Home A Lazyguide to gaming (on a budget) this festive season.

A Lazyguide to gaming (on a budget) this festive season.

2 min read
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Guest Writer: Karl Thomson

 

It’s that time of year where we all rush around partaking in that glorious consumer-driven nightmare that is Christmas. I assume that everyone who would be reading this is hoping to find some form of stocking stuffer like one of the ludicrous amount of good games released in the past month, or new hardware to play one of said ludicrous games.

Here at Lazygamer, we encourage wanting either of the above or just buying it yourself, as that’s what we would and have done. However, before digging into your University fund to finance a new graphics card so Far Cry 2 can be cranked up to ultra quality, here are a few pointers to get the absolute most gaming pleasure for gamers on a budget.

  1. Clean it, and clean it well. – Heat is thy enemy and dust traps the heat in. So take everything out, get a vacuum cleaner to suck the dirt out of your rig, then use something like a soft toothbrush to get those particularly vicious bits of muck out.
     
  2. Make sure your PC is well ventilated – Continuing on the heat theme; make sure all the heat generated has a way to get out. Get an extra case fan if you need to and make sure all your fans work properly. If a fan has seized, just throw it away, its not worth the overheating risk.
     
  3. Over clock your graphics card – Providing excess heat can be dealt with, nudge your graphics card up 10% and run anything that will make the card work like a Russian in a Siberian Prison camp. If your PC crashes, just clock it down a notch. Rinse and repeat. Applications like RivaTuner for Nvidia cards can even reset the clock speed at restart, preventing a system lockup which would just make you look foolish.
     
  4. RAM is cheap and awesome – The current price of a 1GB DDR2 800MHz RAM card is around R250-R350, which is a pitiful amount of money for the performance increase. So go buy more, buy more now.
     
  5. Knowledge is king – before buying anything expensive, do some research. How good is it in practice? Is there a better option available? Does it have any problems? Every bit of prior knowledge of a product will help in making the right choice in hardware. www.tomshardware.com is a good place to start.
     
  6. Don’t lust after better graphics only – Fallout 3 running at 30fps on medium is better than 10fps on. Also, no one likes a graphics w**re.
     
  7. Buy an Xbox360/ PlayStation3 – It’s cheaper than a new high end graphics card and they both have gaming libraries that makes me weep with joy. A hardcore gamer cannot not offer any reason not to buy this over top-of-the-range Geforce or Radeon. Just don’t buy a Wii, you will be disappointed if you enjoy real gaming.

 

Hopefully, these helpful hints can help the financially-challenged gamer get the most out of this wonderful gaming period. It really should go without saying that if you have a Celeron PC, just skip straight to point 7 and save yourself the agonizing question of “Will it run?”

Last Updated: December 5, 2008

12 Comments

  1. Macethy

    December 5, 2008 at 11:06

    Gave up on pc gaming years ago and am officially a console fanboy,love the whole pop in the disc and play!

    Reply

  2. spl0it

    December 5, 2008 at 11:34

    Buy an x360 Arcade for R1750
    Buy used games for R250 a pop Ala Gears of War1 , Call of Duty 4 etc etc.

    Reply

  3. easy

    December 5, 2008 at 12:03

    use a vacuum cleaner! i would not recommend that at all… unless you like static

    Reply

  4. MaxiViper

    December 5, 2008 at 13:01

    New Intel Quad core due 2 extreme = about R10,000.00 without the PC or anything else.

    80GB PS3 = R5400

    120GB Xbox 360 elite = about R3500

    There’s are big difference!
    I just made you go with a console instead of a PC.

    Reply

  5. Karl Thomson

    December 5, 2008 at 13:05

    I have literally used a vacuum cleaner to suck up dirt when it was so bad my pc crashed whenever i started anything using the Unreal 3 Engine. I just used caution, and had no problems. So it was a tried and tested method, not just educated guessing :mrgreen:

    Reply

  6. xyber

    December 6, 2008 at 10:49

    I normally use an air compressor, the one my dad uses to fill the tractor tyres with. Now that thing can blow a dustball into oblivion :mrgreen:

    Reply

  7. xyber

    December 6, 2008 at 10:57

    Seriously though, you do not need a Quad core due 2 extreme. The graphics is being handled by the GPU, so make sure to get a nice graphics card, that should be your one most expensive piece of hardware in your PC. Get enought RAM, 4GB is good and not that expensive as said in the article. You can pick up a decent CPU and mobo for bout R4 or 5k. Yes it all still works out more than a PS3 or 360, but consider that the games are way less than the console game prices (even more if the rumours of R1000, 360 games next year is true). Also, the PC will have much better looking graphics.

    Anycase, I’m no fanboy of the PC. I own both 360 and PS3, and I admit PC is expensive if you want a top rig. But at the rate console game prices are going I’m thinking of upgrading my PC and start buying these multiplat games for it rather.

    Reply

  8. MaxiViper

    December 6, 2008 at 15:55

    YA BUT THE PC DOESN’T have HDMI.

    Reply

  9. MaxiViper

    December 6, 2008 at 16:02

    AND with the recent PC games that have come out Require higher Ram and updated or new Graphics cards, it then sometimes means you’ll have to spend extra money just to run the game, and then some.

    I used to souly play games on PC but it got to expensive and now I also Own PS3 and 360

    Reply

  10. SlippyMadFrog

    December 7, 2008 at 22:12

    Why do you want HDMI if you have a PC? Am I missing something?

    Reply

  11. Crud

    December 8, 2008 at 06:33

    if you buy a new gf card you do get hdmi…dvi-to-hdmi converter, got mine with my ati4870.

    Reply

  12. V@mp

    December 8, 2008 at 09:33

    All the money you save on the price of games alone should
    definitely not be taken lightly.You’ll be surprised
    as to what it ads up to.And you really don’t need a quad core just yet.Unless you wanna play GTA IV.Holy freaking
    hell.That game is a resource WHORE!

    Reply

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