by Bob Pritchard

Created on: October 30, 2010

A computer built to play today’s demanding games also shines in many other areas. All computer programs will benefit from the faster speeds of a well built gaming computer. These faster speeds are possible by upgrading the basic components of the computer.

Processors

Most gaming computers have very large processors. It's not unusual to see a dual core, triple core or even a quad core processor in these very fast machines. A dual core processor is the absolute minimum as these computers are moving very large amounts of data in a very short time. Everyday computing tasks can also be done much quicker and more efficiently with these larger processors.

Video cards

All the computers video processing is accomplished through the video graphics card. Gaming computers use video cards that have large video processing units that can render very quickly. These cards also have large amounts of video memory which allows games to run faster with higher quality images. Installing more than one video card in a gaming system is very common today. This allows the video cards to run in sli mode, which is a technology where the top and the bottom of the screen are rendered independently and then seamlessly put back together. This technology renders much quicker than using a single card. Using these high end video cards makes all your video data speed up considerably whether your running a game or streaming a high definition movie.

Ram (memory)

Gaming computers must have lots of memory. While this is important in any computer it is especially important in a gaming machine. Computers with small amounts of ram can have data bottleneck which greatly slows the transfer of data. A minimum of 2 gigabytes is required and more is much better. This extra ram not only makes games run better but it makes every program run better.

Hard drives

Gaming computers need very high capacity and fast hard drives. It's not unusual to see a hard drive in a gaming computer that's either solid state or a mechanical drive that runs at the higher 10,000 rpm speed. These fast hard drives make games run very fast and are very beneficial to all your other computer programs as well.

Today's high end games are about the most difficult programs your computer will ever have to run. If you have a computer that runs games effortlessly you will have a computer that's going to do everything effortlessly.

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