Believe it or not, some of you actually write me letters or drop me e-mails from time to time with questions about the column or whatever. I am honoured to receive your feedback and genuinely do try to find out whatever you want to know. Recently I have had several letters, predominantly from parents, asking about gaming PCs. A typical letter ran like this - "Hi Dan. I am not sure if you will be able to help me but I am thinking about buying a new PC. My son (although it has been husband / wife also) has gotten into games and I would like to buy a machine that he could play on. However, I have seen the prices of so-called "Gaming Machines" and am not sure I could stretch to that. Are those really the only computers that are suitable? Thanks for any help you can give, [Name Withheld]. So to those of you in this position I first of all say this - THERE IS HOPE. No, you don't have to buy a $3,000 dollar machine to play games on (I certainly didn't) and nowadays with computers it is relatively easy to sort the wheat from the chaff without wading through acres of technical documentation etc. Phew. Breathe O.K., let's get started - just follow the checklist:
DECISION ONE: Decide on a pricepoint. Like anything, computers can be bought for different prices - just don't assume that the more expensive is the better for gaming it is. While this is generally true there are very costly machines which are lousy at gaming because they are configured as workstations or servers. Frankly, if you have $3-4,000 to spend on a computer then you should not be reading this. Just buy a copy of PC World, look for a company called Alienware and buy their Area 51. Just go and do it now. Thanks. Now that those of us who have to be slightly more financially careful are left, there is one point worth adding: just as it is necessary to buy an outstanding machine it is not advisable to buy a really cheap machine either. If you look at most sub-$800 machines while their chipspeed may be good (normally the adverts will scream "1.4gHz NOW") they will be very weak in other areas – normally graphics cards or memory – that will severely hinder them as gaming machines. Basically I would think that if you spend about $1500 you will get a good, reasonably future-proof machine that can play the games of today quickly and rapidly. I am going to base the rest of this article on this kind of pricepoint (certainly Dell supply a machine with the specifications I am about to outline for this kind of money – see www.dell.com for more.
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