Hello friends,

I'm a lil new here and feel quite nervous while talking among the geeks present here...but still I thought I should share sum xperience on the PC gaming world and ask u guys wht do u think abt my thoughts...thanx for ur patience in advance :)

I'm using PC since 1999 and playing games since then (:P), I have seen HDD capacities in MBs, and have used 16 MB EDO RAMs. Presently my PC Specs are:

Intel Core2Duo E8400 3 GHz, nvidia geforce GTX 260, 4gb DDR2 RAM, 320 GB SATA HDD, and using Vista Ultimate.

In those days the prince of persia tht came out with shader support was a craze (POP: Sands of Time)...and I was dying to play it...but alas, it only supported 'FX' cards, and I had geforce 4 MX. Worldwide there were software 'emulators' out in the net for just 'fooling' the PC to believe an MX card to b FX... ;) I spent LOTSA time on this too, just to play the damn game...and then...I bought a FX card...and surrendered to the market demands...

Halo was out on PC, and I luckily had the proper rig to try it out...and it was a dream...was in fact dying to see the sequel. It came out in time and I bought it...on the box was written "VISTA only"...worldwide once again ppl started finding ways to 'fool' the PC (and most of the times fooling themselves :P) to believe Win XP to be vista (XP was the last perfect OS that I njoyed working on anyways)...but all in vain...finally I installed vista...and surrendered to the market demands...

Now, this grafix cards market has come to a saturation...Directx 11 with things like tessalation and all is the latest fad...with nvidia churning out new series of cards everyday having higher power (and much higher costs :P) but the curve has got horizontal on the 'eye candy' department. Well I bet many ppl (mostly budget gamers like me...having limited money to spend on luxuries like gaming... :P) r still using dual core AMD/Intel processors and 8800 series/GTX 200 series grafix cards. The game devs are presently not asking for higher cards as 'minimum specs' as they simply does not have better 'jargons' to offer to the public for coaxing them to buy those (remember 'Directx 10 only' cards tht promised unified shader model or sum crap like tht!)...so now the duty shifts to CPUs.

The game engine that gave same (or better) level of eye candies in DiRT 2/GRID (and running smooth with so called 'older' CPUs like above) now cannot be used for latest games like NFS:HP2 (even for the crappy grafix that it offers)...simply coz then ppl wont buy the new processors...their excuse: the new game engines use more CPU power (as compared to earlier ones)...but then the question is: where is the corresponding better visuals...? With same visuals to offer why change the grafix engines...?

The answer is simple...they want me to surrender to the market demands...yet again...Those of you who r lucky (in terms of money) can and will shift to better cards/processors as they come out, but just ask urself, is it worth the money...is the gaming industry/game devs offering us anything better (as compared to older titles) in return for their ongoing and relentless demands of buying new hardware...?

Like all others, the gaming business has and will xpand...and we've seen a radical change in the way it has from the past...but the expansion should be at a healthy pace isnt it...? or else the lesser mortal gamers (like me) will one day have to stop surrendering and left with 2 options: quit gaming or become a pirate... :(

U guys may not agree with all I've said...but ur opinions would be valuable and plz feel free to give them...

...cheers.