Back when Gothic 3 was released I had saved enough money to build an absolute beast of a PC and took two weeks of vacation to play it.
That's when I learned that SLI isn't worth it and means just more hassle.
this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
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There is only so much 13 UPS Factorio one can handle before looking at an AMD x3d
Dwarf Fortress
You actually want to downgrade for better performance in DF. It runs better on a single core CPU with a higher clock speed; like something pre-Core2Duo.
I upgraded for a higher clock speed and more RAM, but thus was also years ago before Tarn started outsourcing some of the work on multithreading.
Oh yeah the Steam version added multi-threading, huh? Most of my time has been on the legacy version. I keep forgetting I even have the Steam one!
I haven't even played the update, I just paid for it to support them more. I think the only game I've spent more money on at this point is Sims 3.
HL2, the fire animation would cause my PC to crash, think that's when I bought an 8800Gts. Nowadays I play on low gfx because i much prefer higher fps to realistic graphics.
Doom 2016 several years after it's release.
I've heard it is well optimised, it runs reasonably well even on Nintendo Switch.
Yup, it does wonders, thx Carmack and Co.
But it gave me a reason to put off some money and then make a generational jump from my ancient Win7 system to something I can run it with all bells and whistles, something I still comfortably game on today with minor upgrades. If not for Doom, I don't think I could've had a reason to do that with how I was comfortably indifferent to being locked in Skyrim-age games. New rig then gave me an opportunity to try new titles and series I felt in love with. I can't overestimate this factor in my personal journey and I'm a bit sad there may not be other push as strong as this one, with such benefits.
Ace Combat 7 was the trigger last time, and Ace Combat 8 is making history repeat itself. Remains to be seen what the system requirements will be, but I suspect they'll be higher. I'm just hoping component prices go down a bit before some unspecified date in 2026... don't have a lot of faith in that.
Half-Life Alyx did that to me several years ago. Amazingly, it ran acceptably on an RX 580, but that game combined with a then-recent monitor upgrade to 1440p high refresh rate convinced me to upgrade my graphics card.
It damn well made me buy a $300 meta quest bullshit, now with Facebook logins.
The Valve Index was almost twice as much. And I just wanted to play HL Alyx.
Crysis! I built my first high end desktop when it was coming out. Athlon 64x2 4400+, 4GB RAM, 2x7900GT in SLI.
Raptor main drive, 320GB secondary drive. Cost me about 2.5kUSD. Played Crysis just about the best a computer could.
I have a 256gb raptor from that era that is somehow still working fine. I use it as a steam library drive.
Morrowind with total overhaul mods on OpenMW. I couldn't increase the view distance without it becoming a slide show but it looked amazing.
Man, you must have really had some outdated hardware, OpenMW runs pretty damn well even with graphics mods and such in my experience.
it's the view distance that bogs it down, with just the adjacent cells it plays great but I've seen setups where you can see red mountain from vivec and it looks awesome, and I want to be able to do that.
The one game that has gotten me to upgrade my PC so far has been minecraft :3.. I ended up getting a better CPU and doubled the RAM in it
I never really understood why Minecraft requires high specs.
It's not a very well optimized game :3
There's no LOD system so stuff far away is rendered at full detail, and it also renders stuff you can't see like caves, on top of running primarily on a single core, so once you try to play on higher settings, with shaders or mods, or when you build big builds with lots of entities, like if you have farms or use a lot of item frames or armour stands the game really starts struggling to keep up :3.. there are optimization mods for it tho, which makes the performance a lot better (with sodium + lithium I can usually increase my FPS by 200-300%)
Java most likely
The one that made me upgrade was Alan Wake 2. Don't regret it one bit as I've had lots of enjoyment out of my new PC. And AW2 itself is just gorgeous. And that's even without playing it maxed out. I can't even imagine how good it would look with full path tracing.
It was ff7 rebirth that got me to build my last pc... Realized the places it was slowing down were cpu bound so i couldn't just turn down the graphics lol
I don't feel a need to upgrade yet, but I can imagine I will see the limits of my machine when Cyberpunk 2 comes out
Is there going to be Cyberpunk 2?
Cool, thanks! I wonder if they have realistic development timeline this time around.
I might be able to complete CP2077 by then.
Given its "not before 2030" it sounds like maybe? But yea 2077 is enormous, good luck
I just upgraded from an RTX 2060 to an RTX 5060 Ti thanks to Reentry
That was Devil May Cry 5 for me. I almost exclusively play older games that can comfortably run on 2011/2012 graphic cards, but DMC5 made me realize I'm overdue for an upgrade.
Mind you, it was not a major upgrade. 2050RTX and I've been running everything I want ever since because my favorite genres are thankfully typically not graphically demanding and I care more about stable framerate than look.
I do not predict I'll have issues running Okami 2, for example, or the new Onimusha. I do, however, predict I'll need another upgrade for anything that comes out after these two.
I remember Dark Souls 3 coming out on PC and my crappy little laptop at the time couldn't even open the game. This was after I put dozens of hours into DS1 at 15 FPS so I knew it was a long shot.
More recently I played STALKER 2 for the first time and could hardly run it because my CPU was so bad, that one was a little disappointing to upgrade for...
Assassin's Creed Odyssey. The PC version stuttered on CPUs with fewer than 6 cores (PS4 and XB1 had 8, so probably ported to PC lazily), and that me to upgrade from a 6700k to at 3700x.
Resident Evil 4 and Hogwarts Legacy are low-res and blurry on my Xbox Series S. But I don't mind because RE4 is more about the gameplay, and Hogwarts Legacy turned out to be a bland boring game anyway.
The game that makes me want to upgrade is Clair Obscur Expedition 33. It runs okay on my Series S, but the beautiful art direction deserves being shown in the highest quality possible.
It'll be alan wake 2.
My cpu doesn't have the instruction Set to even start it.
Morrowind.
Then Skyrim.
Then fallout 4.
Each one was roughly when I wanted to update anyways.
fallout 4 was when i lasted consciously upgraded my hardware too.