What's New: The $10,000 Gaming PC

We've long said that today's video games require beefed up hardware. Dell has joined the high-end area with two recent moves, with interesting repercussions.

Wednesday Dell announced that they would be releasing an ultra-high-end PC designed solely for playing video games. The PC will feature an overclocked, dual-core CPU, four video card accelerators, and a separate "physics accelerator" chip. Overclocking is the technique of running a CPU faster than its originally designed speed (think "past redline"), and typically requires extra cooling to ensure the chip's survival. As we've said before, video games are what is driving today's PC hardware. While newer programs like Windows Vista will be able to take advantage of newer video hardware, most business applications don't need a $400 video card, let alone four.

Dell also announced they have purchased high-end PC maker Alienware. The interesting story there is that Alienware uses mostly AMD processors while Dell has been strictly an Intel shop. Here at ITS we have long said that AMD provides a superior performance/price ratio. Dell has indicated their preference for Intel won't affect Alienware products.

Thursday, Mar 23, 2006 10:12 am CST

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