Has PC gaming become pointless?

[Ethan_Hunt]

what makes u think microsoft will keep u sending some defected consoles everytime?

Dude even if I go through it twice then believe me I have had it with the console & won't have enough patience to bet on another one.But that's just we & am hence not universally comparing.My point is with their past vendetta with the console overheating & constant RROD's I would rather wait & get it when MS manufactures it with some good falcon chips or atleast has some less issues.

the patch for a console is on the dvd itself.u dont have to download.and its got nothing to do with the patches of PC since not every pc has the same hardware but consoles are the same.so its a universal patch.not a patch rather---an update for the console like updates for windows.whereas a pc game patch patches the game.

You mean everything or rather every patch comes on the DVD & nothing is download via Xbox Live? No game updates are required via Xbox live?

no offence but comparing them is just worthless.

None taken.But the point is not to bring down either platform but everything has it's own blues & bliss so nothing is secured completely.I was just putting some points which I felt would need to improve a bit for the current generation of console & I would never fringe in buying one.Heck I started out with consoles so would never give up on one.I love gaming.PERIOD.That's all I care.Then be it console or PC.

 

[gxsaurav]

So keep sending the console until you are lucky enough to get a non-faulty one? Seriously man I would rather pay more & have something stable & which doesn't cough up so often.

Dude even if I go through it twice then believe me I have had it with the console & won't have enough patience to bet on another one.But that's just we & am hence not universally comparing.My point is with their past vendetta with the console overheating & constant RROD's I would rather wait & get it when MS manufactures it with some good falcon chips or atleast has some less issues

RROD problem has been fixed with Falcon

 

[nish_higher]

You mean everything or rather every patch comes on the DVD & nothing is download via Xbox Live? No game updates are required via Xbox live?

yeah.afaik none of xbox 360 games require updates thru live to play them..but yeah u need those kind of updates when playing xbox (not 360) games.and if i m not wrong the only other update was to xbox live.


and new consoles don't have RROD trouble.so its safe to invest in one.and all the consoles that got replaced have not encountered RROD again.the earlier replacements had the same problem but they fixed it too.

 

[ring_wraith]

Some very good points coming through.

The first I want to mention is again in connection to the RRODs. The Xbox 360, like almost every other gadget has a launch-manafacturing defect. And this has been fixed. The ipod nanos have tilted screens, the PSPs had dead pixels, the PS2s had DRE, and the X360 HAD RRODs. These get ironed out over time, and kudos to microsoft for ironing it out so quickly.

Another thing is, Console games require patches really rarely, and even if they do, it is a far more seamless process on the console than on a PC , what with XBL and PSN providing more than updates for all your games in one place.

And it was very correctly pointed out that we are sticking only to the Xbox 360! The PS3 with its BD - Drive represents the integration of gaming consoles and entertainment centres. It's very hard to imagine your entire family huddled around your computer table, watching the latest movie on a 19" or 21" screen isn't it? And the Wii represents what I consider the true next gen of gaming. Far better Immersiveness than any console or PC will ever provide you. And of course the PSP, which is THE console for gaming on the go.

With so many strong players on the "console" side, as the cliche goes, "Its only a matter of time."

 

[nish_higher]

wii's sales tell a lot about it.and ps3 good for those who also want cheapest blu ray drives

 

[Zeeshan Quireshi]

Dude even if I go through it twice then believe me I have had it with the console & won't have enough patience to bet on another one.But that's just we & am hence not universally comparing.My point is with their past vendetta with the console overheating & constant RROD's I would rather wait & get it when MS manufactures it with some good falcon chips or atleast has some less issues.

Dude the RROD happens over a period of a year , so you will haev an RROD about a year later so if you get a replacement , it will last you about a year before it RRODs and now with the falcon in the market , you can be damn sure that if you get a replacement in 2008 it will be a falcon so no more worries of RROD .

