PC Power?

[Metal_Sonic]

People do tend to exaggerate about upgrading. You dont need the bleeding edge of new PC hardware to enjoy the latest greatest. A good PC today will probably be a ok machine 2/3 years from now. Also, the PC is king in strategy games comrades.

[MN12BIRD]

I built my machine for about $600 USD for the complete tower. It's a big NZXT case w CM 550watt PSU, M2N-E, AMD 64x2 4800, 2GB OCZ DDR2 800MHZ Platinum, an 8600GTS, X-FI Xtreame Gamer, 320GB Seagate SATAII HDD and Pioneer DVDRW. It's nothing special but I don't play much games now a days. Last game I played on it was Call of Duty 4 and it ran that with all the settings on extra high at 1280x1024. Crysis on the other hand... medium for me! But like I said I mainly use my computer for media and downloading. I do some video conversion/editing too.

Right now you can build a great gaming machine for a good price. New cards like the 8800GT, GTS and 9600GT have really pushed the price of higher end video cards down.

Still I see you point. This stuff can be expensive and is usually obsolete after a few years. Consoles have many plus sides no doubt there. But fact is I need a decent machine for the other things I do with it. I don't have nor can I afford a nice big HDTV but my basic 19" LCD monitor does the equivalent to 720p so I can at least watch HDTV video if I need to. I download a lot of music and movies as well. I don't pay for cable TV instead I download all the TV shows I enjoy and watch them when I want in widescreen format with no commercials! I prefer to do this anyway and some TV shows (like Top Gear) are cut for time even if you do pay for the premium channels to watch it!

Basically I built the system I needed and then added an extra $100 for the 8600GTS mid range card instead of just getting a basic one so I can play the odd game when I want. I built it about 6 months ago and the only games I played on it so far are COD4 and NFS Pro Street and they both ran on full settings. It does the job for me. I mean sure I could have spent the same amount on a PS3 but then I would need an HDTV to take advantage of it. I can't download all my movies and tv shows, edit/convert and burn DVD video on a PS3 either.

[TmEE]

I don't see a point in having a super good PC and not making any real use of it ... I know many people who buy a hyper good PC just to listen music and DL stuff and use word... a 1GHz P3 can do all that exactly as good... Win just starts few seconds longer...

[mick_aka]

Maybe for Amiga or something like that theres a small scene

Are you shitting me?

The Amiga easilly has the biggest active retro-scene of any system, many companies still manufacturing hardware and supporting 68k Amigas (have a nice Subway USB controller in my A1200)

As for PC gaming, yes, I agree that there pretty much is no 'scene' at all, which is a great shame, my collection of retro PC titles is second only to my Saturn collection.