Ever waited until after an upgrade to buy a game?

HangTime

HangTime

HangTime

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Often we hear about people upgrading to play a new AAA title, but what about the other way round? Just wondered if anyone else ever holds off on buying games until you have a better system at your disposal. Below are some examples of games I didn't buy on release, even though I really wanted to play them:

Quake 2
It got 97% in the PCZ review, but said that you really needed 24meg+ RAM and a 3dfx card to get the most out of it. Only having 16meg RAM and a standard 2meg PCI card, I waited a few months and then went into town and bought an extra 32meg RAM, a Voodoo1 and Quake2. The irony is ended using my 3dfx card more for other games like Carmageddon, GTA, Screamer Rally and GL Quake.

Grand Theft Auto 3
A notorious performance dog on release (possibly due to being a dodgy PS port), I didn't fancy trying this on my old p3/256meg/gf2mx rig. It was one of the first games I bought for my P4/512meg/gf4 rig built in summer 2002.

Crysis
Far Cry is probably my favourite FPS of all time, I love what Crytek did with the engine (I still chat on IRC with one of the former devs who I went to uni with from time-to-time) and thus Crysis was my most anticipated game of the year. However as I have a TFT monitor and only a GTS320 I am holding fire on buying this until I get a GPU upgrade capable of running it in my native res (gf10 series probably).
 
Yes, I didn't get Crysis & UT3 till I got my G92 :), no way I'd be playing those enjoyably on my old 6800GS lol.
 
I'm waiting to see what nvidia and ati have to offer in the new year before buying crysis also. I loved Farcry (infact I'm playing through it again at the mo) and I don't fancy my Crysis experiance spoiled by dipping framerates and excessive bugs (which should be completely ironed out by then).

The demo plays ok at 1360x768 (26" samsung r8) with everything set to high +2xAA on the system in my sig, but it's still no where near as smooth as I'd like it to be, plus I'd prefer to play it on my 20" tft at 1680x1050.
 
I held off Oblivion for a PC upgrade, from XP 1900+ and ATI9600 to A64 X2 3800+ and X1600XT.

I should have held off playing Bisohock, given that I mean to ugrade some time in the next few days/months. My 1950Pro plays it OK on my 1920x1200 monitor at a little below default settings. I tried turning everything up and it looked gorgeous, but I couldn't aim or move properly for the lag. If I'd waited I could have had the looks and the framerate.

I will sit on Stalker, Orange Box and The Witcher until I've upgraded. Honest I will. Until then it's Operation Flashpoint, Beyond Good and Evil, and NWN2 mods.
 
i held out to get HL2 until i knew my rig could play it perfect, might need a tad of an upgrade in the next ew months to keep up with some of the games coming out :p
 
I've been holding off buying games for a while since I got a bigger monitor - meant a hit in games and I like eye candy turned on so I've been waiting until now for an upgrade to get/play games; UT3, Orange Box, The Witcher and a few others.
 
Morte66 said:
I will sit on Stalker, Orange Box and The Witcher until I've upgraded. Honest I will. Until then it's Operation Flashpoint, Beyond Good and Evil, and NWN2 mods.
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I've just started STALKER myself after never really getting into it, I have to say its one of the best games I've played in ages, really good story and setting, plays really well and a lot of the bugs have been ironed out with the patches. Definately give it a go!
 
Held off on getting Grand Prix 2 until I upgraded from 8MB of RAM to 24. Quite a while ago, that....
 
I'm not going to play Crysis until I can run it smoothly at max. I guess that means waiting for the next gen GPUs? Or is there anything else I can do to enhance the performance of my rig without overclocking or going SLI? Probably not.
 
I just upgrade when my pc cant hack the games i want to play simple as really..

my old 939 , crossfire comp is pants now anyways :P
 
I bought my first PC game months before my first PC. Now a days I tend to buy games but not play then for 6+months untill a few patch's have came out. I really dont see the point in playing most games right away, patch's tend to make them better.
 
Pottsey said:
I bought my first PC game months before my first PC. Now a days I tend to buy games but not play then for 6+months untill a few patch's have came out. I really dont see the point in playing most games right away, patch's tend to make them better.
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Yeah no point in paying to be a beta tester.
 
XtAsY said:
I'm not going to play Crysis until I can run it smoothly at max. I guess that means waiting for the next gen GPUs? Or is there anything else I can do to enhance the performance of my rig without overclocking or going SLI? Probably not.
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Realistically if you want to be running Crysis "smoothly at max" without SLI or overclocking, I think like me you will need to wait at least two generations. I can't see the 'gf9' series being much faster than 8800ultra-SLI, which simply doesn't have enough grunt to do what you want.

Holding off on buying games does have its advantages:

1) Often cheaper
2) Patches have come out
3) May have upgraded by then => better performance
 
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