Is it worth updating your hardware for games anymore?

Crysis was released 2007, and it's probably (except for it's sequel "warhead") the most demanding PC game up to date. What have happened since Crysis?

Most of the PC titles are XBox 360 ports, or multi-platform titles that was made to work on XBox 360 and Playstation 3. This means that the textures and special FX is made to work on 2005 hardware. Ofcourse, the PC ports are sometimes so badly done, that they require a lot of juice to bypass the lack of optimization, and sometimes the PC version is released with boosted graphics that take advantage of the latest graphiccards. However, in both cases, those top 3d titles that really pushes the computer is today very rare. We are talking about just a few titles per year.

There was a while in which I updated my graphiccards at least once per year. The only generation of GeForce I never owned were GeForce 2 and 4. My graphiccard today, or rather cards, are two 8800GTX in SLI. The GeForce 8 series were released in 2006, and so far there have been few titles that I haven't been able to play at full settings, 2048x1536. The previously mentioned Crysis Warhead and GTA4 might be the only ones I can remember that would have benefit from more power.

Considering that I have to pay about $1400 for SLI GTX 295, how many titles will I get that fully use that kind of power until I have to replace them again? How many years will it last?

I bought PS3 on the promise of upcoming titles; Metal Gear Solid 4, Resident Evil 5 and Final Fantasy XIII. Two of them have been released now, and I have finished them, two of them were announced on 360 and one even on PC soon after I payed almost $700 for a PS3. Today, one year later, I own a total of 7 games for the PS3. Granted, there were some amazing exclusive titles on the rig (MGS4/Uncharted) but is it worth to pay the sum of a previously used car for a gaming rig, when the good games are rare and far between... many of the games currently in development will not even run on XBox 360 and PS3, they are made for the next generation, with the exception of the remake of Silent Hill 1 that is actually made for WII/PS2...

Would have been better of with a XBox 360? Well, interestingly there are just a few titles on 360 that I might want to check out; Halo 3, Gears of War 2 and Fable 2. The third is already on it's way to PC, and the former two might eventually be released. The prequels to neither of theese three titles could match the greatness of MGS4/Uncharted. 3 not-that-great titles doesn't seem enough reason to go with a 360 either.

With all that considered, I am starting to wonder if modern gaming is worth it anymore. I am playing Starcraft: Brood War atm, and it's a really awesome title. But I might eventually run out of old games to play. Nostalgia can often play a trick on you, you look at the timespan of 30 years and see lots of awesome titles and you might believe that there were more good titles released back then than now. But when you finally played the real gems, you will begin to see all the junk that was released alongside the good ones, and if you count year per year rather than comparing 2009 to 1985-2000, you will break the illusion.

I think it is worth taking a different upgrading strategy ... for me as a laptop gamer it is good since I am no longer having to pay $4-5k to get a decent gaming laptop, I can spend $2k and be good for a while. For desktop folks you don't need to rebuild more than every 2-3 years if you are smart ... and still can do it for a decent price.

My rig is from early 2006, so it's going on four years old now. I've upgraded the graphics card once (to an 8800GTS/320), and the CPU once (to an Athlon 64 X2 4800+). It's still entirely capable of running almost all current games at quite decent resolution, quality, and frame rate. I was planning to upgrade this year, but due to our home improvement project going way over budget, I've deferred that.

Instead, I've been thinking of doing just one more graphics upgrade; in particular, the 320 MB memory on the GPU is an occasional bottleneck, so I'd like to bump it up to 512 or more. (It's a Socket 939, and the 4800+ is the second-fastest CPU made for it, so it's unlikely I'll be able to bump that up any more without a complete rebuild.)

The main thing that's stopping me is that the 8800GTS is almost silent, and I don't want another screamer in my box, nor do I feel particularly excited about the prospect of swapping the cooler.

GTA4 is the first game I found that requires +1600 graphics memory on one card to get everything on the highest settings... I wonder how long it will be before we see another game like that. Since GTA4 doesn't utilize SLI you cannot use two cards either.

JemyM said:

Most of the PC titles are XBox 360 ports, or multi-platform titles that was made to work on XBox 360 and Playstation 3. This means that the textures and special FX is made to work on 2005 hardware.

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Interesting point . . . hopefully this will slow down the tendency to upgrade, slowing down the tendency to develop to the bleeding edge.

For myself, I no longer have a clue whether my computer is powerful enough to play something. The whole dual core thing has left me unsure of how powerful my spec is, I really ought to get up to speed.

