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General: Upgrade Required
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In The Rant this week, resident tantrum-thrower, Adam Janovyak, throws himself to the virtual floor in consternation over his PC "gaming" rig's lack of, shall we say, OOMPH. Whether it's trying to play an older game like Age of Conan or thinking about trying to play some of 2011's big titles, Adam has a lot to rant about. Check out his thoughts then point and laugh in the comments below.
I have something I need to confess to everyone: I think I may be a whore for free trials of MMOs. Feels good to actually say it out loud finally, it feels right. Seriously though, I don’t think that there is anything actually wrong with the world’s oldest profession. At least when it comes to MMOs. As it turns out, my opinion on being an actual “sex worker” doesn’t really matter right now. My problem with being a “free trial MMO prostitute” is this: my PC sucks. It doesn’t completely suck but it sucks enough where I can’t even play some games. I attempted to download and play Age of Conan via the free trial. All I succeeded in doing was the former. My machine wouldn’t run it at all. After all the downloading and patching was complete, my computer decided the best course of action was to just kick me in the junk, give me the finger, and laugh at me for wasting all that time. Yes, my computer does have a tiny leg that comes out of it to kick people. Looking back I should have opted for a better video card instead of that particular feature.
Read more of Adam Janovyak's The Rant.
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Comments
I wouldn't mind the games requiring top end systems if the games performance justified it. I think a lot of it these days is simply that coders have gotten lazy and/or poorly educated over the last generation. It shouldn't take a top end machine to deliver a game that looks, plays and feels like it could have been cutting edge 10 yrs ago.
I have recently acquired two games: Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas. When I googled the Fallout New Vegas system requirements, I read something about 3GB Ram being recommended. I only had 2GB. However, once I installed the game the typical Bethesda "detecting hardware"-message came up. And it said that "ultra-high" would give me the best performance. That, is optimising at it's best, I must say. But I also played the Rift beta, and performance rarely got above 20 FPS, while running the game on some strange combo of low/medium settings. That, is optimising at it's worst, oh wait, that isn't optimising at all. Performance really varies per game, no matter what the requirements may be.
I have to agree, Why is it some companies, like Turbine can code great looking games without demanding high end graphics cards, while others like Funcom struggle at such?
My guess is that some of the upcoming games will not stress your graphics cards as much, but we won't know until we try them out.
As to your graphics card problem, I just recently upgraded my motherboard and cpu and lo and behold the amd graphics card on the motherboard runs most of the games far better than the previous graphics card I had. Now I did upgrade to a better graphics card since then, but there are a lot of good deals out there right now. Just avoid anything with integrated Intel graphics, they are outright horrible.
" I wish it were that simple, really I do. I honestly cannot justify upgrading my PC financially. More to the point, I can't justify it to my wife and let's face it, she is the boss. If any of you have any suggestions I'm more than willing to consider them, assuming that they don't involve selling off my first born (I'm kind of attached to him)."
It's alot easier to upgrade then buy new, keep the same old beat up tower, just make it shine inside
shhh she doesn't have to know
"All expectation leads to suffering" Buhhda
WEll yes the problem is a lot of companies want to code for the higher new end systems. However the real problem lies that most folks have either junk for pc's or mid line systems. Very few folks have high end gaming rigs like I do very few.
Coding games like that way, wants folks to upgrade but honestly in today's economy how many folks can really afford to do so, even when shopping over at new egg.
Having said this i just upgraded to windows 7 professional 64 bit to get rid of the problems I was having with vista 64.
Really how many folks can afford to upgrade now days, lol i just blew a gasket earlier when i went to go fill my jeep up. I have a 25 gallon tank, with a v8 319 engine, and it was almost 75 bucks at almost 3.10 a gallon, knowing full well that I will get 3 days out of that tank of gas.
If you havent drank yourself into oblivion then I hear Kidneys sell well but honestly building a decent rig costs peanuts these days and honestly a monkey with a screwdriver could put it together, I'm sure Quizzical will be along shortly with his Rig of the day including links and prices.
Where can I get a copy of that graphic that looks like "Ike" standin' next to the controls of some kinda ancient vessel? I love it!
Amen. My gf thinks I've had the same desktop for years. She even sometimes says 'you know we could probably get you a new desktop, i mean, I got the new Mac last year.' I've gotten a new graphics card and even mboard in the meantime. I haven't cashed this in yet. saving it up haha.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
I currently have a fairly fast quadcore 4gb mem Win7 64bit system but my GFXcard is a Nvidia 9800GT OC. Its DX10. Nevertheless everything works to my satisfaction with it.
I used to visit this site a lot however in recent years it has become the home of negative forum posts, illogical opinions and tantrums so I visit less often.
Played or Beta'd: UO / DAOC / Horizons / EQ2 / DDO / EVE / Archlord / PirateKingsOnline / Tabula Rasa / LOTRO / AOC / Champions / Darkfall / Mortal Online / DCUO / Rift / STO / SWTOR / TSW
I think Consoles will one day rule the earth personally. Can't complain if everyone has the same settings/hardware can you developers?
AOC is a bad example. No one could run it right at launch.
Honestly, this is the rant I have been hearing in my head for a while. I hate all these new, shiny games because they look good, and I can't play them. Nor can I afford to get to the point where I can. GW2 is going to come out, I won't be able to play it, and I will be sad.
EDIT: Note: Like Adam I don't think they should make less shiny looking games, I'm just frustrated by the technology moving ahead everywhere except in my computer.
