After playing two brand new pc titles let me tell you why the pc sucks!

GTA3 and Soldier of Fortune II both run like **** on my (1 year and 2 month old system) When did the pc gaming industry change switch to a 1 year hardware replacement cycle.
Playable to me is 800x600 rez with full detail at 60 frames.

Both of these games I have to run in the lowest rez and turn down detail and even then still not very smooth at all.

I would think coding out all the systems out in the field that are older then 1 year old would not be very smart since the number of machine capable of running the games are way less.

A console can go 4-5 years but a pc can only go 1-1.5 years this seems a little weird to me.

(OBSOLETE SYSTEM 1.3 gig athlon, 256 DDR ram, geforec 2 ultra, sblive 5.1)

I am personally waiting for the day when pc gaming evolves to going to software store and buying the newest game and the store clerk ask you if you would like our "latest system" with that.

No thanks I bought one last week.
...Oh, well that won't run on this title it requires twice as much power.

Be sure you've got texture compression enabled in the menus & haven't set the Texture quality to "Very high".
Game, well demo, runs fine enough here on my system - 1.2Ghz Athlon, geforce 4, Extigy, 256MB RAM

That's a fairly small sphere of experience to be making such a sweeping generalisation, don't you think??

I mean, I know that PC games do push to the technological edge, so to speak, but saying that "pc gaming sucks" is a pretty general statement and to be honest one that I think comes from some limited black and white thinking.

Now, I will agree with some of what you have said, which is that if you want to play up to date, new and fresh games, then you have to have a pretty up to date platform to play that on.

One can see the appeal of games boxes like the "X-BOX" and "PS2" because of this. A lot of folks like to be able to just get the platform, get the game, and then play away.

Furthermore, its not as simple often as just "plugging in the game and going" on the PC (even if you have the hardware)because its a much more complex beast than a PS2..... You have to worry about things like Is your DirectX version up to date?? or Do I have the most up to date drivers for my graphics card?....

....Basically technical details that a LOT of people can't be bothered with. And I don't blame them. You don't sit down and program a remote control in some special language just to get to watch the TV. Or have to patch your TV to watch certain programs.....

But why its more of a pain playing games on the PC is because PC games are potentially much more advanced.

With a LOT more RAM, processing power, etc on a PC as well as a lot of extra technology as found in graphics cards, PC games can afford to go that extra mile and do things that are just pretty much impossible on a dedicated games box.

And if we accept that, then its reasonable to reckon that people know this, and expect their PC games to do this.

And its reasonable to accept that you have to have a very up to date PC to play most modern games with all of the eye candy turned on....

Its just the way that it is. If you want to sacrifice this and gain stability, compatibility and so forth in much more abundance and basically take the "headache" out of computer gaming then a PC is not for you, and a dedicated games console is.

None of this detracts from the fact that there have been some VERY VERY GOOD games for the PC over the years. I won't even bother with titles because there are just so many and mentioning even one fails to do justice to the so many more out there that are just as great....

So really its up to you. Its your choice, and whatever is better for you is better for you. That's always true. But to say from that that because maybe the PC platform is NOT for you THEREFORE its a piece of crap as a games platform is nonsense.

There is a whole forum here of people who will agree with me.

And I wouldn't call that system obsolete at all. That's my system minus a lot of extra hard drives, goodies, etc, I am playing these games that mention right now.

Console gaming seems to be the route for the more simple-minded folk out there.

The payoff from such hassles as installing the latest drivers (go to the manufacturers website -> search for drivers -> install -> restart...wow... ) and all that is well worth it. PC games are always one step ahead of the console. The reason you need to upgrade your hardware all the time is that the hardware needs to keep up with the software!! Our games are constantly getting better and better, and that's just not for some people.

BTW: It may not even be the computer that's causing your problems...remember, 90% of a computer's problems are user negligence! BTW: I tried out the SoF2 demo on my P3 558, and it actually ran kind of well, with all the graphics settings on moderate!!

I am used to playing UT/Quake 3 and the performance of those titles are stellar on my hardware. Take these new titles and I feel like I have a 486 again. I just don't think these games are doing that much more than UT or Quake 3 to justify the hardware requirements. Call it code bloat, lazyness or whatever but I am not upgrading for either of these titles. Doom III and UT 2003 I am sure is going to put my machine to an early grave.

PS. I have the latest drivers and my system is tweaked for performance gaming. These last two titles left me unimpressed.

These games might be great titles on a NEW machine but on mine it sure was not.

Agreed!
One quote I remember when GeForce4 was being reviewed by MaximumPc
Quote: " You won't see graphics like this on your stinkin' game console!" [SIZE=1]"The Wolfman demo from nVidia sports 300,000 polygons, realtime rendered fur with per-pixel anisotropic lighting, and a skeletal animation system. The wolfman even casts shadows upon himself!"[/SIZE]
PC gaming will always be cutting edge while consoles are for the masses.

Geforce4 must be the extra goodie. What kind of frames per second are you getting in GTA3 in 800x600 rez

Said quite well Phantasm!

I had the same feeling about GTA3 that you have, but i was told to select ENABLE FRAME LIMITER and this fixed it all up. I'm not quite sure what you meant when you said

In the prior post you complain how quickly your computer has become out of date, and then you say that you are anticipating the day when a week old system will be out of date...

