The gaming industry in the modern world is blooming and fragrant. Instead of developing space technology, humanity is completely immersed in toys, and computers are also being improved exclusively in this direction. What should a powerful PC look like that can run all the latest games? Let's try to figure it out using the data on the requirements for applications released in 2015-2016. Take X-Com 2 strategy, Tom Clancy's: The Division shooter, and GTA V bestseller as an example. So, what should a powerful PC look like?
How to choose an operating system
We did not begin in vain with this point. On the one hand, it is obvious that games released in 2016 should only work on the latest operating systems. Those now are Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. At the same time, the licensed "eight" more and more insistently invites users to upgrade to the tenth version.
In practice, the "seven" takes for itself a large amount of computer resources. Even the world's most powerful gaming computer will suffer if it is forced to give up almost 2.5 GB of RAM only to the operating system, not taking into account antiviruses and many other minor but important utilities.
The tenth version of the well-known OS requires even more computer resources. Thus, reading the requirements for the game, do not forget to add to them also those powers that go to maintaining the system.
RAM
Reading reviews of various games, one can often find comments in which players declare: even if the system is fully compliant, the game still slows down. We have already found out that such problems can be associated with a waste of resources on the OS. But this is far from always the case.
Take, for example, GTA V. The recommended requirements are clearly spelled out - 8 GB of RAM. However, at the same time, FPS draws down in 50% of the players. Of course, this may be due to both the processor and the video card. But, as practice shows, the greatest effect has an increase in memory size up to 16 GB.
This size, although it will not be top-end, will allow you to run the most demanding toys on your machine without any problems.
CPU
This is the most controversial parameter of the computer. On the one hand, this device can be overclocked to higher performance, on the other hand, it was noticed that even with a complete mismatch of this parameter of the game, you could run it at high settings.
All modern applications incorporate quad-core processors into the recommended requirements. For example, the Division asks for an i7-3770 with 3.4 MHz, and X-COM 2 asks for any other model similar in frequency and cores. Of course, the computing power of a computer plays an important role, therefore, when buying a computer with a margin for the future, it is worth paying attention to processors with a number of cores from 6. True, they will cost 4 times more than the ones mentioned above. For information: the six-core i7-4960X processor costs about 90 thousand rubles, while the i7-3770 costs 25,000.
Video card
A graphic card is the main component of any modern computer. Moreover, in the first place, the main role is played not by the size of its memory, as many believe, but by the clock frequency. Any powerful computer for games should have a video card that not only quickly processes the graphic component, but also supports all modern data processing technologies. A large amount of memory in this case becomes only a pleasant bonus.
In the three games we are considering, the recommended requirements come down to the GeForce GTX 660, 770, and 970 graphics cards . In general, these models are not very different from each other. If you are building a powerful PC, then you can completely manage the old GTX 660, it will be enough to run most games at high settings. However, for those who want to get the maximum effect, it is better to choose something newer.
Here the range is not limited. Many models from different manufacturers allow you to choose the best option. Often the choice will be between the number of computing processors and the frequency of video memory. If you are an experienced computer engineer, it is better to prefer a larger number of processors, because the frequency can always be overclocked to large values.
Additionally
We’ll talk separately about the secondary equipment. First of all, if you are building a powerful PC, check how much future “miracle” will consume energy, and buy a suitable power supply. If it does not give out enough power, then all your equipment will not work as it should.
Also purchase a reasonably large hard drive. One terabyte these days is just “trash,” given the amount of multimedia content stored on user computers. But games occupy 50-60 gigabytes. Therefore, the size of the railway should be chosen only by you, but you should definitely not take less than 2 TB.
The best
Now let's talk about the dream of any gamer. How to find the most expensive and most powerful computers? In any case, the price-quality parameters are directly proportional to each other. Therefore, the most powerful PC will be the most expensive.
Consider, for example, a Hyper Cosmos X gaming computer. It uses an eight-core i7-5960X processor with a frequency of 3 MHz. RAM is 64 GB (8 strips of 8 gigabytes) of DDR4 format. Four cards are used as a video card: GeForce GTX TITAN X with 12 GB of video memory each at a frequency of 7000 MHz. The total disk capacity is estimated at 10 TB. To “feed” all this, a 1500 W power supply is installed.
And this "miracle" costs almost 900 thousand rubles. However, if you remove three extra video cards, reduce the amount of RAM by half, the price will drop by almost half. At the same time, performance will not decrease by one FPS unit even in the newest games. However, such assemblies continue to be sold, apparently, very, very successfully.
Power
You can talk about home gaming computers and their cost as much as you like, but the most powerful PCs in the world are not gaming platforms at all , but research supercomputers. Their performance is almost impossible to evaluate in comparison with what we can see on the shelves in stores, since they are designed for completely different purposes.
Every six months a rating of such devices is published. To evaluate them, the concept of "flops" is used - this is the number of floating point operations per second. For comparison, the very first computer in the world had a performance of 500 flops. Now the most ordinary home PC has a capacity of hundreds of gigaflops, and the most popular PlayStation 4 console is 1.84 teraflops.
We will not talk about the entire rating, but only name number 1 from it. It's funny that the top 10 supercomputers include mainly American data centers. However, the miracle of Chinese technology is at the top of the hit parade, and it almost doubles its closest opponent. The Tianhe-2 computer (Milky Way) has a capacity of 33.86 petaflops (ten to the fifteenth degree).