Who's the gamers? I need advice.

[St.James]

I'm not much of a gamer, but there are some games I do like, Such as Rainbow Six, Rogue Spear, Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell.

I prefer PC games and pretty much built my current machine to exceed the recommended requirements for Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. Mainly to be ready for the follow up to that... Plus I'm sick of dropping 2 grand a year for the latest greatest PC bullshit.

The new Splinter Cell finally came out for PC today and I picked it up, installed that massive thing only to find my fucking $400 video card isn't compatible with it. What a crock of shit!

So, I can either drop 3 bills on a new video card or change directions and go with an Xbox 360 or whatever the latest bullshit for that is.

I had Playstation and Playstation 2 and didn't like either one so I dumped them.

My question is this. Is Xbox really all that great? What's the pros and cons compared to PC. I don't want to spend $400 on a console only to have to upgrade that to the latest oohs and ahhs every year just to play the latest games for it.

[texasfury]

.

[fett]

You can do like my 23 year old son does and buy them all.:ROTF: :ROTF: :ROTF: :ROTF:

[Shotgun]

I'm a long-time, old school PC Gamer. I am, in my heart, a PC Gamer. I suppose I always will be.

But since I started working a lot less four years ago when my son was born, I have not upgraded parts every 9 months or so like I used to. And last summer there were a lot of games that I owned on PC (like Doom 3, Half Life 2, Riddick, CoD2...) that I couldn't run well on my pc.

So (gasp) I bought an Xbox. The original one.

For me, this was a great call. I can play all that stuff that I wanted to, and I do. Does it look as good? No. But it is fast and easy and FUN, and in a couple of years when they're off to school, I'll work more, make more, and go back to PC some more.

Now, games are coming out on the 360 that I can't play on my PC, so I'm getting ready to go to the 360. Games like FEAR, and CoD2 and Double Agent.

Oh, and I'm all about the Tom Clancy games - I hate that the Six series has been turned to shit. I hope that they don't do the same to Sam.

Anyway, my two cents.

Keith

[Razor]

I've really liked first person shooters like Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Battlefield 1942, Star Wars Battlefronts, and so on for the PC and Gamecube. I've only had to change video cards twice over the past few years. I've found that most of the games I like seem to support more nVidia chipsets than ATI's, but that's just my opinion.

[audiophile]

What card cost you $400 that won't play it? Has to be $400 from quite a while ago...Dayum...


Holy smokes, my system is way outta spec to run it 8(
Need CPU and vid card.
Build new now or procrastinate...........arrrr

Supported OS: Windows® XP (only)
Processor: 3 Ghz Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon™ 3000 (3.5 Ghz Pentium 4 or Athlon 3500 recommended). Game optimized for Dual-processor-enabled computers.
RAM: 1 GB
Video Card: DirectX® 9.0c-compliant, Shader 3.0-enabled 128 MB video card (256 MB recommended) (see supported list*)
Sound Card: DirectX® 9.0c-compatible (EAX" recommended) - PC audio solution containing Dolby® Digital Live required for Dolby Digital audio.
DirectX Version: 9.0c or higher (9.0c included on disc)
DVD-ROM: 4x DVD-ROM or faster
Hard Drive Space: 8 GB
Peripherals Supported: Mouse, keyboard
Multiplay: Broadband connection with 128 kbps upstream or faster


*Supported Video Cards at Time of Release

ATI® X1600/X1800/X1900 NVidia® 6600 /6800/7300/7600/7800/7900

[St.James]

My current video card is an ATI AIW X800, which has shader model 2.0. Splinter Cell Double Agent requires Shader Model 3.0. Everything exceeds the requirements.

I guess I'll just buy a new one tomorrow and be done with it.

[texasfury]

.

[St.James]

Newegg has it for $380. I've had it less than a year so I won't get shit for it if I tried selling it. I'll probably just put it in another machine.

It's a badass card and while it's capable of handling most games, it's technically not made for gaming.

[Soap]

Any and all of the splinter cell games are extremely addictive.
Don't even think about playing them unless you can pretty much spend the entire day and (depending on who the person is) possibly most of the evening playing these. My recommendation for splinter cell games, always go through the training level first before jumping into the mission/s. Much easier if you do, believe me it does make a difference.

