Posted September 09, 2010

I can think of one downside... ;)
On a more serious note, this generation has definitely headed towards games not being as demanding as in the past. My 2008 rig was humble even when I built it, but it still plays almost every game at medium with 2X or 4X AA (with the exceptions being things like the launch version of GTA4, but even those tend to get patched up later on), and a surprisingly large number of games even run flawlessly at maximum settings (e.g. Mafia II). PhysX doesn't work so well because I have an ATI card, but the games that use physics for significant gameplay features (e.g. Crysis and Red Faction: Guerilla) don't use PhysX anyway.
The way things are going I will be able to continue playing any given new release at medium or higher until at least the next console generation (or, more specifically, the next Xbox, which is what really determines PC tech requirements). Even once that actually happens I may well be able to chuck in a new GPU and some more DDR2 RAM to get back to my medium+ sweet spot; new releases typically still state the now-humble Pentium 4 as the minimum, and I can certainly see the Core 2 Duo filling that role in the future (especially considering its overclocking potential I haven't even needed to bother with so far).
Post edited September 09, 2010 by Arkose