Games that make you upgrade

[PeteRoy]

All the computers I have were upgraded because of games I wanted to play.

2000 Quake 3 made me buy a Pentium 3 733Mhz and Voodoo 5 5500

2001 GTA 3 made me buy Geforce 3 Ti200 AGP

2004 Half-Life 2 made me buy Pentium 4 2.8Ghz HT Prescott

2005 Battlefield 2 made me buy 6800GT to replace my Geforce 3

2006 Battlefield 2 made me upgrade to 2GB because I wanted to run more smoothly

Now I bought Crysis and thought I'd love it so much I'd want to upgrade my machine, but seeing how even the newest systems struggle to get above 50fps in Crysis at highest settings I am reluctant to replace my system yet, and Crysis is not such a good game so I don't really care that it barely runs on my system right now.

 

[xSkyDrAx]

DOD

UT2k3

HL:2/D3

The awesome line up for 2007 games.

 

[shortylickens]

Deus Ex.

Actually, it didnt really MAKE me upgrade. I just enjoyed it more when I did.
When I had my laptop with an ATI Rage LT I could only run Direct3D, and the initial release of Deus Ex didnt support Direct3D properly.

The first year I played Deus Ex it was in software, on a Celeron 366 :Q
When I finally got an Athlon 750 and a 16MB Vanta I was so much happier.

So really, no game has ever made me upgrade. I think its kind of silly you would invest a couple hundred bucks just to play one 40 dollar piece of software.
Thats why I cant get into console gaming. Titles are too expensive and the systems are too expensive considering how short lived they are.

 

[jonks]

UT2000
Crysis (built a new comp)

 

[BassBomb]

Deus Ex 2 (first game I couldn't even launch when on my GF2) made me get FX5200
DOOM3/FarCry (killed my FX5200 that replaced GF2 a few months after Deus Ex 2) made me get 6600GT
Crysis/SplinterCell DA/etc made me upgrade my entire rig

 

[Raduque]

Bioshock made me upgrade from my 7900GS to an HD3870 (well, that and the fact the 7900GS died a horrible death because something fell off it that's needed in the power circuitry).

Homeworld made me upgrade from a Voodoo 3 to a GeForce2 MX, and then to a GeForce3 Ti200. I don't remember what game made me upgrade from my GF3 to a 9700Pro. Possibly Homeworld: Cataclysm.

Edit: Upgraded to a 6800 AGP for Doom3 and then sidegraded to PCIE. I also don't remember what made me upgrade from 6800 to 7900GS, either.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Quake 1 (made me get into 3D gaming with the Voodoo2)
BattleField 1942 (made me give up my Voodoo5 5500)
BattleField 2 (made me give up my GeForce 4 TI4200)
Vanguard SOH (made me give up my GeForce 6800GT, eventhough I bailed on the game right before it launched (played a little bit of the beta))
Dragon Age (the game I expect to end my x1950 Pro AGP)

 

[Bateluer]

I upgrade for the sake up upgrading. I love not having to worry about any system requirements or performance while cranking the details to max. Unfortunately, this attitude has to be reigned in by the available funds.

My next upgrade will be to a 4870, most likely. I'm hoping to hold onto my current CPU/Mobo/RAM until Nehalem arrives.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

Black & White 2
Battlefield 2

Came out at the same time, otherwise I haven't really upgraded for a specific game. Otherwise it's just been "crap, I can't run any of the games I just bought the way I want to..."

 

[Maleficus]

There has never been a game that made me upgrade my computer.

 

[Regs]

COD4 & Bioshock...but to tell you the truth it was more because I purchased a 1680 x 1050 Wide Screen.

 

[RallyMaster]

Damn...it seems a lot of people upgraded for Battlefield 2...

And I have to admit, I did too. I was pissed when I discovered BF2 wasn't going to run on my Ti4200 so I ended up with a 6800GS (November 2005) and later on 2GB of RAM (June 2006) so I could run the thing smoothly.

I also upgraded for Xpand Rally. I'm a World Rally Championship fanatic so naturally I had to get my hands on any rally game that had decent physics and graphics. My Ti4200 was struggling with that game so I got fed up and finally moved up to a 6800GS. I didn't even get to install XR or BF2 onto that computer until later last year when I bought both of them for less than 30 bucks total. And boy, I'm happy I did it because those games are just as fun today as when I first played them before I had a source of income to buy games.

 

[Bateluer]

There's something I wish to say, and this thread seems like an applicable location.

