PCs: Where gaming is most relevant!

I’m willing to bet 90% percent of this audience operates and plays at least two of the following: current-gen console games, traditional handheld games (Nintendo or Sony), and mobile games (iOS or Android). For how quickly the gaming industry changes, consumers, who undoubtedly play a huge role in the industry’s advancements, do a stand-up job of exploring what each platform or console has to offer. Hell, even the Dreamcast crowd has a reason to move on.

Apart from consumer-driven activity that spans from gaming expos to forums, advancements in hardware may have the second largest impact on gaming and, in the case of PC hardware, it is the user base that can find a beautiful medium between hardware and gaming. How does a user find that medium? Putting together a PC, of course!

Building a PC is one of the most constructive experiences related to gaming without pushing a button…apart from the power button. Although many of the elite systems out there run anywhere from $1000-several thousand dollars more than a home console, they have a story behind them that the rest of gaming cannot tell.

With several manufacturers to choose for most components, from motherboards, to RAM, to mice & keyboards, building a gaming PC is as much about the process as it is the result. The moderate and enthusiast builders out there spend hours of research, building, and testing to get their system working exactly how they like it (primarily for gaming). This may all seem irrelevant to you, but let me frame my point in the example below:

Dude A: “I just upgraded my graphics setup from a single GTX460 to dual ASUS-GTX670s in SLI!
Dude B: How does that boost in frames per second look like in Battlefield 3?
Dude A: I ran the FPS benchmark and noticed a 34% increase…on 1920 x 1080 resolution!
Dude B: Not bad man! You know, I saw those cards really perform well with the overclocking features of the new ASUS Z77 motherboards.

Technical as it is, the example above shows us how users have the power to have a direct influence on the performance of their PCs. Unlike the console & traditional handheld systems, PC gaming goes through multiple wavs of hardware each year, explaining one of the reasons why PC gaming marks the performance standard for the industry. You’ve got a chance to experience this for yourself at an affordable price point. Some of these PCs can cost about as much as an iPad and run current standouts like Battlefield, Skyrim, and Crysis.

Last year, I put together my first PC for under $650 and can still enjoy PC exclusives like Blacklight Retribution and Tribes Ascend. Interestingly enough, when I upgraded the cooling unit on my processor, kept my graphics card driver current, and moved my system into a new case, I came away with an 8% increase in my graphical output (3dMark 11). So yeah, even a newbie can find his or her way into PC gaming quite comfortably!

I sincerely recommend giving this a try. While console games wiggle around in the mud of their current “generation” and give way to casual-based downloadable and indie games, the PC gaming market continues to deliver for its audience and help advance gaming all around. Continue to check up on Game Binge for more PC hardware & gaming articles and, in the meantime, keep your thumbs twitchin’ away!