Reccomendations for a PC gaming newbie

[bgjerlow]

Hello guys

Recently I have decided to go into PC gaming, as I've had to spend some money on upgrading my desktop PC. These upgrades had to done any way, as I've recently started my own graphic design business. So, what kind of games can you recommend? I have been thinking about getting ARMA 2 (for DayZ) or perhaps ARMA 3. I'm mainly into shooters and open-world games :)

Here is my PC specs:

Motherboard: Foxconn M61PMV

CPU: AMD Athlon X4 620

GPU: ASUS GeForce GT 610 2GB DDR3

Memory: 4GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 401MHz

Storage: 500GB Western Digital + 750GB Samsung

PSU: Cooler Master GX 550w

Thanks in advance! :)

[threetonesun]

A Geforce 610 isn't going to run much of anything well, although if you're into shooters and open world, you probably can't go wrong with Battlefield 3.

[Viper217]

If you like open world games with rpg elements, give Fallout: New Vegas a shot. If open world with rock-solid shooter elements, creepy atmosphere, and a touch of sci-fi, give Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl (first one), and Stalker: Call of Pripyat (it's fantastic sequel, better in many ways but a bit looser story) a go, I can't recommend those two games enough. Far Cry 3 would also be an option for a much more scripted game.

if MP games are what you want, and you dont mind using origin (EAs steam-without-any-sales-or-benefit) then Battlefield 3 is plenty of fun. Tribes Ascend is free to play and very fast, great game. I don't know how well it would run but you could give Planetside 2 a shot as well on the free to play front.

Other games you could look into: Natural Selection 2, Skyrim, Metro 2033, Red Orchestra 2, Borderlands 2, and CounterStrike: Global Offensive.

[bgjerlow]

Cheers for the info guys. I'll give Tribes: Ascend and Planetside 2 a go. I already played Far Cry 3 and Battlefield 3 on the Xbox, and still own BF3 on there. Is there any more good free to play games available?

[Noir Angel]

Weak CPU and weak graphics card. What kind of resolution are you expecting to be able to game at?

[threetonesun]

Cheers for the info guys. I'll give Tribes: Ascend and Planetside 2 a go. I already played Far Cry 3 and Battlefield 3 on the Xbox, and still own BF3 on there. Is there any more good free to play games available?

Team Fortress 2 is always good for some rocket-jumping fun.

[bgjerlow]

Weak CPU and weak graphics card. What kind of resolution are you expecting to be able to game at?

Honestly, I have absolutely no idea. I'm entirely new to the whole PC gaming scene. I don't have any plans to upgrade my CPU or my GPU for at least the next few months. Might upgrade it later this year. Also, how is a 2.6ghz quad-core AMD CPU weak?

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

Honestly, I have absolutely no idea. I'm entirely new to the whole PC gaming scene. I don't have any plans to upgrade my CPU or my GPU for at least the next few months. Might upgrade it later this year. Also, how is a 2.6ghz quad-core AMD CPU weak?

b/c AMDs, in general, lag behind in gaming compared to Intel's CPUs. Also, 2.6GHz is going to be a bottleneck if you were to buy a more powerful card.

speaking of, the 610 is a very, very basic model. You wont have much fun gaming on that thing.

I think just about everyone here would tell you to upgrade your CPU, RAM and GPU asap.

[Noir Angel]

Honestly, I have absolutely no idea. I'm entirely new to the whole PC gaming scene. I don't have any plans to upgrade my CPU or my GPU for at least the next few months. Might upgrade it later this year. Also, how is a 2.6ghz quad-core AMD CPU weak?

AMD's current range are hopelessly inefficient, you get around half the performance per thread handled. In gaming terms a recent generation Intel i3 would walk all over that CPU with half the amount of cores. They're not so bad for programming but that's not what you're using them for :)

[bgjerlow]

b/c AMDs, in general, lag behind in gaming compared to Intel's CPUs. Also, 2.6GHz is going to be a bottleneck if you were to buy a more powerful card.

speaking of, the 610 is a very, very basic model. You wont have much fun gaming on that thing.

I think just about everyone here would tell you to upgrade your CPU, RAM and GPU asap.

Yeah, but I'd rather not spend the money on that, as I want to get the new Xbox when that comes out instead. For now, I'm just looking for some games that can be played on my current set-up :)

Have any of you played Blacklight: Retribution? Heard about that game, and it looks pretty good.

[Noir Angel]

The i3-3220 is ?2 more expensive than the CPU you have chosen and would be a far better gaming choice.

[Andre S. Veteran]

The GT 610 is a rebranded GT 520 so you can check out if it meets the recommended requirements for recent games here:

http://community.fut...ce+GT+520/games

Unfortunately you'll notice that it mostly... doesn't meet those requirements at all. The Athlon X4 620 is also a 4-year old CPU that wasn't particularly good in games even for its time. So, if you want decent performance you'll have to look at older games, or, among recent games, those that don't push the graphic envelope much.

