I think a number of things limit the PC gaming industry, and graphics is a part of it.

Specifically for graphics, its holding down gaming overall. With higher and higher expectations for amazing graphics, its becoming harder and more expensive to develop. Along with that, for a PC, the standards can be pushed much higher as video cards come out, and devs do that in order to remain cutting edge and attractive where as a console hardware is locked.

Mainly though, I think its the console's near plug and play ability that makes it very attractive. I like to play games, although a lot of times, i just dont have the time to devote to it. There is something very appealing about a console being able to just play the game without hassles of installation etcetc.

But yes, PC's technically do give the best bang for the buck, especially in the long run. But most people dont see the long run, or they dont care about it. Upgrading PC's also takes some experience and trial and error. As a relatively new PC gamer, I made the mistake of buying the wrong kind of video card once, and the wrong RAM once too.

Price wise if you are frugal and upgrade efficiently, then its fine. I got my basic storebought rig at around 600. Spent 100 on new video card. Nowadays i can run COD4 well enough, same for bioshock and CC3. Crysis runs with pretty low settings, but still playable and enjoyable,

a lot of the newer games have widescreen support, which is fine and all, but some of them dont, like Half Life 2

Specficially for HL2, on the aspect ratio, it wont let me click and change it. Although if i set the resolution to a high amount, it looks relatively ok in widescreen.

Some older games like Halo PC just dont have widescreen and even if i do set the resolution to its highest, the stretches look terrible.

So what do you guys do if theres no widescreen available? play it in windowed mode or is there some trick that i dont know of?

Thanks for your help! =)

Its because COD4 is completely different gameplay from Unreal or Quake. COD/BF are based a semi-realistic health systems. One 'noob' bullet could kill you in COD. Whereas, the only one shot kills in UT or Quake are from skilled shots; other guns require many more hits.

andrewt1187

very true, in arcadey fashion games, UT, Quake etc, it requires a different skill set and playing method then CoD4 and such. so its not that theres no skill, its different skill and different gameplay styles

(I was told this would be the better place to ask the question, so here it goes again)

Sad but true, I've been running off of my integrated ATI Radeon Xpress 200 for over a year now. You ever see FEAR running on that thing? Well...nvm, I won't even go into that.

With black friday coming up, I thought I might as well shell out for a video card, however, my budget is extremely, insanely limited.

I have found these 3 cards, but I haven't been able to find any good reviews of them, so if you can give your opinion of them, it would be of a great big help!

ATI Radeon HD2400 Pro 256MB - $49

ATI Raoden HD2600 Pro 512MB - $99

NVidia GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB - $99

As you can see, my budget is below $100, and my options are only those 3, so if you can pick and choose which one you would select out of those 3 and say why, thanks so much =)

(I know theres a lot better out there, but my budget and time only allows for these 3 options, so please limit yourself to only these 3 choices)