Competitive Gaming on a Budget FNATIC Says Yes @ Techgage

Maybe one of the shortest system reviews I have ever seen but does bring up a good question.  "Can you game on a $500 system?"

Short answer "Yes",  You can game on anything from an Android tablet to a Dell to something you found at the thrift store.

Longer answer: "Depends on what you want to play"

This will undoubtedly raise a few eyebrows, as I admit I was a little suspicious whether you would actually be able to seriously game without a dedicated GPU. CPUs with integrated graphics have come a long way, and you are hard pressed to find motherboards nowadays without integrated video. There is an obvious push by the industry to integrate graphics. Years ago, it was common that the higher end motherboards didn’t have integrated graphics, but again, not the case these days.

The question is, can you game at the level of the competition gamers, without dropping a bundle? Can you get enough power into a small form-factor that is smaller than a 6 pack of beer? Let’s take a closer look at what AMD and FNATIC have come up with.

Something deep down tells me that you should NEVER game on internal graphics but most of that comes from several years knowing that internal graphics was always intended for corporate America and suzy/sammy homemaker checking email and watching pr0n. 

If you want to really game you need a better graphics card.

Thing is internal graphics have gotten better and while 4K gaming is still a long way off you can do 1080p with several hefty graphics tweaks. 

Of course, just because you can build a cooler sized PC "designed for gaming" the real question is should you?  Why bother building something like that when you could buy one off the shelf, have access to tech support and will likely come with an OS. 

Believe me I am all for building your own computer and tell people they should but "this" isn't how you do it.

Related Web URL: http://techgage.com/article/competitive-gaming-on-...