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Gamers, Upgrade your Systems
jbischof writes "Looking to upgrade your aging PC? Ace's Hardware has a new upgrade guide tailored specifically to gamers. The data shows exactly which upgrades - processor, motherboard, gfx card, or combination of the three - will give the best performance boost on all the latest and most popular games (according to their recent poll)."
well if car performace was ranked by the opinions of their drivers, the honda prelude would beat a ferrari and Neons everywhere would outdo porsche.
useless
I played Unreal 2 for a few hours last night on my wont-work obsolete need-an-upgrade Radeon 7200. Guess what? My obsolete out-of-date SB Live! card - not even 5.1 sound, mind you, a paltry 4 channels - worked just fine too. I've recently upgraded my mobo and CPU and bought a new HD. And I didnt spring for the absolutely necessary 8meg cache version either.
How did the tech industry manage to convince everyone that they absolutely need the latest and greatest bullshit? The machine they were 'upgrading' from is perfectly adequate to play every game they benchmarked.
1600x1200 with FSAA and AF is nice, but it doesnt make the games any funner.
Here's my upgrade guide. I wait until I want to play a particular game, and if I absolutely cant, I upgrade. And I double my current specs.
Unreal 2 is a bore, BTW, for those looking for a review.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Windows is the gamers platform of choice. When I buy a new game, i sure as heck dont want to spend 8 hours configuring WineX to run it at a 25%-50% loss of power (my friend tried StarCraft on WineX on a 500 mhz with 256 ram, and it ran like ass... on windows, perfectly fine). I want to play my game. If you want to configure your system so that it runs Windows games, by all means, but dont bitch because "linux gamers are left out".
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
For a $119 system that's small and has a great library fo games ($20-30 each), I cant go wrong with the Cube.
Most PC's cost nearly $2x10^3 for a real gaming strenth system ---- plus the games cost $59 each and that's at a cheap place like circuit city.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
I know, I know, I'm a troll. Moderate away. But, geez, does tech really matter any more. You can't buy a system, console or PC, that doesn't draw millions of texture mapped triangles per second, doesn't have awesome sound, and so on. It's all so pointless. If money is not an issue, as it certainly wouldn't be to someone who constantly upgrades video cards and such, $160 will get you a nice Game Cube and Mario Sunshine. Or get an X-Box with Splinter Cell. Or whatever.
The bottom line is that the PC tech race has lost all purpose, except to stroke the ego of hardware fanboys. And, man, do those guys need the ego stroking.
How is this really news? There are many many sites that have system guides updated once a month... is this site that much better of a system guide?
The first priority for a gamer, especially a FPS gamer, should be a good video card. However, their first suggestion listed is a Geforce 4 MX 440 over a TI 200, then they don't even provide benchmarks for the Geforce 4 MX? And for that matter, why would any self respecting FPS gamer buy a MX card of any type from Nvidia when the TIs are so much better?
lets see, i'm going to break this down 2 ways.
[quote]
Theres more to gaming than just Windows-only games like Couterstrike or Quake III.
[/quote]
old games, yes, this article is about the cutting edge of games (doom 3, etc)
[quote]
Many Linux people enjoy the same kind of fun on their platforms. Railroad Tycoon II and Quake II work just fine, thanks.
[/quote]
OLDER GAMES.... THATS PROBABLY WHY THEY DIDN"T MENTION LINUX.
how long has NWN been out for win? linux?
don't get me wrong, i love linux, its just that these blanket "WHY NOT LINUX?!" statements are getting on my nerves.
I'm waiting till the 1337 h4x0rs are done with linux, and when the 1337 h4x0rs can stop being so 1337, and start being more productive.
I'm thinking of switching to BE.... so i can be more productive. Its a joke.... laugh....
honestly, though, i did the whole deb thing for a couple years, and i just got kind of bored with it. I don't use a computer for fun anymore, so that kind of puts a dampner on things.
