Is PC gaming becoming to expensive?

Published on 10-26-2011 05:03 PM

With hot new games like Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3, the mininimum requirement for playing them will take an arm and a leg. Lets take Battlefield 3 for example. I recently purchased Battlefield 3 expecting to plug and play the CD, but actually, my graphics card, a GTX Geforce 450 that I once payed a handsome sum of $200 for about a year ago, can no longer keep up with todays standards.

So what graphics cards can play Battlefield 3? I get referred over to the Nvidia.com site and wow did I thought PC prices were going down, it seems the opposite. To get the best performance and power out of Battlefield 3, they display the GTX 590, with a full green bar that explains how it provides the maximum fps, or frames per second. The GTX 590 sells at Amazon for approximately $1000! Who ever knew a graphics card could stab you in the back.

On the other hand, you play Battlefield 3 on High Performance, not "Ultimate" for around $180 graphics card, which I was extremely reluctant to let go of my dollars. I went with theXFX AMD Radeon HD 6870 900M 1 GB DDR5 DUAL MINIDP HDMI DUAL DVI PCI-E Video Card, which, will soon replace m y GTX Geforce 450. Hopefully I can scavange some money out of my soon to be retired graphics card. Once upon a time, I thought it was the most amazing graphcis card. It looked like a racing car, with two red exaust pipes coming out of the back, I was gleaming at the packaging and just the way the card was displayed.

Above is XFX AMD Radeon HD 6870

So is PC gaming becoming to expensive? Although "graphics cards are going down," the ones that decrease in price are the older outdated ones that can't play games the way they are suppose to be played like Battlefield 3. And this is just the price of the graphics card. You still have to get the quad core processor, the power supply, heat sink, motherboard, and everything else that goes in.

Maybe its' smarter to stick with console games. You pay $300, and you get the comfort that every game you buy will play smoothly.

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_{This article was originally published in forum thread:

Is PC gaming becoming to expensive?
started by
dave} _{View original post}

7 Comments

Kandor - 10-26-2011
- Reply
In a nutshell, yes they are. I believe someone on Youtube (TotalBiscuit or the like) covered this by basicly saying: if you want to play top of the range games, you'd need to update your computer every few years!
But look at the consoles for example, Playstation, Xbox. They can last you until the next generation (7 years for PS3 and 8 for X-box.) You can run any game from the computer on your console! (Minus the wii)

MadAxel - 10-26-2011
- Reply
It only is going to get worse. What I do is wait for the price in electronics to drop, then buy them. You might have to wait a few months or even a year or two, but in the long run its worth it. Such as the iPad 2, which I want to buy, but if I wait a while there will be some on ebay for near half the cost.

ina - 10-26-2011
- Reply
What does seem odd is I rarely ever need to upgrade my graphic cards as I bought 2 top of the range ones a while back both the cards cost £600 each (approx $1000) before that I had top of range graphic cards and the same before. For some reason I can never get graphics cards that don't have problems. For example say you buy ATI cards most games will work fine until you realise several games are made for nVidia cards so your ATI cards do not perform as well and the same vice versa. Can't nVidia and ATI just team up and produce Ultimate graphics on the cheap for everyone rather than having a new model every week to rival the other firm.

Phoenix - 10-26-2011
- Reply
Ill always stick to console gaming mainly, lets face it who is smarter in the long run.Like you say $300 for a console and $1000 for a graphics card, graphics can make the game better but if the game is good to start with the graphics don't matter at all.

Montecristoe - 10-26-2011
- Reply
Console version of BF3 only has 24 player maps LOLhttp://buypoe.com/battlefield-3/1746...r-problem.html

Snipes12 - 10-26-2011
- Reply
I prefer consoles because I don't have to worry about graphics card problems

For example, I had just bought minecraft, tried to play it and got an error. After hours of trying to fix the damn thing I finally uninstalled my latest driver for my video card and minecraft works.. but some of the source games like garry's mod or CSS crash on startup... so now i have to update to play some games and remove it to play others which constantly blue screens my computer...

At least with consoles game companies have to bend the way they make products not just produce whatever the hell they feel like then expect the gamers to spend hundreds more in equipment just to play it.

Supersize - 10-26-2011
- Reply
Not to mention if you own a mac you can't play most pc games...
Im not a huge gamer, so I don't care either way really because I don't buy top of the line games. I prefer my xbox mainly though because i really like the controller. I hate moving with awsd and shooting with a mouse... it just doesnt translate as well for me.

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