OT: Climbing System Requirements and Specs

[David E. Gervais]

Interesting thread,..

All I can say is the industry has gotten to the point where they are catering to the 'Bleeding Edge' (aka the top 5% of PC owners who have the latest best rigs and aparently spend the most money in the industry) This is a whole lot of bull.. the industry is gonna die faster than 5 ton rhino in quicksand if it continues to 'ignore' the mass majority of 'normal' PC users. I consider myself normal,.. why? because I can't afford to buy a new PC every year. heck I barely manage to get a new rig every 5 years. I'm still running my AMD 1.4ghz with a Gforce FX 5200. When will I next upgrade? hmmm,.. I expect another year or 2 before I can afford to make any upgrades. Real Life (tm) tends to eat up all my money, leaving little or none left for 'luxury' items.

I tend to raid the bargain bins now,.. those games run ok on my system and hey they cost less. it's a win win situation.

Nuf said,. Cheers!

[Fyron]

Thus, we have Dell, makers of cheap commodity computers.

[Sivran]

My computer is only three years old.

My computer is three years old. It's handled everything I've thrown at it. Granted, I don't have FEAR and don't ever plan to.

Oh, and ethanol? Please. Takes too much energy to produce, gas is better. Bio-diesel man. Bio-diesel. Burrito-scented exhaust anyone?

[TurinTurambar]

<sniff,sniff> "Mmmm... french-fries..."

BTW Siv, that discussion's been moved to the OT:Ethanol thread

[TurinTurambar]

rdouglass said:

Got it from a new g550 card purchased new. I have about 50 of these cards in my office where I work as well as in my home PC. I ZIP'ed up the CD minus the Adobe Acrobat, DirectX, and docs (went from 180Mb down to 19 Mb) and put it here if you want it:

http://www.clarkinsurance.com/Matrox5.95.5.0.zip

I am not sure what version of DirectX games I've played but I know I play at least 1 (my 6 year old plays LEGO StarWars and I know that uses DirectX and I think it may even be 'c')

Funny that, Matrox says the latest driver is 5.93 for that particular card, and Driver Detective says I'm up-to-date. The only mention I can find of that driver is for a 400-series or Parahelia cards. You say this came with the G550 cd eh? Hmmm...

Oh, and hey, I downloaded that file thanks. Is it the whole "P-desk" install? If so I'll have to uninstall what I have first.

Thx,
TT

[rdouglass]

Is it the whole "P-desk" install?

Not the whole CD but should be all the PowerDesk stuff. As I said, I just removed Adobe Acrobat, DirectX, and the documentation. I have the bandwidth and space if you do. Let me know and I'll put up the whole thing.

And yup, got that CD with the last batch of 10 G550 cards I bought. I put the same driver on my personal G550 (which originally came with the 5.23 drivers) with no probs at all.

[rdouglass]

David E. Gervais said:
<snip>.. the industry is gonna die faster than 5 ton rhino in quicksand if it continues to 'ignore' the mass majority of 'normal' PC users. </snip>

Ya know, folks have been saying that since I bought my first computer in 1978. However, every year there is a new batch of kids in the game publishers target market (demographics, whatever word you want to put there) that must have the latest and greatest game. And the latest and greatest game usually needs the latest and greatest hardware. Besides, if there were never any excitement over being able to do new things with game software, we'd all still be playing Pong. (And now how much re-playability can you get outa' *that* one. )

Hey, how do you think the game console market survives? Or the auto industry? Or the _____ industry? Oh sure, personally I agree with you. I drive a 6 year old truck not because I can't afford a newer one but why? The one I have works fine for me. I still have the same Atari I bought several years ago (don't want to admit actually how long ago) and it still works. Do I or my kids play it? Not a chance. They want to play the Xbox with Halo. Hey, I wanna' clue you in if you don't already know that Halo is quite a bit more fun than Pong.

The thing we have to keep in mind about statements like that is that there is a *lot* of disposable income out there and the game publishers target market has control over a big portion of that.

A lot of teenagers have a lot of influence over their parents money. Right or wrong, that's just the way it is. So as log as there are teens and game publishers, this industry won't die.

And besides they won't make much of guys like me - I haven't bought a PC game for myself since I bought Gold 4 years or so ago.

[TurinTurambar]

[teenager] Aw, snap... [/teenager]

2.4ghz P4, 1.5gb RAM, latest video drivers, latest DirectX (april'06)...

Now the game won't even start.

[Renegade 13]

rdouglass said:
I drive a 6 year old truck not because I can't afford a newer one but why?

6 year old truck is still practically new! I drive an 11 year old truck, love that thing and still works great...without a lot of the electronic crap the automotive companies think we want/need...

But that's a little OT so I'll shut up now

[rdouglass]

Renegade 13 said:

6 year old truck is still practically new! I drive an 11 year old truck, love that thing and still works great...without a lot of the electronic crap the automotive companies think we want/need...

But that's a little OT so I'll shut up now

Yeah, but I didn't mention that I bought it 2 years ago and the one I had before that was 10 years old.

As to the G550 driver issue, would you like me to post the full CD image? Again, I run that version and have no problems. Have you tried removing all of it (game, DirectX, and driver) and install them in this order:

Video Drivers
DirectX
Game

That's how I normally will do it if I have problems with any of those things. I install all support software first.

That help any?