Poll: PC... Expensive... Wait what?

[CheeseSandwichCake]

I really shouldn't have made Ducks and Kittens poll options...

 

[Aries_Split]

The most important bit in your PC when it comes to games is your video card

If its nVidia, it needs to be a 7800, 7900, 8800 +

The 8600, or 7600 are second rate video cards.
In practice, a 7900 is better than an 8600

I have no idea about Radeon cards, maybe someone else can explain them

Eh, my last PC had a 7600GT and it ran the Crysis demo (on low... at 800x600, with everything else on my computer closed)

I could run crysis fine, on a 6600GT - whats your point?

My point is that you don't even need anything spectacular to run most of the games that are out. Sure, you may not have as pretty graphics as everyone else but as long as you can pull off mid settings and 1024x768 resolution with an FPS of between 50-60 on most games your computer is O.K

but really tho its a pain in the ass... I have a macbook with an 8600GT running windows to play my games, and the day is fast approaching where that will only meet the lowest specs.

If youre buying a new PC you want it to be cutting edge, or else it wont last! I feel a good PC which does not cost the world should last at least 5 years before it cannot play all the games on the market.

It has slowed down recently because we've become tied with the static console market, so we might get 7-8 years out of this cycle, but who knows when the next generation hop will occur?

Anyway I know you can build a cheap PC at the moment which will play everything, but who whats just that? Its not much more to get the cutting edge!

You might as well buy an xbox if youre satisfied with just mediocrity.

But expecting a laptop, which for the most part has static specifications, to play anything that comes out on high for years is foolish.

 

[Gitsnik]

Spoiler: Nerdgasm!

I'm typing this from my Core2Quad q9400, 8 gigs of Corsair Dominator, and a GTX-260. Gratuitous? HELL yes. But when I want to do something - anything, this PC pretty much scoffs at me and does it in half a millisecond. Well worth the pricetag for me.

I run pyrit off a similar machine with a few more (different) cards.

Useless for gaming though, but I see your nerdgasm and raise you a password cracking nuclear bomb.

 

[Toners]

I prefer PC gaming, but when it comes to consoles, you can be safe in the knowledge that it will work for the games you buy for it, whereas with a PC, it's sometimes hit and miss. I remember when I originally bought The Elder Scrolls IV, it didn't work on my PC, so I had to run oldblivion... which sucked.
Of course I'm never gonna forget the time my first PS2 quite literally blew up. That was a good firework show

 

[Dys]

Pretty sure it's been explored and concluded many times in this thread that over a time period of more than a month it is cheaper to buy a computer as oppose to a console, A week if you aren't paying Australian prices (IE you don't cop a 50% mark up for no apparent reason).

 

[Zac_Dai]

PC gaming is quite a specialist hobby in my view and as such you need a certain level of knowledge to get the most out of it. Most people don't want to waste their time with that, which is fair enough so they stick to consoles.

But then the problem is through ignorance stupid myths grow up around the world of PC gaming. Like the idea its stupidly expensive and that you need to upgrade every 6 months.

It just makes me *sigh* every time...

 

[Lord George]

Got a £600 Pc from Dell, it runs everything I could want, from Oblivion to Crysis to the Sims 3. All good.

 

[sunami88]

I run pyrit off a similar machine with a few more (different) cards.

Useless for gaming though, but I see your nerdgasm and raise you a password cracking nuclear bomb.

You, sir, are AMAZING. No sarcasm, thats actually really sick.

 

[Sneaklemming]

The most important bit in your PC when it comes to games is your video card

If its nVidia, it needs to be a 7800, 7900, 8800 +

The 8600, or 7600 are second rate video cards.
In practice, a 7900 is better than an 8600

I have no idea about Radeon cards, maybe someone else can explain them

Eh, my last PC had a 7600GT and it ran the Crysis demo (on low... at 800x600, with everything else on my computer closed)

I could run crysis fine, on a 6600GT - whats your point?

My point is that you don't even need anything spectacular to run most of the games that are out. Sure, you may not have as pretty graphics as everyone else but as long as you can pull off mid settings and 1024x768 resolution with an FPS of between 50-60 on most games your computer is O.K

but really tho its a pain in the ass... I have a macbook with an 8600GT running windows to play my games, and the day is fast approaching where that will only meet the lowest specs.

If youre buying a new PC you want it to be cutting edge, or else it wont last! I feel a good PC which does not cost the world should last at least 5 years before it cannot play all the games on the market.

It has slowed down recently because we've become tied with the static console market, so we might get 7-8 years out of this cycle, but who knows when the next generation hop will occur?

