Do you feel a compulsion to constant hardware upgrade?

[Kane]

i don't see a big difference in these pictures, except for a blue instead of a brown filter. destructable terrain is actually CPU bound and one of those extra calculations I was talking about. Same goes for animations (skeleton with a higher node count).

also, i never said that "nothing changed" but that the changes are minimal and largely irrelevant. not to be nitpicky, but that distinction is pretty important. yes you can run a quad-SLI setup and turn everything in the graphic settings to max, but the quality gained is tiny compared to the power invested and it doesn't even improve the game one bit - in fact, it worsens it, because the advanced effects negatively impact your on-screen visibilty.

 

[Spectacle]

i don't see a big difference in these pictures, except for a blue instead of a brown filter.

Seriously? You don't notice how the ground has gone from being flat and featureless to detailed with plenty of grass and clutter? How the trees look like trees and not cardboard props?

And if fancy graphics hurts visibility, that's actually an improvement for a tactical shooter, since real-world camouflage tactics start to work, instead of player models standing out like a beacon in the environment.

 

[Karmapowered]

i don't see a big difference in these pictures, except for a blue instead of a brown filter. destructable terrain is actually CPU bound and one of those extra calculations I was talking about. Same goes for animations (skeleton with a higher node count).

also, i never said that "nothing changed" but that the changes are minimal and largely irrelevant. not to be nitpicky, but that distinction is pretty important. yes you can run a quad-SLI setup and turn everything in the graphic settings to max, but the quality gained is tiny compared to the power invested and it doesn't even improve the game one bit - in fact, it worsens it, because the advanced effects negatively impact your on-screen visibilty.

I have to agree to this.

Now we've got 4096x4096 textures (if not higher) on every tiny pebble, but that doesn't make the games necessarily visually more appealing (to me). I also prefer the BF2 screenshots over the BF3 ones. It's perhaps a matter of the uncanny valley being too close.

We've got destructible environments which would be a good thing if they didn't remain largely scripted (to be honest, I haven't played each and every recent FPS out there, so this might be irrelevant).

Animations are arguably better since more detailled, except that they still stick to pre-established patterns : you can't jump everywhere, you can't shoot through holes, etc.

Most importantly, if there are improvements graphics-wise, they do not have any positive effect on the gameplay.

FPS haven't really evolved. Most of them remain very

And if fancy graphics hurts visibility, that's actually an improvement for a tactical shooter, since real-world camouflage tactics start to work, instead of player models standing out like a beacon in the environment.

I am not sure we have the same conception of camouflage. You probably think of this, while this is how it's done. Current games are still very, very far from achieving such a detail.

 

[Spectacle]

And if fancy graphics hurts visibility, that's actually an improvement for a tactical shooter, since real-world camouflage tactics start to work, instead of player models standing out like a beacon in the environment.

I am not sure we have the same conception of camouflage. You probably think of this, while this is how it's done. Current games are still very, very far from achieving such a detail.

Yes, that's camouflage. Games may not be photorealistic yet, but grahics have gotten good enough that camouflage is something you should keep in mind when playing multiplayer shooters.

 

[Excidium]

I'm pretty sure a Core 2 DUO is enough to play most games if you have a good enough graphics card.

I don't think so, most modern games are poorly optimized console ports and they seem to rely on the CPU much more than anything else.

Is smaller SSD better than bigger HDD?

Omg, yes plz. You can pair them into RAID zero for killer performance.

What about SSHDs are they worth anything?

 

[Karmapowered]

Yes, that's camouflage. Games may not be photorealistic yet, but grahics have gotten good enough that camouflage is something you should keep in mind when playing multiplayer shooters.

Again, feel free to correct me if this has been done in any recent game that I am not aware of, but camouflage as I understand it, and would like to see done, isn't a matter of photo-realism.

You are speaking of (EDIT) improved textures (which is EASY to handle for modern graphic cards), I am thinking of (EDIT) improved meshes (a much higher number of polies).

 

[A user named cat]

What about SSHDs are they worth anything?

Just get one of these and a 1tb Spinpoint or Caviar Black as your D:\ storage drive. It's a great setup.

 

[Dexter]

Get 256GB Samsung Pro SSD as system disk. There are already 1TB SSDs but they are way beyond anyones price point: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7173/...iew-120gb-250gb-500gb-750gb-1tb-models-tested.
Get 2TB/3TB Western Digital Red/Green as storage HDD.

 

[A user named cat]

Red drives are designed to be used in a NAS, in which case you might as well recommend he grab a Synology too. They're not meant for internal storage to stick your docs and shit on that you don't want cluttering up your SSD, if that's what you're suggesting. Green drives are complete crap too. Nobody should still be using those.

I don't know about you but I access my D: drive a ton (music, photos, some games, Adobe temp files, etc.) and it's nice to have the fastest 7200rpm drives you can get for that task. Hence, Caviar Black or Spinpoint.

 

[baturinsky]

SSD are indeed tempting, but I'm afraid to OCD over rewrite limit.

