Maximising Performance

The performance of a gaming computer can be measured by two standards - visual quality and framerate. The first term refers to the visual quality of the rendered image, whilst the framerate refers to the number of times the video card refreshes the image shown on screen. However, although higher visual quality and resolution settings have a negative effect on the framerate, the best gaming PCs are able to maintain high values of visual quality and framerate simultaneously. In general, frame rates of over 30 frames per second (fps) are desirable in high performance games, although the fastest gaming PCs can often achieve much higher framerates whilst still maintaining visual quality.

Benchmarking

There are a number of benchmark programs that may be run to assess the relative performance of a PC by running a number of standard tests and trials against it. Programs include 3DMark, a computer benchmark by Futuremark to determine the DirectX performance of graphics cards, and PCMark from the same company, which is designed to test the performance of the user's CPU, read/write speeds of RAM and hard drives.

Overclocking

Gamers often overclock their computers in order to increase the performance of their computers and prolong the usefulness of their hardware. This technique forces a computer components (for example, CPUs, video cards and RAM) to run at a higher clock rate than they were designed for. In this way, the user can buy a slower, cheaper component and overclock it to the speed of a more expensive component.

Overclocking is used in gaming PCs to obtain higher framerates than the parts in the PC would render using stock clockspeeds, and tips on how to overclock the latest CPUs, graphics cards and motherboards are often published by gaming magazines. However, in order to achieve the highest overclocks, the user must employ advanced cooling methods, such as water cooling to avoid damaging the hardware.