It was high spec early 07 I think, and ran Gothic III fine, so I'm hoping I've got enough at least for the flood of great releases late this year, which will probably be enough to keep me going for ages (along with Age of Decadence and Starcraft II)

My rig is from 2003 and with a couple of upgrades it can run last year's games on low.
I'll buy a new one around Christmas probably similar to the one lghartveit got.
With games like Rage and Doom 4 and technology improvements like
SATA III 6 Gbit/s
40nm DDR3 memory chips
USB 3.0
DirectX 11 GPUs
PCI E 3.0
being expected within the next year,my answer is yes.

I think it partly depends on what games one wants to play.

As long as I concentrate on Adventure games, I can look a bit more relaxed at upgrading.

I think that 3D-heavy games like shooters, and more growing role-playing games still demand upgrading.

I don't know much about strategy games, since I rather keep away from them - RTS, I mean.

Me, personally, I'm more and more rather withdrawing from gaming; the only things keeping me there are RPGs (to a lesser extend, more and more), and adventures.

I have the feeling as if there aren't games anymore that appeal to me - which takes the need for upgrading away from me.

yeah. depends on the specs you want to play. the higer ended graphics game will need a higher specs pc. if your a hardcore or even a slightly hardcore player, upgrading your pc is a must.

As long as we have cycles in the industry - it will be worth it if you care about modern games and good performance.

Even if the current consoles are at a stage where most games can be converted easily to PC and run well on decent rigs - if the necessary steps are taken during planning and development - they will eventually be replaced by the next generation of consoles.

Beyond that, most console titles that make it to PC - or are developed concurrently - will have enhanced visual features meant for the superior platform. Stuff like high-res textures or flexible visual settings (better view distance, etc.) will also benefit from having top-of-the-line hardware.

Then, of course, it depends on what else you want to do with your PC. If you want to enjoy HD/Bluray movies and work with powerful CPU/GPU intensive applications like Photoshop or 3D studio, then you can't just stop upgrading without paying the price.

Even a little thing like the emulation scene benefits from powerful hardware - and there are STILL DOS games that don't run at full speed in DosBox, not even on the most powerful rigs.

There are many reasons, but it certainly depends on your own specific wants and needs.

I'm a demanding gamer, and I require smooth frame rates and "max detail" for everything I play - and I've yet to reach a point where I could have that in every single game. This is even when I've had absolute top-of-the-line hardware.

It IS true, however, that there's been a significant and noticable shift due to console domination - and for me it's sort of a relief that I don't have to focus on upgrades.

I found myself playing more and more indie games, and less and less games from publishers, they simple removed everything I love about games, and replaced it by better and better graphics. On the other hand the indie games focus on improving gameplay, I think gaming would be a whole lot better if publishers also focused on gameplay. There is one big irony in that though, I happen to love the FF series.... which typically has very bad gameplay... but they always have amazing worlds to discover with amazing graphics and great story...........

I also thought at one point I was tired of gaming and that I didn't like it anymore. That is until I began to play indie games, I realised that the problem was that no games I was interested in were released.

And of course I am making my own games.... that also takes up a lot of time.

GothicGothicness said:

I found myself playing more and more indie games, and less and less games from publishers, they simple removed everything I love about games, and replaced it by better and better graphics. On the other hand the indie games focus on improving gameplay, I think gaming would be a whole lot better if publishers also focused on gameplay.

I also thought at one point I was tired of gaming and that I didn't like it anymore. That is until I began to play indie games, I realised that the problem was that no games I was interested in were released.

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You can't talk about indie games like this, without dropping a few title names

I guess these games are well known on the forum

Right now I am playing the latest version of Battle of Westnoth, that is acctually freeware, and I love it, if you like turn based strategy games it is a true gem! It also has some C&C and optional "quests" etc.

Eschalon book 1 reminded me of how much fun roleplaying could be, each area was crafted with much love and I grealy enjoyed to explore all of them, and I kept being excited of what would happen. He managed to create a much more interesting world than any publisher in recent years even if he has 1/100 of the resources. On top of that he managed to make the gameplay just challaning and interesting enough to keep it always fun.

Top that with a lot of replay rate and different skills.......

PvZ comments unncesarry.

A bunch of JRPG's one brand developed by my friend, these ones do not have so great gameplay, but they have a great atmosphere and good story.

I found three the hard way especially interesting in terms of story ( No it has nothing to do with the movie )

There is also a genre I like... maybe not so much for most people here, I named this genre "Princess maker" these brand of games are very popular in Asia, but almost none excisting here. However there are some indie offerings. Basically it is all about raising one character, choosing who they will interact with, go inside dungeons to explore and kill things, choose which job to take, buy stuffs, etc etc.