Anyway I know you can build a cheap PC at the moment which will play everything, but who whats just that? Its not much more to get the cutting edge!

You might as well buy an xbox if youre satisfied with just mediocrity.

But expecting a laptop, which for the most part has static specifications, to play anything that comes out on high for years is foolish.

The laptop is really meant for university, I live far from home, so thats why I have a laptop, I plan on building a desktop for the next gen, whenever that happens, but this guys want advice on a PC not a laptop

 

[CheeseSandwichCake]

A: You only have to buy a console ONCE and it's there for years. With computers, at the end of the year you're lucky if you still have the original computer's casing
B: Most computer games these days can only be installed xxx times before the protection on it will prevent you from installing it again even though you own the bugger.
c: In the long run, consoles are cheaper, better and less likely to implode whilst playing today's equivalent of Crysis.

A: If you buy a decent PC you've got it for at least 5 years, your point is? There are more Xbox 360's RRODing than there are melting PCs...
B: This is true, except for the part where you said "most computer games" since I only have like one game that does that.
C: Dude... Crysis can probably barely even RUN on a console.

 

[Flour]

A decent PC* is about E650, a PS3 + game is less than E400.
A PC is used for three years(four if everything is new), a console for 4-6 years depending on how long people make games for it.

*With 'decent' I mean hardware that's at least a year old. If I were to buy everything new, I would spend about E1200 on it.(E250-350 graphics card, E120~ RAM, E250~ motherboard, E300-400 processor, E120~ power supply)
This all is without windows and a monitor, which adds another E400-500.(120 for Vista and the rest for a decent fairly new monitor)

The "E" is used for the ?(euro) sign.

You don't already own a monitor or computer? I'm not being sarcastic.

This computer is about five years old, the only thing I could use is my 320GB HD. The monitor is this [http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=5&id=1668], and needs to be replaced with something a bit larger since games are moving towards 16:9 formats, depending on the resolution increase for graphical quality.

 

[Dys]

The most important bit in your PC when it comes to games is your video card

If its nVidia, it needs to be a 7800, 7900, 8800 +

The 8600, or 7600 are second rate video cards.
In practice, a 7900 is better than an 8600

I have no idea about Radeon cards, maybe someone else can explain them

Eh, my last PC had a 7600GT and it ran the Crysis demo (on low... at 800x600, with everything else on my computer closed)

I could run crysis fine, on a 6600GT - whats your point?

My point is that you don't even need anything spectacular to run most of the games that are out. Sure, you may not have as pretty graphics as everyone else but as long as you can pull off mid settings and 1024x768 resolution with an FPS of between 50-60 on most games your computer is O.K

but really tho its a pain in the ass... I have a macbook with an 8600GT running windows to play my games, and the day is fast approaching where that will only meet the lowest specs.

If youre buying a new PC you want it to be cutting edge, or else it wont last! I feel a good PC which does not cost the world should last at least 5 years before it cannot play all the games on the market.

It has slowed down recently because we've become tied with the static console market, so we might get 7-8 years out of this cycle, but who knows when the next generation hop will occur?

Anyway I know you can build a cheap PC at the moment which will play everything, but who whats just that? Its not much more to get the cutting edge!

You might as well buy an xbox if youre satisfied with just mediocrity.

But expecting a laptop, which for the most part has static specifications, to play anything that comes out on high for years is foolish.

To compare a mac to a gaming rig of any sort is foolish, you understand that they are not built for gaming and with the money you spent on that you could have bought something more than competent for gaming that would last a long time, right? That's a bit like buying a rolls royce and complaining that it won't outsprint a ferrari.

 

[gsf1200]

If you have questionable morals, PC games are free! And music and movies too!

 

[Zacharine]

My current computer is up for complete rehaul, so much so that I'm thinking of buying a new one entirely.

My current PC was bought at summer 2003 and all I've updated for it are the graphics card (1,5 year ago, used 80e) and 1G more RAM (got it cheaply, like 15e). Oh, and I had to change the HD once. That was 40e.

Under 150e of upgrade costs in the last 6 years and only now are the games beginning to be unplayable. Crysis felt a bit like an excercise in futility, but 800x600 was still playable and Mass Effect run fairly well (average of 19-21 fps on fighting portions) on the lower spectrum of visual settings

And I don't plan to use more than 500 euros max for my new PC. No need for a display though, so I can get a slightly better machine.

