Gaming PC manufacturer WidowPC said this week that it has launched the world's first gaming computer designed especially for World of Warcraft players.

The PC's hardware and software is optimised to play the online game at the best possible performance and detail. At the core of the model is Bigfoot Networks' Killer NIC online gaming network accelerator.

The Killer network interface card has a built-in processor which provides extra muscle and claims to give online gamers an advantage by reducing the amount of lag.

"Most of our engineering staff are World of Warcraft players and have been designing PCs for their friends," said WidowPC chief executive Joshua McClure.

"Our customers said we should offer an affordable machine that plays World of Warcraft exceptionally well.

"This new Killer NIC online gaming accelerator allows us to design a great system for $1,495 that will play World of Warcraft with the performance of a much more expensive system."

The company also took on Dell and its line of gaming laptops with a Core 2 Duo gaming laptop.

The Sting 517D features Intel's Core 2 Duo Merom CPU, an nVidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX video card with 512MB DDR3 memory, a 17in wide-screen 1920 x 1200 WUXGA SuperBrite LCD, DVD-RAM technology, up to 4GB of high-speed DDR2 memory and a 200GB SATA hard drive for $2,195.