24th March 2006, 1:20 PM
(This post was last modified: 24th March 2006, 1:30 PM by Dark Jaguar.)
Depends on what you want. I got a satisfactory GeForce 6800 with 256 MB of video RAM for about $200. I can run my games in the highest resolution my moniter can support with an average frame rate of around 30-40 FPS. If I take the resolution down a few notches, I can get a steady frame rate of 60, and if I wanted to spend more, I could get a second one and likely get a steady frame rate higher than that.
So, yes the video card can be pretty expensive, but if you know where the bottle necks are and what you need to do to overcome those, you really won't need the latest and greatest of everything to get an awesome computer.
(And by the way, that's without any sort of overclocking. When I start messing around with that, it's hard to say what I can get away with. Thing is, while I have some nice cooling options, the real issue is going to be the 2 pillows I stuffed behind my computer. I note confusion. Well, you see the power supply I got had a feature I wasn't aware of at purchase. Bright lights in all the colors of the rainbow spray photons out the back of my computer at the wall, keeping me up at night. I had to stuff pillows in strategic locations just to "wall off" the light while still allowing air flow. If I wasn't worried about damaging a vital component, I'd open the thing up and unhook all the lights in the thing. I suppose they were added to make the computer "shiny", but it's just annoying if you have your computer in your room and have to have total darkness to fall asleep (I'm talking the hall light coming in under the door being too much.))
By the way GR, it seems the Penny Arcade crew agree with our assessment of the PC version being better than the XBox version. I will say this. Even with my new "rig", my video card may be the one thing holding me back from maximum awesome in that game. Oh well, the motherboard is top of the line so I'll be able to use future video cards at their full potential for some time.
So, yes the video card can be pretty expensive, but if you know where the bottle necks are and what you need to do to overcome those, you really won't need the latest and greatest of everything to get an awesome computer.
(And by the way, that's without any sort of overclocking. When I start messing around with that, it's hard to say what I can get away with. Thing is, while I have some nice cooling options, the real issue is going to be the 2 pillows I stuffed behind my computer. I note confusion. Well, you see the power supply I got had a feature I wasn't aware of at purchase. Bright lights in all the colors of the rainbow spray photons out the back of my computer at the wall, keeping me up at night. I had to stuff pillows in strategic locations just to "wall off" the light while still allowing air flow. If I wasn't worried about damaging a vital component, I'd open the thing up and unhook all the lights in the thing. I suppose they were added to make the computer "shiny", but it's just annoying if you have your computer in your room and have to have total darkness to fall asleep (I'm talking the hall light coming in under the door being too much.))
By the way GR, it seems the Penny Arcade crew agree with our assessment of the PC version being better than the XBox version. I will say this. Even with my new "rig", my video card may be the one thing holding me back from maximum awesome in that game. Oh well, the motherboard is top of the line so I'll be able to use future video cards at their full potential for some time.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)