The Best Gaming PC Money Can Buy 417
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.'"
Very useful guides (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:$10K US for a gaming rig? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:$10K US for a gaming rig? (Score:3, Interesting)
The learning curve is way steeper with the real instrument, no questions there. When you play some easy level song, where you have to click just a note every now and then to create some chords, it sure is easier than trying to figure out where all those fingers go on that instrument. And then striking the chord just right, too!
But then again, when I look at the time some people spend on those games, where weeks turn into months of them playing for hours, I start to wonder whether in the long run, they couldn't have learned the real instrument in almost the same time they need to master one of those super nasty hardcore badass songs in the game.
Re:The investor's budget? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The investor's budget? (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently someone doesn't run Visual Studio 2005 with a moderately large C++ solution. ;)
Seriously though, your work computer is nearly identical to mine, except I have 2GB of RAM. While I got the RAM upgrade earlier this year (from 1GB), and it helped quite a bit, I'm still amazed at Visual Studio's need to peg my CPU at 100% on a frequent basis. How much I hate to see "Updating Intellisense"....
Re:The investor's budget? (Score:3, Interesting)
As we move further from the time where computers were new, rare, and novel, the chance of your second theorem becoming true for a new system approaches zero. I would argue that the probability for any system currently manufactured is already sufficiently small as to be insignificant.
Re:The investor's budget? (Score:2, Interesting)
The PC I bought my wife to do her work on, paid for itself in 30 days. We laid out money for a new PC for her work, with the expectation that she would use it to make money.
It was a good investment since she successfully used it to find and sell homes to buyers, and recouped the cost in less time than it took to depreciate. Now that it's paid for it's proving to be an excellent investment, since her old one was slow and she spilled soup into the keyboard (it was a laptop from 2000) which started causing problems and impacted her productivity.
Same deal for a car you use to drive to work. You profit from your salary so when you buy a car for commuting, it's an investment, even if it's a Mustang GT, though these days a smarter investment would be a Prius. However the prius offers less emotional return on investment so whether or not a hotrod is a good investment is subjective.
If blowing off steam by testing the reported 0-60MPH acceleration times causes a stress relief that helps you live longer, the Mustang is a damn good investment, despite the fuel cost. This value is immeasurable.
You can't take it with you and it pays to be giddy a few times a day, as irrational as that might be, it's simply good for you ;) Sometimes investing in your happiness is a good thing. You can see increased salary as well as work productivity when you are happy which is an indirect monetary gain, though the profit doesn't need to be monetary.
Merriam-Webster's defines profit as:
1: a valuable return : gain
2: the excess of returns over expenditure in a transaction or series of transactions; especially : the excess of the selling price of goods over their cost
3: net income usually for a given period of time
4: the ratio of profit for a given year to the amount of capital invested or to the value of sales
5: the compensation accruing to entrepreneurs for the assumption of risk in business enterprise as distinguished from wages or rent
I think happiness fits definition 1 (as long as you consider happiness valuable) and can be had with a 1337 gaming rig or car whether or not you use it to make money directly.
-Viz
Re:The investor's budget? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:furthering the myth of expensive PCs... (Score:3, Interesting)