Misunderstanding PC gaming

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Well, the Cell Architecture has one Big Core (PPU) and 8 Small Cores (SPU's). The chip itself has a lot of differences with your standard processors, so the way to program for it is quite different (which was a complaint from developers that carried over from the PS2 era. It's practically the same reason the original God of War took 5 years to look the way it did on the PS2). There's power there but it's hard to properly harness.

 

[alphamalet]

I'm tempted to make a thread titled "Misunderstanding the Average Gamer". It would seem to me that there is a common misconception that PC gaming can be picked up rather easily. This is simply not the case.

-Getting that price effective PC would mean doing extensive research, and having a handle on each component in a PC/what they do.
-It would also require building it yourself, which IS NOT a simple task. It's very easy to screw up your first time.
-People need to know how to troubleshoot issues that arise when a game doesn't work correctly.
-People need to know how to preform proper matinence on their PC, or risk damaging their hardware.

This is just scratching the surface of the commitment you make when you decide to be a PC gamer. Coming from a former PC gamer, you CAN'T expect people to know this stuff, or dedicate a ton of time learning it. People don't want to deal with the hassle, nor do they want to jeopardize a large financial commitment due to a lack of technological know-how.

The way I see it, there is a lot of misunderstanding between dedicated PC gamers, and console gamers.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

:words:

So google one? There's several that run perfectly fine. Try http://hackingnation.org/

One thing I will say though about the low framerates is that you do need a more powerful computer to run emulation for modern systems successfully with good fps. Because basically you are running windows and then you are running an entire console in the background on top of it, so if you normally only get like 30-35 FPS for games designed to run on PC, then you're likely going to have some issues. This technically could drive up the cost of a PC by potentially 150-300$ for a better GPU and CPU. But it's still cheaper than owning every single console and a PC.

 

[nevarran]

That's what ignorance is, annoying.

1. the cost of a pc is too high and you have to constantly buy new hardware.
- you can buy a pc for $700 and be able to play almost every modern game at highest settings(excluding crysis 3 and games similar to it) with decent resolution plus any retro game, including console games from gamecube, ps1, gba, genesis, snes, nes, n64, etc.

On top of that, the games for PC cost less than the console games. You save pretty much 10 bucks on every game, not to mention Steam sales and some very low prices on Amazon. So, here's at least 100 bucks saved on every 10 games.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

My PC Specs:
intel i5 2500k processor
Zotac geforce 550ti fermi AMP! edition
8gb ram
500gb hardrive
750 watt psu

Whenever i read this kind of thread and people put that up there i pretty much just read it as "And here is my dick!".

OT: These really are not the issues that turn me off PC gaming. Largely it's the community that does that. Much like how i've been starting to feel about this very website lately 'cause the forums seem to be getting more and more toxic as the PC/console debate rages on.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well those comments are a poor expression of the actual reason people fear PC... you need a lot of extra knowledge before things work properly for you, consoles simply do not.

 

[Arina Love]

All i know is i dropped fucking 1000$ on PC (don't live in us) and it now lottery whenever games actually work on it. Tomb Raider worked ok but Grid 2 crashed video drivers as well as Far Cry 3.

Service people can't help, no news or working solution from Nvidia or Microsoft.

Tried every solution i found on google and eventually gave up, now i have 1000$ reddit and anime machine because i don't trust that it will actually play game i bought.

So here you go my experience in PC gaming, and precisely why i will be buying next gen consoles. PC gaming = never again.

 

[Shadowstar38]

What you put up there doesn't cover every issue people have with pc's. But for point number two, having to go to a forum to figure out why your game isn't working is bullshit. I never run into this issue when I'm using the machines built for the primary purpose of playing games on it.

 

[JudgeGame]

I think there are two very distinct camps in pc gaming. The "master race" pc gamers who are hardware junkies and everyone else. In my experience, hardware junkies are generally total assholes who do completely unironically feel like superior specimens and act like jerks towards anyoone that doesn't agree with them 100%. Everyone else either doesn't have the money for console gaming or is interested in a certain gaming niche that falls under pc indie developement or just happens to work a lot with computers and logically plays on them aswell.

