Simple materials for blender render?

Are there any tutorials how to make simple materials for blender render like plastic, mat, steel, gold, clay, polymer, rubber, leather etc.? I know I’ve seen somewhere a book that explains thoroughly about materials and nodes in blender internal render engine. I’ve tried using cycles but my cpu is faster than my gpu surprisingly, so there’s no way I’ll be using cycles for rendering.

You should definitely use cycles for rendering.

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Every_Material_Known_to_Man

Thanks for the help guys. I’ve found the solution.