How long will a high end PC last for games?

marl · 9 Apr 2007 at 11:07

The first PC i got became out of date and incapable of playing games after about 9 months. the 2nd has lastest much longer.

How long do you reckon a new c2d PC with 8800 gts/gtx would be good for in order to play games with reasonable, as opposed to maximum detail?

jongeeone · 9 Apr 2007 at 11:09

A while -

cant really say but it would last you a few years.

Also depends on the games as when DX10 games come out the 8800 series will be low end nearly

Edit

thats why im holding out for next gen

pastymuncher · 9 Apr 2007 at 13:29

Well my Sli'd 7800gt's (clocked to death) with a A64 4000+ @2.75ghz lasted around 14 month's. Then i got COH and was very dissapointed by how much i had to turn the detail down. I am hoping that the rig in my sig will last a little longer.

jake000 · 9 Apr 2007 at 13:31

As jongeeone has said, it depends.

New hardware is coming out frequently and it puts your current stuff out of date. This doesn't mean to say your pc is slow though.
If you bought a core2duo, 2gb ram and a 8800, im sure that could last for atleast 18 months.

Phil2008 · 9 Apr 2007 at 13:40

I paied just over the £2000 for my system about 16months ago and ive just upgraded the 3dcard in that time. It still plays games fine, but I will need to upgrade the 3d card again soon and buy another gig of memory for it. See in sig.

weringo · 9 Apr 2007 at 13:47

For games you can just upgrade your graphics in 18 months or so and keep the rest of your system and I reckon your whole system would last about 3 years in total playing games at mid/high detail.

manveruppd · 9 Apr 2007 at 13:55

The cutting edge is a very slippery slope...

I'll get my coat

Cupra · 9 Apr 2007 at 14:16

manveruppd said:
The cutting edge is a very slippery slope...

I'll get my coat

your right... your nearly always better off getting bang for buck items rather than top end stuff due to how long anything lasts in the pc market

NathanE · 9 Apr 2007 at 14:35

It all depends on the components you choose. The 'generation' of the component is more important than its clock speed.

p4radox · 9 Apr 2007 at 14:46

It depends on what size screen you have.

The last thing I bought was a 19" widescreen monitor about 14 months ago. The reasons for going for a small size were ease of transport, and the fact that lower resolutions require less powerful components for a reasonable level of detail.

I 'only' have an Opteron, 1Gb ram and an X850XT but can play C&C3 at moslty high detail levels. It also helps that I don't play many demanding games any more, but you get the idea...

manveruppd · 9 Apr 2007 at 15:32

NathanE said:
It all depends on the components you choose. The 'generation' of the component is more important than its clock speed.

Not necessarilly... Remember how much of a killing NVidia made with the 6800s by banging the Shader Model 3.0 drum? The lower-end of those cards like my 6800nu slow down noticeably if you enable SM3, and DX10 will be the same story: the 8800s may be capable of slaughtering any DX9 game, but when games that fully utilise the new api come along we'll find them pretty inadequate.

The best thing to do if you're money-conscious is to stay a few years behind the curve. I find this easy to do since I'm disgustingly slow at finishing games, so I've got loads of stuff from 3-4 years ago to get through before I "need" an upgrade. (And when that upgrade comes I won't need to buy cutting-edge stuff either because I'll have last year's games to get through!

)

The only thing this is a problem is if you want to play the latest FPSs online, because the FPS community tends to have a short attention span and moves on to the next big thing as soon it's released. So I'm stuck playing Rocket Arena 3.