghz P4, for really cheap... Today's cheaper desktops are reasonably powerful for day to day use over most 4+ year old hardware, for a minimal hardware investment.
I just point this out as it doesn't even have to come down to your examples, or the idea of laying out cash for something that expires right away.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info