I so totally know what you mean here about the half baked cookie, because towards the end of my computer gaming career, I just didn't feel that I was getting my "bang for the buck"! I started to feel that the computer manufactures were loosing some ground to the computer software company's. Back in my day when I started gaming on a computer, software company's had to conform and comply to the designs and spec's of the computer. They had to gear their game as so it would fit the computer, with very little emphasis to the computer owner/user on needing to upgrade.
With the computer games of today, the above and stated stuff I said no longer applies, now there is great emphasis to the computer owner/user that to play their game, even on 1 year old hardware, that hardware might not be "cutting edge" enough to play, so it leads the owner/user to be forced to upgrade. Now a day's to me, it seems like video card companies are just pumping out new models and fancy series numbers to meet the modern software company's demands.
So ultimately I decided to give up the ghost and stop being a slave to the video card company's and software company's and gravitated away from computer gaming and landed smack dab in Playstation 2 land! I like my choice, for I'm not being compelled every six months or so, do to hardware upgrades or make advances to the existing hardware, so I don't have to worry about upgrading anything in regards to my Playstation 2. I like the fact that for my game console the software company's had to conform and comply to the console, with no worry about nagging the owner/user of having to have them spend their money on anything but the game. No sound card upgrades to worry about, no video card upgrades to worry about, no worrying about if ones processor chip is up to the job, no worry about if ones RAM count is high enough for the job, nothing, no worry's, just gaming!
Plus I'm more of an old school gamer, as one of my factors when buying my Playstation 2. I like the look and feel of the classic titles. So I might not have all the "bells and whistles" that come standard on modern day consoles, but to me I really don't need them nor require them, I'm quite happy with what I've got.