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Do you feel a compulsion to constant hardware upgrade?

Baron Dupek

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Heck no.
With how slow upgrading is these days (as you mentioned in recent post - there is little to play, if you know what you want and not jump at anything trendy) and my collection is in 99% not that demanding.
Bought SSD for STALKER mods and Path of Exile, need new GPU for that PoE crap.

Had to buy new mouse because my a4tech x750 stopped working after almost a decade on my Win7 machine.
Thing is - it works on any other machine without problem, it just stopped working on my main PC for... some reasons? No update or drivers installed, nothing.
 
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I forget to mention that despite I'm wielding a terrible PC beast comparing to my last rig from 2008, I don't feel that 'bleeding edge tech' vibe anymore. I miss the times when that 3Dfx animation was giving a boner.

Ok, overall I'm not regret upgrade but I don't think I will need another unless hardware dies.
 

mindx2

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Between the years of 1995-2010 I would have said yes. Did it so often I unwillingly learned pretty good hardware skills. Had plenty of card changes. Matrox, Diamond, several Voodoo, and Banshee. The move from PCI to AGP took some work to get hardware conflicts solved. IIRC the move to PCI-E as a standard has eliminated any more problems.

Since the 2010 or so the answer is no. I've had 2 PCs in the last 8 or 9 years, and the last one I replaced (Athlon II X4) was only due to a lightning strike/outage and my lazy ass not having installed a decent PSU backup. I'm currently running an HP office PC with a RX 460 thrown in. Runs damn near everything at med-high. The days of constantly swapping out mobos and dedicated cards are over. It's a mixed bag. On the good side, hardware is cheaper and lasts longer. On the downside, no one really tinkers with shit any more, so engineering skills get nerfed.

Similar story. However, I started building my own rigs in the 1980s. There was this local computer store that built mainly computers for businesses that I would hangout at. All the guys there taught me how to build, and more importantly what to get for, my own rig if I wanted to game. They were all 20-something tech geeks right at the beginning of this tech revolution. Man I learned a lot from those guys back in the early days of computers! I've never bought a store branded computer (Dell, Acer, etc.) in my life. Building my own became a hobby and I would rebuild from scratch every few years. Still remember getting that first Matrox 4 mb video card... 4MB man!!! Or my first 500 mb hard drive. I thought it would be impossible to fill that thing up at the time :D. I still enjoy putting together my own rig but do it much less often than in years past. There's no need to chase the rainbow with the "next-bestest expensive thingy" as there isn't anything I want to play that would necessitate me getting said "next-besstest expensive thingy." I will occasionally breakdown at get a newer (not the newest!) video card. I still dabble in water-cooling and lighting/sleeving my rig. Still have to make my machine look gooooooood! :obviously:
 

YldriE

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You make it sound like you don't bother upgrading because nothing interesting gets released... which is true, but another reason is simply that performance upgrades aren't as radical as they used to be. If you aren't one of these idiots who play everything on Ultra with 8x supersampling, then most games look really good even with mid-tier hardware. My girlfriend's laptop has a 1050Ti and we play Wildlands, The Division 2 and Gears of War on 1080p/60 without thermal throttling, and it's not like games look bad on Medium.

The Dreamcast was released in 1998 and gave us Shenmue 2, just how powerful do you need a machine to be to get good graphics? A mid-range PC will play everything you want.
 

DalekFlay

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Only thing I can't stand being on a low setting is usually draw distance. Pop-in drives me mad. Also I have to use native resolution of course, anything else looks terrible. Other than I agree, you don't need a monster card to get a good experience. I just watched some Borderlands 3 benchmarks on medium settings, 1080p, and they were getting 60fps on cards like the 1050.
 

Alpan

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I've recently come to the same conclusion as the OP's most recent posts. PC gaming is the only hobby I spend anything on (and it's not much in the grand scheme of things), but recently I realized that I could replace my current rig (custom-built four years ago) with a machine from ten years ago and my quality of life wouldn't diminish in any significant way -- it may even increase owing to the restrictions a more limited machine may place on my gaming choices, but overall there would still be an infinite amount of good games to spend time on as I desire.

I bought new computers in 2005, 2008 (a laptop for my undergraduate years), 2011, and 2015. I'll probably replace my current rig in 2020 or 2021. I actually don't have a good reason to, except a vain desire to max out stuff like CP2077 and BG3, and unless the PC landscape drastically changes in the interim, that'll probably be the last upgrade I'll make until the machine dies.

Good games are like good books and good movies, they simply don't get old, and as with all software, they don't even demand anything other than what they demanded when they were first released. With each subsequent upgrade the diminishing returns become more acute.
 
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f you aren't one of these idiots who play everything on Ultra with 8x supersampling, then most games look really good even with mid-tier hardware.

Actually, mostly I'm switching off effect like blur, lens flare etc. if it is possible of course and only geam I insisted to run on ultra on new rig was... Crysis 1, propably the last truly bleeding edge PC title.
 

Chippy

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Still using tech from 10 years ago. Playing games from 10 years ago. No complaints.

Latest game I purchased brand new was Kingmaker. No complaints there either.