 

[adithyagenius]

All these issues with PCs existed from long time. PC vs ps1 & ps2 existed even back then. Microsoft is to blame for the drop in pc games last 2 years. Even the hardcore PC game developers (orange box and bioshock) had to release on consoles because of the holes in Microsoft. Microsoft screwed up directx 10. For forcing gamers to upgrade to vista, it hyped directx 10 and made some games vista only (halo2, ultra high of crysis) although they can run fine on xp (due to patch). Which proves that dx10 is bull. Game developers could not develop games on dx10 because of the bad drivers, lack of good hardware (there was no clear cut "most gamers will buy this graphics card") and vista dilema (will people upgrade or not). Now the issue is slowly settling. Gamers are not moving to vista ultimate (seriously ultimate x64 is "the gamer edition") unless their config is ultra high. valve's surveys have shown mostly people are using 7600gt and 8800gts. Thats the reason they developed oragne box to give high fps one high settings on 7600gt and ultra high settings on 8800gts.

Here are the reasons why I will not buy consoles:
1. Too expensive. I will anyway own a dualcore 1gb ram pc. All the graphics cards i buy will be cheaper than console + hd tv.
2. I want to play when other people want to use tv.
3. Graphics quality of pc versions is higher. Be it GTA or gears of war.
4. I like to tweak my games. I like to enable extra blood through ini. I like to change some textures ( oblivion), i want to install mods like jailbreak.
5. Dont want to waste time patching. I am going to patch my computer regularly anyway. I donnot want to maintain and patch my consoles too.
6. I like PC titles more. Half life, farcry, system shock, diablo and warcraft. I hate halo a lot because the the weapons dont feel like weapons do in PC shooters like stalker and farcry. Console games are dumbed down due to non geek population percentage being high.
7. reconnecting speakers. I dont want to reconnect my 5.1 speakers everytimes i want to listen to music or watch movie on computer or play games on console.
8. LAN gaming. I can play cs, ut, nfs on hostel LAN and find servers easily. But noone else owns console to do console gaming.
9. I dont want to use mod chips and lose warranty and get banned on live account. Retail PC games are easily available and are lot cheapers. PC game prices drop quickly but console game prices dont drop in India.
The disadvantages dont apply to me:
1. Cost. I buy graphics card only if it can it can run games of playtimes of 2 years minimum before upgrading. I dont upgrade just because crysis has come out. I bought 7600gt last year and I have played an avg of 8 hours per day. I got Raedon 7500 (mobile on laptop) in 2001 and played avg 10 hours per day.
2. patching and tweaking. I format every semester (6 months) and i have my own customised windows xp installation on acronis true image. I only have to update antivirus and realtek and nvidia drivers.

 

[ring_wraith]

All these issues with PCs existed from long time. PC vs ps1 & ps2 existed even back then. Microsoft is to blame for the drop in pc games last 2 years. Even the hardcore PC game developers (orange box and bioshock) had to release on consoles because of the holes in Microsoft. Microsoft screwed up directx 10. For forcing gamers to upgrade to vista, it hyped directx 10 and made some games vista only (halo2, ultra high of crysis) although they can run fine on xp (due to patch). Which proves that dx10 is bull. Game developers could not develop games on dx10 because of the bad drivers, lack of good hardware (there was no clear cut "most gamers will buy this graphics card") and vista dilema (will people upgrade or not). Now the issue is slowly settling. Gamers are not moving to vista ultimate (seriously ultimate x64 is "the gamer edition") unless their config is ultra high. valve's surveys have shown mostly people are using 7600gt and 8800gts. Thats the reason they developed oragne box to give high fps one high settings on 7600gt and ultra high settings on 8800gts.