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
Seems like the console's a no brainer. When you need a new box for other reasons, you'll get one that's up-to-date for the latest titles... but why go through this cost and hassle when you can get a pop-it-in-it-plays system for $200 and no labor?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
You can get a 2100XP, ECS K7S5A mobo with sound and LAN that can handle ddr/sdr, and a 440MX card for under $200. Sacrificing CPU or GFX card to improve the other will cost you too much performance, and having done this exact setup for some "cash flow impaired" friends I can tell you firsthand that it's plenty fast to game on, especially when you are upgrading from a P2 400 and a TNT 2 32mb card.
The 440MX has it's place, depending on what you are looking to do.
Murphy was an optimist.
The paren post has a valid point. Like a lot of people I know, I am getting sick of the hell that is the constant Upgrade Cycle. I'm tired of upgrading my system to play the latest and greatest only to find that my favorite games no longer work. Upgraded your video card? Oops. All those old 3DFX-specific games no longer work. New processor? Too bad it's too fast and a whole batch of games (thanks a pantload, Origin) run too damned fast. Opps! Looks like that new soundcard killed off a few games. New version of Windows? Guess what? Yep. More games died.
Three years worth of upgrades (and often less) seems to kill most of the games I have. (Save Quake and it's kin.)
Compare that to the consoles. All of my old Playstation games still work (save the one I ran over with my chair, but that's my fault). Some of those games were made in 1996/1997. Most games for the PC from those days no longer work.
Is that a "So what? Thems is old games!" I hear? Bite me. I spent money on those games and it annoys the hell out of me that this sad state of affairs has come to pass.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
"Specifically, many games now feature several levels of detail, enabling those with faster video cards to enable extra shadowing, higher levels of geometry, higher resolution textures, and so forth."
I thought Ace were normally pretty knowledgeable. This has been going on for years. I remember playing F19 Stealth Fighter and MSFT Flight Sim back in the 80's (CGA graphics - yeah!), and they had these options then. I'm sure they weren't the first either.
Here's my little rule for upgrading my system.
Replace every three generations, or when things are three times as fast as your current device.
Simple, isn't it? For the past 10 (or so) I've worked on that little rule and it's lead me exactly where I want to go.
My 486 became a Pentium II 266 became a Pentium III 800 became an Athlon 2400+.
My something rather (I think it was an S3 Virge, but this was in the days when no one cared anyway) became a Voodoo 2 became a Geforce 256 became a Radeon 8500 (Which I bought budget at $100 canadian).
My Gravis Ultrasound became a Sound blaster Live became a Hercules Game Theater XP became Nforce2 Dolby Digital output.
It's strange how well this system worked out. Just as my machine became almost unbearable for games (About a 30FPS average for most games) I've upgraded because of this 3x rule. Sure, it means that you won't be at the bleeding edge for very long but the edge is too easy to fall off anyway. Only idiots would skip from a Radeon 8500 to a 9700, just as it would be stupid to ditch a 2400+ Athlon for a 2.8ghz P4. At the same time, people who tell that a 500mhz and a Voodoo 3 is enough for anyone are obviously not playing any modern games. The trick is to get caught in between the two extremes.
GF4 MX is good as long as you don't mind upgrading again when the next generation of games are released (which won't be long now)...
John Carmack: "Don't Buy a GeForce4-MX for Doom 3"
Regardless, if I'm not in the mood to build a box I think I'd trust Alienware for a gaming machine over anyone else out there.
"From of old, there are not lacking things that have attained Oneness." - Lao Tzu
you do realize that there are other sites that you can go to, to get information and that said sites are just a google search away, right? if you're going to drop 150 bucks on something, you really ought to do a little checking around to make sure you're getting the best bang for your buck.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
There can be a lot of difference from system to system with the only difference being the chipset. Two Athlon's, one in a VIA chipset, and one in an nForce2 chipset, will have very different performance. And, if you don't want to trade performance for price, fine, but I don't see how that stops you from using AMD. Instead of the the 1800+ he has, you could've gotten a 2100+ or 2400+, or more memory, or a better video card, etc.