I got into gaming when I first got a Dell Dimension XPS T450, a powerhouse with 96 megs of ram and a 16meg Voodoo 3. It worked wonderfully with the games of its era that I wanted to play. I very rarely ever asked myself, "why the hell can't I get a better framerate?" I always did exactly as well as it was supposed to do. Times were good.
Since then, I have had just about the most horrible luck imaginable with the framerate performance I get out of my PCs, even on ****ty detail and resolution settings while everyone else is complaining about how they can't get 60 fps with specs inferior to mine with the setting on 1600 x whatever with 16xAA and AF. It's gotten to the point where I suspect that there's a vast conspiracy on the part of all computer and graphics card makers ever to make me as mindboggled and as frustrated as possible. And that's not counting the occasional bad luck with choosing computer specs (like picking a laptop with a Mobile Radeon X2300 that not only, as I find out later, sucks, but IS THE ONLY RELATIVELY-RECENT CARD I CAN FIND THAT ISN'T EVEN FRELLING SUPPORTED BY ATI FOR DRIVER UPDATES.
Maybe it's just that I've been very pro-ATI in my card selection, when ATI secretly hates me? I can't even get consistently good framerates on a super old game like KOTOR 2, especially when any fog or smoke effect shows up- on a desktop with a Radeon 4670! I can't even get good FPS out of Morrowind now since I upgraded graphics cards for this thing! Yes, I know, people getting screwed by driver issues with older games happens a plenty, but WHY DOES IT HAPPEN TO HIT ME EVERY SINGLE FREAKING TIME.
This came to a head this afternoon, where I finally decided to buy Portal and play it for the first time. I wanted to enjoy it much as everyone else did. Let it be noted that this PC can play games like Dragon Age I&II or Starcraft II with little if any FPS trouble. The drivers have been updated recently, as I make sure they always are. I download and install Portal. I start the game, letting the auto-detect determine the graphic settings. I get 10fps. I turn the settings all the way down. ALL THE WAY DOWN. As in, LOWEST EVERYTHING on 1164X864 or whatever. The frame rate? 10-15 MOTHERFRACKING FRAMES PER SECOND. I GOT A FLUID FRAMERATE OFF DA II ON MEDIUM RIGHT OFF THE BAT, A GAME THAT CAME OUT LIKE A MONTH AGO, AND I CAN'T FRACKING PLAY PORTAL 1 WITHOUT WANTING TO TEAR MY EYES OUT. Seriously, WHAT THE GODDAMN FREAKING MOTHERFRACKING HELL! Isn't the source engine supposed to be well-optimized and everything? I can't even find more than a few threads of people complaining about performance issues with Portal that aren't Mac users on the entire internet! And I didn't even screw my computer up by going to Windows Vista or 7! This thing is still on XP! IT SHOULD BE FREAKING FINE!
I'm sure plenty of you are gonna be all like "dude, stop buying machines from Dell and those other idiots, they suck." This is fine other than the fact that plenty of people who buy from those ****ty vendors don't have any problems, including say, all of my gamer friends. OH! And, when I asked on this forum where I good alternative place to get a PC was, most suggested, you know, to build my own computer. Which would be fine IF I KNEW HOW TO BUILD A GODDAMN COMPUTER. I'M SORRY I CAN'T DO WHAT YOU ALL CAN. DOES THIS MEAN I HAVE TO SUFFER WITH STUTTERING FOR ALL ETERNITY? Seriously. did I do something to anger the Poseidon of PC gods? This is but a small sample of the **** I've put up with for years, despite (excepting the Radeon 2300 debacle) rigorous research before every purchase. SO WHAT IN THE GODDAMN FREAKING HELL IS GOING ON?