Just have fun gaming.
Thats what its all about just having fun and killing lots of time.
You'll be surprised just how quick 3-4 hours, then another 3-4 hours can pass once you get into a game.

Ex. (wife)
"Honey, I'm gonna step out for a bit to run some errands and fill up the car." "You need anything while I'm out?"
(Me, holding game pad and staring into tv screen) "Nope, honey I'm good, thanks for asking, be careful."
(wife)
Honey, "I'm going to bed, love you see you tomorrow."
(Me, still playing away, thinks to myself "wow its got late on me" and says) "Okay honey, good night love ya and see ya tomorrow."

I love a good game that hooks me and takes me.

[HoWheels]

My question is this. Is Xbox really all that great? What's the pros and cons compared to PC. I don't want to spend $400 on a console only to have to upgrade that to the latest oohs and ahhs every year just to play the latest games for it.

I bought an XBox a few years back because of the hackability of it.


I now have 1.75 TB of HDD space on this XBox :ROTF:

But the thing is awesome. Asside from the fact that I have a collection of just about every XBox game ever made
It also plays emulators from almost every system (Atari, NES, SNES, N64, Sega, Neo-GEO, MAME [arcade], etc).

On top of all that, with XBox Media Center, I can stream anything onto my big screen TV, surround sound system in my living room. It streams everything I have on my PC, so my entire MP3 collection, downloaded TV shows, movies, in ANY format (divX, mpg, avi, qt, etc). It even plays stuff from Youtube and google video!

I also bought a 360 this year and am very happy with that too

-a

[jjw]

i got a hacked xbox the 1st day they came out.and it has played every game i have thrown at iti have about 300 game backups on dvdsand a large hardrive to install games to
mind you i hardly play it now-might hook it up at work somewhere and get some enjoyment out of the thing

[AfterForever]

I'm not much of a gamer, but there are some games I do like, Such as Rainbow Six, Rogue Spear, Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell.

I prefer PC games and pretty much built my current machine to exceed the recommended requirements for Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. Mainly to be ready for the follow up to that... Plus I'm sick of dropping 2 grand a year for the latest greatest PC bullshit.

The new Splinter Cell finally came out for PC today and I picked it up, installed that massive thing only to find my fucking $400 video card isn't compatible with it. What a crock of shit!

So, I can either drop 3 bills on a new video card or change directions and go with an Xbox 360 or whatever the latest bullshit for that is.

I had Playstation and Playstation 2 and didn't like either one so I dumped them.

My question is this. Is Xbox really all that great? What's the pros and cons compared to PC. I don't want to spend $400 on a console only to have to upgrade that to the latest oohs and ahhs every year just to play the latest games for it.

That is why I hate gaming on a pc.. always the updates, and once you got enough updates, the older games won't work anymore.

I'm a diehard racegamer. That is why I don't like the Xbox, there are no decent racegames on the Xbox. But since you like the other genre that shouldn't be an issue. I'm a big PSX/PS2 fan btw.

Xbox (or any other console) > PC. In ten years you can still play all the games you have on the Xbox, but in 10 years, the computergames you play now, won't work on the newest computers.

[Newc]

Windows XP was the worst thing to happen to PC gaming - no more Carmageddon because it only runs in DOS

Anyhoo, I've got Splinter Cell Double Agent on the 360, and it's great. The 360 is a great machine, and the recent ones do not have the problems that the first and second runs had.

If you look around the 'net you'll see all kinds of horror stories about them, but my 2nd 360 has been on for a solid week non-stop while I got the #1 Survival Rank in Dead Rising, and it never gave me any trouble.

Of course, I also have a Pelican FanStand under it. I highly recommend that.

I gave up trying to keep up with PC game requirements. My first PC I built myself and it exceeded Tomb Raider, as well as the first Rainbow Six, and didn't require more than a new video card for about 2 years.
After that, everything went downhill
Once I started needing bigger CPUs and more RAM and faster CD drives, I stopped trying to keep up with it and stuck with the consoles for games.

Once in a while I'll get a PC game - got Oblivion just so I could get the Construction Set for it - hopefully someone will find a way to put user-made mods on the 360 when they get their new programming suite up and running that will allow you to build your own games and load them on a 360.

[St.James]

what are the graphics like in xbox 360 compared to PC? Better, not as good, just as good?