Tuesday, 7 June 2011
2011 Best Gaming Pc
CyberPower PC Black Pearl Review
Playing PC video games requires more than just the cheapest bargain computer with wimpy hardware components. Those kinds of gaming PCs may have attention-capturing specs like
Video/Audio:
A few months ago NVIDIA dropped a couple of bomb shells on us, the GTX 480 and 470. However, do to some minor issues the 480 was updated and sent out with a new name the GTX 580 which is by far their best card. This card is one of the most powerful on the market, giving the owner of one a nice smooth ride in any game they play. CyberPower's Black Pearl gaming PC comes equipped with two of these amazing cards, which is more than enough graphic processing power to run any game at max graphic settings and maintain a high rate of frames per second.
Each card has 1.5GB of GDDR5 video memory, which is more than enough for any game and is only dwarfed by AMD's flagship, the ATI Radeon HD 5970, which has 2GB. The 1.5GB of memory are clocked at 1848 MHz and a core speed of 772 MHz, which is the fastest on the marketAside from excellent performance, the other great part about the GTX 400 series cards is their inclusion of DirectX 11 which is the newest multimedia and gaming interfaced used to make those games even more realistic. For a while ATI cards were the only contenders in that market but that is no longer the case. DX 11 focused on adding more computing support, as well as the video rendering feature tessellation. These were to really give game developers, and eventually gamers, more realistic and fluid graphics rendering.
Tessellation has been around for a while but has never been implemented much due to the processing power it takes. Since the DX 11 release, though, that is probably about to change. NVIDIA took those same things and integrated them into the FERMI technology that the GTX 400 series has. With this added technology and support we are ready for some seriously intense graphics that will astound us all.
Processor:
Quad-core processors dominate most of the high-end gaming PC market. However, both Intel and AMD have taken the next step and brought out a six-core, 12-thread chip. The CyberPower PC Black Pearl has the Intel Core i7 980 Extreme, which is by far the most powerful CPU on the market. This processor stock is clocked at 3.3 GHz but it comes overclocked to 4 GHz. Normally you would have to worry about heat, but this gaming PC comes with the Asetek 510LC 120mm Liquid Cooling system, which will keep everything at a reasonable temperature.
Memory/Storage:
Another very important feature that every gaming PC needs is a good set of RAM. The CyberPower PC Black Pearl has 6GB of Kingston's HyperX DDR3, which is clocked at 1600 MHz. The motherboard allows for adding another three sticks if you wish and can handle faster clock speeds as well. That is plenty of RAM power and probably isn't the bottleneck on this rig. If there is a bottleneck it probably resides with the hard drive, which is a regular 7200 1TB HDD. Thankfully that is the secondary drive. The primary is an Intel 80GB SSD. As long as you are using it and not the secondary, slow speeds are not probable.
Additional Features:
The motherboard housing all these jaw-dropping pieces of technology is the ASUS P6X58D-E Intel X58, which should handle just about anything you can throw at it. The CyberPower PC Black Pearl has two PCI Express x16 slots, both running at x16. There are another two x16 slots running at x8 and then two xl slots. There is also a PCI slot for anyone still using equipment that requires one. With about every SATA connection you can think of you should have no problems with storage interface options. Also there is FireWire and up to 10 USB ports at your disposal.
This gaming PC is running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit like most other pre-built machines. There are two optical drives, a Blu-ray drive and a DVD +/- RW drive. Now between the processor, RAM, graphics cards, optical drives, water cooling and everything else you can imagine how much power this gaming PC must need. Thankfully there is a Corsair 1000-watt power supply to do the job, and it does it well. A power supply with this much wattage should have no problem keeping up to speed with advancing technology.Support/Warranty:
CyberPower PC offers full information about what is in each of their gaming PCs but like most other companies doesn't go into much detail about the specs of each piece of hardware. This is common and isn't really a problem since most people know what they're looking for when they buy a gaming PC. Although they don't offer those details, they can still easily be found elsewhere.
According to the code of Power PC's warranty, you are covered by a limited three-year labor and one-year parts warranty. Although it's only a guideline and not an actual rule, if any parts are defective, they will show their true colors before that one year mark usually. Three years of labor is nice should you need any servicing. After three years most gamers are looking to upgrade. On the gaming PC website you can find a contact phone number, email address, FAQs, driver downloads and just about anything else you could want for additional help and support.Summary:
As you can see, the CyberPower PC Black Pearl gaming PC is by no means the "$300 super savings special." Gaming PCs need high-end hardware and unmatched computing speeds and this system gives you all the computing power you could ever want in a gaming computer. With it you can set sail on the vast ocean of great games, then pillage and plunder to your heart's desire. With all the great games coming out and DirectX 11 implementation creeping into the works, all gamers can use a powerhouse like this computer to help them in their epic gaming adventures.
