Computer Background

March 22nd, 2008 by Mitch

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A gaming PC, sometimes referred to as gaming computer or gaming rig, is a personal computer built specifically for computer gaming. Overall, these computers are better than 'basic' PC's which usually do not run applications that require highly demanding hardware. These computers have more RAM, bigger hard drives, more powerful processors, and better graphic cards than a basic PC.

History

Origin

As computer games started becoming graphically and computationally complex in the 1990's, with games such as Quake and Tomb Raider using hardware accelerated graphics, the concept of building PCs specifically for gaming was born. As such, the power of a gaming PC's GPU has always been the top priority. In the early and mid 90's, companies such as Voodoo PC, Falcon Northwest and Alienware, focusing entirely on gaming and high-end PCs were launched. Games like The 7th Guest and Myst were killer apps that helped CD-ROMs and sound cards become far more popular. In 1998, AMD incorporated the 3DNow! instruction set into their K6-2 CPU line as well as every CPU model thereafter. The technology was designed for vector processing, a frequent task in 3D games. Intel responded with Streaming SIMD Extensions in the Pentium III, which AMD eventually also incorporated from Athlon XP onwards. However, it wasn't until the 2000's when major computer manufacturers such as Dell made any serious attempts at building gaming PC's.

Status Symbol for the Hardcore Gamer

The gaming PC is also a status symbol for the hardcore gamer, as building a new gaming PC comes with the bragging rights of having the most powerful 'rig' amongst the people he or she knows.

Gamers who like to show off their customized or home built PCs, in particular those who attend LAN parties, often use cases with windows in order to easily show off the components inside. Typically a plethora of interior case lighting is used to display certain components. Additionally, some gamers also do some case modding.

The Rising Cost of Gaming PC's

The cost of gaming PCs has also increased significantly even with inflation factored in. For example, the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro was released at US$399 in 2002.[1] Today, new graphics cards are launched at US$500 or above. If one factors in SLI or CrossFire, people now spend more than US$1000 on graphics cards alone for a high-end gaming experience.

A further boost to the potential cost was made when Intel and AMD started releasing gaming and overclocking specific CPUs, often at the top of the price range. Currently, the lineups are known as "extreme edition" suffix and the Athlon FX series in 2003 by Intel and AMD respectively.

Hardware Description

Graphics

Gaming PCs use hardware accelerated graphic cards which offer high end rasterisation based rendering. Memory capacity on 3D cards is usually high in the range of a few hundred megabytes. High end 3D graphics cards use the PCI-E or AGP expansion slots on the motherboard, with the latter type of expansion slot currently being phased out. Two or more graphics cards can sometimes be used simultaneously via the utilisation of SLI or ATI CrossFire technology. Using SLI or crossfire configurations with upwards of 1 GiB of memory are possible. Due to the additional load on the CPU and the requirement of most modern games to have hardware accelerated graphics, a computer without a dedicated graphics card or with a video card integrated on the motherboard cannot be considered a gaming PC.

"A well-made, top-class video card should at least adequately play all the new games for about two years, though hardcore gamers will eagerly spend the money to upgrade more often. To keep up with the technology while spending the least amount of money, waiting two years to upgrade is the most accepted compromise." - Microsoft.com

The graphics cards found in gaming PCs are always within the latest 2 generations (which generally last about 6 months) of graphics cards when built in order to achieve high performance.

Visual feedback

While the superiority between LCD screens and CRT monitors is still debated, it is clear that a fast response time and high refresh rate is desired in order to display smooth motion. Apart from the primary display, some gamers choose to use secondary displays as well. These may include a second screen or an LCD display located on the keyboard or by itself.

