Ridiculous.

I'm a fan of ASUS, but this is a bit much.

Now, I'm not a big PC gamer by any means, mainly because of shit like whats in the link.  Computer technology moves too fast, and rather than maximize what a current generation of a "standard" machine can run, developers seem to be more concerned with challenging chip manufacturers to see if they can put out cards that are capable of running their game on "max settings."


This card linked, the ASUS ARES, is a statement kind of contradicting and enforcing that.  The thing is ridiculous.  It is basically and SLI card set up, that can be SLI'd, giving you a 4 card setup if you have 2500 bucks to drop on the thing.






For those not familiar with what I am talking about, SLI is a feature of ATI cards that lets a user hook up 2 cards in a single computer so they can have more graphical processing power to make games run more smoothly.  Its usually a waste of time and money, but some people are psycho and say its totally worth it.  But, like I said, seems developers seems to challenge chip manufacturers...  So yeah, but doing it, and doing that shit where you submit you system specs when you install the game, you encourage that behavior.  Way to go.

So, back to why I seldom waste time with computer gaming.  Anyone can get a "decent" graphics card for 150 bucks.  Not too bad, and it will last you a good while.  Unless you want to play games a year from the point you buy it. New games that is.  Old ones will work fine.

If you do like to play the latest DOOM or Half-Life, or more recently, CRYSIS, yeah, get ready to drop another 150 to 300 bucks to play that game.  And more than likely, itll be less than 6 months after you bought your last card when that new game comes out.

But the fun doesn't end there.  You'll have to probably buy more RAM also, if your motherboard can support it, and speaking of that, you'll have to hope your motherboard will support whatever new PCIe interface this new behemoth card uses, and if not, that's another 100 bucks you have to drop
and since you can't really just pull a old processor out of an old pc and drop it into a new one, you're going to need a new one of those, so thats another 250 bucks.  And since you have a new pc at this point, you're going to need a new copy of windows.  So go ahead and throw another 150 bucks on that.

So, that 50 dollar PC game (more on that in a minute) just ended up costing you about 700 bucks.  Fuck all that shit.  I'll stick with my one-time, 300 dollar PS3 cost, and never have to worry about it not being up to snuff to play a PS3 game.

I'll admit, I'm vastly exaggerating, but really, I'm kinda not.  PC gaming is a costly hobby, for no real reason other than it can be.  All these dual core, quad core, core-i7... whatever.  All that bullshit?  for the average person, it is completely unnecessary.  Little 14 year old Jimmy doesn't need a 3ghz core-i3 Intel processor to play farmville, or watch some dude light his fart on fire on youtube.  And All those models they used to have in the HP commercials don't need one to play with pictures.  The only people that NEED that processing power are the people who work in laboratories, sequencing DNA and shit like that, or Michael Bay, for rendering Optimus Prime in the new Transformers movie.

Back to this 50 dollar PC cost for multi-platform games.  Why the hell does Assassin's Creed 2 cost 50 dollars on PC, but 60 dollars for PS3 and X360?

Back to this monster of a card.  What's the point of it?  The article linked uses the line "you don't need a ferrari to drive the speed limit," but in the PC world, the analogy really needs to be amended.  In the PC world, you do need a ferrari to drive the speed limit.  The only problem is, there is no speed limit, so you don't know which ferrari you need.  This new card, no developer is going to design any program specific to it, because unlike with consoles, it is not the standard, and by the time it is considered "standard," the available technology will have advanced so much that this thing will be a ripple in a puddle.  And back to my original point:  That is the inherent problem in the PC gaming world. 

PC games NEVER looks as good as their console counterparts.  And the reason for this is because developers are never challenged to max out current available standard technology.  A console generation is a definable thing.  A console generation is typically 5 years, sometimes longer.  This current batch is well on its way to 10.  That's a good thing.  PCs do not have this though.  The PC market is always changing, so it is a race for companies like NVidia and ATI to make cards that can perform the theoretical minimum requirements that developers will push for, rather than the other way around.  New video cards are always coming out, and except for rare occasions, the new cards are seldom more than meager bumps over existing cards. 

An upgrade in the video card market usually consists of taking an old card, and just slapping faster ram on it.  Once RAM speed is maxed out, it switches to bumping GPU speed of that RAM on that card.  Once that is done, it falls back to bumping the available memory, and then the process starts all over again.  Some people will say their is more to it than this, but those are the people that are WAY too into it, and they will throw a bunch of random numbers and terms at you that have no application in practical daily life.

What am I saying?  Nothing really.  I'm just commenting on the state of things.  The bottom line is, computer technology companies HAVE to keep pushing out new technology, for a number of reasons.  I would say "to make money," but most of them have their hands in so many other things they are making more money than most could ever imagine.  But the real reason they do it, and need to, is because society needs them to.  We have so many needs for various types of technology that if companies DIDN'T put out new cards and chips and whatever as often as they do, we would be held back by lack of possibilities.  We wouldn't have out iPhones, or latest android phones, or netbooks, or whatever.  Are these things necessary?  10 years ago, no, but now, yes, they are.  Which is why all of this is just as the title says: Ridiculous.