I think it is pretty undeniable that the difficulty of buying and playing games is no longer a factor in choosing console or pc. There are several problems with each but not it's not really a consideration to most buyers.

 

[RevRaptor]

Oh gee another PC gamer desperately trying to convince everyone that PC gaming is hassle free. I've never seen that before.

As much as I love PC gaming the simple fact of the matter is its much higher maintenance and hassle than you get with a console. Just go to a PC gaming advice forum, you see all them people there asking how to get the bloody thing running. Yea they ain't there pleading for help because they like the forums ambiance.
It doesn?t happen as much any more but you still do come across games that simply refuse to work because you had the nerve to buy the wrong graphics card.

That crap doesn?t happen with consoles, its why people buy them. PC gaming still has a ways to go before it reaches the sit and play user friendliness of consoles. Although it has to be said that the next gen of consoles seem to be reducing that gap and not in the good way.
Well at least I can still emulate that is one huge plus PC gaming has going for it

 

[Octorok]

Seriously, what the fuck is SLI and CrossFire? :/

I checked, and I think nobody answered this question.

It's very simple, really. SLI and CrossFire basically just mean "using more than one graphics card". Nvidia and AMD just use different names for it.

When people say "in SLI" what they're saying is that they've got two copies of a graphics card, they've stuck a little bridge thingy on them, and they now use them both at the same time.

Generally speaking, SLI/CrossFire is a mixed bag - it uses a lot of power, and it's not as smooth as running a game on just one card, but you get the boost in performance in return.

 

[Tom_green_day]

- you can buy a pc for $700

You realise this isn't a good thing, right? I got my PS3 for £200 ($308) a few years back and it's never broken or needed an upgrade. Also, due to pre-owned market, games are much cheaper and I don't have to download them. When I did try PC gaming, the computer frequently broke and could barely play several games that I bought, leading me to waste quite a lot of money without knowing if it would work or not.
$700 (£450) is a hell of a lot of money, and consoles are much cheaper to run and maintain I find.

 

[GabeZhul]

Oh gee another PC gamer desperately trying to convince everyone that PC gaming is hassle free. I've never seen that before.

As much as I love PC gaming the simple fact of the matter is its much higher maintenance and hassle than you get with a console. Just go to a PC gaming advice forum, you see all them people there asking how to get the bloody thing running. Yea they ain't there pleading for help because they like the forums ambiance.
It doesn?t happen as much any more but you still do come across games that simply refuse to work because you had the nerve to buy the wrong graphics card.

That crap doesn?t happen with consoles, its why people buy them. PC gaming still has a ways to go before it reaches the sit and play user friendliness of consoles. Although it has to be said that the next gen of consoles seem to be reducing that gap and not in the good way.
Well at least I can still emulate that is one huge plus PC gaming has going for it

Why would PCs need to reach the "sit and play user friendliness of consoles" again? PCs are not consoles. PCs are multi-purpose tools that also let you play games amongst the myriad of other things you can use them for. If you actually know how to use them, they can do everything consoles do and way, way more. So yes, they are less friendly and you need to sit down and learn how to actually use a PC, but that is just the price you have to pay for versatility.

For me, comparing PCs to consoles often feels like comparing cars to trains. Yes, sure, when you want to go from one station to another, using a train is simpler and cheaper than using a car, but that car can take you everywhere else you want to go, not just to the station. Sure, the car has a greater maintenance cost and you have to actually learn how to drive it, but again, that is just the price you have to pay for versatility.

 

[mohit9206]

The best thing to do is have a pc as a primary gaming system with one console of choice to play the exclusives and another handheld system for outdoor trips. My preferred combination would be PC+PS3+3DS though i currently own PC+PS2. and btw here is my PC specs
Intel G630
radeon 7750
8gb ram
Thia will play all games just fine for a few years atleast and it only cost 400 dollars to build.

 

[Adon Cabre]

[HEADING=1]Blah, Blah, PC purists[/HEADING]
E3 will blow you all away with the assortment of console exclusives that none of you will ever own.

[http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/03/tomb-raider-vs-uncharted-the-comparison-we-had-to-make/]
No Uncharted Series (PS3),
No Tomb Raider (2013) for PC.

