The game forced you to upgrade your computer.
The game forced you to upgrade your computer.
I owned an i5 4690 paired with a Radeon 390. Initially it handled 1080p smoothly. After upgrading to a 1440p 60Hz display, the experience improved. When "Rise of the Tomb Raider" and "Alien Isolation" were released, I upgraded to a GTX 1080 for better performance. As the CPU slowed down with "Cyberpunk" and newer titles dropped to 45-50 fps, I rebuilt everything to 5600x resolution. Eventually, I got an RX 6700 XT when possible, which paired with a 1440p 144Hz monitor.
Usually I don’t change game parts. I mostly upgrade for projects like BOINC, F@H, Blender, encoding, etc. This time, though, I’ve been eager to boost my GPU (since the current prices aren’t appealing) for Beat Saber and VR. I’ve really gotten hooked on getting higher frame rates so I can react quicker.
Many games came first. Early on it was Counter-Strike in the early 2000s. Then I set up a full rig in 2008, leading to an upgrade for BFBC2 in 2010. Battlefield 3 helped push the platform upgrade, and after that the focus shifted to productivity improvements.
Recently I tried Cyberpunk 2077 to see how ray tracing looked. Switched to a different platform and got an AM4 build, originally planning a 3080 TUF from overclockers, but after waiting months I ended up with a 3060ti FE at the MSRP. Honestly, I wasn’t particularly excited about the game. It has a great open world, especially Night City, though the rest feels underwhelming. I played it once and haven’t returned since.
I originally played Doom in 1993 on my 386, then upgraded to a 486 six months later and eventually a Pentium. MS Flight Simulator 2000 came next; it was the first game I regularly enhanced with content from web sites, but performance declined over time. I kept upgrading, repeating the process. My next project was a modded Oblivion in 2007, which introduced stuttering issues due to open-world loading. To address this, I switched to 10,000rpm HDDs costing about $300 at the time and kept using them until I moved to SSDs in 2016. Last year, I restored the game with all mods on an old HDD, which now runs flawlessly on modern hardware. The following title was Skyrim. The original version worked perfectly on my new i7 2600k/GTX 570, but modding caused crashes. After testing, I realized a VRAM problem and upgraded to more RAM. Eventually, I replaced the GTX 570 with a GTX 670 (2GB) and later models, then switched to ENB for Skyrim. A lighting mod called ENB severely impacted frame rates, so I needed both more VRAM and strong GPU power, leading me toward high-end GPUs. In 2015, I upgraded to a 28" Samsung 4K monitor after watching a tutorial—this let me appreciate the texture details I added. At that time, my GTX 980 handled 1080p at 60fps with ENB, but only 20fps at 4K. My target shifted to 4K at 60fps, which wasn’t met until I got a 2080 Ti in 2018. The 4K also inspired me to buy a 2K ultra-wide monitor in 2015. With a 1080p display, I could see the textures I created for Skyrim clearly. In 2015, my GTX 980 managed 60fps at 4K with ENB, but 4K at full resolution dropped to 20fps. That pushed me toward higher resolutions. By 2020, Windows updates caused issues with my i9 9900k; another update halted games using the Havok physics engine even after CPU overclocks I’d used since 2018. I had to switch to faster CPUs, like the i7 8086s with 5GHz all-core overclocking. The i9 10900k and GTX 5800x handled 4K at 60fps thanks to ENB, but at 2K it was only 20fps. That goal became achievable in 2018 when I got a 2080 Ti. The transition to 4K also motivated me to invest in two gaming PCs around the same time, after watching a tutorial on them.
None, for me was the other way around, bought a 1060 and then figured what game to play with my new powers. 6000 hours of MHW (with high res texture pack) later.... (OK, meanwhile I have a 3070, but the game worked well with the 1060*) *Edit: actually, since most people talk about GPUs, i forgot, the 1060 was fine, but now i was having a hard core CPU bottleneck, so I had to upgrade from 2200G > 3600.
Amusingly, for me it was Skyrim! I had been out of the PC space for a few years, ever since my last PC broke and I couldn't afford to repair it at the time. Last year during the first lockdown I got a semi-decent laptop with a 1650, and I started playing PC games again. Fallout 4 and Skyrim especially, which I'd already played to death on consoles, but had been limited in terms of modding. When I discovered the extent of the mods available on PC, I went a bit overboard, and the game ended up looking amazing but it was chugging along at 40fps! That was the moment when I decided that I was going to build my first new PC in ages. It took a while, though. I started gathering components in December. The graphics card, as you might expect, was the hardest part to source, so I didn't finish it until June/July. Still, Skyrim looks amazing on a 3070! I have run some other games, of course.
Half Life 1. 640x480 was the only thing my K62 could handle with a decent GPU. Most recent improvements came from hardware issues: -GTX 260M (twice broke in my setup) -3k screen stopped on my MSI (GT60, probably?) -Constant GPU fans kept failing on my Gigabyte P35Xv6. Interestingly, the HP Pavilion from 2006 still worked fine when I sold it. The MSI GX660R from 2010 is still running smoothly. Technically the GT60 functions (though now with a 1080p display). I still use the P35X… but honestly, laptop designs seem to be deteriorating.