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Gaming pc info
A gaming computer (also gaming PC, gaming machine and gaming rig) is a personal computer that is capable of playing computationally demanding video games. Gaming computers are very similar to conventional PCs, with the main difference being the addition of a performance-oriented video card. Gaming computers are often associated with enthusiast computing due to an overlap in interests. However, while a gaming PC is built to achieve performance for actual gameplay, enthusiast PCs are built to maximize performance, using games as a benchmark. The difference between the two carries a large discrepancy in the cost of the system. Whereas enthusiast PCs are high-end by definition, gaming PCs can be subdivided into low-end, mid-range, and high-end segments. Contrary to the popular misconception that PC gaming is inextricably tied to high-priced enthusiast computing, video card manufacturers earn the bulk of their revenue from their low-end and mid-range offerings.
Because of the large variety of parts that can go into a computer built to play video games, gaming computers are typically custom-made, rather than pre-assembled, either by gaming and hardware enthusiasts or by companies such as Alienware, Gateway, VoodooPC, V3 Gaming PC, LanSlide Gaming PCs and Origin PC that specialize in producing custom gaming machines. In order to generate interest, gaming computer manufacturers that sell complete systems often produce boutique models, allowing them to compete on aesthetic design in addition to the hardware inside.
Contents
1 Hardware
2 Prebuilt gaming PC
3 Gaming laptop
Hardware
Historically, gaming computers had several distinct hardware components that set them apart from a typical PC. The push for better graphics began with color fidelity, from display systems such as CGA eventually graduating to VGA, which was adopted for the mass market. Gaming also led the push for the adoption of sound cards, a component that is now commonly integrated onto motherboards.
In the 1980s, several non-IBM PC compatible platforms gained a measure of popularity due to advanced graphics and sound capabilities, most notably the Commodore 64 and Amiga. Computer game developers of the time targeted these platforms for their games, though typically they would later port their games to the more common PC and Apple platforms as well. The MSX was also popular in Japan, where it preceded the video game console revolution.
LAN parties helped to promote the use of network cards and routers. This equipment is now commonly used by non-gamers with broadband Internet access to share the connection with multiple computers in the home. Like sound cards, network adapters are now commonly integrated on motherboards.
In modern times, the primary difference between a gaming computer and a typical PC is the inclusion of a performance-oriented video card, which hosts a graphics processor. Some motherboards support up to four video cards through SLI or Crossfire. However, such configurations are typically regarded as a curiosity for enthusiasts rather than a useful alternative to single-card upgrade cycles.
Forays into physics processing have also been made, though with Nvidia's buyout of PhysX and Intel's buyout of Havok, plans are that this functionality will be combined with existing CPU or GPU technologies.
Prebuilt gaming PC
While many "hardcore" gamers build their gaming PCs themselves, some choose to go with prebuilt or custom-built gaming PCs. These PCs can often be more expensive than building one's own, with higher premiums attached to high-end brands with varying levels of customer service. Different companies offer varying degrees of customization, some almost as much as building it oneself. There are however, drawbacks to building one's own computer. Assembling a computer means being personally responsible for any problems that may arise, both during the assembly phase, and after it's in regular use. Instead of using a single technical support hotline to cover your entire system, often one will have to deal with individual component manufactures.
Due to the wide inconsistencies in after-purchase support from component manufactures, trying to get support can be a daunting task for even the most patient of people. Customer support is a major reason why even extreme gaming enthusiasts may look to a system integrator for their custom PC builds. There are many positive aspects in choosing to build one's own system, such as no longer being tied to specific configurations. Pricing on individual components is often better, and thus saves quite a lot of money on a comparable pre-built system.
Gaming laptop
Gaming laptops are the mobile equivalent of gaming desktops and are usually more expensive than their desktop counterparts. Currently, most gaming laptops feature more power efficient versions of high end desktop graphics cards, which still drain heavily on battery life, and necessitate more advanced cooling systems. One recent development by NVIDIA is SLI for laptops. Generally, gaming laptops are not considered "rigs" as the term can also refer to the physical size of the system. Modern gaming laptops[3] can achieve respectable game performance, but never quite match desktops in a class to class comparison, and most do not feature upgradeable graphics cards.
Due to the relatively small size that the hardware has to fit in, cooling the heat intensive components is a major problem affecting the performance of such laptops, usually causing degraded value for money performance wise. Attempts at using the same performance hardware as desktops usually end in a decreased clock frequency of graphics chips to reduce heat, causing the poor value for money.
A newer trend in the gaming PC industry is to create small form factor desktops that are easy to transport. Several companies provide lines that specialize in these computers.
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