Just more of the same thing that you can read if you track my new replies at GameSpot, that's what. PCs are my hobby, and gaming is my excuse for spending time and money on the hardware. The messages I choose to offer answers to in the forums are generally about the stuff I am most interested in, such as 3D Video Cards, so there will be a lot of that in here.

Now, don't get excited if this isn't what anyone else here offers for their own blogging space; it's what I think could be useful, and therefore worth my time organizing it for publication here. I'll end the first installment with a proposed table of contents covering what all I may eventually add.

Because some of the members here have computer and game troubles that I've had experience with, one of the earlier sections will be about PC Trouble Shooting, and the most recent game I've been playing will be used as an example. FYI, that's been Obsidian's Neverwinter Nights 2.

Before that, I will discuss the things to look for when going Video Card Shopping, and the waste of time it would be to buy a card to use in a plain PCI slot, and similarly, trying to use onboard graphics for modern 3D games. At some point, I'll cover some of the history of the dedicated Video Card, as well as of my personal involvement with computers generally, and about building my own systems as well.

I've repeated in several replies at GameSpot and elsewhere, a particular semi- philosophical rant against using subjective terms of superlative nature, and I will repeat that here, eventually, I am certain. In a more practical section, you will learn how to easily identify the specific components inside of your own Personal Computer, and why you need to be able to do that, as well as a simple chart showing the relationship of the System Requirements of various popular games.

For any of the readers here at GameSpot who have visited other gaming forums at which I've participated in a major way, you are likely to see "reruns". I have reused some of my essays from the start of becoming a gaming forum regular at least once, as I've moved from one place to another as my primary base. For the most part, if you were even semi-regular on BioWare's NWN2 forums, then you may have seen my name, since my threads were so popular there as the basis for their "Sticky Threads" at the top. That, however, was prior to being messed with too many times by Stanislav the Woo- woo from Obsidian (name changed to protect the guilty).

1. How to identify what's inside the main system unit, in order to be certain your PC can run this or that game with decent image quality and playable frame rates.
2. A few games' requirements for comparison, ranked by the Video Card Required.
3. Overall poor performance from onboard video chips.
4. Terrible game performance from Video Cards running on the plain PCI bus.
5. A basic guide to New Video Card shopping.
6. Choosing useful comparison criteria for computer performance discussions.
7. The first steps in performing trouble shooting diagnostics.
8. Where to learn how to perform a proper "Clean Boot".
9. Sample FAQ for the NWN-2 game's trouble shooting.
10. The Laptop PC Conundrum.
11. Upgrading options for some Laptop PCs.
12. The compromise between getting plenty of cooling and dealing with lots of noise from a game system.
13. Dealing with an overheating problem.
14. In case you wanted to know, where the author's computer start began.
15. Building my own PCs back in the day.
16. A little video performance history from AGP1 to PCIe.
17. Should you stick with gaming consoles instead of having to deal with PCs' many hardware differences when used as gaming platforms?
18. Philosophical differences between gamers happiest with PCs versus those who will be better off with console gaming, and how to encourage more of them to cross over to join us.