Here are the reasons why I will not buy consoles:
1. Too expensive. I will anyway own a dualcore 1gb ram pc. All the graphics cards i buy will be cheaper than console + hd tv.
2. I want to play when other people want to use tv.
3. Graphics quality of pc versions is higher. Be it GTA or gears of war.
4. I like to tweak my games. I like to enable extra blood through ini. I like to change some textures ( oblivion), i want to install mods like jailbreak.
5. Dont want to waste time patching. I am going to patch my computer regularly anyway. I donnot want to maintain and patch my consoles too.
6. I like PC titles more. Half life, farcry, system shock, diablo and warcraft. I hate halo a lot because the the weapons dont feel like weapons do in PC shooters like stalker and farcry. Console games are dumbed down due to non geek population percentage being high.
7. reconnecting speakers. I dont want to reconnect my 5.1 speakers everytimes i want to listen to music or watch movie on computer or play games on console.
8. LAN gaming. I can play cs, ut, nfs on hostel LAN and find servers easily. But noone else owns console to do console gaming.
9. I dont want to use mod chips and lose warranty and get banned on live account. Retail PC games are easily available and are lot cheapers. PC game prices drop quickly but console game prices dont drop in India.
The disadvantages dont apply to me:
1. Cost. I buy graphics card only if it can it can run games of playtimes of 2 years minimum before upgrading. I dont upgrade just because crysis has come out. I bought 7600gt last year and I have played an avg of 8 hours per day. I got Raedon 7500 (mobile on laptop) in 2001 and played avg 10 hours per day.
2. patching and tweaking. I format every semester (6 months) and i have my own customised windows xp installation on acronis true image. I only have to update antivirus and realtek and nvidia drivers.

I'm sorry , but i don't agree with most of your points, other than the 2nd.

1.Consoles are too expensive? The HDTV is something you are going to buy sooner or later anyway. It is an investment. The PS3 and X360 can be had for the price of a high end GPU.

2. agreed

3. Unless you have a really high end PC, not really.

4. You do, agreed, but most people dont. And mods are available for consoles anyway.

5. So, according to you, patching a console is tougher and takes more time than Pc patching? [sarcasm]Damn you automatic downloading and installing on consoles [/sarcasm]

6. Console titles are DUMBED down? Where are you getting this stuff? And game developers are releasing almost all their games on consoles too [look at Unreal tournament]. But there are lots of console games that are never going to appear on PC... And who said you have to be a geek to play games?????

7. Welcome to the future buddy. The PS3 and X360 can store and play music, play high def movies as well as games. And i'm sorry but i prefer to watch a movie on a 32" HDTV as compared to my lousy 17" tFT.

8. Consoles have multi player support built in! no need of LAN gaming. And you will be hard pressed to not be able to find servers on XBL and PSN!

9. Mod chips are used to play pirated games. Lets see you play a pirated game on steam. And about the price, PS2 games start from 499 today. I wonder how that happened if console game prices don't drop.

And the disadvantages do not apply to you? Who cares? This thread is about gaming in general! The disadvantages apply to most people. Did you see "Which is better for adithyagenius? Console Gaming or PC gaming? " as the thread title?

Please think befor arguing!

 

[MetalheadGautham]

All these issues with PCs existed from long time. PC vs ps1 & ps2 existed even back then. Microsoft is to blame for the drop in pc games last 2 years. Even the hardcore PC game developers (orange box and bioshock) had to release on consoles because of the holes in Microsoft. Microsoft screwed up directx 10. For forcing gamers to upgrade to vista, it hyped directx 10 and made some games vista only (halo2, ultra high of crysis) although they can run fine on xp (due to patch). Which proves that dx10 is bull. Game developers could not develop games on dx10 because of the bad drivers, lack of good hardware (there was no clear cut "most gamers will buy this graphics card") and vista dilema (will people upgrade or not). Now the issue is slowly settling. Gamers are not moving to vista ultimate (seriously ultimate x64 is "the gamer edition") unless their config is ultra high. valve's surveys have shown mostly people are using 7600gt and 8800gts. Thats the reason they developed oragne box to give high fps one high settings on 7600gt and ultra high settings on 8800gts.

