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Christmas Buyer Guide for Gamers

12.07.08 - 01:06pm

Christmas is upon us and the pressure is on to shop till you drop. In recent months there has been a slew of product launches and game launches that have once again raised the bar for PC gamers so I’ve decided to help ease confusion by laying down a some advice before you go out shopping.

Newer is Not Better

Intel just released their heavily anticipated Core i7 lineup based on their Nehalem architecture. This architecture is no doubt fast but we aren’t seeing the performance jump that we saw going from the Athlon 64 to the Core 2 Duo nearly 2 years ago. This is due to Intel focusing more on multi-threaded performance rather than single-threaded performance.

Unfortunately a gamer your main focus is running a typically single-threaded or sometimes weakly multi-threaded application as fast as possible. To stretch your budget out as much as possible I can happily point you in the direction of the Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 and E8600 processors. I suggest buying “older” Core 2 Duo processors for a few reasons. First, the processors themselves are cheaper. Second, the motherboards cost half as much, $300 versus $150. Third, DDR2 is much cheaper than DDR3, further saving you money. Getting 90% of the performance for half of the cost is hard to argue with.

Nvidia was Right

A few months back Nvidia stated that the CPU matters less to gaming than the GPU does. To the Tech savvy this was like saying “The World is round” and presenting this fact like new research. This has always been true, the CPU exists in a gaming platform to feed the GPU and perform generic tasks like sound generation and gameplay organization.

With current gaming there are three resolutions or markets. The low-end consists of 1280×1024 and 1440×900 resolution monitors, the mid-range between 1680×1050 and 1920×1200 monitors, and the high-end with 2560 x 1600 resolution monitors. When shopping for a graphic card you need to first figure out which bracket you sit in before figuring out what GPU is necessary for you. Most gamers these days sit in the mid-range bracket with the low-end market diminishing and the high-end market slowly growing.

Low-end Gamers

For the low-end gamers there is nothing better than the HD4830 that was just recently released. It’s priced around $125 and features enough processing power to be effective for another 12+ months. If you don’t mind spending another $25 the HD4850 makes an even better deal by offering a significant jump in performance without much of a jump in cost or power consumption.

Mid-range Gamers

For the mid-range gamer it gets to be a bit trickier with many options available to you. The GTX260 and HD4870 1GB offer great value however CrossFire HD4850s are another great option. Aiming between $200 and $300, the cheapest option would be a GTX 260 896MB for roughly $250. The HD4870 1GB costs $10 more and offers roughly identical performance so it’s a tough call here. Lastly CrossFire HD4850s will run you $300 and offer a large performance jump over either HD4870 or GTX 260 albeit with greatly increased power consumption and requiring a CrossFire motherboard.

High-end Gamers

The high-end market has a slew of options available to it with prices ranging from $400 to $1000+. Given the near doubling in resolution going from a 24″ to a 30″ monitor, effectively gaming at this resolution simply becomes a scaling problem. Thankfully with CrossFire and SLI you can just throw more GPUs at the problem until your wallet is empty. I personally would start with an HD4870 X2 for $480 and see if that is enough performance to suit your needs. Otherwise SLI GTX 280 are another option although that nearly doubles the cost. In the end it’s all about the budget, I myself am quite conservative for my daily gaming computers so the HD4870 X2 would be my card of choice.

Motherboards and Memory

You can’t have a computer without a motherboard. For all the options I’ve mentioned above besides the SLI GTX 280s, I would suggest picking up a decent Intel P45 based board. Something in the $125 to $150 range will be fine and make sure it supports DDR2, not DDR3. DDR3 is still a bit expensive and should only be purchased if you are either a benchmarker or buying a Core i7 system.

When picking out memory, search for two things. First, capacity, you’ll want at least a 4GB kit of memory, two 2GB sticks. Secondly, speed, you’ll want DDR2-800 CAS5 for most systems or DDR2-1000 CAS5 for overclocked systems. I specify the faster memory for overclockers as you’ll typically want between 450FSB and 500FSB and a DDR2-800 kit could limit you if it doesn’t overclock well.

Storage

Solid state drives have received the greatest amount of press lately however your reliable platter based hard drive is still quite competitive and functional. SSDs are great however the price to performance and storage ratios are all wrong for the average consumer. That being said, there are a few ways you can approach your storage system.

The traditional route involves one drive for everything. If you want to do this, grab a 1TB drive for around $150 and call it a day. I would also suggest a second drive to backup your data on, ideally another 1TB drive. Now, if you would like to mix it up a bit, keep on reading and pay attention as things could get crazy.

I know I said SSD are a bad idea but in some cases they can actually be a great buy. My first suggestion is a bit crazy but also insanely fast. Buy two 30GB SSDs(OCZ Solid Series will do) and combine them via RAID0. This will give you 60GB of incredibly fast storage, perfect for installing your operating system and your games. Then grab a terabyte drive and store all your movies, music, and miscellaneous data.

Another option would be to grab two 300GB VelociRaptors and RAID them together. Unfortunately these will cost you much more than the SSDs and offer similar performance in most instances. However, you will have 600GB of speedy storage. I personally prefer the SSD option but some people still prefer a hard drive and it’s additional storage.

Wrapping it all up

I’ve covered a lot in this article but only brushed over the issues at hand. At the end of the day for gamers, Core 2 Duo is roughly better than Core i7, GPUs are better than CPUs, memory capacity is better than speed, and storage can be handled however you like. If anyone would like some specific advice feel free to drop a comment and I’ll do my best to make a well rounded suggestion.

Category: Articles, Gaming, Hardware