I
t’s easy to get carried away when putting together your
new PC; you want to get the best of every component you
can afford. However, not all components are created
equally when it comes to maximising your gaming
experience. Do you really need a 16-core processor or 32GB of RAM?
Well, that’s what we’re here to find out.
We tested a wide range of components and peripherals across five
different games, to see what difference they made. Some upgrades
didn’t make a difference to performance, but unlocked better visuals,
improved ergonomics or just generally made our gaming life easier.
The basis of our test rig was an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X – we then
underclocked, overclocked and disabled some of its cores in order toDO YOU REALLY NEED MORE CPU CORES FOR GAMING, AND HOW MUCH DIFFERENCE
DOES RAM MAKE? EDWARD CHESTER INVESTIGATES WHICH COMPONENTS ARE THEMOST IMPORTANT FOR GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR GAMING PC
WHAT HARDWARE DO YOU
REALLY NEED
FOR GAMING?
Games such as Dota 2 put a
high demand on the CPUtest how a CPU can affect gaming performance. We also equipped the
system with a range of RAM options, different storage drives and, of
course, different graphics cards. We then tested a range of different
monitors, mice and keyboards to gauge their effect on each of our
chosen games.
Each game was tested at 1080p (1,920 x 1,080) and 4K (3,840 x 2,160 ),
so we could demonstrate the extremes of monitor resolutions most users
will encounter. We also set each game to a detail level that balanced
performance and image quality in the best possible way. Graphically rich
games such as Rise of the Tomb Raider were run at Medium to High detail
settings, while Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) were
run at High detail settings and above.