DIY 4 GHz Dual Core Gaming Rig For $720 201
Tom's Hardware has posted the detailed results of their recent quest to build a beefy gaming rig without a visit to the poorhouse. The trick it seems is to find a processor with 'cores designed for a much faster clock than their nominal rating at a speed of up to 4 GHz without problems.' They provide shopping lists for both a 'budget version' and a 'top flight version'.
Site getting slow by page 3 (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe try using a Coral Cache version [nyud.net] so other folks get a chance to see the article.
Cheers!
Nice OC on the processor but... (Score:5, Informative)
Most game programmers optimize their engines around video cards these days, not the CPU.
print url (Score:5, Informative)
For those of you who will complain (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The $710 dollar one was not the overclocked one (Score:3, Informative)
http://svcompucycle.stores.yahoo.net/ultra-120.ht
Re:Already outdated (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Already outdated (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No visit to the poorhouse (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Quality Quantity (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Already outdated (Score:3, Informative)
Also, Tom's did a benchmark a few months ago comparing performance with various amounts of RAM. While they found a decent improvement going 512MB -> 1Gig, they didn't find much difference going 1Gig -> 2Gig.
That said, even after reading it I included a matched pair of 1Gig sticks in my upgrade; it didn't add much to the price and it can't hurt. (Besides which, being able to alt-tab out of a game without swapping like mad is very nice)
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Video card is ridiculously low-end (Score:1, Informative)
I was able to easily obliterate this $720 "Gaming Machine" for under $700 with a configuration I originally did a month ago: $698 Gaming Machine [geeklimit.com]
I'm actually a fan of Tom's, I like their method of LCD analysis...but the $720 rig is pathetically underpowered and the spending on it was ridiculously misallocated. After comparing their system to mine, Tom's credibility has taken a serious hit with me.
Working link (Score:3, Informative)
Use this url if you're too lazy to copy and paste. It should strip the referer header and take you straight to the one-page print version.
Re:Orthography? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Quality Quantity (Score:2, Informative)
Differences in work done per clock cycle don't just apply to the PowerPC architecture. I know you were probably just trying to be funny/cute, but the fact remains that once CPUs started hitting the hundreds of MHz, the performance gap grew and people began to notice how architecture efficiency really played a part in performance. It's even more true today than it was then.
Re:Site getting slow by page 3 (Score:3, Informative)