GamingPC
- Started
- Last post
- 13 Responses
- digitalswarm
My friends tell me that making a PC strictly for gaming is cheaper than going out and buying one from Alienware... Like $500-600... Is this possible/can any of you help?
- unknown0
yes, its possible. it's probably possible in canadian dollars too, depending on what video card you get.
- sparker0
i'll sell you my sgi 330 for 2500 usd.
:)
- digitalswarm0
How about a great video card? I'm looking for something that looks great, but won't cost me a fortune, because it's only built for gaming, nothing else... I have a Mac for that stuff.
Thanks.
- unknown0
maybe 200-300CDN
- vena0
probably not for $500, unless you're looking at really crappy components (especially the motherboard, people are often seduced into buying crappy ones).
let's do a pricewatch showdown for a hot little gaming PC, shall we?
we'll start with a combo mb/cpu deal to make it easier on ourselves. MSI K7N2Delta with an Athlon XP 3200 will run you about $400.
now we'll look at ram. we're looking to kick some ass, so let's throw at least 1 gig in here, and let's say PC3200. that's $124.
video card video card, what's a good gaming video card gonna cost us? well, personally i think the recent geforce offerings are bulky and a bit on the doodie side, so we'll say a radeon 9800 pro, 128mb. that'll cost you upwords of $300.
right now we're at $824.
now unless you're a warez kiddie and you've got yourself a copy of Alcohol 120, you're gonna want a cd drive. these days it doesn't make much sense not to get one that can't burn, and we're gonna be frugal about it so let's say $40 for a decent one.
we're gonna skip the floppy drive. nobody uses them anymore.
we've got the core components now so let's get a case. figure $50 for a halfway decent one with a 500w power supply.
throw in misc cabling for $20
that brings us to a grand total of $934
where do you want to cut corners?
- illroot0
Here's what I put together to do 3D and gaming, which works great for both.
AthlonXP 2500+ (1.8ghz)
*overclocked to 2.2ghz,
(XP 3200 speeds)
(save myself $200)
ATi Radeon 9800 modded to a 9800pro (saved myself $100)including other parts like HD, mobo, memory, case, total came out to about $1100.
- vena0
oh yeah, i forgot about the harddrive. pick your size and update price accordingly :)
- digitalswarm0
Wow, thanks, Vena. The question now: is the juice worth the squeeze...
Will edit for Gaming PC. Email me.
- unknown0
you really don't need top of the line everything if you're just using it for gaming. not necessarily cutting corners, but... oh well.
- digitalswarm0
Thanks for your help guys. I'll see how much overtime I get this week.
- brundlefly0
I bought a P4 2.66 g
1 gig ddr400 ramAsus (nvidia chipet card overclocked to 666mgz) 128 ram
for like $900
its awesome for games.
- mitsu0
cut corners with your processor.
go amd save the ones you love a buck or two.for gaming the two most important things for you, perfomance-wise are memory, and video card.
most everything is handled through the hardware abstraction layer thanks to directx and opengl, this allows the game engine to leverage off of the video cards onboard processor. if a feature isn't supported, then your system will try to emulate it through the system processor, but with todays games this is rare if not just unheard of altogether.
- mitsu0
after you get your computer set up, download a few of the benchmarking apps from here:
http://www.futuremark.com/
some of the older ones from 99 and 2000 are also quite impressive, even by todays standards.