Looking To Do PC Gaming? Here Are 5 Things To Remember (For Newbies)
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So look at you, you got your new shiny PC and your ready to play some awesome new PC games like Call of Duty 4 and Crysis, but can you? Getting into PC gaming can be a little tricky for new comers and sometimes confusing, so here are 5 things to look for before getting into gaming.
5. How much RAM do you have? RAM is temp memory in which your open applications use to run with, so the more the better. If you are running Windows Vista I would run at least 2 gigs of RAM and in Windows XP I would choose 1 gig but I would go on the safe side and up grade to at least run DirectX 10 games. RAM is one of the most important things in PC gaming and PCs in general.
4. Check the games system requirements. If a game says needs at least 256mb video card and you have a 128 chances are you wont be able to run it in its full glory. Most likely you will receive a low FPS and in some cases the game wont even load. So make sure you have at least the requirements but more always helps.
3. XP Or Vista? Most new games will be made for Vista so you will probably want to buy it but some older games don’t run very smooth on it, like GTA: San Andreas in my case. XP at this point has better driver support so its a safe bet that you can run your games in their full glory on the system so you should wait until SP1 of Vista is released later in the month.
2. Don’t be cheap, go Dual Core. At this point playing games are best suited to have two processors. Of course older games run fine without two so if you are going to go with a solo processor don’t go below 2.8ghz.
1. The most important thing of all in gaming, YOUR VIDEO CARD!!! Make sure your video card is not integrated graphics, like mine :(, because you will want a at least a PCI card with its own built in RAM. At this point you can find a cheap Nividia card like the GeForce 5500 for about $50 and it can play most games before 2006 but I would recommend the Geforce 7800, which can handle most games on the market today. Also do not buy a video card with less than 256mb of built in memory because most games require at least that much.
Do you have any other pointers for people looking to get into PC gaming? If so leave it as a comment!
One Comment
blackmesa31337
March 14th, 2008
at 9:56pm
these are very great tips to new comers for pc gaming. a few things i might recommend, if you are running vista, and you seem to be lagging or have a very choppy frame rate, try adjusting the appearance of vista, change it from AERO to vista basic; it may seem pointless buy AERO will put alot of strain on your graphics card, no matter how much money you invest in it.
something that I feel needs to be brought to the attention of new found pc gamers is online play. A clear advantage to pc gaming over console is more customizable, in-depth, and down right better online multiplayer. However what good is multiplayer if you having bad internet. You should know your bandwidth (which your internet service provider will give you). The minimum recommended I would suggest would be 3Mb/s. For most people today that is a little slow. If you are restricted by location choose the fastest speed available (be sure to do your homework though, as some isp’s cap and shape your speeds). I would prefer cable over dsl as when you are playing a game and then someone calls your house, noticeable lag will be present.
One other pointer is to always update your drivers. Windows can automatically update your drivers with a single click, scan for driver updates every 3-4 weeks to stay ahead of the game and get optimum performance out of your system.
Last but not least, be sure you close any cpu intensive software as this will limit your performance greatly.
oh yeah and also, make sure your first game is NOT crysis, because chances are it will run sloppy and it will make you give up gaming for pc forever. wait until your are more experienced (and rich) beofre spening 50 dollars for crysis.
a good website i like to go to before a purchase a game is
http://www.systemrequirmentslab.com it will scan your system and tell you if you meet the minimum and recommended requirements and also gives good advice at how to meet the requirements if your system fails to do so.