Audio

Gaming PCs are usually equipped with dedicated sound cards and more recently, surround sound speakers. Speakers can include 5.1 to 7.2 surround sound and/or headphones. A surround sound speaker setup is a required to enjoy the full audio experience found in most modern computer games.[6] Sound cards have hardware accelerated technologies, such as EAX, so that adding sound effects and streaming audio across the bus does not place additional loads on the CPU. The Sound Blaster X-Fi has 64 MiB (unprecedented for a sound card) of onboard RAM and has gaming PCs as part of its main target demographic with a dedicated "gaming mode".[7]

Physics

While physics cards are now available, compatibility and performance increases are still debated. Some people have experienced performance downgrades in GRAW, one of few games currently available that take advantage of additional physics hardware. Graphics card manufacturers plan on including PPUs on their chipsets and also adding a slot for a third graphics card (in addition to the usual 2 slots for SLI or Crossfire setups) to act as a PPU. At the moment, the cards are expensive and not widely used, but the figures are improving.

CPU

The CPU is generally responsible for computing physics, AI and central game processes. Gaming PCs generally have high-end CPUs or gaming specific CPUs such as the Extreme Edition line by Intel. With the rise of multithreaded games, multi processor and multi core setups become more important than ever. Knowledgeable buyers will also make sure their CPU is capable of running the latest instruction set extensions, such as SSE3.

Memory

Memory, or RAM, acts as a cache for non-graphical resources that games use. Gaming PCs typically have more expensive editions of RAM sticks, which sometimes include LEDs indicating the current level of activity. The fast RAM found in gaming PCs has the benefit of increased performance by having lower latency than regular RAM.

Storage

In gaming PCs, fast hard drives are very desirable. Having a faster hard drive will result in lower loading times in games. For this reason, some gaming PCs use certain RAID setups to lower latency and increase throughput to mass storage. Since the space taken up by games is nominal compared to the total availability on modern hard drives, speed is preferred over capacity.

Network

While typical computers, including high-end systems, tend to use wireless connections to connect to other computers as well as the internet, gaming PCs more often use ethernet cables for the fastest and most reliable connection possible. Dial-up connections cannot even be considered as a gaming solution due to the unacceptably high pings (~400ms is common).

Interfaces

There are many hardware interfaces designed specifically for gaming and while sometimes used with less powerful PCs, they are most often observed with gaming PCs. Such interfaces include keyboards and mice built for gaming (these typically include additional keys or buttons for game-related functions as well as LCD-screens), joysticks, gamepads, steering wheels, PC-compatible airplane gauges and panels, and others. It should be noted that touch screens are rarely used for PC gaming at this point.

Haptic feedback

More commonly known as force feedback, haptic feedback allows for greater immersion into the games played. While there are no keyboards that support haptic feedback, some mice and most forms of game controllers do.

Cases

Case designs for gaming computers tend to be flashier; cases with clear sides are common, to reveal the internal components which may be adorned with LEDs. In addition to aesthetics, gaming cases are also designed for function; the case must be able to provide cooling for high-end components, and have room for expansion and customization.

Performance and Benchmarks

As a general guideline, a gaming PC should achieve high scores on 3D benchmarks such as 3DMark when it is first built or upgraded. Gamers who know how to overclock sometimes do so to prolong the usefulness of their hardware. The highest results are always and by far achieved by overclocking.

Outside benchmarks and in "real world" testing, the performance of a gaming PC can be measured by two metrics - framerate and visual quality.

The framerate is measured in frames per second (fps), which refers to the number of times the video card refreshes the image shown on screen. Generally, frame rates of above 30 are desirable in high performance games, though the fastest gaming PCs can often achieve much higher framerates while maintaining visual quality.

Visual quality refers to the visual quality of the rendered image. Higher settings and resolution have a negative effect on the framerate. A key feature of the gaming PC is that it should be able to maintain high values of both framerate and visual quality simultaneously.

Overclocking

Apart from hardware enthusiasts, overclocking is used in gaming PCs to achieve higher framerates than the parts in the PC would render using stock clockspeeds. Overclocking is such a big part in gaming PC culture that some PC gaming magazines such as GameStar occasionally publish guides on how to overclock the latest CPUs, GPUs, and motherboards. In order to achieve the highest overclocks, more advanced cooling methods must be employed, such as water cooling.

Pre-built gaming PCs were rarely overclocked, but a trend has emerged with the Dell XPS 600 Renegade and several other companies including Vigor Gaming, Overdrive PC, Alienware, Falcon Northwest, and Voodoo PC now offering overclocked and warrantied machines.