Gun hobby expensive? Think about $1,800 graphics cards for PC gaming.

[Jack Ryan]

I am going to have to strongly and respectfully disagree with you sir.

You can read several studies about the pros and cons of playing games. One particular article I remember reading says that games improve "rapid eye movement" and I think that could benefit us greatly as real life shooters. For example, if you are shooting moving targets, or needing to identify a single target in a group quickly.

Study: Video games can improve your vision <--- Linky

Not the original article I read but same general idea. Vision is only one way they are beneficial. I firmly believe that playing FPS games increases your reaction time as well as "quick thinking".

If you believe it, that's all that matters. Good luck to ya.

 

[MACHINEGUN]

Video games are a waste of time.. isn't that the whole point?

Especially when you are bored with nothing productive to do?

 

[Dryden]

Video games have been proven to assist our soldiers in training. Flight simulators, Tank simulators, combat sims.....etc.
This saves money, time and raises skill levels of our troops. Much of their equipment is electronic and very closely resembles video games... but just a little bit more deadly.

Like it or not, it's here, it works and there's no going back.

 

[matthock]

Newegg.com - BFG Tech BFGEGTX2951792H2OCWBE GeForce GTX 295 1792MB 896 (448 x 2)-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards is the most expensive consumer class card I can find at Newegg, at $770. It is common to have dual card setups, and it's possible to have 4 card setups. That's a LOT of money to make things in the game a bit shinier.

Utterly pointless? Of course, but some people have wayyyyy too much disposable income, and like big FPS numbers even if they're higher than the refresh rate of the monitor What I'm excited about is solid state hard drives coming down in price - hard drives are the biggest bottleneck at the moment. Intel's coming out with new models of all their SSDs in the next few weeks, gonna cut the price nearly in half. For a lot of hard drive operations, the SSDs are something on the order of a 10-25x increase in speed, they've just been hideously expensive so far, but these new ones will be inexpensive enough for a lot more people to start using them, which will drive prices down even more.

 

[Don]

ATI


You couldn't give me one...BTDT

 

[seawolfxix]

Study: Video games can improve your vision <--- Linky

Not the original article I read but same general idea. Vision is only one way they are beneficial.

False. I had 20/20 vision until getting sucked into playing World of Warcraft in high school. When I got to the big lecture halls in college, I realized that I needed glasses.

 

[HICKMAN]

ROFL, laugh if you want, but back in 04 I got flown to both Dallas and Las Vegas to play Call of Duty

Gonna have to build a new rig now that Modern Warfare 2 is on the way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBJcOy6iuUc

 

[Plague421]

False. I had 20/20 vision until getting sucked into playing World of Warcraft in high school. When I got to the big lecture halls in college, I realized that I needed glasses.

Don't mean to sound rude, but you are by far not a "study" where variables and constants were used. You cannot blame WoW for your eye problems, of course unless your optometrist said it was the cause.

A perfect example is me, I have spent countless hours of my life in front of a computer screen, not just playing games, and I have 20/20. This past year alone I would be on the PC from 9am to easily 2am almost every day. No I wasn't employed.


However if you think you are on to something take Blizzard to court and get yourself paid. (just a joke)

 

[theweakerbrother]

And just think, that 1800 dollar investment is worth 1/64th of that in only 3 months when the latest and greatest graphics card comes out.

I would wager to guess that the kid at Gamestop is lying about his 4k budget. I doubt he makes that in the allotted time. Unless he lives with mom and dad... and even still...

 

[Glocker]

I used to be a tech nut and did the gaming thing for a number of years. Its been a couple years now since I've even own a PC and probably 3 years since I've played a PC game. As much as I loved it back then I slowly began losing interest because I quickly realize no matter how hard I tried I was never able to have the latest and greatest technology and something always came out every 3-6 months that totally outperforms current technology.

 

[joistman]

There is always going to be a new video card better then the one you just bought.........just give it a week!

 

[Naptown]

I just bought one at Frys that was 512 MB DDR2 that cost $30. That's how I roll with upgrades.

 

[matthock]

I aim for about $150 once a year for video cards - seems to be a good point for price vs performance. It's enough to play pretty much all games - yeah, not at max resolution on a 40 inch screen with every option cranked up to 120%, but really, who cares? If it's a fun game, it's still a fun game even if it's only 4x antialiased instead of 16x and has the lens flare turned down a couple notches. Every couple of years, upgrade the motherboard/processor/memory for about $500-600, although I'm stalling on that atm - I hit a sweet spot my last upgrade a couple years back with an E6850 processor just after they came out, so I'm waiting for I7 to come down to non-crazy prices to make my next upgrade. Otherwise, I mostly try to keep the same parts, rather than buying/building an entire new computer; not having to buy new hard drives/case/power supply/etc saves a lot of money over buying an entirely new computer.