As Phantasm mentioned, 2 games is not a wide variety of knowledge and experience with computer gaming. If the problem is incredibly bad, don't you think that the companies will distribute a driver or patch for them? My rig is what i consider great, and it runs GTA3 a little slow at times. Most people don't have a computer similar to mine, especially if they are store bought. You make it seem that the gaming companies were out to purposely 'screw' you. That attitude won't get you very far in the computer world, considering problems erupt with releases of software and hardware alike. We must all have patience when dealing with these problems as one day they will be resolved. Hang in there bud

I don't think that will happen at all.

I think there will come a time where hardware shall reach such an advanced level that it will be impossible to write a game that fully exploits it....

Now I don't see this happening for some time, maybe even 10 years or more (very likely more), but when it does, I think powerusers of this generation shall be looked upon as the cowboys of the hardware phase just as currently many old school programmers of the 70's and 80's are looked upon as the cowboys of those decades....

We are witnessing a real revolution in PC hardware. As far back as ten years ago, a 3D graphics accelerator in a home PC was just not something considered viable or even desireable.

Techologies such as RAID, which were up until fairly recently only thought of as server technologies, are making their way to the mainstream home PC.

Likely this shall ultimately evolve to a state where the computer equiped, internet connected home has a dedicated server at its heart, and uses something like wireless LAN tech to allow people to sit in the garden with their laptops and play games, surf the net, talk to people, etc....

I don't think PC games will ever look "reality real" as such, and I don't think people will want them to, but what we will get is a world that we know is computer generated and has all the loveable qualities of this universe but has lighting and transformation, texture quality etc that's a good as the human eye can tell.

This transitional period is a wonderful time, and I can't help thinking that in around 20 years this will be thought of as the "good old days" of PC hardware.

And it has been good days. I remember the absolute wonder of getting home with a grand new Voodoo2 PCI card and Quake II..... And yes, this does validate some of what you are saying, which is that a lot of hardware purchases that people like us make for their PC's innards are games purchase led.

And its still good days now. If you like games at all as much as some people here do, then dismissing the PC as a games platform because of technical issues is fairly silly. You are more or less getting what you pay for, both in terms of monetary value and in terms of handling technical issues.

I have a Geforce 2 Ultra 64MB card just like you. I know its yesterday's news but I assure you that it does play any game a care to try. But as has been noted here, you have, as always with any PC game, have to set the appropriate settings in terms of eye candy level.

I had GTA3 on until I created a games partition again this weekend and only copied some games over from the original directories. I shall reinstall it again (if I can find it in this mess) and tell you what fps I get.

fps is only part of the story, though, so I will be also trying to honestly ask myself how playable it is. I remember it being just fine.

Console ? What's that ?

:eek: :eek: :eek:

I agree, while new gameboxes (consoles) seem to be released every Xmas. We've discussed this quite a bit in past threads.

What I h8 about consoles?

In a nutshell, the fact that they have games designed for the PC e.g. 1st person shooters and that regular console users find it amazing to have say a hard drive addon as a 'new thing' when its old news to us PC owners who already have better, faster drives (the xbox has a 5400rpm drive).

I especially h8 console games that are better suited to a PC with mouse & keyboard combo - take Metal Gear Solid 2 for example, I can just imagine the precise accuracy I will have with my "Logitech Dual Opitical Mouse" as opposed the some stupid analogue sticks i.e. 1 shot kills not 25 tries with a joypad!

Though console games can be great & all you have to remember how many PC ports of the games are made better, or vice versa! How many PC ports are way cut down for consoles due to memory limitations & such. Anyone remember all the fuss with getting Duke Nukem 3D onto the playstation 1?
Or the poor texture quality due to, again, lack of RAM - this affects even Gamecube.
I guess the Controller thing is debateable enough.

I don't want to get into the 'consoles vs pc' argument 'cos I think it's pointless: use the tool for the job at hand.

I think one point the original poster (Nexxus) probably does know about but may have ignored for rhetorical reasons is that you don't have to toss the whole computer and replace... Since someone with a very similar system but a GeForce 4 instead of the outmoded 2 (to which I personally have just recently upgraded from a TNT 2!) is playing it with no hassles, a new vid card, not hellishly expensive, would probably have you flying on all the current games. A console has less of that user tweakability...

Bravus

First off, I think something is wrong when someone with pretty good system specs comes here and says his system is obsolete and says he can't play any games. I have a GF2 MX400 64MB(rest of my specs are in my sig.), and I haven't found any game that doesn't run pretty good, not as spectacular as the guys with the GF4 Ti's but I've never had any problem.

I'm not a hardcore gamer so I don't need the killer frame rates and super graphics most of these guys use and most of the games I play, my card is more than enough to handle. I do occasionally play games which should really be played with a better card but the game still plays fine and looks good (just not REALLY good)

Have you never played a console? I seriously believe some of those games (Even PS2) run at sub-10fps at times. No one ever seems to bring this up though.

When we are all old and grey, I'm sure computers will evolve to the point where they will be so rediculously fast what speed your system is will be irrelavent. "Oh, I've got a 39 TerraQuads with 200 Triilobytes of memROM and 4128 Gigablocks of graphics memory.

Computers are still fairly young, and so are consoles. Give them some more time and I'm sure they will satisfy you.

Untill then, I suggest you get some new drivers because I haven't met a game yet that doesn't run super on my system (comparable to yours) and even systems made 3 years ago are still playing current games decently.

please, don't compair an orange to an apple