Some people rarely, if ever, upgrade their PCs. Typically, these are the same people I see bitching because they can't run a recently released title on their 4 year old system. Its amusing, and also very sad, to visit the technical forums for various MMOs and games and see the threads posted. It makes me very sad when I see people asking advice on which sub-50 dollar video card to buy to play the hottest new MMO or FPS.

Even worse are the flat out lies that you see in some places. Reading some of the Newegg reviews, for example, would have you believe that a GF 8400GS is adequate to play COD4 at decent resolutions with AA. My own brother still insists that he can run Crysis at 1280x1024 with medium to high details and 2x AA at 45fps sustained with his single core A64 3000 and X1800XL.

It also makes me cringe at how hard it is to compare graphics cards across the generations. Its easy to find benchmarks comparing a Radeon 3850 to a 3870, or a 2900XT to a 1900XT, but nearly impossible to find reliable data comparing a 3870 to an 1800XT. After a generation passes, it becomes very hard to dig up data. Toms Hardware Guide's charts are probably the best resource, but even they have gaps and don't update as frequently as they should.

 

[PeteRoy]

I forgot to mention I upgraded my Pentium 2 233Mhz from ATI Rage 2c to Voodoo 3 back in 1999 because of Quake 2 and Need for Speed High Stakes.

 

[desolate]

Bioshock, Crysis, & The Witcher made me upgrade from a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, 1GB, Athlon 64 3000+ to a E4300 @ 3GHz, 6GB, and a 8800GTS

 

[Martimus]

I actually upgraded from a 3500+ and a X800XL to a X2 4200+ and a HD 3850 just so I could ask for some new computer games fro Christmas last year. Also upgraded my RAM and PSU during my troubleshooting with my new CPU and GPU. (Ended up that my old Heatsink wasn't pushing enough air for my new CPU, and I needed to replace that.)

 

[Dumac]

Before Oblivion, I upgraded to a 7800GT, 2GB of RAM, and a better PSU in order to be able to run the game well.

In the end, I could run it all on high, and could even make the grass appear for miles (with tweaking of the init files), but Oblivion ended up being a disappointment anyway.

So now, I don't really feel like upgrading for games anymore.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Supreme Commander made me build my own computer for the first time.
It just doesn't run good on a Pentium D, 1GB of RAM, and an ATi X600 with catalyst 5.8 (my dads computer)

 

[TheVrolok]

I don't think I ever upgraded because of a game, I'd just wait until the point where I couldn't really play anything new on Medium+ settings. I had a AMD64 3000+ and 6800 until I saw The Witcher, Cysis, and Bioshock coming out (with Spore, Alan Wake, and Mass Effect coming up ... eventually) so I decided it was time and built myself my current rig to play games for the next period of time. I did have games that I bought, and then shelved due to performance under what I wanted (DX2, D3).

 

[toughwimp11]

for me it wasnt any specific game but rather that my p4 radeon 9200 was just not working with any current games

 

[Zenoth]

No games ever "forced" me to or "made" me upgrade as in "alright I need new hardware because I just bought that game or am planning to". But I could say that at around the time when Battlefield 2 came out I was already planning to go from 1GB to 2GB, and after BF2 came out I still had 1GB and I thought that I was having a good performance enough. After a few months I had bought two or three other "demanding" games and I started making maps for some games using their respective editors and I finally decided to jump onto the 2GB wagon.

But when it comes to CPU or GPU or Motherboard/Chipsets there's really nothing that influenced my upgrades other than price drops, energy savings/money savings/healthier bills, useless "future proof" concept based on impulsive thoughts of purchases and the desire to keep all and every single settings in all of my previous and future games at their highest settings even though I know that I can bear with lesser settings in any of them. I must admit however that the 2008 list of games which I am interested in are indeed currently influencing my future upgrade like it never did before.

 

[Naeeldar]

Everquest and Age of Conan although for AoC I was due for an upgrade anyway.

 

[angry hampster]

A combination of Crysis, Bioshock, and TF2. I was coming from a 2.5 year old laptop with a 64mb vid card, so I enjoyed my upgrade thoroughly

 

[Pocatello]

Longbow 2, quake 2, half-life, falcon 4.0, Far Cry, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Medieval Total War 2, Crysis.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I was fortunate enough to support BF2 with my ATI 300SE when it came out. If I hadn't bought a computer 4 months before, I would have been stuck.

Back in the old days I had some programs that required 4MB of RAM. My 286 only had 1MB. So I basically had to get a new computer since it was already a few years older and needed a new floppy drive anyhow (It was only DD).