If you’re looking for the ultimate gaming experience, does it still make sense to invest heavily in hardware? We look at the alternatives
CONTRIBUTORS Stuart Andrews, Barry Collins, Tim Danton
Hold on! Before you spend hundreds if not thousands of pounds on a gaming PC, it’s important to think about what you really need. Gamers have never had more options, be that traditional games consoles, Nintendo’s Switch (and rivals) or cloud-gaming services.
This article isn’t here to dissuade you from buying a £4,000 gaming PC if that’s what you want. But we would encourage you to think carefully, to read about all your options before you jump in.
That’s why, over the next six pages, we analyse what each sector has to offer. Whether it’s Chromebooks or Windows laptops, mini PCs or towering desktop monsters, consoles or the cloud, by the end you should know exactly where to invest your money.
INDEX
27 Cloud gaming
27 Consoles
28 Non-gaming Windows laptops
29 Chromebooks
30 Mini PCs
30 Gaming PCs
31 Gaming laptops
Cloud gaming
PLUSES
Low cost of entry
Older computers can be fine
Works on Xbox
NEGATIVES
Costs mount up
PCs can be too old
Strong broadband required
You can largely brush aside concerns about how gutsy your hardware is if you opt for cloud gaming. Largely, but not entirely.
The current pinnacle of cloud gaming performance comes from Nvidia GeForce Now’s Ultimate tier. On that plan, you can stream games in 4K at 120fps on either PC or Mac, with the graphics settings maxed out on over a thousand games, including Cyberpunk 2077, Fortnite, Destiny 2, Rocket League and many more.
However, don’t be lulled into thinking you can run GeForce Now Ultimate on literally any old computer. Although most of the heavy lifting is done by the RTX 4080 SuperPods in Nvidia’s EU data centres, some local processing is still required. On a Windows PC, you’ll need a GPU that supports DirectX 11, a dual-core 64-bit processor running at 2GHz or faster, and 4GB of RAM. On Mac, Nvidia recommends a MacBook Pro from 2016 onwards, an iMac from 2017 onwards or a MacBook Air or Mac mini from 2018 onwards. We’ve tried running it on a 10-year-old iMac and it didn’t end well.
Your broadband connection needs to be up to snuff, too. For 3,840 x 2,160 or 3,456 x 2,160 streaming at 120fps, GeForce Now demands 45Mbits/sec. That’s not a 45Mbits/sec connection, that’s 45Mbits/sec of dedicated bandwidth for this application alone. At Full HD, GeForce Now can even crank up to 240fps, but that needs at least 35Mbits/sec.
Nvidia also recommends a wired Ethernet connection to keep things as smo