Bow your heads,

"Thank you, Console Exclusives".​

​

[li]No One Builds their PC[/li] I hope you all reaize just how small a % of PC gamers actually do this -- 5%?

[li]PC Market Growth[/li] It's growing because of Social Gaming (Facebook) and the average MMO, not because of Crysis 3 or Witcher 3, so don't count on a PC exclusive to rock the gaming world like Playstation 3's Uncharted 2 or Wii's Super Mario Galaxy 2 did.

[li]Game Sales[/li] Like any sale, you've got to hunt for them, and then create accounts in Amazon, Steam, Origin, Windows Live etc...

[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/10241-SimCity-Is-Broken-And-Its-Not-Just-the-Servers]​

[HEADING=3]And When Publishers Answer to No One?[/HEADING]

You would think that freeing a company of the big bad Console market would make triple-A titles more intuitive to a wider audience. Not so, because now they don't have to meet the standards of Microsoft and SONY's quality management. They can put out whatever they want.

For example, Final Fantasy XIV got ripped for being the junk that it was; but consider these problems fixed as SONY will now be incorporating that title into their console library.

[h4]Console better for Gaming Purists[/h4]
If you're not obsessed with expanding your library 20+ games a year, and if you're only interested in the fine experience of a diverse and quality selection of titles, then consoles work best.

[h4]pictures have links[/h4]​

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

Well honestly, the greatest misunderstanding I see is that graphics is the first thing that comes up when it comes to PC gaming.

You know what, it doesn't. You can get a PC for the price of a console and if you're willing to lower the graphics settings, you should be able to play most games for as long as the console generation lasts. Not to mention the fact that the upgrades you make after that are much cheaper than buying a new console.

Also, how many graphics-heavy PC-exclusive games are actually worth playing? Crysis? That's more of a benchmarking tool than anything. The Witcher 2? Yeah, I guess so, although that game is definitely not for everyone. I'd go with indies any day. And you can play indies on pretty much everything.

 

[Rob Robson]

Okay, slightly off topic question, but the OP mentioned resolution and it got me thinking. I've never really monkeyed around with resolution and pretty much always used the same one. How taxing is resolution when playing games on PC?

Memory bus width and amount of memory on a graphics card is the resolution bottleneck.

The higher the resolution, the more textures need to be loaded simultaneously.

A 192bit bus and 1 GB / 1.5 GB of VRAM is enough to run 1920 x 1200 res or 1920 x 1080.
A 256bit bus and 2 GB VRAM is recommended to run 2560 x 1600 or two screens at 1080p
A 384bit bus and 3 GB - 4 GB (and above) VRAM is recommended to run three monitors at 1080p.

SLi/ Crossfire (multiple synced graphics cards) does not help you attain higher resolutions, as their VRAM is mirrored, not shared.

These specs are always listed with each graphics card in the details at any reputable etailer.

Be wary of certain graphics card that have "marketing RAM". IE, cards with more RAM than the memory bus can feed, leaving it internally bottlenecked. It's not uncommon to buy a 2GB graphics card with a 128bit memory bus (which will only actually give you 1GB) - likewise it's not uncommon to see graphics cards with 3 GB of VRAM that only have 192bit or 256bit buses which will only use 1.5 GB and 2 GB respectively.

Was that way too technical?

TL;DR: The actual GPU processing power/ frequencies etc. do not affect whether you can run high resolutions with high res textures, only memory bus width and VRAM does.

Well honestly, the greatest misunderstanding I see is that graphics is the first thing that comes up when it comes to PC gaming.

You know what, it doesn't. You can get a PC for the price of a console and if you're willing to lower the graphics settings, you should be able to play most games for as long as the console generation lasts. Not to mention the fact that the upgrades you make after that are much cheaper than buying a new console.

Also, how many graphics-heavy PC-exclusive games are actually worth playing? Crysis? That's more of a benchmarking tool than anything. The Witcher 2? Yeah, I guess so, although that game is definitely not for everyone. I'd go with indies any day. And you can play indies on pretty much everything.

Too true.