Specialised Equipment and Perception

Enthusiast kit has increased immensely over the past few years. Is it all marketing hype?



Everywhere you look, there's reference to some sort of enthusiast kit that's guaranteed to make you uber 1337 with a mere push of a button. Some claims are fair, and although they're often served with a side of hyperbole, they're a true indication of the quality of the product. An example would be the abundance of GPU flaunting advertisements for the latest ATI and nVidia cards. Yes, they're powerful. And yes, they are worth the investment if you require the performance they offer (assuming your PC is capable of harnessing it). What bothers me are the products which target the same market, but have no real value over a somewhat blander (and cheaper) alternative.

An excellent demonstration of a laughably useless product is the Killer NIC (Network Interface Card). This fancy little expansion board claims to improve ping times and game frame rates with its ninja-like blade shaped heatsink. OK, that's not the source of its apparent prowess, but it almost could be judging by its effectiveness. They claim that it improves gaming performance by offloading network related tasks from the CPU. In reality, this just doesn't work.

The cheapest Killer NIC card on StaticICE is $220AUD, which makes it far from a cheap upgrade considering every motherboard comes with 1 to 2 inbuilt Ethernet connections. With this considered, you would expect that such a device will be accompanied by a high end system. No one in their right mind would bundle this with a low end machine. Which brings me to my next point, if this was put in a higher end machine, it's automatically made redundant! A high end CPU is more than capable of running games and network tasks concurrently without affecting performance. And if it was used with a low end CPU, you'd be better off upgrading the CPU than splashing out $220 on a card that will give you an extra 1 or 2 FPS at best. And ping? Even if it does save you half a dozen ms you won't see the difference. The physical distance between you and the game server is what determines a higher ping, not the NIC you're using.

There's also the popular demand for gaming keyboards. Before I delve into this, the only reason I'd buy such a keyboard is if it offered extra function keys which were required for gameplay. Otherwise, why do people pay in excess of $100 for a 'gaming' keyboard? It's a device with buttons, which by their very nature have a Boolean value (on or off, true or false). There's no sensitivity involved, or any extra accuracy. It's lunacy. Unless, of course, you honestly find features such as keyboard LCDs, back-lights, pretty patterns and bragging rights worth the extra money.

Paying extra for a mouse I can understand. It makes sense since the shape and sensitivity are vital for both gaming and regular use. When it comes to keyboards, a nice simple ergonomic keyboard with a comfortable mould is all that is required. $50 will get you a keyboard that performs as well as any of the gaming alternatives, with added ergonomic features.

Lastly is the trend for companies to offer factory overclocked GPUs. Sometimes the overclock is so minimal, that the price increase over stock versions is plain silly! The latest HD4890 GPUs are famous for their overclock potential. It doesn't take much for a company to raise the clock setting in the BIOS, test them, and increment the price for those who want 'the best'.

Sometimes an overclocked card will indicate that it is hand picked from a better batch. I'd be weary of this. Unless the overclock is significant, the likelihood of a higher-binned card is small.

With all this being said, the aforementioned products are not without their advantages. The Killer NIC range is now capable of offloading P2P tasks such as BitTorrent. Gaming keyboards may be useful if small features such as add-on LCD screen is essential. And overclocked cards give you piece of mind and a valid warranty (not that they can prove you overclocked the card anyway, but that's a different story). However, their claims of being vastly superior (in terms of performance) compared to products of significantly less cost is completely unfounded.

The moral of the story is, don't believe the hype. If you want the best without spending needlessly, do the research.