by Pedro Pacheco

Created on: April 09, 2008   Last Updated: April 22, 2011

Do you remember the first old consoles that came to the market? They were ugly, slow, they crashed all the time and the games-for goodness sake, they didn't deserve a minute of our attention.

Some years later the consoles and games started to evolve a little. The first color games appeared and things started to change. Now we could enjoy some games that in spit of being old they were very fun. I still play these games for long hours.

Then the first computers with MS-Dos came. They were old fashioned and the only games they could run were 2D games with no more than 16 colors. Still they were not bad at all for that time. The problem remained in how could computer games producers make better games. They couldn't because the hardware was not enough for it.

Some times later, about ten years later the first 3D games appeared. They were absolutely amazing and they marked a new era in computer games. The consoles were left behind year after year because now with windows 3.11 and later with the new Windows 95 (new...) computer games were many times better than console games.

I guess the only consoles that were worth buying instead of a computer were the Playstation and the Sega Saturn.

Today things are completely different. Computer game cards keep making progress every single day. They are two times powerful every year and the same is true for the computer CPU. The consoles can not keep up with them.

Not only computers have faster and more good looking games but they also can be upgraded every time and there is no limit to how many games you can install on it. The only limit is the hard disk capacity or your pocket.

I really don't recommend buying a console right now much less the Playstation 3. It's too expensive plus you have to buy all those games for more than $100 each sometimes. It's much better to spend some money on a good computer and then get all the games you want for it!

Consider a laptop instead of a desktop computer. They are more expensive, sure, but you can take it everywhere without needing to find electricity somewhere.

The most important thing for playing good games at a good resolution is the graphic card. Never get a laptop with an Intel graphic card integrated in the motherboard. They are only good to work with Windows and little more. Instead get a good Nvidia or a good ATI card. They will do wonders for your graphics.

The second most important thing is the processor. Get an AMD! Forget about Intel! AMD processors are much faster rendering games than Intel processors. AMD even bought ATI so you ca see they are designing and optimizing their processors for games.

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