Is there any point in upgrading anymore?

Thinking about upgrading my rig, C2D e8400. Seems pretty cheap these days, £300 for new z77 mobo, I5 2500k and 8 GB RAM. Doubt I'll upgrade my 6850 though. Still not sure I really need to, even the newest games still run ok on med/high @ 1920x1200 (apart from the odd one or two like Witcher 2, which can be choppy).

As for the consoles holding back gaming well don't expect it to change with the next generation of consoles I don't think they'll be pushing any boundaries tech wise again, especially Sony.
 
Only game i upgrade for is total war. I didnt enjoy shogun but i did invest in some new hardware. Its a shame that PC gaming is really only about 1 game for me.
 
Now that I'm not playing FPS games much I'm still perfectly happy with a Q6600, 5770 and 8gb, and that's playing at 2560x1600. Expect I'll get another year or two out of it before I feel an itch.

Would like a SSD though.
 
I dont think i see the point anymore :(
got a Phenom x6, 16gb ram, 2gb 6970.

and all i seem to be playing is ****** console games.

is there ever going to be a game that uses the hardware i have?

oh! in ten yrs...ok lmao

I find it less important to upgrade these days, I'm running about a 4-5 year old rig and there is very little in terms of new releases these days that I think "ooh bugger upgrade time" I can still get by on the mainstay of settings just can't quite manage to max everything out these days.
 
Depends what stage you are at.

My main machine is a 4~5yr old laptop with a GS7900. I'd love to upgrade but I don't the space for a desktop. Decent gaming laptop just out of reach budget wise.
 
Depends what stage you are at.

My main machine is a 4~5yr old laptop with a GS7900. I'd love to upgrade but I don't the space for a desktop. Decent gaming laptop just out of reach budget wise.

They are always expensive. I had an awesome zepto a few years back that was a beast :) It did break though and had to be returned :(
 
Just look at the Steam Hardware and Software Survey if you want an answer to your question. The majority of users are still on 4GB of RAM or less, dual core CPUs or less, and have DX10 GPUs or less. Why would developers make games that the majority couldn't run at near full settings?
 
Just look at the Steam Hardware and Software Survey if you want an answer to your question. The majority of users are still on 4GB of RAM or less, dual core CPUs or less, and have DX10 GPUs or less. Why would developers make games that the majority couldn't run at near full settings?

Ambition? Make they best looking game they possibly can and then scale it back with lower settings? Not that hard really
 
I dont think there's much point at the moment, consoles are seriously holding back games development and progress

Apart from X-Rebirth and maybe Doom IV there isn't anything interesting on the horizon. Almost everything seems to be for the consoles now.

Now that the last great PC developers GSC and Ensemble Studios are dead there's not a lot of hope for PC gaming. There's no RTS like Age of Empires and there's no FPS like Stalker.

BF3 was held back by consoles and Crysis 3 is unlikely to live up to the original.
 
Would like a SSD though.

DO IT!

Best upgrade I've made since going wireless for my keyboard and mouse.

For the most part whenever you make an upgrade you get something which is slightly better than the previous version. An SSD is an order of magnitude better than a conventional HDD, everything is just so fluid since the upgrade.

Can become a pain though shuffling things around so they can all fit.
 
If you've got excess money to spend and you want to upgrade do it, get an ssd well worth it. As for GPU, CPU etc if you're playing everything fine at the moment don't see why you would want to upgrade for a few years not like games will get that much more demanding and you can always lower a setting or 2 saving yourself like £500+..
 
I wonder if the people who think upgrading is pointless have 1440P/120Hz/multi monitor setups. Those that do could still make use of more power than is currently available on the market for the most extreme titles. Even at 1080P 60HZ there are a few games that require a top end SLi setup to run perfectly, although most will of course run flawlessly in that instance.
 
I'm not sure we're looking at this the right way. Yes, it's entirely possible that if consoles were better then you would have a few games with better graphics to play. But how many would be able to play them? Is forcing development teams to do more with the same budget a bad thing? I don't think so. It seems we're finally bucking the trend that is Wirth's law.

Besides, better graphics take a lot of development time and effort. I remember a developer commentary where somebody said "i don't think you'll find a graphic designer that's glad that it's an HD world". You ever wonder why games are shorter than they used to be? Ten years ago you could spend days on the campaign, now it's over in six hours. That's because all the time went into the graphics.

And i mean even then, it's not like consoles are holding back graphic development. There's no reason you couldn't make a game with the best graphics you've ever seen and run it at lower settings on consoles. You're not upset that you don't have games with better graphics. You're upset that you don't have games that console gamers can't play.

Very insightful post. If I could rep it, I would.
 
I upgraded a few weeks ago from an Athlon x64 2200, 4Gb RAM and ATI 4870 to an Intel i2550k @ 4.6, 8Gb RAM, ATI 7970 and 120gb SSD... simply to play BF3 with all settings on '11'.

Looks awesome and doesn't drop below 60fps at any point.

First time I've been able to upgrade the PC as I wanted to and as such didn't want to have to upgrade it for quite a few years.
 
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