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 Digg.com Facebook Google Bookmarks N4G Gamerblips del.icio.us Reddit Slashdot.org StumbleUpon This is why I mostly stick to consoles these days, cutting edge PC gaming is more of an expensive pain in the arse than it's worth. Wow I just bought a new PC 2 months ago and now I find out it is already a dinosaur! F*&^ you very much CVG staff, I was living quite happily in ignorance just a moment ago and then you had to go and wreck it. And where exactly does it say that it's expensive? Replacing all your old gear with all this new stuff is what's expensive. You'll note I said the words 'cutting edge PC gaming'. personally, I will expect EVERYTHING that is on Vista to work on Windows 7. Otherwise I forked out £360 for an OS that only lasted 3 years.
Either way, I wont be touching Windows 7 until SP1. I've learnt that from Vista. touchscreen what a load of shite.
and XP does everything you need and is very stable. Who wants a screen covered in fingerprints? All that for guildwars/guildwars2 (only pc games I will be playing for many years unil something good comes out) nah my current system will run it fine. I love my pc I really do and I think it is the games machine that has given me some of the best gaming moments of my life and I have been playing games for many years now but the pc arms race is just too much to have to be dealing with.
My current pc is about 2 years old and still seems to run everything fine so I wont even consider upgrading for a long time. People simply can’t afford to buy the latest hardware. With the recession biting I wonder how many people will actually be able to afford to make the jump?
I am a much bigger lover now of consoles than ever I have both the PS3 and the 360. Once you have a HD TV the graphics are pretty dam good especially if you have been playing games that stretch back to Last Ninja and Kings Quest I, II and III. Didn’t like IV that much!
I quite like Vista and as far as I can see there wont be much difference between it and Windows 7 so there is no temptation for me to move for awhile and as one other poster stated I don’t have my ‘new’ operating system that long. At heart I am still a pc gamer but the consoles have come a long way and I can’t deny that.
That’s my two cents anyway. These companies need to stop trying to be the first to introduce new technology, perfect the existing stuff first. Thought USB 3.0 would be on this list it's not expensive. RAM cost, flat screens, bare bones bundles, generic DVD+-RW... Remember when you really cared that the CDRW was 12x instead of 10x? As long as you are sensible and buy stuff after the first exponential drop in price (one half-life) you will only need a mobo + chip + RAM + GC every 2 years (~£350). And thats comparable to a console price right? Only you get a machine (in my opinion) that can do a lot more.
:D Finally! Sensible posts about PC hardware! :)
This myth that PC gaming is more expensive than consoles is a load of Hooey. Harml3ss & CA O'Donnel are spot on with their posts. 350 quid every 2 years is about right. I paid 500 quid for a mid range system 4 years ago and its still kicking bottom. Will double up as a good media box linked to the TV when its time to upgrade.
I love it how people forget that when they paid for a console they forgot about the price of the shiny new telly that goes with it. :P
I speak from experience with my X360 and my LCD TV.
Dont see the point in touchscreen monitors though. My PC i 2 years old now( gfx card is 18 months old ) and it plays everything maxed with AAat 40FPS+( except Crysis/Warhead and GTAIV which requires a quad core ). It'll do me for another year and ill consider the upgrade then.
I bought a PS3 recently and i could have upgrade my whole pc for the cost of that, PC gamings not expensive when you flog your old parts and use the money for new ones.( I recently upgraded a 4 year old cpu/mobo/ram - AMD 4200+,ASrock 939 mobo and 1.6Gig DDR1 ram for an E7200, P35 mobo and 2gig DDR2, total cost from flogging old stuff was 80euro :) )
With all these console ports on PC there really is very little need to upgrade as theyre no longer pushing PC's to their limits. Thats fine for now but when the next round of consoles come out they wond be ready as theyre not evolving gaming technology.
I game on consoles and PC and always have since my old Amstrad days in the late 80's, however the way things are going it looks like we're destined for generic shooters/RPG's/sequels and what not for the next 10 years.
There was a huge revolution back when the PS1 was released with Wipeout, Gran Turismo, Tekken, Metal Gear Solid, FF7 was brought to the masses, Resident Evil 2.
All gaming legends, but what have we had in the past few years that push the boundries? Fear( did a great job of bringing a bit of freak to FPS ), Half Life, Crysis( the game is generic but the environment is fantastic ),Battlefield 2( online 64player sandbox combat ), GTA3( first extremely immersive urban sandbox game ),DMC( innovative because it went back to the old arcade genre of being feckin difficult in places ).