Here are the reasons why I will not buy consoles:
1. Too expensive. I will anyway own a dualcore 1gb ram pc. All the graphics cards i buy will be cheaper than console + hd tv.
2. I want to play when other people want to use tv.
3. Graphics quality of pc versions is higher. Be it GTA or gears of war.
4. I like to tweak my games. I like to enable extra blood through ini. I like to change some textures ( oblivion), i want to install mods like jailbreak.
5. Dont want to waste time patching. I am going to patch my computer regularly anyway. I donnot want to maintain and patch my consoles too.
6. I like PC titles more. Half life, farcry, system shock, diablo and warcraft. I hate halo a lot because the the weapons dont feel like weapons do in PC shooters like stalker and farcry. Console games are dumbed down due to non geek population percentage being high.
7. reconnecting speakers. I dont want to reconnect my 5.1 speakers everytimes i want to listen to music or watch movie on computer or play games on console.
8. LAN gaming. I can play cs, ut, nfs on hostel LAN and find servers easily. But noone else owns console to do console gaming.
9. I dont want to use mod chips and lose warranty and get banned on live account. Retail PC games are easily available and are lot cheapers. PC game prices drop quickly but console game prices dont drop in India.
The disadvantages dont apply to me:
1. Cost. I buy graphics card only if it can it can run games of playtimes of 2 years minimum before upgrading. I dont upgrade just because crysis has come out. I bought 7600gt last year and I have played an avg of 8 hours per day. I got Raedon 7500 (mobile on laptop) in 2001 and played avg 10 hours per day.
2. patching and tweaking. I format every semester (6 months) and i have my own customised windows xp installation on acronis true image. I only have to update antivirus and realtek and nvidia drivers.

You are starting to hit the targets...

IMO, the best way PC gaming can be made better is if you could install a dedicated Gaming OS, that has been compiled on your own PC, and has its only objective as to play games, and hence barely uses any resource. Linux comes close to the target here, so I feel that if Game developers decided to release only OpenGL Linux games, we could immidiately have a gaming-centric distribution for extracting maximum juice out of the system. Windows could still be used for day to day computer tasks.

And yes, you are right in saying that its not nessary to buy new GPUs just for a newer game.

Game developers are to blame, for increasing the system requirements by each new game released.

The world would be a better place to game if a standard was adopted for PC games. Its too bad IBM has expired its patent of the PC, because if it was active, I am sure they would have done something to standardise PC gaming. Now we only have consoles to look at, if Graphic requirements keep increasing as a parabolic function of time. Hell with Moore's law.

 

[Zeeshan Quireshi]

Totally true dude .

Consoles are tailor-made for gaming and thus offer the best gaming experience .

@adithyagenius , dude even if you want to change speakers every time a single optical cable is not much hassle , much like putting in a power-plug you may say .

ALso , in most cases you won't be able to affors as high end a PC as to support the resolution and GFX quality outputted by console games(my xbox 360 churns games at 1920 x 1080 constantly , beat that on a 15k gaming rig coz Xbox 360 core costs Rs 15k n that too with 2 Free Original Games )

 

[MetalheadGautham]

ALso , in most cases you won't be able to affors as high end a PC as to support the resolution and GFX quality outputted by console games(my xbox 360 churns games at 1920 x 1080 constantly , beat that on a 15k gaming rig coz Xbox 360 core costs Rs 15k n that too with 2 Free Original Games )

You can even make PCs tailor made for gaming. All you need to do is to compile the OS right in the same machine, and strip it down so that it does nothing but game. As I already said before, this can't happen unless developers of games move away from windows and go to linux.

And yes, you can also compile the game on the same machine if you want to "tailor" it for the box.

 

[Zeeshan Quireshi]

You can even make PCs tailor made for gaming. All you need to do is to compile the OS right in the same machine, and strip it down so that it does nothing but game. As I already said before, this can't happen unless developers of games move away from windows and go to linux.

And yes, you can also compile the game on the same machine if you want to "tailor" it for the box.

and from where are you gonna get the source code to compile ?

I'm talkin of current scenario . also even if you compile , having different configurations is the biggest prob .

 

[adithyagenius]

I'm sorry , but i don't agree with most of your points, other than the 2nd.

1.Consoles are too expensive? The HDTV is something you are going to buy sooner or later anyway. It is an investment. The PS3 and X360 can be had for the price of a high end GPU.

2. agreed

3. Unless you have a really high end PC, not really.

4. You do, agreed, but most people dont. And mods are available for consoles anyway.

5. So, according to you, patching a console is tougher and takes more time than Pc patching? [sarcasm]Damn you automatic downloading and installing on consoles [/sarcasm]

6. Console titles are DUMBED down? Where are you getting this stuff? And game developers are releasing almost all their games on consoles too [look at Unreal tournament]. But there are lots of console games that are never going to appear on PC... And who said you have to be a geek to play games?????

7. Welcome to the future buddy. The PS3 and X360 can store and play music, play high def movies as well as games. And i'm sorry but i prefer to watch a movie on a 32" HDTV as compared to my lousy 17" tFT.

