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500 bucks

May 5, 2009 -By Loyd Case

Build a $500 Gaming PC

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We all know that it takes serious CPU horsepower and a big graphics card to run today's generation of PC games, right?

The real answer: it depends. If you want to crank up every eye candy setting and game feature, then the answer is yes. If you're willing to give up a little bit of those shiny graphics bits, and turn down some of the game settings, then you can have a surprisingly good gaming experience for very little money.

When AMD shipped the Radeon HD 4770, we thought it might be the centerpiece for an affordable gaming system. So we set out to build a low-cost gaming PC. The goal: $500, including the operating system, but not the monitor, keyboard, or mouse. After a tremendous amount of shopping around, we were able to meet our cost goals.

However, the idea was to build a $500 gaming PC. Did our $500 system also meet the goal of hitting reasonable performance without giving up too much? Let's find out. Continued...

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