DUST Search - sell PC gaming to me

Kristoff Atruin wrote:

>See you don't have to buy the newest of the newest

That's kind of a key thing when you're building a PC if you don't want to really bling it out. Since you can change individual components of your machine there's a continual arms race between the manufacturers to release the biggest and bestest thing. This is most noticeable in video cards. That constant churn is enabled by charging a huge premium for bleeding edge gear, but you don't need bleeding edge gear since the most recent games were designed to run on far less powerful cards. If you compare the specs of video cards you'll find there's a point where a moderate increase in processing speed / power.

For example
http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-geforce-gtx-750-ti-33-94339.htm
vs
http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-geforce-gtx-760-directcu-de-85679-1396.htm
vs
http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-geforce-gtx-780-poseidon-7f-95510-1226.htm

All the same make and brand, with very small differences between the first two and an extra gig of ram and a little more power on the third, but with huge differences in price. When I build a new machine (once every 8 to 10 years) or upgrade my video card, I go for one at about the relative price range of the first one on that list. Then I use it until it croaks or I literally cannot play a game I want with it on low settings. That takes about 4 years.

The two most important components to spend lots on are the motherboard, to make sure it has plenty of upgrade capability, and your power supply (because newer, bigger video cards need more juice). If you buy those two things top of the line, or at least not out of the bargain bin, a long time will go by before you need any major upgrades. A new video card every 3 or 4 years and possibly a better CPU at some point over the lifetime of that tower, and that's it. The only time it gets expensive is when you're no longer able to upgrade with the motherboard you have, because by that point it often turns out that the architecture of that board is obsolete and you can't re-use your cpu or memory.

Then you buy a new mobo, cpu, ram and video card...then reuse the old case, hard drive(s), power supply etc.

Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 21 post(s)
DAMIOS82 WarRavens Final Resolution. 117	Posted - 2014.05.14 19:06:00 - [1] - Quote The thing with consoles is the lack of expansion, don't get me wrong there great machines and one will play all games. But the console is limited, meaning that allthough a game might look very good on the console. It will never achieve the maximum quality it could have, because you can't upgrade the console, not in memory or graphics, so your always stuck with the same quality of games. Now with a PC the lifetime is the same as a console, plus a bit more. Depending on your hardware. See i just bought a new PC a year ago, just a normal stock from the stores, round about 700 euro (960 dollars) at that time. It's an Acer predator. I7 4770 processor , 8 gb ddr3 memory, 2tb hard drive and 120 ssd with a gtx 760 NVidia card. Nothing to extreme, but when i bought it i looked at how much i can expand on it, before i need to make mayor changes. So my motherboard allows me to expand my memory to 32 gb, aswell as expansion for graphics cards, etc. So in my eyes this pc can last me atleast 10 years, before games require 32gb of memory and the graphic card will last me atleast 5-6 years before i need to change it to something better. And when all of my options are exhausted and i can no longer play my games, i change my motherboard to allow to continue upgrading more. Now this might all sound expensive, but it's not really. See you don't have to buy the newest of the newest, If you would buy just a few generations beneath the latest you could save yourself hundreds of dollars/euro's. So in the end all your doing is spending the occasional 100-200 every so many years. Alternatively you could just buy a new good computer, max it all out with a few memory cards and just use it untill it becomes absolete and then buy a new computer, but then we are still talking about a minimum of 10 years, if not more. So that's atleast 1-2 consoles over the same timeframe, meaning money wise it's round about the same. The difference is i get to enjoy my games in the very best settings the game has to offer, a console player just has to settle with less. See for me when i look at dust on ps3, i think to my self wow what a low quality of graphics, it would have looked a thousend times better on my pc. Half the stuff i can't see and the game lags because there is not enough memory to handle the game. This is not the game it self, but the console. When you look at there game when demo's are showed the quality is great (some how). But the main ps3 system we have now, just can't handle it. The ps4 would, but not if the game is further down the road in severall years time. Now if i had the option to upgrade the ps3 or ps4, then yes it would be a great buy. But not when they constrict you into wanting the maximum quality for your own games.
DAMIOS82 WarRavens Final Resolution. 117	Posted - 2014.05.14 21:48:00 - [2] - Quote Kristoff Atruin wrote: >See you don't have to buy the newest of the newest That's kind of a key thing when you're building a PC if you don't want to really bling it out. Since you can change individual components of your machine there's a continual arms race between the manufacturers to release the biggest and bestest thing. This is most noticeable in video cards. That constant churn is enabled by charging a huge premium for bleeding edge gear, but you don't need bleeding edge gear since the most recent games were designed to run on far less powerful cards. If you compare the specs of video cards you'll find there's a point where a moderate increase in processing speed / power. For example http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-geforce-gtx-750-ti-33-94339.htm vs http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-geforce-gtx-760-directcu-de-85679-1396.htm vs http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-geforce-gtx-780-poseidon-7f-95510-1226.htm All the same make and brand, with very small differences between the first two and an extra gig of ram and a little more power on the third, but with huge differences in price. When I build a new machine (once every 8 to 10 years) or upgrade my video card, I go for one at about the relative price range of the first one on that list. Then I use it until it croaks or I literally cannot play a game I want with it on low settings. That takes about 4 years. The two most important components to spend lots on are the motherboard, to make sure it has plenty of upgrade capability, and your power supply (because newer, bigger video cards need more juice). If you buy those two things top of the line, or at least not out of the bargain bin, a long time will go by before you need any major upgrades. A new video card every 3 or 4 years and possibly a better CPU at some point over the lifetime of that tower, and that's it. The only time it gets expensive is when you're no longer able to upgrade with the motherboard you have, because by that point it often turns out that the architecture of that board is obsolete and you can't re-use your cpu or memory. Then you buy a new mobo, cpu, ram and video card...then reuse the old case, hard drive(s), power supply etc. exactly my point, allthough the 760 is a little bit cheaper here in the Netherlands, i think most parts are if i compare it to american sites. None the less like many before us said. Its about finding the middle point of what you can afford. The differences are indeed very small. Before the I7 i had a quadcore. Still lasted six years and it does still work. But i decided to strip it apart and make it into a pet project. Just to see what i can turn it into. Before my second last computer, i had a pentium 4 that lasted me close to 13 years, did had to change the graphic card once, offcourse also my memory cards (fried them) and the power supply (also fried), nearly fried my processor aswell, but caught it in time and placed a better cooling system on it. But just to show that PC's can last a very long time if you take care of them. And before that i had a pentium 360 partially converted into a 480..aaah the good old memories i had with that baby.