8. Consoles have multi player support built in! no need of LAN gaming. And you will be hard pressed to not be able to find servers on XBL and PSN!

9. Mod chips are used to play pirated games. Lets see you play a pirated game on steam. And about the price, PS2 games start from 499 today. I wonder how that happened if console game prices don't drop.

And the disadvantages do not apply to you? Who cares? This thread is about gaming in general! The disadvantages apply to most people. Did you see "Which is better for adithyagenius? Console Gaming or PC gaming? " as the thread title?

Please think befor arguing!

You don't have to be sorry to disagree. Everyone is in different situations and have different tastes. For me PC is best. But you didnt understand some of my points due to them being very short. Lemme explain...

1. I will not buy HDTV because i dont see TV nor anyone in my family wants to see saas bahu serials. DD is going HD but it will simply upscale the resolution of its crappy quality videos and beam em using satellite. I dont see myself buying HDTV for next 8 years. If you intelligently buy graphics cards it will be cheaper. The problem is that many cards out there are simply not vfm and some appear vfm but are not. I have been playing games since 1996. I have spent only 14k on graphics cards till now I can still play COD4 at medium high and play Bioshock at high settings. I dont judge performance based on avg fps but on minimum fps and lot more things. I also don't upgrade just because crysis type games come out. I will play crysis with my next upgrade expected to be sept 08. Also buying graphics cards at the right time is also important. Many who bought 8600gt are simply screwed unless this was an upgrade from geforce 4 or raedon 8500 or onboard. Geforce 8 series allows you to play very few games which you can't play on geforce 7 series.

3. Read my above point, that choosing awesome graphics cards at right time by looking for right performance benchmarks and analysing if its needed. I always play games at settings that are way higher than consoles.

4. Exactly. I want tweaks and dont care if others dont want. Most of the mods are not available for consoles. Mods are developed using toolkits provided by the developer and are developed on PC.

5. According to me maintaining a PC + console is tougher than maintaining PC alone. No sarcasm.

6. Thats the trend. Take deus ex for example. The original game rocked because of all the complex skills and augmentations. Deus Ex : Invisible War was dumbed to handle some console audience. The game simply didn't meet the standards of original deus ex. Blizzard doesn't make games for consoles. Tell me a few games which are very nice and are not available for PC.. I am asking because I genuinely want to know.

7. I know the media capabilities of consoles thanks to my console owning friends. But they can't handle my 73GB music collection on my computer harddisk. Where will I store that? How will I arrange when new content gets added. Most of my videos can't be played due to codec issues. Seriously, even Ubuntu is unable to play them due lack of codecs for linux. I like wmp11's search as you type media library. Regarding the size of the screen - Most importance thing is the angle subtended by the image. I think 17" is enough for such close range viewing. For movies I have 17" widescreen laptop and an old 21" onida Black TV. Gaming is more impoartant than movies to me anyways.

8. I want LAN gaming because thats what all my friends have. Everyone of my friends has LAN but no access to internet except college wifi. The ping is very inconsistant and too high for playing due location as well ISPs issues in India, compared to max ping on LAN being 24 ms. Sometimes there is LAG while playing Quake 3 among friends in Visakhapatnam and Mumbai using BSNL and MTNL. The fact that I am playing with my classmates and seniors is better. I dont want to spend money on xbox live.

9. How old are those PS2 games? I can get orange box for Rs 725. I am talking of somewhat recent games.


the thread is about gamers. So it obviously includes me. This is a poll and generally posts should be " I voted for this because of these...". Thats what my post is. I voted for PC gaming and why. Obviosuly more people like PC than consoles. So I am part of the general audience and I contribute to it and maybe others share my situational constraints. Dont know why you have issue with that. Do you listen to certain band just because people generally are listening to that band? People listen to what they like and everyone contributes to the statistics for personal reasons as there is no "in general".

Totally true dude .

Consoles are tailor-made for gaming and thus offer the best gaming experience .

@adithyagenius , dude even if you want to change speakers every time a single optical cable is not much hassle , much like putting in a power-plug you may say .