Thats only a few and im sure you'll all have loads of others, my point is there few and far between
Hopefully Battlefield 3 will be a cracker( 1200+ hours put it on BF2, never ever played a game that much in my life ) this is way i love pc you can lose yourselve for hours in just buying accessories never mind the hardware Good article.
I couldnt be assed trawling through nerd sites looking for information. This hit the spot.
I'll be buying a new rig in september and I hope the prices of the i7 chips go down. **** that! I'm moving to a Mac once my current PC goes tits-up. Interesting read. Thanks PC Gamer.
I agree with the points that have been made that PC gaming needn't be all that more expensive compared to console gaming. This is especially true when you take into account the much higher prices of games for consoles which are higher because of licenses, and in order for the console producing companies to make up for the prices on their consoles which often sell at a loss in order to get their hooks in the consumer.
Finally, to those people complaining about suddenly feeling their PCs are old: Hardware wise they may no longer be cutting edge but if they still manage to do what you want more-or-less then why the grief? Sure, it's nice to feel on top of the game if you will, but just because technology marches onwards as it has a tendency to do, that doesn't mean you have to upgrade to the latest hot thing as soon as it is released. Indeed, by waiting you avoid premium prices and often end up with a more stable and ironed out product. If you do feel a burning need to have the latest and the greatest then I'd suggest you take a moment to reflect on what is the root cause of this perception of needing to own the latest new CPU, GPU, etc. Furthermore, the PC tech market is what drives development and the same technology is used sooner or later (often later,) in consoles. In fact, the hardware in the current "next gen" consoles are dinosaur parts from a PC tech perspective. just to up the anti on the pc front anyone played farcry 2 on a console, this is why pc's are good they actually allow a lot more freedom to games devs than what consoles allow.
pc's are always evolving where as consoles are built to last a set time before the next upgraded model arrives pc's are always being upgraded.
and as it stands the current gen of consoles wouldnt exist if pc tech hadnt been developed. DONT FORGET AMD/ATIS APPROACH.....
basically take existing gpu tech and newer cpu tech shrink it right down and stick it all on the same die/chip with high speed bottneck free inter connectors I.E HIGH END CPU AND HIGH END GPU ON A CHIP PLUS EDram........ i think amd/atis idea is better than intels its called fusion
fusion tech a new hollywood gpu and a broadway/powerpc vxe cpu will be wii hds SYSTEM ON A CHIP I'm trying to get one more year with my socket 939 4400x2, 2gig ram and 8800gts 320mb eqquiped pc. I want to hold out until Homeworld 3 is announced. I'd actually buy a brand new high spec pc, just to play that game. I agree that the article is about cutting edge technology and it does not speak for the average PC. You can easily build a brilliant PC for £500 as I have done. I would say to console owners ( I am one myself but prefer my PC) if you make an informed purchase and at the right time it is well worth the effort. This nonsense about PC gaming is dying and is expensive is a myth perpetuated by ignorance and hard-headed fanaticism. The fact is as time progresses the PS3 and 360 will look painfully outdated in comparison to the average PC. dont forget the savings you make on games and peripherals on the PC, you dont need anything other than the standard mouse and keyboard. at least thats what i get by with!
i can understand why people choose consoles for ease of use but pretty much all of the best i have played have been on the PC, i truly dont understand what people see in the likes of god of war, final fantasy and the typical high profile console games. halo actually started out as a PC game until MS came along and i remember gears of war being seen in an old PC Zone mag with epic showing off their new tech, it wasnt adverstised as gears just screens from epics 'new' game. Im a huge Final Fantasy fan although i prefer the turn based combat as opposed to FF12's combat, however theres nothing like it on hte PC unfortunately, id pick FF13 for the PC instead of my PS3 in a sec if it was planned for release
On the Halo thing, well it actually started on the Mac with Marathon :P as thats what Bungie hit it big on.
The screenies for Epic were for the unreal engine, hence GoW got included.
Consoles and PC' have their niche, i prefer arcade games and RPGs on console, but the experience of FPS comes nowhere near the experience on a PC.I dont care what anyone says, theres a big difference to playing online for kills with your screen 3 feet in front of you and with your trusty G5/6/7/8/9 ready to headshot in less than a second and turning 180 degrees in less than a second. Not to mention a xfi produces supurb virtual surround sound with headphones.