 

[Dexter]

Red drives are designed to be used in a NAS, in which case you might as well recommend he grab a Synology too. They're not meant for internal storage to stick your docs and shit on that you don't want cluttering up your SSD, if that's what you're suggesting. Green drives are complete crap too. Nobody should still be using those.

I don't know about you but I access my D: drive a ton (music, photos, some games, Adobe temp files, etc.) and it's nice to have the fastest 7200rpm drives you can get for that task. Hence, Caviar Black or Spinpoint.

What does "not meant for internal storage" even mean? They're HDDs you can stick into your PC. They have about the same stats as the Green drives (from which I've got a whole bunch and never had a problem with), they are envisaged for working longer and have 3 year warranty, while the Greens have 2 year warranty. The biggest difference is that the Greens have an "ECO" Mode and the Reds don't. They both cost around the same where I live, for instance a 3TB Red/Green is ~115€ RPM for both is designated between 5400-7200rpm based on drive.

The 3TB WD Black drives cost ~170€ and are designated for continuous 7200rpm with 5 years warranty. I don't think the additional price/GB is worth it, especially if he doesn't need it for anything burst data intensive and just stores data additional to a SSD. Pairing SSDs in RAID is equally stupid and you'll likely never require to do that as a normal user.

I would highly dissuade from getting anything from Seagate nowadays though.

 

[Baron Dupek]

To upgrade I need more good games to convince me to change which can't run even on LOW with lowest resolution.
So there is Chivalry which need better GPU (still playable with my amd4850) and... nothing more.

 

[TripJack]

my desktop is 8 years old and has been completely unusable for the past 6 months

if anything i have a complulsion to never upgrade hardware

 

[ChristofferC]

Nope I'm a cheap bastard. My current computer is fairly new but the core of my last one was from 2007 so it was time.

 

[Sodafish]

Still running a Core 2 Duo here. Nvidia GTX 460 was the most recent update. I haven't found a game it really struggles with yet (could play Twitcher 2 just fine), so no need to update yet.

Having said that, it would be nice to have a quad core i7 for audio/video encoding.

 

[Dr Tomo]

I prefer building a new computer then upgrade since I always have the cash to pick up everything high end all at once. Until the day comes where I need to build a new computer I just oc everything until it craps out.

 

[A user named cat]

SSD are indeed tempting, but I'm afraid to OCD over rewrite limit.

You shouldn't have to worry about that anymore, it's a problem of the past for the most part. Current SSD drives should last you almost just as long as a mechanical drive. This is why you should always have an external backup drive regardless. That's where a decent Synology comes into play, I definitely love mine.

What does "not meant for internal storage" even mean? They're HDDs you can stick into your PC. They have about the same stats as the Green drives (from which I've got a whole bunch and never had a problem with), they are envisaged for working longer and have 3 year warranty, while the Greens have 2 year warranty.

Red drives are specifically designed to be used in a NAS setup, it's what they're optimized for and even what WD's site will tell you. They have some NASaware WD tech, and special recovery, sleeping and energy efficient features not found with their other drives. So no, they're not meant for normal daily usage in an internal storage setup.

The 3TB WD Black drives cost ~170€ and are designated for continuous 7200rpm with 5 years warranty. I don't think the additional price/GB is worth it, especially if he doesn't need it for anything burst data intensive and just stores data additional to a SSD.

What kind of dildo needs 3tb, especially for internal usage and not strictly for backup? A Caviar Black 1tb is currently $85 and they go on sale from time to time. I don't feel like repeating as to how a D: drive is best used but opting for slower shit like Green drives is retarded, especially if you want to install any large games or programs outside of your SSD.

 

[ChristofferC]

You need 3TB drives to store all that delicious 1080p porn.

 

[zerotol]

Well i confess i am a real upgrade whore.

currently core I3770K
7870
27inch TFT dell (2560 x 1440 )
SSD

 

[Gurkog]

I built a new computer 4-5 years ago after burning up a comp with 8800gts that I got on release. The radeon 4870 works great for most games still, but I can't do dx11 with it. Perhaps I will upgrade in a year or two... maybe longer.

 

[Oesophagus]

Only thing I bought for my PC recently was a gig of ram. Not bothered by hardware upgrades at all, I can run New Vegas on low settings fine and that's about it

 

[Severian Silk]

Core 2 Duo

 

[Misconnected]

I used to build the fastest gaming desktop I could, pretty much once a year (I think 3 times in a year is my record), and often upgraded every time a new sound or graphics card generation hit.

However, at the time my lifestyle was to work all the hours I could for 6-18 months in a country I'd never been to before, then go somewhere new and repeat... So it's not like I had anything better to spend the money on (or very much time to enjoy the computers, but whatever).

Between me settling down and consoles killing the hardware race dead, I think I've built new gaming desktops 3 times since the Xbox 360. And these days I don't just order the slickest, fastest components I can find. Incidentally, I think I've built my last desktop. Pretty sure it'll be laptops only by the time these ones start to suck.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Bought a computer from a friend in 2007 that was an Core 2 Duo e6700 slapped on an Asus P5W DH Deluxe, with four gigs of memory and some old Nvidia card. Only upgrading I did was putting in an Nvidia 9600GT and then a Radeon 6850 later on. Had it overclocked to 3.4.