ALso , in most cases you won't be able to affors as high end a PC as to support the resolution and GFX quality outputted by console games(my xbox 360 churns games at 1920 x 1080 constantly , beat that on a 15k gaming rig coz Xbox 360 core costs Rs 15k n that too with 2 Free Original Games )

I did check out graphics quality man. But speakers with optical cable cost too much and are not vfm in my budget range. I am using Creative T6060 for 5.1 gaming. T6060 causes a huge mess of wires apart from placing them behind my computer and all. All my money for gaming comes from scholarship. I simply cannot afford console gaming. Also I am worried about image quality rather than the reolution since i use small screens and sit very close. I want highest quality textures possible. If i start earning I will start spending on consoles too.

 

[napster007]

I dont see myself buying HDTV for next 8 years.

if ur going to play games for the next 8 years on ur crt monitor ............may god be with you man!!!!

 

[adithyagenius]

if ur going to play games for the next 8 years on ur crt monitor ............may god be with you man!!!!

How is not buying HDTV imply using CRT monitor only? Even now, to an good extent CRT is better due to brightness, contrast, response times, aspect ratio and cost. Once I have finished with 4:3 only games and LCD panels lose all their shortcomings, I will upgrade to 19" or 20" widescreen. I think it will take few more months for that to happen. I am buying a computer and it will have good monitor and hence its not a cost due to gaming. Whether I buy console or not I will be buying the standard monitor anyway.

 

[Ethan_Hunt]

Geforce 8 series allows you to play very few games which you can't play on geforce 7 series.

Could you elaborate a bit more on this point? Not really sure what it meant.

2. I want to play when other people want to use tv.

Now that's a brilliant point.Why didn't I think of that.My current PS2 purchase is held on because I have a 14 inch TV in my bedroom which supports only PAL signals & hence those NTSC version DVD's won't display any colour.My living room's TV is mostly used by my parent's & hence most of their time goes in watching age old serials so I get kicked back into my room. As such I like my privacy so would like to play inside but can't due to this silly restriction.I can't buy another TV for it now,can I?

ALso , in most cases you won't be able to affors as high end a PC as to support the resolution and GFX quality outputted by console games(my xbox 360 churns games at 1920 x 1080 constantly , beat that on a 15k gaming rig coz Xbox 360 core costs Rs 15k n that too with 2 Free Original Games)

Just out of curiosity,which HDTV do you have? or are you playing via those VGA cables connected to your monitor?

 

[ring_wraith]

adityagenius, some very good points again. When i said that this thread was not centred around you i meant to ask you to look at the bigger picture. And i completely disagree with the console games being dumbed down. There are always one or two exceptions. BTW, the PS3 HDD can be swapped out with even a 250GB one if you wish.... Again with the codecs thing, steadily, updates will give support for most codecs. The X360 supports DivX now! Regarding the LAN gaming thing, that is needless to say very rare in India. Very few people have LAN parties. And the PS2 games are indeed somewhat new....

side note : Scholarship money on GAMING -> NIIICE!!! ROCK ON MAN!

Regarding the console games here we go:
1)God of War series [need i say more]
2)Metal Gear Solid Series
3)Ninja Gaiden Series
4)Resident Evil series [sure RE4 was ported, but we all know that that was broken]
5)Shadow of the Collosus + Genji
6)Guitar Hero series
7)tekken series
i hope you get the picture. There are sooooo many more.


Again, with the linux - box idea, that is very hard to make work. A different OS for every PC out there? Do you have any idea what a nightmare that would become for Diriver distirbutors? And i'm pretty sure ordinary people don't know how to code an entire OS.

Maybe if someone made a software that generated an OS..... a long shot.... but still...

 

[adithyagenius]

Could you elaborate a bit more on this point? Not really sure what it meant.

