Gaming Machines

I'm asked on a fairly regular basis about how much a gaming PC should cost. If this was a perfect world, they would cost a little more than their console counterparts, however this is not a perfect world. Microsoft does not pay me to install Windows on my PC's, nor do I get money from EA every time I ship a PC that will play their games. The fact of the matter is that if all we did with our computers was play video games, there would be no market for "Gaming PC's." Luckily for me, PC's can do much more than just play video games, which is why we pay more for them than our Xboxs or Playstations. While I play Team Fortress 2, for instance, I listen to my iTunes, record TV with Media Center and could even be transcoding a DVD to DIVX. I'd like to see your 360 do that!

Unfortunately, PC gamers put so much higher demands on our PC's that we require much more powerful hardware than our consoles contain. Even Sony's Playstation 3 with its very strong Cell processor, G70-based video and XDR memory struggles when you run Linux on it because of slow hard drive performance and a measly 256 MB of RAM. Game consoles are so inexpensive partly because they are partially paid for with royalties, but also because their hardware is very specialized for their sole purpose: running video games.

So I tell most people that you will end up paying around $1700 for a great gaming experience, or more for a better experience. Njord SLI is that PC, and it really does shine when you sit back and fire up just about any title out there and crank up the settings. Moreso, they will probably look better even on your 720p TV than your console can play them.

The real purpose of this post is actually to talk about why I chose the parts I did for our gaming offerings, namely Njord SLI, Njord AM2, Thor and Odin. I read a review today about a gaming machine for $1500 that had, on paper, very impressive stats: quad-core processor, 4GB of RAM, dual video cards and more. Ready for the rub? The quad-core processor is a Phenom 2.2ghz, the 4GB of RAM is not even useable because the machine ships with Vista 32-bit, and the dual video cards are actually a single card, the 3870 X2.

Njord SLI ships with a dual-core processor, 4GB of RAM and a single video card, and it costs $250 more. However, that dual-core is a Core 2 Duo overclocked to over 3.0ghz, the memory is all there thanks to 64-bit Vista, and the single video card is a 9600GT which has just amazing performance for the dollar. Our end result may look weak in plain English, but when you compare the stats, we will beat the competition in just about every situation.

Thor is also a tricky call, because it is still a dual-core processor, 4GB of RAM, and a single video card. But again, looking past the plain English we see a brand-spanking new Core 2 Duo E8400 at over 3.6ghz, DDR2 that hits nearly 1000mhz, and an 8800GT that, when overclocked, even gives the 8800GTX a run for it's money. Again, this machine could stomp a quad-core with dual video cards if that quad-core was a Phenom 2.2ghz and the dual video cards were the 3870 X2.

I post many of the Nordic PC machines onto the Futuremark ORB and make them publically available. While it is not a perfect representation of how a PC will perform in all video games, it is a pretty good performance meter most of the time. I wanted to touch on two of the systems I put up there, both systems were varients on a very similar shell, only the video cards, CPUs and motherboards changed. Both systems scored around 12,000 points in 3dMark 2006, so in theory, they should game the same, right? Wrong.

One system was a Q6600 with dual 8600GTS cards in SLI mode while the other was a E4400 with a single 8800GT. Naturally, the first system should perform better since it has more cores and more cards, but the later actually gets better frame rates in just about every game I've ever run, and not by a small margin. The big difference is that most games are still only using about a core and a half, and SLI is not giving us perfect scaling. SLI is an awesome upgrade path, but if you can, you should always buy a faster single card over two slower cards. 

So even if you decide to purchase your next PC somewhere else, do yourself a favor and look beyond the plain English and the 3dMark results. Even more so, look beyond review sites who may very well be keeping that PC they just reviewed in exchange for a good write-up.