PC Game Fun Time

We have previously discussed the release of Intel’s new Core i7 processor and all the changes that it brings.  Well, it has been a month, and the new processors and compatible motherboards are now readily available online at sites like www.newegg.com.

I have been itching to get my hands on one of these new processors, which by all accounts are a significant leap up from the Core 2 line.  Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it!), my current gaming rig has proven more than adequate for everything I have thrown at it.  While I can’t justify the expense, some of you might be interested in putting together a new high end gaming machine.  So, with that in mind, here is my current Core i7 build:

• CPU - $295 - Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66 GHz - Getting a 2.66 GHz quad core that would beat the crap out of an old 2.66 GHz Core 2 Quad for under $300 seems like a good deal to me.  Unfortunately, the next cheapest Core i7 is $570, so this is pretty much our only option.
• Motherboard - $245 - Gigabyte GA-EX58-DS4 - This is a bit of sticking point for me right now, actually.  The Core i7 uses a completely new CPU socket type, meaning there are only a small number of compatible motherboards currently available.  They are all pricey, with most in the $300 range.  The above motherboard has a PCI Express x16 and 2 PCI Express x8, so it could accommodate up to 3 high end graphics cards.  It takes up to 6 DDR3 RAM chips, has 8 channel onboard audio, and good onboard RAID.  So, at least you are getting some good features for your $245.
• Memory - $185 - G.SKILL 6 GB (3 x 2 GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333 -  It is true that 6 GB of DDR2 800 would only cost you about $50.  However, $185 is not, in the grand scheme of things, that much to pay for memory.  G.SKILL has had a number of very popular RAM offerings on newegg and I don’t have any hesitation recommending them.
• Hard Drive - $110 - Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM 1 TB - Depending on how much storage you want and whether or not you want to do RAID, you could get 1, 2, or even more of these hard drives.  From a gaming perspective, you might also want a faster, smaller hard drive to help minimize load times.  This would probably be a VelociRaptor or even a Solid State Drive.  However, I can’t honestly recommend doing this as the benefit is very low and the cost is comparatively high.
• Case - $70 - Enermax Chakra ECA3052B Black SECC ATX Mid Tower - Yes, I know this not a well known maker of high quality gaming cases.  However, this case is inexpensive, well constructed, and sports a 250 mm side fan for some serious, yet quiet, cooling.  I would probably throw in one or two 120 mm fans, in addition.  These can be ordered for a few dollars each.  One added bonus of this case: no unnecessary LED lights!
• Power Supply - $100 - Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650 W - This is a nice, affordable 650 watt power supply.  It has plenty of peripheral and SATA connectors, as well as a 4 or 8 pin CPU power connector, and two 6 + 2 pin PCI-X power connectors.  This will allow you to connect any single graphics card on the market today, as well as many 2 card configurations.
• DVD Drive - $25 - Samsung 22x DVD Burner Model SH-S223F - Not much to say about this one.  It is a DVD burner that will handle all of your CD / DVD drive needs.
• Video Card - $220 - $260 - We at last come to the most exciting part of building any gaming rig - the video card.  Here, I’ll give you a few options.  The EVGA 896-P3-1260-AR GeForce GTX 260 is a decent option at $220.  My card of choice, however, would be the HIS Hightech H487F512P Radeon HD 4870 at $230.  This card edges out the GTX 260 in most benchmarks.  For a little bit more power, you could also go with the EVGA 896-P3-1267-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked.  The card costs $260, but it is based on the slightly more powerful GTX260 Core 216 and has been tested by EVGA to run at a stable 626 Mhz (compared to 576 Mhz stock).

That wraps up my build.  I have managed to keep the cost around $1300 and put together a pretty serious gaming machine.  Of course, if you were really looking to splurge you might want to spend an extra $200 or so and go for one of the high end video cards - probably the Radeon HD 4870×2.

There were a few areas where I would have to spend a bit more than I would like, mainly the motherboard and RAM.  However, I’m sure in the coming months that these costs will come down, making a Core i7 machine a very real possibility for me in the relatively near future.

It has been a very long time coming, but pricing on DDR3 memory is finally getting to the point where it is just about worth it.  The last time I checked on www.newegg.com, 4 gigabytes of DDR3 1333 could be had for around $125.  This is still several times the going rate on the older, slower DDR2 standard, with the same amount of DDR2 routinely going for $50 or even $40.

In the grand scheme of things, though, $125 is not that much to spend on system memory, and prices will continue to drop.  Also critical is the fact that there are now plenty of DDR3 supporting motherboards available at reasonable prices.  Perhaps most importantly, the new line of processors from Intel, the Core i7, will only support DDR3.  The Core i7 is Intel’s successor to the Core 2 line of processors, due out later this month.  It will be a little while before Core i7s become mainstream, as the early motherboards are all in the $300+ price range.  However, rest assured that once there are some good Core i7 motherboards at lower prices, DDR3 will pick up some serious steam.

There are a few reasons why DDR3 has taken so long to become popular.  The primary factor that provided momentum to DDR2 and kept DDR3 from taking hold was the pin incompatibility between the 2 formats.  While some newer motherboards now have slots for both types of memory, DDR3 memory will not fit in a DDR2 slot.

