The thought occurred to me as I looked through more websites for a new graphics card. I caught a bad case of deja-vu, being that I have been through this process probably 6 or 7 times, each time "upgrading" to a newer, shinier card. Each new upgrade brought the promise of better graphics, but not much else.
If you think about it, that's about all you are getting with a new card: better graphics. More detail. Higher res textures. Better spell effects. And yes, it will take a lot of the pressure off of your CPU. But every year we get a new one, or a new tower. I did start to look at towers, too. Started to add 'em up, getting ready to slam down another grand. Not a process I look forward to.
Not for now, though. I am going to try something, and it makes me feel kinda' good.
I am not going to get a new card for this machine. No more ram, nor a bigger monitor. If I need all that fancy stuff, I will go play on the bigger machine that Leala is always on. In the meanwhile, I am going to see what games will work, what games won't and what games are fun to play on this machine. But first, let me give you the stats to show what I am working with. Bear in mind that my old card was a Gforce 7900. She game me a solid year or two of playing:
AMD Athlon 64, 3500 processor.
2 gigs RAM
160 GB Hard drive
Audigy Sound Card
As for the graphics card now, I went out and plunked down 40 bucks for this Nvidia Geforce 8400. It is basically like an on-board graphics chip that needs no extra power plug-in. It is really just a few steps above a graphics chip, thus the price. So far it runs all my usual games, but the CPU usage has gone WAY up, which is to be expected. The card isn't doing all of the work as it used to: the CPU is pulling more weight.
Luckily, I have been on this browser based games/ indie game kick lately, and loving it. I am seeing how graphics make the game, and finding myself getting lost in games that are 2-D sprite fests as much as I ever did in Vanguard or Ryzom. It seems to me that you can kind of train yourself to expect a certain level of graphical sheen to allow a good time to be had, but as with art or music you can un-train yourself to look past the superficial and to the heart of the game. Is the game-play good? Does it have a cool back-story? Does the community make the game better?
I am concerned about the trend to pump more money into my PC. We have done it constantly over the last 10 years and I'm sick of it. While we can afford it, it just feels clunky, unnecessary, a bloated process of plugging things in, installing things, buying more power or longer cords. All to allow the games to look better, while the best game-play I have found as of late has been found in lower (graphical) quality games.
I don't know, we'll see how it goes. To be honest, I want to just go plunk down 500 bucks and grab a tower with a decent graphics chip. Nowadays the cheap PC's are yesterdays powerhouses. I don't care about seeing every pore on the characters face. I don't need to see every little beam of light. While there is nothing wrong with that pursuit, something I have done myself for years, I am not wanting to do it now.
Ask yourself, seriously, why World of Warcraft or on the not-so-other-hand, Wizard 101, have become successful. Think about it. What did they do that worked? Besides fun game-play, they allowed people to do things together easily and made the game run on as many different systems as possible. I truly believe that the lower system requirement is the main reason why both games are doing very well. Game-play is second. If you can't run it, then forget it altogether.
So, I will be listing the games that I try very soon. I will clean this machine off a bit, get rid of the Vanguards and EQ2's and save the big machine for those, and see what adventure I can find on this machine.
Sorry, Best Buy. I am going to avoid coming in and spending another thousand dollars with you this year. You had me for the last 10, for a while at least I am going to play with what I got.
Beau
FINALLY! Someone that make a point I have always mentioned: Newer is not always better, or "Dont fix it if it aint broke"
If the game works and you like playing it, why bother spending $500 for that fancy graphics card to that a few extra pixels are colored in?
Sat Oct 03 2009 8:04AM ReportWhile I really enjoy putting systems together, I can't see the expense any more either. My last build was last November and I'm hoping that I will not have to upgrade for at least another year or two, preferably two. Oh, and a tip. Avoid Best Buy man, try Newegg, ClubIT, NCIXUS or MWave, in that order. A lot better pricing when you do decide to upgrade, and with Newegg, I usually get my parts within two days to PA and most items have free shipping.
Sat Oct 03 2009 8:24AM ReportYeh I have tried some other places, like Frys. That place is sick. But that's just the point: I can go on forever upgrading here and there, until I spend another few grand over the next coupla' years. :)
I still have the bigger machine to run the bigger games, but I'm enjoying seeing what games run and how they run. I have been exploring lot's of indie games, anyway, so this will fit perfectly.
Beau
Sat Oct 03 2009 8:32AM ReportI usually get a new graphic card every 3-4 years. That's about the time they last until games becomes too hard to the run to the point of burning my processor and greatly overheating my motherboard......which it did in July this year ¬¬
Sat Oct 03 2009 10:43AM ReportBut yeah...3-4 years....I think that's "ok"
3-4 years is perfectly ok, and so could every year, depending on the person. I guess for me it's just added up over the last 10 to be a lil much. I'm mainly doing it to try out other games, ways of playing.
I'm excited!
And if I have to, I can always jump onto the bigger machine.
Beau
Sat Oct 03 2009 1:58PM ReportI agree with your concepts for sure. If i didn't put a lock down on huge client downloads, I would have never discover great games like Free Realms nor Runescape to name a few. I think the Browser Base gaming model will become more popular in 2010. Especially with Onlive launching this winter.
Tue Oct 06 2009 10:55AM ReportMMORPG.com writes:
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