You cant compare sitting on your couch 7 feet away from the tv with a controller that has a preset limit on how long it takes to turn 180 degrees. Hell i can even read the feckin text on some PS3 games on my 40" HD tv( it just too small and its 8-9 feet away ) yeh, upgrading hardware can be an expensive business, but when you consider that PC games tend to be £20 cheaper than consoles, based on buying one game a month that's a saving of £240.
and besides which, if you're happy with the quality of console games then there's no need to have a cutting edge pc, just something that'll run the game comfortably at medium settings. That Windows 7 beta isn't ready "in a few months", you can get it right now. in the past two weeks i've built a small gaming pc that is more powerful than either the 360 or the ps3 for about the same price as an 80gb ps3 (about £270). it's very quiet, has a 3ghz core 2 cpu and an ati hd 4670 gpu, and (the very pretty, very usable, and very free, at least until the end of july) windows 7 beta.
it runs well anything i throw at it, upscales all my dvds, and if i was so inclined there would be an icon on my desktop linking to a menu with large images of consoles and games that when clicked would enable me to play any 8bit and 16bit console game that i liked (i could never afford a neo-geo as a kid, and i quite fancy the idea of playing some of it's games), any ps1 game, any n64 game (mario 64 in HD with shedloads of adaptive anti-aliasing? yes please!), any saturn game (o radiant silvergun wherefore art thou?), any dreamcast game, alot of ps2 games, some gamecube/wii games, and almost every arcade game that's ever existed (daytona usa anyone?), all in glorious high definition on my 42" tv, with xbox 360 pads for the 3d stuff and japanese saturn pads for the 2d games (i've never used a better pad for a streetfighter game, but then i never got out much and i could only afford one pad) plugged in to one of the four usb ports on the front of the little black box. i had dreamed of this sort of thing as a child (imagine a box that could play arcade perfect versions of streetfighter(s) 1,2,3,and 4!) but of course doing this would be illegal so my dream will have to remain just that, a dream. unless of course i do it and don't get caught. which i won't, because it's illegal and wrong, and downloading roms makes baby jesus cry.
anyway, that's enough waffle from me, i've got downloading (3dmark06, honest guv!) to be getting on with.
yours unerringly,
The Magnificent Ten
p.s. the windows 7 beta has been publicly available since 9/1/2009. this information is easily retrievable in seconds (or minutes, if you first have to boot your computer up), although the time it takes does depend on many factors, the main ones being the responsive speed of your computer and the speed of its network connection, the rate at which you can type and read, and your intelligence. If you could buy a console with all the latest technology every year then it'd cost a fortune too But all this needs cooling
i have an over clocked quad core machine
It can play anyting and do anything i want it to
but i refuse to use water cooling still like a loltard
Software developers are still developing in 32 bit making us 64 bit users having to pay more - a bigger screen means bigger graphics card.
I might be rambling - but i have to admit, i was a console gamer at first then hit pc, and have since fallen in love with my pc As good as some of todays gaming rigs are, they pale in comparison with some of the CAD workstations we deal with at work. We've just quoted a Dell machine costing over £10k to run NX. Very impressive stuff. I have been running windows 7 beta on my laptop for a couple of weeks now. And i can say that is loads better than vista sp1 wich came with my laptop. It runs much quicker boots faster and is loads more stable then vista wich it ever seen to do was crash when playing games. And forever had to keep using system restore. On the game pc vs console topic I cannot resist making this one point.
PC games are oh so much easier (and cheaper - no mod chip necessary!) to pirate.
Depending on your position in the industry, people could find this to be a good or bad thing. As a gamer who looks fondly back on the days when computer games were ultimately appreciated for their merit rather than marketability, I feel no guilt when today the only cost to play the latest pc game is half a day's download.
PCs better for gaming than consoles? Yes, if you're a tightarse like me.
And don't get me wrong. I'll definitely buy the next LucasArts point-and-click adventure that comes out. I'm looking forward to a quieter better performing PC. I'm particulary excited by Intel's advances in graphics tech..finally we might start seeing a surge in fairly low spec (well high compared to todays tech) PCs with built in GFX cards capable of running the latest games.
