What specs do I need for a gaming PC?

[fearthehat]

Hi all,

With it being nearly the new year and all I'm thinking of upgrading my computer. For quite a while I've just been using a laptop with only a 32mb graphics card and 224mb of RAM and I'm thinking of switching to a desktop that I can run more modern games on.

I've been looking around, but all the model numbers and whatnot you get in computer configurations are confusing me. So I thought I would ask what the minimum specs are that I should look for on a gaming PC. I'm not concerned with having full performance on everything, as I'm not overly concerned with graphics, but I do want games to be able to run without slowdown.

The system I was looking at was around 2.2GHz, with 1Gb of RAM and a 256mb graphics card (non-integrated, so I could upgrade it in the future if needs be). Looking at the minimum specs of some games (I'm using F.E.A.R as a benchmark) it seems this should be okay - but then again, I'm no expert...

Any advice?

[jiggyninjai]

That sounds fine. Only thing I would suggest is maybe going with 2 gigs. Reason being: 1. ram isn't that expensive and 2. Its still a lil bit of an overkill, but not for much longer.
just curious who are you going through and whats the price on it?

[fearthehat]

just curious who are you going through and whats the price on it?

I got the specs from a model at Dell New Zealand, with the price around NZ$2150 (around $1500 US). I'm sure I could get it cheaper if I shopped around, which I can hopefully do once I find out if the configuration is good or not. Thanks for your reply BTW.

[Madcat]

Raw speed isn't as reliable a mesure of CPU speed as it used to be. I'd suggest looking at a dual core machine - Intel are currently in the lead in terms of preformance.

[Chikahiro]

Ditto on dual core. I'm a huge AMD fan, but currently own a Core 2 Duo machine - runs great.

[Ikselam]

How good are the dual-core processors at handling older games that don't support them?

[Pax]

The system I was looking at was around 2.2GHz, with 1Gb of RAM and a 256mb graphics card (non-integrated, so I could upgrade it in the future if needs be). Looking at the minimum specs of some games (I'm using F.E.A.R as a benchmark) it seems this should be okay - but then again, I'm no expert...

Any advice?
That's actually slightly better than thi system (2.8GHz dual-core Pentium, ATI Radeon x600 256MB video, 512MB RAM). It's not all about processor and graphics ... your memory is, if I may, "the third leg of the triad". Any one of the three can bottleneck your system something fierce.

We're looking at adding a 1GB "kit" (two 512MG memory sticks - this machine needs memory installed in balanced pairs) at the very least, sometime in the next few months ... because we're starting to see some laggy performance in the more memory-intensive games, now.

Our prior system, mind, was an absolute dinosaur (600MHz CPU, 80MB of RAM, and an old VooDoo graphics card of indetrminate model), so this system STILL feels like it's lightyears ahead of what we're used to ... ^_^

[Pax]

How good are the dual-core processors at handling older games that don't support them?
Those games will only use one of the two cores. Since mosty dual-core CPUs are far better per core than the CPUs generally in use prior to dual-core games ... you won't notice much, if any, of a performance issue.

OS incompatibility is the bigger problem, really. Getting some of my older DOS and Win95 games to run properly, without regular CTDs, can sometimes be a serious pain in the ass. 8( Some games, you wouldn't know they weren't written for XP. Some, I just cannot get to work ... at all ... period.

[SJBenoist]

How often do you upgrade your PC? If it is at least every 4-5 years, skip the dual cores this time around (unless they are cheaper, which they very well may be ... can you say "collusion"?).

2 GB of RAM is pretty much standard for decent experience on a current game. Not only isn't it overkill, you may find it a little short if you are playing cutting-edge stuff with just some of the bells & whistles turned on. Pay attention to the timings, there are quite a few options for RAM these days and they are not equal (or even compatible).

Don't forget to add 250-300 (U.S. dollars) for the gaming video upgrade, if you stay cheapish. Video cards can no longer be described as "all doing the same thing, but some better". Cards will have different functionality by chipset, and vary in performance by model.
E.g. For nVidia, the 7xx0 line indicates the chipset, while the middle two numbers indicate the model. So 7200, 7800, etc. are have the same functionality, but different performance.

Lastly, F.E.A.R. and Oblivion (two system-intense recent games) recommend a 3.0 Ghz (P4 equiv.) or higher. That 2.2 Ghz may be little slow, and is overpriced at 1500$ if it doesn't include a decent display or a decent video card (Though it's a good deal if it includes both).

[theCimmerian]

How often do you upgrade your PC? If it is at least every 4-5 years, skip the dual cores this time around (unless they are cheaper, which they very well may be ... can you say "collusion"?).

Not necessarily collusion as much as competition. AMD took a big chunk of Intel's market, Intel dropped prices to compete, and AMD dropped prices to compete back.

Currently, dual core processors help best with heavy multi-tasking - running more than one resource-heavy program at the same time. Very few current PC games are designed to take advantage of the processing power of a second (or third or fourth) CPU. The single core machines tend to offer substantially greater single task performance per dollar than their dual core competitors.


2 GB of RAM is pretty much standard for decent experience on a current game. Not only isn't it overkill, you may find it a little short if you are playing cutting-edge stuff with just some of the bells & whistles turned on. Pay attention to the timings, there are quite a few options for RAM these days and they are not equal (or even compatible).

It's also nice to be able to run a game without shutting down Photoshop, Thunderbird (email), Internet Explorer, Firefox, iTunes, anti-virus, closing three explorer windows, and so forth.


That 2.2 Ghz may be little slow, and is overpriced at 1500$ if it doesn't include a decent display or a decent video card (Though it's a good deal if it includes both).

Well, I think the 3.0 GHz requirements on most games assumes you are using a single core Pentium 4 CPU. A single core 2.0 GHz AMD Athlon 64 processor is about the same as a 3.0 GHz Pentium 4. Intel's own Core 2 Duo processors perform much better than the Pentium 4 or the AMD 64 series, and they start from 1.66 GHz.

[fearthehat]

Hi all, thanks for the replies.

I rechecked the specs and it turns out the 2.2GHz is actually a dual-core processor, so I presume that should give better performance than an equivelant single core. Also, after advice I probably will upgrade to 2GB of RAM as it only costs a little extra.

Although I've also decided to look at buying an Xbox 360, as many of the PC games I am interested in playing (F.E.A.R, Half Life 2, Dreamfall etc) have been ported, and the 360 costs about a quarter of the price of a new PC. I guess I'll just have to see how many upcoming PC exclusives I want to play...

[theCimmerian]

If the Xbox 360 gets the job done, you might take half the money you save by skipping the new PC and (assuming you don't already have one) buy a high definition television so you can really enjoy the graphics.

Me, I'd take the PC - but then I prefer strategy games, and there's generally a much better strategy selection for PC versus game console.