Selecting The Right Computer
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008There’s no question that personal computers were built with baseline functionality- all of them can process documents, and to a certain extent, play multimedia and display the same. However, there are significant difference when we think of specific needs of users of personal computers.
Here is an easy to understand scenario: compare a student and a professional PC gamer. If you are thinking about which types of PC fits which, then you can expect significant differences between the two.
Here is a question to ask: what does a student need in a computer? Put yourself in the shoes of a university student, and think about what types of work and activities you will be engaged in. A PC is more likely to function as a typewriter or word processor for the average college coed. It is already a given that you will be printing and submitting a lot of papers and reports.
If you think about the degree or course of the student, such as engineering or architecture, then you can expect that there are certain changes from the basic type of PC. Definitely, the student has a huge database of files to be saved, and possibly even special software for designing. For sure, he needs ample disk space to accommodate all his files.
Now, if we are talking about space, then we are talking about hard disk space here- the lowest is 80, then there are those that reach 300 now. So that’s fixed- how about computing power? A student will not need a computer with extreme computing power or clocked speeds exceed 1.5 GHz- what would be the point? For video cards, it is the same- a regular video card with 512 MB will do. If the student plays some games, that baseline is also sufficient for playing. However, as for the gamer, it is another whole different thing.
A gamer would be using the personal computer in two ways- for work and for leisure. The leisure part would be the one that would tax the computer most, because it would be running algorithmic engines non-stop, playing multimedia and receiving input from the user at the same time.
In terms of the hard disk space, how much would a game fanatic need? For sure, 300 GB of disk space would not be enough, so a larger and more generous hard drive is needed. However, hard drives that can take more than 300 GB tend to be costly, so a way to get around this for gamers is to install more than one hard disk onto their PC. Think about it: installing one game may use up more than 5 GB of space alone, and a lot of virtual memory will also be needed as the game is being played.
When thinking about a processor that is powerful enough for the gamer, the basics simply would not do. Intel Skulltrail is one that is highly recommended for these purposes.