My suggestion (aside from staying a funny and engaging writer) is to find a way to trick your wife into wanting to play these graphically intense games.
Then she'll MAKE you upgrade the computer!
I've been wanting a shiny new graphics card for about a year or so now. I'm still coasting on an 8800GT (since RMAd to a 9800GT - same difference performance-wise) that I bought in April of 08. Embarrassingly, I have the opposite of your experience: I can't find anything that I want to play that brings this card to its knees. It may help that I am using a by-todays-standards lowly 1680x1050 screen. If it's MMOs you want, then maybe - provided your machine is PCI-e capable - getting a $100 to $150 graphics card is the right move. If you can get it by the boss, that is.
Otherwise, start playing Halo.
Just say to your wife: "I'm going to buy a new thing. But i'm stuck between a graphics card or a goat. What do you think?"
This were exactly my thoughts when Eve Online upgraded their requirements....and sadly I had to stop playing an amazing game because of it.
er well my sugestion would be to both have your own accounts so that you can spend some of your money on the things you both want.
But that's all I've got.
Otherwise why can't you make some sort of deal to skim part of your paycheck and put it into an account every month so that after a few months you can start upgrading?
I'm afraid my relationships tend to be a bit more modern over traditional so I'm not sure how one would work like this.
Or perhaps buy a part per month and at the end of a few months you will have enough to make a new computer?
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Actually, Age of Conan has improved the engine and it will in the near future. To my knowledge, there is no perfect software engine out there, but Unreal 3 Engine is probably the most polished/debugged of the market.
We could use other examples for other games... Crysis and the Crytek Engine... It didn't work well in a lot of computers... but it worked seamlessly with medium/some high settings.
Same for AoC. The easiest thing is to blame on the game... However other factors may be the reason: drivers, DX installation, etc. Dreamworld Engine is far to be perfect, but it works good if you know where are the limits of your hardware.
Regards.
Right here: http://www.treehugger.com/50-year-old-computer.jpg
Finding the right pictures for some of these articles is a chore.This one happened to be kinda easy.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I remember when I played EQ that they would up the system requirements with each patch. After a while I stopped playing the game because I couldn't afford all the upgrades needed.
At least with LOTR the requirements have not changed as far as I know.
This constant upgrading is fine for people who have jobs today but for those of us on Social IN-Security who havent gotten a raise in the last two years (even though the politicians gave themselves a $3000/ month raise) it is a real PITA.
For those of us who must live on under $1000 a month income, choices must be made - do we upgrade our computers or buy food? Do we upgrade our computers or pay the bills? (Computers do not work too well with the electricity turned off)
This is why I still have a computer that runs Windoze (Window$?) 98 so I can re-run Ultima 7.
I became a fairly proficient programmer in the past out of necessity - I was a HARDWARE designer - I designed the computers themselves - had my own company doing contract work for the local Aero-space industry - and I had to learn to program so I could make the things work.
From what I have seen most programs today are sloppy patchwork jobs. They do NOT remove unneeded code - just bypass it - and repeat code over and over instead of using a modular approach to just access pre-coded segments. This is why many programs take up obscene amounts of hard disk space.
If the Companies would put OUR OWN programmers to work at a decent wage we would not need to put up with the output from the cut-rate programmers from India and China.
OH BTW - The reason I have a limited income after I owned my own company, it was the outfall of a bad marriage and her having a good lawyer.
This was a really good read, was grinning the whole way through. I had this problem this time last year but upgrading just lead to more problems for me. Here is what hapened.
1st computer - Laptop. Could just run wow. That blew up.
2nd computer - Hand built, some of the parts I hand crafted from soap. That got hacked for my wow account, blew up and fell into the swamp.
3rd computer - Spent £400 on my new rig and another £200 on a four year warrenty. That lasted less than two months before blowing up and falling into the swamp. It has been in for repair for almost a month and it took the month before that trying to convince the manafacturer to pick it up. At time of typing I am using a laptop I borrowed from a freind that is slightly more powerful than a 1980's calculator.
Stick with what you have I say:)
P.s Brilliant picture. Made me laugh.
tyvm
AoC really was a bad choice to test out on a low end system: The game always had performance problems, even on computers that met or exceeded the 'optimum system specs,' and always was a resource hog. If I remember correctly, fully patched that game used up somewhere between 30-40 Gigs of hard drive space.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
You had to use your powers as an MMORPG.com writer to rant about your own personal computer problems? I had a 6 year old computer with AMD Athlon 1500+ (1.34 GHz), 607 MB RAM (I don't even know how it got to that number), and a Radeon 9250 (it's been rated so low and poorly designed that ATI took out overclocking functions for it) until last summer. It constantly restarted itself and gave me a huge load of crap. I could barely run Guild Wars; even then it was at 20 FPS. It was a Windows 2000, and lagged when I tried installing Windows XP on there (since it takes up more RAM).
Then, I got a new computer. AMD Athlon II X2 240 (2.8 GHz Dual Core, 2 MB L2 Cache), 3 GB of RAM, but ended up with a nVidia Geforce 6150SE, also a very bad graphics card which you have to (dangerously, since it's onboard graphics) overclock to play anything, even Modern Warfare. So, I'm still stuck to playing 2005 games like Battlefield 2, or games that are more processor-intensive than graphics-card intensive like Alliance of Valiant Arms. MMORPGs? Still Guild Wars (I can get about 30-40 FPS now) and Rappelz (processor-intensive because it's based more on distance than textures).