Sorry for long reply, but i have included my upgrade technique.
I am simply saying that upgrading graphics card when a new generation becomes standard is waste of money. Take for ex: 7600 GT and 8600GT. 7600GT can play all the games released upto 2006 and few games of 2007 like perseus mandate, hellgate london orange box at high settings. 8600GT gives better framerates than 7600GT in stalker, bioshock and COD4 at high settings. Crysis is still unplayable. 7600GT can also be used to play COD4, Bioshock and stalker but settings have to be reduced to get stable frame rate. Also, 8600GT will definitely not allow high settings for games released after 2007 unless the games have low sys requirements and can be played on 7600GT too. So a person upgrading from 7600GT will be wasting money for less than 5 games. Also keeping in mind that directx 10 hasnt matured, 10.1 being released .. its not fully directx 10 capable. 7600GT on the other hand is fully directx 9 compliant upto 9.0c. Its similiar situation for person upgrading from 6600GT to 8600gt although to a less extent. Always wait for the new versions of DirectX to be complete and the number of [emphasise]new[/emphasise] games (games that can't be played on current card but can be played on new card + new games coming out which can be played on new card) to be large enough to worth the money and keep you entertained till next upgrade (around 3 years). Then buy the graphics card and play at highest settings.
Also, many times the difference between high and very high settings is minute. Even now most of the game engines are not capable of using highest/high texture quality or lighting to make improvement in image quality over high/medium but do make difference fps. But there is significant drop in image quality when going from high/medium to medium/low.
Resolutions should be defined by the size of monitor. Anything more than 1024*768 will not be singificantly better on 17" CRT but will cause fps issues and refresh rate problems. On 17" LCD 1440 is not significantly better than 1280.
Regarding monitor size etc. While PC gaming I am sitting so close that if I had huge screens like 32", a lot of the HUD would be out of my field of vision causing neck pains etc. So 17" is enough for 4:3 aspect ratio and 19" enough for widescreen (not sure yet). I have the perferct ergonomic setup of my computer. Hence, I can play even 16hours per day on holidays without issues. I cannot do that with large screens and I hate refresh rate of TVs (I hate PS2 and XBox displays because of this). Also an ergonomic setup for playing will be bad for TV watching from far.
Regarding other hardware parts.. people are wasting money here too. All the games that can be played on 7600Gt can be played whether its DDR2 266 Mhz (my config) or DDR2 800 MHz ( considered vfm by some) or if I have oldest dual core Pentium D 820 (my config) or E6850 ( best core 2 duo).

 

[Zeeshan Quireshi]

Just out of curiosity,which HDTV do you have? or are you playing via those VGA cables connected to your monitor?

I've got a Samsung 720p HDTV but the Xbox 360 and PS3 both are capable of outputting at upto 1080p .

I use Component cables for my Connection .

Tell me a few games which are very nice and are not available for PC.. I am asking because I genuinely want to know.

Well here you go :

1) Resident Evil Series (1,2,Code Veronica , 3 , 4) (4 was ported to PC but gameplay is much better on Console )

2) Dead or Alive Series (1,2,3,4)

3) Sonic Series

4) Burnout Series (1,2,Takedown,Revenge,Dominator,Paradise)

5) Ninja Gaiden Series

6) Tekken Series

7) Halo Trilogy (Consoles got it much earlier)

8] Virtua Fighter Series

9) Gears of War(we got it one year earlier)

10) God of War Seires

i could go on and on about games that are Only Available on Consoles ond which are considered gaming classics .

I will play crysis with my next upgrade expected to be sept 08. Also buying graphics cards at the right time is also important.

So you mean to say you will play a game that is released today 1-2 Years Later and that too after spending so much time and money on just buying a GFX card . Cmon man games are for enjoying , wat's the fun if you spend som much time optimizing ur system .

Also , you can exchange games with your friends 5-6 of my friends have Xbox 360 so each person has 2-3 games and we all exchange with each other n play .

For me i've only bought Dead Or Alive 4 and Burnout Revenge but have completed more than 15 Xbox 360 games(since oct 07) .

@adithyagenius , also PC's cn never match the ease of use of a Console , Just put in a game disc and start playing , no installing , driver updating , etc etc .. Just pure gaming fun , because after all games are meant to be enjoyed .

 

[nish_higher]

FYI those who think xbox360\ps3 su*ks with CRT tv--i have a Sony 21' non flat tv.probably kv2197.i dont have any complaints regarding how games run on it.i also have a Samsung 720p and graphics dont make that much difference like you ppl hype it.all u need is a good tv.and in case of PC's the same is with monitors.