- Nov 8, 2010
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My friend is a console gamer, specifically Xbox360. I showed him TDU2 on my PC using a 360 controller and now he's intrigued. He wants to play the Batman: Arkham games and upcoming Skyrim and BF3. He didn't give me a hard budget, but he did say "as cheap as possible, but still look better than my Xbox on my TV". He's going to be playing on a 50" 1080p screen and the gameplay needs to look improved over the 360 version. Since he specifically mentioned the Batman games first, I built a configuration on Newegg with an added PhysX card. I know not many games use PhysX, but I think in this case, for $50, it will add enough to Batman to be worthwhile. Maybe not.
I read the $500 SBM and read about the weaknesses and strengths of the system and tried to follow the spirit, but I think that they always try to use the most modern hardware, which isn't always the most cost effective. That's why I went a bit old school on the GPUs. Basically, what I'm looking for is; any glaring problems I missed, whether the configuration has junk parts, and whether I can push good looking settings at 1080p. Other thoughts: delete the PhysX card and get a second GTX 260 in SLI, but at $200, is there a better option, because of the motherboard limitations (x16,x4, Crossfire Only) would need me to step up into a different price/SLI catagory.
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Sidenotes: I went with the Apevia case because it included 3 fans in the price and I read that both of the GPUs run hot. In my friends mind, he's taking an expensive gamble. He thinks PCs are complicated to game on until he saw Xbox controller support. The last computer game he played was Marathon on an Apple Macintosh Performa 630. It's because of his love for Bungie that he bought an Xbox for Halo in the first place.
I read the $500 SBM and read about the weaknesses and strengths of the system and tried to follow the spirit, but I think that they always try to use the most modern hardware, which isn't always the most cost effective. That's why I went a bit old school on the GPUs. Basically, what I'm looking for is; any glaring problems I missed, whether the configuration has junk parts, and whether I can push good looking settings at 1080p. Other thoughts: delete the PhysX card and get a second GTX 260 in SLI, but at $200, is there a better option, because of the motherboard limitations (x16,x4, Crossfire Only) would need me to step up into a different price/SLI catagory.
Sidenotes: I went with the Apevia case because it included 3 fans in the price and I read that both of the GPUs run hot. In my friends mind, he's taking an expensive gamble. He thinks PCs are complicated to game on until he saw Xbox controller support. The last computer game he played was Marathon on an Apple Macintosh Performa 630. It's because of his love for Bungie that he bought an Xbox for Halo in the first place.
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