PC gaming would then be back in it's glory days. You do know you retard that CVG doesn't own the PC industry, M$ doe's go whine to them, I hate PC gaming always has and always will be an expensive waste of time. I dropped out of PC gaming just after Dawn of War came. Mainly due to being a poor student. I might get back into it now that i've got some cash but, i don't see the point in having to upgrade every 2 years anymore. The benefits aren't as stark between Consoles and PCs. So i probably wont. Then again Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 and Dawn of War 2. Will probably plunge me back into it. Oh well time to dust of my screw driver set and get building. windows 7 is vista sp1 basically.
its the same OS..download the beta and find out :) All that tech sounds great but how much will it cost, how easy is it to upgrade and, why can't pcs with all that power do split screen gaming, and why must we upgrade every 2 year? I think the old model where PCs once lead as a gaming platform is fast declining although they have the option for developers to develop super gfx games such as crysis or even souped up GTA4. In the old days Gfx on PCs would easily surpass SNES, PS2, Xbox. But with this gens consoles (360/PS3) the ease of use, the price, longevity and let's be honest pretty sweet gfx on large screens is somewhat a blessing. Even the controllers for FPS in my opinion is easier to access than the 'stretch your finger' keyboard approach. However RTS is still best played on the PC, altho I reckon my 2 year old PC won't be able to play DOW2 or even Starcraft 2. Sadly my PC gaming days are over ... after 18 years! Tech is easy to upgrade, and in my opinion quite fun.
replacing your Pc every 2 years? even thats extreme by my standards. I intend to keep mine for around 4 to 5 (its now 2 and a half) then get new clobber when its cheap. Here I was thinking that with the release of Crysis things would be slowing down...
Considering my £40 card can run that game at a HD resolution on high settings, what is really left? Run it perhaps, but run it well? Short of a massive discount on one of the top tier GPUs (or a second hand sale,) I fail to see how 40.00 GBP could afford anyone the kind of GPU firepower needed to run "Crysis" at the best settings. Indeed, it's only recently with the GTX285/290 in SLI mode that "Crysis" has been cracked. Granted, if 25 FPS is acceptable then maybe it's do-able with lots of the eye-candy toned way down. If, however, you are looking for a 40-60 FPS experience with bells and whistles then it will take more than a 40.00 GBP GPU card. Intel stepping into the GFX card market can only be a good thing. Competition is good.
If they can bring out a good card for reasonable prices then we might see card prices dropping. where the hell can you find a decent 32inch tv for 200 quid!! unless your talking about the old school CRT tvs, you must be kidding. it costs about that to get a decent 22inch let alone 32!! :roll: Touchscreen desktop PC? Now there's something that'll last all of five minutes. If it came with self cleaning capabilities I may consider... Just get yourselves a Mac.
My imac 24 is just incredible. Runs Vista on a drive partition so I have the best of both worlds! hahaha! I concur with the touch screen comment above. I suppose some sort of synthetic, non-finger print leaving tech gloves could be designed...
As for Macs I don't doubt the image quality I have seen on some of their monitors, but they are prohibitively expensive in my opinion when I can get something quite similar for far lesser prices. I don't get it.
Everything mentioned in this article hardware wise was available before christmas. I was hoping for more. Who's going to use touch screen, i don't want anyone mucking up my monitor with their greasy mits. Windows is windows if 7 can get off the ground useing less resources than vista i'll get it.
Anyway I built a core2quad, sli box two years ago and it can do far cry2, fallout3 and anything else at 1920x1200. I can't justify an upgrade cause everything works. It sucks, I've never gone so long without buying new kit. although i am sure touch screen could be useful at times
i think for general use it will be as succesful as the speech recongition software was... This article was old news months before they even published it. Maybe they can tell us that CPU's have finally broken the 1000Mhz barrier in the next article. :roll: Keeping within the context of the article, I'd say PC gaming is relatively cheap. It is of course up to individuals to upgrade as much as they like but really you need not upgrade for 3 or 4 years once spending perhaps £400. This is a lot, and compare it to consoles and it is more, but you get so much more of a package and a full on gaming experience with the PC. A top end PC spec, i.e AMD Athlon 2 quad core 3 Ghz, Nvidia 280, 4 GB DDR RAM would just clean up any current console in the graphics stakes and that is far from being the best you can buy!!
I plan to upgrade this year, and am currently still running a single core processor that runs most of today's games well enough. There is so much choice out there you really have to do your research and know what you are doing, but it is worth it.
PC gaming as a whole is going to see some huge titles this year that I think will make console fans jealous. If it is isn't then it should be!! | 
