The Video Game Revue

I did it!

Well, after a couple of years of putting it off, I finally bought a brand new PC. I've talked a bit about various specs and stuff before, so for comparative purposes, here's the final count of what's going into the new box:

Case - Antec Sonata II (ATX, 450W PS included, "Quiet")
Mobo - ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe NForce 570 Mobo (AM2, SLI, PCI-E16, SATA2)
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Dual Core AM2 Windsor 2.2GHZ 2X512KB
GPU - BFG GeForce 7900 GT (PCI-E, 256MB 256BIT GDDR3, SLI)
RAM - OCZ Platinum XTC PC2-6400 2GB (2X1GB DDR2-800)
HD - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2
Sound - Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 SE PCI 7.1

Altogether, the above lot cost me no more than $1350 (Canadian dollars). Of course, shipping with insurance and sales tax added a lot more, plus I bought a keyboard with it and some other stuff... you know how these things tend to add up when you're buying a PC. :) At least I have the monitor already, and a sweet monitor it's been too.

I'm really excited about the hot RAM--it's one of the most expensive components in the system, and all I've ever used before were cheap $65 sticks of Samsung RAM. Also exciting, of course, is the graphics card. Matt recommended BFG as a brand, which seems like solid advice, and a think that a GeForce 7900 will be more than enough for my purposes. The SATA2 HD should make a seriously noticeable difference as well.

I did cheap out a little on the case, but I think that it'll be okay. This isn't a crazy powerful rig, and I generally don't bother with overclocking, so I think the 450W power supply will be able to handle it. Buying a separate case with a nice power supply tends to cost a lot more than the $120 price tag of the Antec Sonata II; often as much as $300. My current PC has a much older Antec case and I'm happy with it overall.

In a couple of weeks this new PC should have arrived and be assembled, so I'll be sure to post more about it then. As for the release for Windows Vista (should I have waited for that to come out before upgrading my PC?), I'm planning to wait at least a year before switching up from Win XP anyway--just to give them extra time to work out various issues in the OS. I was a relatively early adopter of Windows XP (not at home, but at the office, where I did play games including Neverwinter Nights, Battlefield 1942, and WarCraft III), and I remember that there were various issues that came up and were resolved over the course of the first year of that OS's lifespan (and then, of course, there was the dreaded Service Pack 2...)

At any rate, this new PC will definitely help tide me over until the Wii is released in late Nov. I believe the date that they're saying now is Nov 19th, and I've heard that the PS3 is two days earlier--the 17th, I suppose. Part of me really is tempted to buy a PS3 right away, but I'm just not convinced that the offerings of the first year of the PS3's lifespan will be worth the investment. I'd rather wait until at least the following summer to see what games become hits and whether or not a price drop gets announced before I dive in. The Wii sounds pleasantly affordable, though, and as discussed earlier, I am intending to get one of those on launch day if possible.

I should probably clarify here that I am not expecting the Wii to be "better" than the PS3--that is not at all why I am figuring on buying the Wii first and waiting on the PS3. It's just that most consoles aren't very appealing in their first year of existence, simply put. I know that there's a lot of appeal in being on the bleeding edge and on experiencing the excitement of launch titles. I did miss out on some great early PS2 experiences such as Metal Gear Solid 2, Gran Turismo 3, Final Fantasy X, and Grand Theft Auto 3... except that I didn't really miss out because a got to buy and extensively play all of those games eventually. There's something to be said for not always jumping in with both feet, if you see what I mean.

Consider, for instance, that so many people were so hyped up over the Nintendo 64. On launch day, it was almost unimaginable that the N64 would bomb--people loved Mario 64, and both Pilotwings 64 and Wave Race 64 were considered great games, although they were a little shorter than people were expecting. But if you didn't rush out and get an N64 right away, it became clear within a few short months that N64 games were being plagued with delays and that several key titles (eg. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire) were decidedly lack-lustre. The N64 had an okay run overall, and it eventually produced classics such as Goldeneye 64 and Zelda 64. But being one of the very first kids on your block to have a N64 really didn't add all that much value; because the best games were so few and far between, you could have bought an N64 two full years after the launch date and gotten just as much out of it in the long run.

All I'm really trying to say is that you can't know for sure that a new console is going to be awesome. Some people are still telling themselves that the XBox 360 is awesome, for example, and I am thoroughly unconvinced myself. There is no doubt that the hardware for the Wii will be weak, and if the PS3 manages to launch with Devil May Cry 4 and Metal Gear Solid 4, those two titles alone are enough for me to say that the PS3 will almost certainly have a stronger launch line-up. The real question, though, is whether or not the PS3 is worth as much as what Sony is going to charge for it. Maybe it'll be worth all that and more, and maybe it'll just be kinda frustrating to have one. I know that Fritzkrieg was frustrated with his PlayStation 2 (he got one at launch) for the first year that he had it. And what if the PS3 is plagued with the sort of first-run hardware issues that some XBox 360 owners saw? I think it's safe to say that if you choose to wait on getting a PS3, you can feel good about that decision. And if you choose to get one on launch, don't let guys like me make you feel any less pumped about it--I wouldn't want that.

Woah, that turned into quite the little rant. I guess I'm just excited about November. Hmm... what I really should be excited about is the hot new PC that I just ordered, which is more costly (and powerful) than a PS3 and Wii combined. And, of course, there are plenty of awesome Nintendo DS titles just around the corner too.

posted by Parappa @ 5:38 PM