I have always joked that I don't play games but that I use benchmarking software. It always sounds better and more "technical" to say that you are using benchmarking programs that evaluate the performance of the hardware on your computer. One of the most common questions in computers is, "will this computer that I want to buy be powerful enough?" One of the advantages of playing computer games is that you become extremely sensitive to the hardware performance of a computer. If you want to know what kind of computer is the fastest one on the block then ask a "Gamer". A Gamer may be a little too obsessed with hardware for the average user but they will be able to tell you what the best CPU and Video card are the best at the moment. They also will be able to tell you if you are getting the most bang for your buck. Gamers read reviews all the time about the latest hardware. They also read reviews about the latest games and the related hardware requirements. But they also learn the hard way what works and what doesn't work on their system by playing the games themselves. This real world experience of playing games is often times more valuable than benchmarking software or reviews. Games generally are the most intense things that you can run on a home system. If you know games then you know home PC hardware. It is kind of like the neighbour that loves driving fast cars on the weekend. He can tell you a lot about how different cars stack up hardware performance wise. When people turn to you for advice on purchasing a computer you can give them an honest and real world estimate of what is going to be a powerful enough computer for them. Just leave out that you play games though and just stick to component specifications and keep it general in your descriptions. A "power user" would be code for a Gamer or Multimedia hobbyist and a "regular" user would be code for someone that just checks e-mail and surfs the web. Only mention games when you find out they are a Gamer. This weekend I found out the hard way that my main computer is "out of date" through "real world" benchmarking/playing games.
I finally broke down and bought a copy of Total War: Shogun 2. It is a strategy game and strategy games are not as intense as first person shooters in terms of hardware requirements. I thought I would be fine with the system I had. My system fell in between the minimum and maximum recommended specifications. But playing is believing.
So far my Windows XP system with a Core 2 Duo 8500 and an ATI 4870 1 GB video card has handled most of the games that I like. Well after checking the task manager I found out that I was using more system memory than the 2 GB that I had. It was never more than a 100 Mb but that meant my system was using my hard drive to make up the difference. My system was "paging" because it didn't have enough RAM. On Windows XP all you have to do is right click on the task bar (the bar at the bottom of the desktop) and you will get a menu with "task manager" as one of the options. Clicking that option will open the task manager. Click the "performance" tab at the top of the task manger and you can learn something about your system performance. There is one entry under the "Physical Memory" section called "Total" that will tell you the total RAM installed on your system. Under the section called "Commit Charge (K) there is an entry called "Peak" that will tell you the most RAM you used on your system so far. If your "Peak" level is higher than your "Total" then at some point your system had to use your hard drive to make up the difference. This means that you don't have enough RAM in your system and are slowing yourself down.
Total War: Shogun 2 is the first program that I have used that needed more resources than I had. I can also tell by the video playback on the screen my video card isn't "keeping up" on the highest settings. If my RAM and video card are not keeping up my CPU is probably not either. You can read a lot of reviews about how a car handles or accelerates but until you drive it yourself you won't really know if it works for you. Playing games kind of keeps you up to date about what you really need and what you don't really need. Sometimes reviews are more about pushing products that you really don't need so I don't always trust them. Manufacturers provide "free" hardware to reviewers and buy adds in the magazines and websites that review them. A lot of reviewers get so used to driving the "exotic sports cars" of the computer hardware world that they can make you a little paranoid about what is in your system. As you can tell I don't always trust every review no matter how well intentioned it is. I want to drive the car myself. Well, my "car" has been doing fine so far but now it just isn't keeping up with this "new traffic".
Playing games also gives you a preview of hardware requirements that will be standard in the future. If a game is using a lot of RAM today then in a couple of years a lot of programs will be using more RAM and will need to be running an operating system that can address that memory. Gone are the days when having Windows 98 Second Edition with 256 Mb of RAM was good enough to use modern programs and the Gamers saw this coming first. Well, today I found that Windows XP with 2 GB of RAM is not going to be enough for what is comming. I will have to switch to Windows 7 and at least 4 GB of RAM in order to run modern programs in the not too distant future. Windows XP can only handle 4 GB of system memory total. I have 2 GB of system RAM and 1 GB of RAM on my video card. I could add 1 GB to my system as a temporary "patch" to my problem with Total War: Shogun 2 but many fundamental problems will only be resolved with a new computer at this point. I can keep running my "old" favourite programs on my machine that I have now but future programs will have to be run on a newer machine. I run Windows 7 on a small Netbook for surfing and using Microsoft Office and have found no reason to switch to Windows 7 for more powerful programs until today. As much as I like to see what is coming I also don't like to run out and pay big money to have a front row seat either. Total War: Shogun 2 helped me benchmark my system this weekend and I can see a future computer build happening soon.
