Selecting The Right Computer
There's no question that personal computers were built with baseline functionality- all of them can process documents, and to a certain extent, play multimedia and display the same. However, there are significant difference when we think of specific needs of users of personal computers.
Here is an easy to understand scenario: compare a student and a professional PC gamer. If you are thinking about which types of PC fits which, then you can expect significant differences between the two.
Here is a question to ask: what does a student need in a computer? Put yourself in the shoes of a university student, and think about what types of work and activities you will be engaged in. A PC is more likely to function as a typewriter or word processor for the average college coed. It is already a given that you will be printing and submitting a lot of papers and reports.
If the student is in architecture and engineering, there are specific needs, but the computing power remains the same more or less. Often, the student would have thousands of saved files on his or her personal computer, and maybe some software like electronic encyclopedias installed. With this in mind, we are simply talking about space.
Now, if we are talking about space, then we are talking about hard disk space here- the lowest is 80, then there are those that reach 300 now. So that's fixed- how about computing power? A student will not need a computer with extreme computing power or clocked speeds exceed 1.5 GHz- what would be the point? For video cards, it is the same- a regular video card with 512 MB will do. If the student plays some games, that baseline is also sufficient for playing. However, as for the gamer, it is another whole different thing.
You can say that a gamer uses his PC for two main things: work and play. The most arduous tasks of the PC would most likely be during game time, as it will have to play multimedia non-stop, receive input from the user, as well as run algorithms constantly.
Speaking of hard disk space, a gamer would need more space that a mere 300 GB, simply because of the software and files that need to be saved. In actuality, hard drives with large disk space can be very expensive, which is why some gamers install more than one hard disk on their PC. There are some games that can consume 5 GB of space or more, jus to have them installed, and when the game is being played, more memory will be needed as well.
When thinking about a processor that is powerful enough for the gamer, the basics simply would not do. Intel Skulltrail is one that is highly recommended for these purposes.
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