We promised we would get our lad his own PC this Christmas, and though we don’t have a massive budget I want to get one he can game on as he doesn’t have a PS3 or any form of games machine.

It’s entirely dependant on the game and what experience you want him to have. What sort of games does he play? The latest ones? Most of them now need a monster PC to play well on.

If he’s happier playing last years games then chances are you can get away with less, but unfortunately it’s not an exact science.

As a rule of thumb though, the graphics card is your main driver. To do the gubbins nowadays, the graphics card will typically cost as much as, or more than the rest of the PC.

And I’m sorry to say, that even a half decent PC is going to cost a fair bit more than an XBOX360 (for example).

A reasonable gaming PC that will play modern games at a sensible lick will cost you around 300-500 quid, easy, and I’d say that’s minimum spec.

For example, this is what I’d say is a mid level gaming PC, but it doesn’t come with a screen, keyboard or mouse, add another hundred on at least for those.
http://www.custompc.ie/intel-gaming-pc—level-2-20050-p.aspp

I built up my current PC (which is about the same spec as the above) for about 150 quid but I used the old screen, hard drives and case.

It would be cheaper to buy a PS3.

I would say around £800 minimum if he wants to play the likes of COD, GTA etc. Just bought an AMD 1090T overclocked with a GTX470, and already I’m thinking it’s still not quite enough.

Trouble is as soon as it’s delivered it’s out of date.
Saying that I saw COD on the nephews Xbox earlier and it looked rubbish compared to the PC version.

I have a Phenom X4 955 with a Geforce 460 and 4gb Ram. I’ve no problem playing anything on max settings unless I turn on Physx and so far I can’t see any great advantage. Mafia II runs great but I doubt your son will be playing that. My previous system with a gts 8800 (same processor) ran most games up to 2 years old pretty well including Dragon Age origins. Cost wise however for a decent gaming PC you’re talking £500+. Best bet for ease of use and cost I would probably plump for a PS3 or Xbox. At least with the PS3 you’re getting a Blu Ray player as well.

Depends what games you want to play. I get by alright with a Q6600 processor, 4gb ram and an 8800GT 512MB graphics card. It plays Crysis and that latest Far Cry on their highest settings.

Another vote for an Xbox or PS3 – a much cheaper way to do gaming.

Buy him an Xbox & a netbook

It’ll probably work out cheaper

Depends what games you want to play. I get by alright with a Q6600 processor, 4gb ram and an 8800GT 512MB graphics card. It plays Crysis and that latest Far Cry on their highest settings.

To emphasise your first point, I’ve got the same GPU in SLi with the same amount of ram and an Athlon x4 620 CPU.

A couple of years ago this could play Battlefield 2, Crisis etc. all on highest settings, but now just about about plays Bad Company 2 on the lowest settings (which is about as resource hungry as anything else at the moment) but it struggles badly when I’m in the thick of things.

They’re old cards now and any decent specced PC will be running much higher off the shelf.