Besides, it's not like you need a fancy computer to play Nethack, and really, if you have Nethack, you don't need all those shiny games


As far as vision, I've been using computers since I was little - I played my first computer game at the age of 3, and I really picked up on it around 11-12. I found from 3rd grade up until my junior year of high school, I was having to get new glasses on a nearly yearly basis. My junior year, however, I switched from a tube monitor to an LCD monitor, and I've only replaced my glasses twice since then, and one of those was because the old discontinued frames broke and I needed new lenses to fit the new frames. If anyone is having eye problems from their computer and is using a tube monitor, I HIGHLY recommend upgrading.

 

[Griffeycom]

I just bought one at Frys that was 512 MB DDR2 that cost $30. That's how I roll with upgrades.

I see 4GB DDR deals all the time for about $30 online.

 

[AngryFish]

I respect all of you guys who still upgrade their systems every few years but I kinda gave up on the whole PC gaming thing about 2 years ago. I bought a 360 and havent looked back since.

 

[Django]

My last system recently burned out in a thunderstorm. UPS, surge supressors... came in through the router (F'ing FIOS)
... So I dumped a couple grand into a new PC:
CoolerMaster HAF case (highly recommended)
ASUS P6T7 Motherboard
Intel i7 950 (was cheaper than the 920)
12GB OCZ Platinum DDR3
EVGA GeForce 285 GTX
4x 1TB Seagate Barracudas
ASUS 8x BD-ROM
Sony 16x DVD burner.
800w PSU

My idea of gaming is Solitaire, Tetris, Castlevania SotN, and SMB3.
Until they supplant first person shooters, racing games, and 'visual novels' as the driving force in today's market, I don't plan on spending the time and energy to become a gamer.
This system makes me want to try though.

Only adjustments might be SSDs, another graphics card for SLI, maybe water-cooling.

Really, you could build an i7 based system for under a grand today, or buy prebuilt for cheaper.
Building computers, like collecting firearms, is an addiction. As an addiction it should be closely monitored and rationed... like government healthcare
::cough::
/me dies

 

[Naptown]

I see 4GB DDR deals all the time for about $30 online.

You must have PCIe or AGP, as my PCI ports wouldn't support 4G. I'm stuck light years behind you with a standard PCI slot. Sad to say, I only have 1 more PCI slot to go on the mother board. It's a dell that I bought in 2002, so she's just an old lady that doesn't get out much. I can't afford to pimp my PC, I pimp too many of my other hobbies.

 

[matthock]

CoolerMaster HAF case (highly recommended)

I'll have to take a look at that one. I have an 8 year old Antec case that's built like a tank, but is beginning to show its age and the many, many times it's been moved. How is installing swapping hard drives? That's my biggest complaint about my current case - I have to remove the video card to mess with the hard drives. Planning on doing my next MB/CPU upgrade when Modern Warfare 2 comes out - I guess I need to start thinking about a case for then as well, since the current one really is out of date . I do some air overclocking with a huge heatsink/fan (Newegg.com - ZALMAN 9500A 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler - CPU Fans & Heatsinks), but no water cooling here - it's always seemed like such a pain, and not worth the effort to maintain the watercooler setup when you could be actually using the computer.

I really do recommend the SSDs next time you do the upgrade, especially after Intel releases their new models in the next few weeks. You really just need it for the system drive. My setup is that I have one 32gb OCZ SSD with the OS installed, then a pair of Raptor drives (one older Raptor, and one newer VelociRaptor) with the rest of my programs and files I'm currently using. Very fast - unlike a lot of upgrades that might make games a bit faster, the SSD makes a noticeable and considerable difference in day to day operation, even beyond the already impressively fast VelociRaptor.

It's not much hard drive space in the computer, but I keep most of my files on an HP Mediasmart NAS server instead - makes it easier to do reformat/reinstall, and the server runs RAID, so it keeps my data a bit better backed up (although I still run offsite backups for the really important stuff - doesn't matter how many hard drives you have if they all burn up in a fire/thunderstorm). Also makes it easy to access stuff from both desktop and laptop.

That is an interesting point about the surge getting it through the data line. I've got UPS on the server, PC, and router, but nothing on the data line. I guess it might be a good idea to look into RJ45 surge surpression...

 

[HICKMAN]

Just ordered my "Recession Special"

I used to over do it a little with my rigs, but this outta do the trick. I've been using an old work PC with a 9600GT.

 

[Litlratt]

Gaming at very high resolutions requires a powerful computer.
Driver and/or in game settings can slow a lesser machine down to the point where the game is unplayable, ie. slideshow.

Examples
1024X768 = 786,432 pixels per frame
1920X1200 = 2,304,000 pixels per frame
2560X1600 = 4,096,000 pixels per frame
At a minimum of 30 frames per second, you should get the idea.