Last year the power supply blew up, and I used that as an excuse to actually build a system. An Intel i5 3470 on a Biostar tz77xe3 with 12 gigs of memory and two 6850s in Crossfire. The 3470s are locked so you normally can only mess with their turbo setting up to 4.0. Adjust the FSB a notch and it can reach 4.2 which is respectable. Boot drive is a 10,000 rpm instead of my old system's 7200. It can run pretty much anything at 1920x1080 and still be able to turn on the bells and whistles, so I'm happy.

 

[Konjad]

I did in the past.

My first PC, bought in May 1999, was Pentium II 233MHz with 32 MB RAM, 4 GB HDD 7200RPM and some internal GPU, 15" monitor (with resolution of 1024x768 in 85Hz, I still have it and use it as a second monitor). I have upgraded that PC twice, the first time I purchased Voodoo 2 3DFx 12/16 MB VRAM. That GPU was amazing. The second time I bought additional 64 MB RAM, resulting in 96MB in total.
The second PC I've got, in 2002, was AMD, probably around 1.2-1.5 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 80GB HDD 7200 RPM and GF4MX 64 MB. I used the same monitor and speakers from the old PC. I don't think I've ever upgraded this one.
The third PC, which I got in 2005, was a 14" (1280x768) notebook, AMD Turion 64 1.6 GHz, 512 MB DDR 333 MHz RAM, 80 GB 4200 RPM HDD and internal ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M (shared memory 128 MB). Shared memory made the actual RAM to be 384 MB, so soon after I have bought 512 MB RAM and replaced one 256 MB, therefore I had 768 (128 VRAM and 640 RAM). Some time later I still wasn't happy with the memory, so I bought 1 GB, making it 1536 (minus 128 for VRAM).
The next PC was desktop again, purchased in 2007, but I cannot remember exact specifications. It had 2GHz AMD CPU, 2-4 GB RAM and Nvidia GT(X?) 6800/6600 with 256 MB VRAM. No idea what HDD it had, except that it was standard 7200 RPM. I bought a new 22" monitor with 1650x1050 resolution.
Then I had two old and used small (12-13")laptops for old games. One was IBM with a pre-pentium processor, 32 MB RAM, but it broke. So I bought Panasonic Toughbook CF-71 for about 50€. It has Pentium II 300 MHz, 96 MB RAM and NeoMagic GPU with 1 MB VRAM, 1024x768 resolution. It had 2 GB Hard Drive, but I replaced it with 80 GB 5400 RPM, so I could store all these old games still worth playing. The laptop still works as a charm.
The latest PC I have bought is a 15" (1366x768) 2009 laptop I use right now. Core 2 Duo 64 2.1GHz, 4 GB DDR2 800 MHz RAM and ATI Radeon 4650 1GB VRAM, 320 GB 5400 RPM HDD. I've never upgraded it, excluding buying Windows 7. So far I never felt a need to and I still don't. Thanks to consoles all the new games still work fine, at worst on low details, but as long as they work I'm happy. I see myself still using it for a long period of time because my financial situation went downhill since 2009 and I won't be able to buy a new PC for quite a while, however, to be honest I don't really care. As I said, everything works, even if in low details and 20 FPS (but that's just ArmA3, the rest of the new games run much better).

EDIT:
As a bonus, my laptop models (except the IBM one):
2005, CompaQ Presario V2000:

,

CF-71:

(though I have silver version)

2009, Toshiba Satellite L500-126:

 

[Great Deceiver]

My first computer was a HD-less 8086 with 2 5 1/4" drives, and a greyscale EGA monitor. This was back in the late 80's, I played all the Sierra adventures on that box, and probably had the most fun ever.

Games have always more or less propelled all of my hardware upgrades since late 1993 - that's when I saw DOOM, and had a revelation. By then, my trusty 386DX couldn't run it properly, and I had no sound card. So I upgraded to a 486DX2 and got a Sound Blaster. Also, on a lesser note, Betrayal at Krondor and Ultima 8 (U8 ran like a dog on a 386).

This happened again in 1996, when Quake came about. 486 couldn't run Quake Test properly, so I got a Pentium 166, and played Quake to death. Shortly thereafter I had to get a Voodoo 1 to get GLQuake working, it was another revelation.

In 1998 I wanted to play Unreal, so I bought a Pentium 2/400, and upgraded my Voodoo 1 to a 8MB Voodoo 2.

So on and so forth. However, in more recent years (maybe 2006-now), I've become a jaded oldfag and don't really feel the need to upgrade anything for long stretches of time. There's a huge back catalogue of good games that I haven't played, and most of the new stuff coming out that's interesting doesn't require anything better than what I already have.

In the past 8 years I've made 2 reasonably big upgrades, one in 2008 from an Athlon 64 3.2/Geforce 6800GT to a C2D8400/ATI 4850 and one this year from that to an i5 3570k - this wasn't really needed, but I wanted to run Dota 2 at a constant 60fps, that game is really CPU bound. Also, emulation of newer consoles at full speed without caveats is a nice bonus.