As far as shoot-em-up go, I absolutely love magical broom stick extreme... it was a long time since I could enjoy a good shoot-em-up, but that one is just about perfectly matched.... I finished the game many many times.

When we have the rogue likes games... like nethack with falcon's eye, you can always drop in and begin to play it never knowning what to except and always have a fun adventure.

gawd I could make a very long list!

Hehe Gothic.

Thanks for your mentions.

I'm also quite fond of Eschalon, though I'm probably less tolerant of certain indie aspects than you are. Maybe a lot less tolerant, but I definitely recognise talent when I see it, and Eschalon is amazing considering how few resources were involved.

For some reason, Asian/Japanese RPGs tend to turn me off quite a bit, but that's more about style than actual gameplay. I've played other titles from those areas that were AMAZING, like ICO on the PS2.

Nethack is a nice concept - but ever since Diablo/Diablo 2 revolutionised the genre, I've had a hard time going back to the singleplayer primitive stuff. That said, I know there's deep and interesting gameplay in some of them, but the presentation gets in the way for me.

I tend to prefer the less indie indie titles Sort of like Eschalon, which is probably the kind of UI/Presentation that I require AT THE VERY LEAST to be able to enjoy a game. I'm too used to the niceties of a decent production, and that's sad - but what can you do.

Can you in that case give some examples of none indie games which you enjoyed recenlty ? I am very curious to find this.... except for kings bountry which I enjoyed... my list is............. empty.

GothicGothicness said:

Can you in that case give some examples of none indie games which you enjoyed recenlty ? I am very curious to find this.... except for kings bountry which I enjoyed... my list is............. empty.

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Sure, but most are older games I've replayed - and mostly due to patches or similar enhancements

Gothic 3 with CP 1.7
Age of Conan (it's an MMO, yeah, but it's very good)
Bloodlines with 6.0 patch
Fable 2 (not that good - and console only)
Mass Effect (before I realised it won't carry over your character)
Deus Ex (i'm interested in trying the nameless mod)
Ultima 9 (just started because of JDR who might have started because of me )
Blood Bowl (though I've only just scratched the surface)
NWN2: Storm of Zehir (quite old-school in style)
Sherlock Holmes: Jack the Ripper (haven't gotten far, but it's ok)
Baldur's Gate (with TUTU - BG2 UI/high res/WS mod)
Might and Magic 6 (with the community patch)
Ultima Underworld (DosBox)
Drakensang (though this bored me a bit, frankly)

Off the top of my head

I've only completed a few of these games (again, being replays mostly), and the rest have mostly been playing around a bit. I just can't seem to focus on gaming - or much of anything else - these days. But it's probably just a phase

GothicGothicness said:

they simple removed everything I love about games, and replaced it by better and better graphics.

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You very much hit the head of the nail regarding what I feel, too !

Thank you for finding words for my own opinion !

I just bought an upgrade for mine, as it happens. Came across a deal on a factory refurbed 9800GT/512, which Tom's Hardware puts at about twice as fast as my 8800GTS/320. It was cheap, and the place has a good return policy, so if it turns out that I'm CPU-bottlenecked after all, I can always return it.

But if it does work out as planned, my rig's probably good for another year.

I'm still playing most games on my almost 5 year old Dell single core P4 670 3.8 Ghz, with a GeForce 7900GTX/512. I don't play a lot of new games either though. I had no trouble with King's Bounty, but I've held off on buyying some of the glitzier games like Sacred 2. I'm hoping I can get away with just a graphics card update for all the new games I lust after coming out this fall.

I've got a 5 year old Gateway with an overclocked 7800GS video card. It plays Fallout 3 and Oblivion fine with medium settings. I can play on high but it bogs down when it gets crowded. I don't play shooters, so I'm not needing a super-fast frame rate. However, my computer has stopped powering up and while trying to determine if it was the power supply, I broke one of the cables off inside of the motherboard. I'm going to have to buy a power supply and a motherboard, so I may end up just buying a whole pc. I don't want to spend more than $500 though. I'm really not sure where to start. It's been a while since I've bought a machine.

Walp, I plugged in the 9800GT, and yeah, it delivers. Even Crysis actually looks good and plays smooth. Not that I particularly WANT to play it, mind, but still... For a few tens of euros, this was a pretty damn good upgrade. FO3 and G3 also look a lot better on it.

The card is also quite silent, even more so than the one it replaced. We happy.

Edit: Whoo, FO3 and G3 look and play ridiculously well with this card. Very nice upgrade!