Edit: In all honesty though, I need to upgrade my 1GB amd card if I want to play The Warhammer: Total War games. And I do want to get around to playing them.
I might have considered it for Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries. But don't really give a damn now.
 
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Jasede

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I don't care about upgrading ever. But when I buy a new computer I tend to buy the best parts money can buy at the time. This is not the best strategy but it works for me.
 

Sodafish

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The only thing I have a compulsion to contantly upgrade these days is my camera + lens collection.
 
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Without gaming, Ryzen based PC should be efficient for everyday casual use for how long - 15 years? 20? Core 2 Due is still efficient...
 

garren

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I bought a new computer at the start of 2020, my old one was like 12 years old without upgrades. Sure it could only run old games (or simple new games) but basic web browsing and stuff worked. I got the spark to finally upgrade when youtube videos started lagging sometimes if I put them higher than 720p :lol:.

Now that I got a new computer I already got the urge to start upgrading soon. Then I remember I'm a cheapskate so that kinda balances it out.
 

Ol' Willy

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Let's get radical. Have you ever consider downgrading PC for you own good?
I did that back in 2013. I had my old PC that wasn't the bleeding edge at any rate, but was perfectly capable of running some modern games, like ME3, or some unoptimised games like Cryostasis. But by that time I was completely despaired by the quality of new games and the endless sea of shitty releases, so I bought myself a rather mediocre laptop that can't run even New Vegas.
 

OctavianRomulus

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Not at all.

Still using my i5 2500k from 2011 and my GTX 970 from 2014. I might replace my PC next year though. Ran Doom Eternal on Medium and it was good enough for me.
 

Ol' Willy

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You could have just not played the newer games but you had to set boundaries to stop yourself from playing all those "shitty" releases.
Nope. It's just that I stopped playing altogether and therefore the need for more or less powerful hardware ceased, and y'know, it's more comfortable to watch some shit while lying on your back than hunching in front of a table.
 

Chippy

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Let's get radical. Have you ever consider downgrading PC for you own good?

I've still got my 98se PC that I specifically keep for Syndicate Wars and Mechwarrior 3, and an XP PC with a single CPU. I know there's software now that emulates hardware, but it's not guaranteed to work. Somebody recommended DGVoodoo in the BG thread becasue Nvidia's old and new cards don't play well with BG1. But there seems to be a bit of a framerate issue with loads of spells on screen.

But I still need to tweak it a bit. Still, sometimes it's easier to just move stuff around and plug the old PC in.
 

DalekFlay

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There's so few games with issues on Windows 7/10 (that aren't fixable) that I don't really see a point to a retro PC. At least not yet, I think it's inevitable that changes and retro PCs will probably become their own market like retro consoles are now (Retron, etc.).
 
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No, only compulsion I feel is to get the best value for my money. Constantly upgrading for gaming seems less cost effective than just getting the right pc at the right time (1 or 2 years into a console generation when next-gen games that actually require an upgrade come out).

PS2 gen: Athlon XP 2600+ 9700pro (1800+ 9500pro on the cheap, plays everything up to oblivion).
PS3 gen: Core2Quad 6600 8800GTX (GT on the cheap, plays everything up to dragon age 3)
PS4 gen: i7 5820k + gtx980ti (i7 2600k r9 290x on the cheap, still runs everything)
PS5 gen: Likely some new cpu/gpu/SSD archs in late 2021/mid 2022.

Having your pc keep up with the latest games for 7 years was a pipe dream in the 90s.
 
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GhostCow

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There's so few games with issues on Windows 7/10 (that aren't fixable) that I don't really see a point to a retro PC. At least not yet, I think it's inevitable that changes and retro PCs will probably become their own market like retro consoles are now (Retron, etc.).
Mechwarrior 2 and Interstate '76 are enough to justify a retro build IMO. Too much trouble to find a working voodoo card these days though. I tried a retro build about 10 years ago and bought a couple of voodoo2s for sli but they must have been bad cards because I couldn't get them to work
 

DalekFlay

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Mechwarrior 2 and Interstate '76 are enough to justify a retro build IMO.

According to PC Gaming Wiki both of these games work on modern Windows with tweaks and fan patches, though Mechwarrior 2 seems to require you use the DOS version. I have not tested myself though, they are not my kinda games.
 

GhostCow

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I'76 "works" but trust me when I say not really. Good luck getting every detail working. Especially if you want the music. I've never been able to get Mechwarrior 2 running. Not even in an emulator. I'd want to play the glide version anyway.
 

Ismaul

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Still using my i5 2500k from 2011 and my GTX 970 from 2014. I might replace my PC next year though.
Same, but I'm on a GTX 960.

I'm going to upgrade GPUs this gen, not sure yet if 3060 or 70, to go with a 1440p monitor.

Then I'm not sure if I'll stretch the CPU some more, maybe upgrade my 8GB RAM with 16GB RAM (DDR3 lol), or forget about the RAM upgrade and plan to refresh the whole system within a year.
 

Riddler

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Why would I? The graphical improvements have been fairly minor the last 10 years or so.

Upgrading the computer largely in step with console generations seems sensible to me and I'll likely get a new GPU in a year or two.
 

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