These past few weeks and months gaming has had a little aroma of what it used to feel like, the PC isn’t being treated as an outcast as much – if not having been accepted again as a properly viable platform of sorts. Though all that may be the current generation consoles showing their age; it may be short lived once the next XBox or PlayStation pop their heads out of the parapet. The trend is often seen as the ebb and flow of long term gaming and system popularity swings back and forth.
Rather than that, a singleplayer game actually kept ahold of my wandering attention span which always has something more productive or awesome to be doing (though rarely does in an evening). Of course, this game is non other than The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – in all honesty I had forgotten how much I adored the TES series, since my first adventures in Morrowind the Dunmer homeland to my battles and wanderings in Oblivion the Imperial capitol – I realised it was a series that I spent a lot of time playing.
Just as it takes an Elder Scrolls game to trigger my nostalgia and reignite my interests, it also takes a batch of new games to remind me that my system is approaching its own end. Rather, my CPU and Memory (in turn my Motherboard) are bottlenecking my otherwise fine XFX Radeon HD5870. This triggers memories of playing GTA: Vice City at less than 30 (probably less than 20) frames per second, I do believe a CPU and/or Memory upgrade were key back then in remedying my problem – followed by my amazement at how smooth it played.
Experience says…
Basically this is the joy of PC gaming for some, that moment when you realise your rig is at its end and needs an upgrade. You’re reluctant to fork out another wad of money, of course you could consider overclocking but that is a hassle and may not actually sort your issue out (or indeed generate new issues).
Now, dear gamer, it is a knowledge and timing game – you could rush off to your nearest store and buy the bits that are decent now. Or you can see what Intel and AMD have on the horizon and hold out just that little bit longer, this may be rewarded with lower prices on current components or indeed even better next generation price/performance.
This is my current situation with Intel, AMD already revealed their cards which were rather disappointing (the Bulldozer FX CPUs). I’m now waiting on Ivy Bridge, due April to see what my choices are. I’m also aiming to either double or quadruple my memory, so either 8GB or 16GB respectively (12GB doesn’t seem to be worth aiming for price wise).
What’s next?
My list of incomplete games is still increasing steadily, Deus Ex: HR (and DLC), The Witcher 2, Skyrim and now Serious Sam 3: BFE; all my main priorities to get done – but in no particular order and at varying paces. I have plenty of other real things to be getting in the way of gaming, hence my often slow progress with some of the larger games.
I will probably post some thoughts on co-operative gaming based on some experience, though mostly anecdotal stuff.
I’ve gone from a rather grumbly person to one who couldn’t be happier in a matter of months, not in an overall sense – I got much achieved in the past few months and felt very happy as a result of that. No, rather, my gaming system started to show its age and did so without allowing me to attempt adding any frills to it to keep it going.