Not that expensive you know, considering I can use the exact same comp for quite a bit more than a console. I can use my 3D modelling softwares, I can write my reports, surf the net etc. far easier than I could with a console.

Sure, games tend to be a tad more buggy, but I consider that the hidden cost of having a far more versatile machine.

 

[Gitsnik]

I run pyrit off a similar machine with a few more (different) cards.

Useless for gaming though, but I see your nerdgasm and raise you a password cracking nuclear bomb.

You, sir, are AMAZING. No sarcasm, thats actually really sick.

~100,000 passwords per second for aircrack. Huge power drain, well worth the investment when I can crack a "secure" WPA-PSK network faster than most people can WEP crack. Makes clients cry sometimes though.

There is a guy around (not on these forums) with more gear than I who gets them faster still. (25% faster than I can IIRC). Awesome stuff, useful for trumping people's "bling" when talking rigs, but ultimately useless as I don't game on it (well the occaisional game of nethack, but ASCII graphics and a network connection don't really count).

Also, Dys, you're on crack if you think a Mac isn't built for gaming. The systems are built to do high processing and graphical rendering - what more do you need from a gaming rig?! It's not like games take 10 minutes to render one frame like most of the work the Mac's I'm around do.

 

[CheeseSandwichCake]

PC gaming is quite a specialist hobby in my view and as such you need a certain level of knowledge to get the most out of it. Most people don't want to waste their time with that, which is fair enough so they stick to consoles.

But then the problem is through ignorance stupid myths grow up around the world of PC gaming. Like the idea its stupidly expensive and that you need to upgrade every 6 months.

It just makes me *sigh* every time...

Yeah, I hate console gamers as a whole for the fact they formed those rumors. Yes, I hate every one of you, especially the Halo 3 players.

It's not stupidly expensive and you only upgrade what... every 5 years depending on what you initially bought.

Okay sure it does take a certain level of knowledge to do it but once you've been shown how to do it it's easy as pie to build your own computer.

 

[UltimatheChosen]

If you already own a PC then you usually only have to upgrade your graphics card, RAM and processor and in Australia that's about $700 (I got a 9800GT, an extra GB of RAM and a 2.5ghz E5200 Dual Core for that at least), if things don't work then you can get a cheapass motherboard that does work with them for probably $150.

Most people consider paying 200$ more than for a console (that's 50% extra in the case of an Xbox 360 elite) to be a considerable amount of money. Especially since computers become obsolete a lot faster than most consoles.

 

[electric_warrior]

my laptop is just about capable of playing crysis and is only not perfect because the garphics card isn't quite good enough, which could easily be remedied. it only cost £500 and is perfect for everything i may wish to do; homeowrk, coursework, gaming (it plays practically every game i can think of perfectly except fallout 3 and crysis), internet and making videos. it has a 2.2ghz dualcore processor (rated at 4.4ghz), 320gb hard drive and 10gb of ram.

personally, I think £500 is a pretty good price for such a good laptop
not really expensive at all then.

 

[CheeseSandwichCake]

To compare a mac to a gaming rig of any sort is foolish, you understand that they are not built for gaming and with the money you spent on that you could have bought something more than competent for gaming that would last a long time, right? That's a bit like buying a rolls royce and complaining that it won't outsprint a ferrari.

Going to pretend I didn't read that. Macs aren't BUILT -FOR- GAMING. But they can surely do it as good as any PC, check the hardware they have. Hell, bootcamp any of the more recent Macs onto Windows XP and they'll run faster than a Kenyan for gaming as far as I'm concerned.

 

[freakaknight]

Like most things though it's all about buying for what you need/want. If you're not a gamer then a system shouldn't cost all that much for internet access and word. Annnd even if you are, it's not all that expensive. My system is far from 'top of the range' but i still play most of the recent games on pretty good graphics, better graphics than a ps3 that's for sure. So as long as your 'building it yourself' and not buying from brands like DELL, computers are in that sense, pretty cheap =]

And as for the Pc-console debate which has occured like it always does. Pc beats console any day. an average gaming PC may cost that little bit more than a console, but for what you get out of it, in comparison, it's a bargain. The big whoop with consoles always was it's convenience with the fact you don't have to install everything and that it had all it's games 'tailored' to it's specs; they were reliable. But now with red rings and frustrating settings, consoles are less like this. The only REAL plus side to console now is that alot more games are released for console as opposed to PC.

But a PC that i can watch films, photoshop, surf the net AND play top of the range games on (still) on decent graphs which only REALLY cost between 300-500, is far superior and cheap in comparison to a troublesome over glorified console (IMO) =]