I mean, it's not like I'm bitter or anything.
i remeber how ****ty it was to have to run elite on linedraw mode because the 8086 i was playing it on was too slow for flat shaded mode. it was amazing to run the game on a 486 in an amazing 16 colors. and when elite plus rolled around and offered a full 256 color pallette i was completely blown away. this problem is not new. when it comes right down to it you cant just buy a computer and expect it to play every single title on the shelf. its not a console. if all you play is the upmarket games then you will probably never run into performance issues with a LAME PC! (tm). its those games for pc gamers that need cutting edge hardware that wont exist cheaply for 2 years.
back in the mid-to-late 90s only maybe about 1 in 100 of people who owned computers had a 3d card. i had a voodoo 1 and it was probibly the best purchase i had ever made. it even made me give up consoles. up to that point most games were efficient little machines. games for the most part were designed to work in software at a decent performance. so long as you met all the minimum requirements, you were fine. if you had a 3d card, and the game supported it, it would take that good performance and make it awesome. i remember running descent2 at 120 fps using the 3dfx version. mind you i ran this under dos, so it was just super fast.
figure around the time quake 2 came out gamers were really demanding better graphics and were willing to dish out big money for hardware to play it. that said ive never had problems getting an idtech engine to run on any computer, even one rediculously out of date. some developers are just better than others. there was the time i had some cash and was forced to choose between to games in a bargain bin, one was prey and the other one was fear, these came out around the same time, and my system was more than capable of running either one. so i bought prey cause it was based on an idtech engine. it ran beautifully and was one of the most awesome fpses ever. so now some years later i find fear at a thrift store, and guess what, it runs like ****, and im on better hardware now. prey has a portal engine and it runs faster. id love to give both portal games a go, but that developer is unfamiliar terratory for me.
things took a turn for the worse around the time game developers were getting better at taking advantage of 3d hardware. this meant they no longer had to write tight code like they did when most games ran in software. i ran freespace 1 on a 120 mhz pentium with 24 megs of ram (it came with 8 and i dropped 16 on top of it). that machine ran every game i threw at it. even games with substantially higher system requirements, the reason was because of that voodoo card. i was building computers around that time but they were too expensive to just **** around with. my first experiment with this was going through boxes of apple 2 parts at school and slapping them together until i got working (or toasted) machines. and i was probibly 14 or 15 at the time. i built a few pcs, around that time but i left the manufacture of my machine to experts. so round the time i was 18 i found a place with a made to order pc, you select parts, and they throw it together for you.
by age 20 i was a system builder. so since then ive been building my own computer. companies like dell love to cut corners, they turn huge profits by shaving off a couple bucks here and a couple bucks there and you pay the difference. i find that building your own pc not only gives you a better system, it also saves you money. just learn what you need, and how to read specs and determine compatibility. these days its pretty much case, psu, mobo, cpu, ram, video, and drives. best bet is do some research as to what kind of cpu you want, and based on that research to pick a cpu, then choose a mobo that is compatable with that, then move from there. usually mobo manufacturers list compatable ram, and its best to buy ram thats on that list. buy your video card next. check to make sure its compatable with the board, these days theres only one video standard so its not hard to **** up. pick a decent hd and optical drive (which are becoming less neccisary these days but it makes it easier to load an os). now sum up the power requirements and figure out how many watts you need from your pcs, double it (because psu manufacturers are dirty lieing scum) and buy that. then pick a case that ti will all fit into. mind cooling, 4 fans minimum, bigger fans count as 2, i bought an extra fan for my xclio a380 dispite the twin 25cm fans. there are tutorials online. and if you **** up its not like you spent over a thousand bucks. i have a computer i built for 800 bucks years ago that runs sc2 like it was new. if id have ****ed up building my first computer id have been out 2 grand and thats 90s money.
to sum it up pc gamers are the reason games are made for computers that dont exist yet. if you dont ether drop 3k on a gaming rig that you can run for 4 or 5 years, or 1200 every 2 years, or 800 every 18 months, you will probably be able to keep up with games. this isnt too bad because many parts age better than others. i still got drives from 3 computers ago, a good case will last you a decade, and provided you buy a good psu, you will likely be able to use it for 5 years. buy the best video card you can get your hands on, and do it every 3 years, no exceptions. better to spend $300 on a card that will be good for years, than to spend $150 every year. things like monitors, speakers and input devices keep em until they break. this is why pc gamers are pc gamers, they love to throw money at the problem. if you dont like problems, buy a ****ing console.
