Now that I have consoles, I think I won't be buying PC games any further.

The latest PC game I bought is Left 4 Dead and the other one I play is Quake Live (free).

I've been a PC gamer for a long time. Playing games on PC can be pretty convenient -- since you can switch between browsers and games with just a click. However, I run into prices as well.

Prices? Yeah, prices. First of all, system requirement.

System Requirement

I have to update the hardware to keep up the pace or I'll be left behind.

When I went into college, I bought my own PC and a video card, 6800LE. Seen old nowadays, 6800LE could handle most of the games that time, like UT2004, Half Life2, Guild Wars, etc. Until I bought this card did I find that the AGP video card has been gradually replaced by PCI-E, so my main board, AGP 8X, is actually an bit old standard.

As time went by, more and more "computer killers" has been released. Crysis is an obvious example. I realized my machine would not handle new games any further, and as I intended to keep this PC until I graduated from college, I wouldn't largely upgrade the computer (or I could just buy a totally new one instead), so I could only stick to my 6800LE.

It was not over, because my will was challenged. A famous game, Left 4 Dead, was released. I have had Xbox360 that time, but I wanted to play the PC version because mates I know all went to PC version. Knowing my 6800LE was an outdated veteran, I should look for a decent video card.

It was February of '09. Seeking a video card has become a hard quest. nVIDIA GeForce 7 series would be just fine, but every store I stepped into had already sold out and wouldn't refill stock anymore, since PCI-E is the mainstream now. The AGP 8X cards left are only 6200, weaker than my own.

Out of desperation, ATI cards came to my mind. Yeah, why not try ATI cards instead? I spent hours looking for nVIDIA cards, but ended in Radeon HD 4870 within less than 5 minutes.

Taa-Daa! A new video card, which however appeared like an old man in his mid-forties when he stood among 20-something dude crowd.

My hardware: P4 3.0GHz, RAM DDR 1GB, HD 4870 (AGP 8X). The man in his mid-forties can handle old tasks easily but fresh ones inadequately. I needed to adjust the graphic of L4D to lowperformance to merely afford a 1X Frame Per Second.

I've played Left 4 Dead and Quake Live for so many hours. I'm satisfied, but I don't want to take efforts on upgrading computer just for games no more. I'm a lazy person, not passionate enough as to keep my computer shiny and tidy.

This is the first reason why I am thinking about quitting computer games. The other reason will be in the next blog. Thanks for reading so far