Also, faster memory speeds generally do not translate to significant performance increases in real world tests.  From a gaming perspective, you might see an increase of a few frames per second going from DDR2 800 to DDR3 1333 or DDR3 1600.  However, this will not hold true forever.  Currently, memory speeds are rarely a bottleneck, and so faster speeds won’t help you much.  Nonetheless, progress keeps marching on, and eventually DDR2 memory will be slow enough compared to other system components that it will become a problem.  This may not be very far down the road.

Of course, the pricing of actual DDR3 memory sticks has also been limiting.  Typically, DDR3 memory has costed about 3 times as much as DDR2 memory for quite some time.  However, DDR2 now costs about 1/3 what it did 12 or 18 months ago.  It is now so cheap that putting 4 gigabytes into even the lowest cost desktops is recommended.

With all these facts in mind, I think we have now reached the turning point.  If I were to build a gaming machine today, I would go with DDR3 memory.  It is not that expensive, and it will give you a lot more upgradeability options in the future.  Of course, I would also probably wait on building anything until Core i7 motherboards come down in price, but that is another story.

Many PC hardware review sites like to do the occasional “state of the graphics card market” type review where they make some overall generalizations about which video cards are the good buys at the time.  Typically, these sites will lump cards into 3 categories, by price:

1. “Budget” - about $150
2. “Performance” - about $250
3. “Enthusiast” - about $450

Of course, those categories are complete rubbish, and (hopefully) everyone reading hardware sites realizes this.  The idea that a $100 to $150 video card is “budget” is beyond ludicrious.  The fact is, if you spend much more than this, you are simply not getting a good value for your dollar.  If you spend $150 on a video card every 18 months or so, you will essentially always be able to play all of the latest games at high settings.  If you instead spent $300 on a video card, you will not in general be able to go 36 months on that same card with all the latest games at high settings.  So, assuming your goal is to always be able to play games at high settings, you will end up spending much more if you buy $300 cards than if you buy $150 cards.

The preceding paragraph has some caveats.  The $150 number assumes you have a monitor running 1680 x 1050 or perhaps 1920 x 1200.  These are the standard numbers for the now very cheap 22″ and 24″ widescreen monitors, respectively.  If you are using a smaller monitor, running, for example, 1280 x 1024, you might get by spending less.  Similarly, if you have a monster 30″ monitor that runs 2560 x 1600, you will probably need to spend a bit more.

Read the rest of this entry »

The biggest, sharpest, and rustiest jagged double-edged sword in PC gaming is without a doubt the hardware itself. On the one hand, the ability to choose each component in a computer is a great positive, allowing a smooth upgrade cycle the envy of console gamers everywhere, the ability to get as much performance as you’re willing to pay for, and of course the sheer fun of assembling a custom rig that uses as many blue LEDs as your power supply can handle. But on the other hand, PC gaming can be a sheer hassle sometimes (whereas on locked-down console platforms games “just work”), and no one can argue that it’s cheaper. But those are the breaks, and everyone reading this blog is here because they’ve found that, on the balance, the positives outweigh the negatives.

I had a blast back in January 2007 specing and assembling the computer that is still my primary Windows XP gaming desktop. I built it to be able to play Supreme Commander, a really demanding real-time strategy game that fully utilized multiple core processors. The components were good for the time: an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 processor, Nvidia GeForce 7950GT graphics card, and 2 GB of RAM all wrapped inside of an Antec P180 “black monolith” case (I got over my plexiglass and blue LED obsession in college). Since then I’ve added another 2 GB of RAM which, thanks to plummeting prices over time, cost 20% of the first 2 GB. I also replaced the video card last month when it steadfastly refused to stop frying itself at temperatures of 120°C, even with the sides of the case off. So I’m now running an ATI Radeon HD 4850, which is the best bang for your buck out of any video card. It runs Crysis at my 20″ monitor’s native resolution on high graphics settings with full anti-aliasing at a smooth frame rate, so yeah, it’s sweet.

Along the way something curious happened, though. I bought a cheap pre-made Dell computer to serve as my primary desktop, and installed Ubuntu GNU/Linux on it (yes, I’m that kind of computer user). In fact, I’m composing this very blog post on said computer right now. So I have a perfect computer dichotomy right now: the good one is used exclusively for playing games, and the other one is used for everything else. It’s almost as if my gaming computer was a dedicated game console — except, of course, it plays games that don’t suck with a peripheral that doesn’t suck. I’m sorry gamepads, but you’ll never match the sheer versatility of the mouse and keyboard. We have three PC gamers living in this house with nary a console in sight and that’s the way we like it.

As for what’s next with my gaming computer, I’m looking to upgrade the processor and motherboard in the intermediate future. Everything else should last me for awhile. And I have some recommendations to anyone building a new computer from scratch (or upgrading an existing one). Absolutely, positively get 4 GB of RAM. RAM is so cheap these days that maxing out is mandatory. Also, don’t spend too much on a video card. $150-200 is the price range you should be looking at (a range that is currently ruled by the ATI Radeon HD 4850, I might add). If you have more money than that to spend on a video card, buy a decent video card now, and then use the rest of the money in a year to a year and a half to get a better video card. You’ll get a lot more performance averaged over time for the same cost.

And to anyone who’s into PC gaming but hasn’t built a gaming computer — what are you waiting for? It’s one of the best aspects of the hobby. Start by maxing out your RAM as an interim upgrade and then plan more drastic measures. Relish in the freedom to upgrade that console gamers completely lack. You’re already committed to the hobby, so do everything in your power to have the best possible time with it.