If you're into First-Person Shooters I'd heartily recommend Team Fortress 2. :)

[Noir Angel]

Left 4 Dead 2 is also a great deal of fun, both online and in SP mode!

[Arceles]

Cue Javik and all the comments saying that AMD is bad when it's not. You can actually check my signature and I'm able to play games like Crysis 3 on medium settings @1080p (vsync disabled) no problem. I have no experience with the nvidia cards though.

[YounGMessiah]

I would suggest the Mass Effect Series on PC, I had a better experience than on console.

Bioshock 1 was fun

Assassins Creed 1

Fallout 3 and New Vegas

Deus Ex: HR

Portal

Dead Island

Bulletstorm

Starcraft II

[Noir Angel]

Do I really need to school you with actual numbers again?

[YounGMessiah]

Javik the point is that he is saying that the AMD is still suitable.

[Arceles]

Do I really need to school you with actual numbers again?

Do you remember that you gave no sources about most of your facts? you made them in fact... now, if you would be so kind to pinpoint that precisely post to OP it would be great, he would be then be able to judge (and see your biased attitude)

Edit

Here: https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1135648-can-someone-explain-why-i-shouldnt-get-an-amd-fx-cpu/page__fromsearch__1

No lies.

[Noir Angel]

And the point that I'm making, as I was making the last time is that he can get something that will be better for the same money. Better for the same money is a very simple equation to me.

Do you remember that you gave no sources about most of your facts? you made them in fact... now, if you would be so kind to pinpoint that precisely post to OP it would be great, he would be then be able to judge (and see your biased attitude)

I gave you links to a load of different benchmarks, you just refused to accept them because they didn't match up to your misguided fan loyalty.

[YounGMessiah]

To stay on subject the OP doesnt care about whats better or what else he can get or upgrade.

He asked for games he can enjoy and play at decent frames with his setup.

[Paul Ferson Veteran]

Let me preface this by saying my computer would be considered crap compared to some of the rigs on here. I have an Nvidia GT 220 in my system. Fred Flintstone would have had a better GPU. Still, here are some games I've actually played and confirmed will run well enough.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It goes on sale fairly regularly, and it uses Steamworks as its DRM. The benefit of that is that you can buy it from other sites online - like Gamersgate or GreenManGaming, for example - then register it with Steam, and it'll work as if you'd bought it from Steam directly. Basically, it gives you more options to find a copy through other online vendors. The lowest I've ever seen it was ?5 or so but the Augmented Edition (all the DLCs) often goes to about ?7.50 as well. If you have a choice in the matter, you might as well go for the Augmented Edition. Plus, it's a good PC version including a Field of View option in the menus.

Sid Meier's Civilization V. I'm able to run this game on an Nvidia GT 220, and it works. You'd likely have to play with the settings too, but the game will run. I'm not sure how it would be on some of the longer settings - it gets a bit less smooth towards the end of a normal game - but it does work. The Gods & Kings expansion is good too, and Brave New World is coming in a month or two. It also uses Steamworks so keep an eye on alternative vendors again. It occasionally slips to ?5 or so, and Gamersgate had the G&K expansion for ?5 during Christmas.

Mount & Blade: Warband. This is far from the prettiest game, and I have to run it on DirectX 7 to get the big battles (100+ units on-screen) advertised. Nevertheless the core gameplay is good and it's really extensible too. People have made a bunch of different mods for it, ranging from new features to entire overhauls. Probably the best of those overhauls would be Floris, Prophesy of Pendor or Brytenwalda. An actual 'end' varies from player to player but you could probably juice a few hundred hours out of the single-player... and then there's the multiplayer too. There's a demo on the Taleworlds website, so try it out if it takes your interest. In regards to DRM this game can be bought through Steam or other vendors, but other vendors don't offer it with Steamworks. It also goes on sale with some frequency - I got all the games (M&B, Warband, Napoleonic Wars and With Fire and Sword for ?5 through Gamestop's app).

Death to Spies: Moment of Truth. This game can be tricky to get a hold of at a nice price but it's do-able. The first BundleStars bundle contained it and a bunch of other games for ?5, but I bought it mainly for this. It's basically the Hitman franchise amped up in difficulty with a World War II backdrop. You play as a Russian spy infiltrating German territories. Unlike the Hitman franchise you can drive vehicles. It runs on my GT 220 but I did play with some of the settings as well. VSync is the biggest FPS killer, but that applies to virtually every game.

Audiosurf. This occasionally sells for about ?2 or so on Steam, and it can be addictive too. It's a music game but it's not Guitar Hero or Rock Band. If you're into music this can be a lot of fun to play. I'm terrible at it but there's a definite addictiveness behind it all, and I can see how some people will sit and try to top leaderboards on it.

This entire list would cost you about ?22, if you got the same deals as I did. You can also get Civilization IV - it often goes on sale for less than Civ V. Some more experienced players would argue that it's the better game of the two but they're both good fun, really.

[Andre S. Veteran]

Sid Meier's Civilization V.

In strategic view, this one actually plays ok on extremely low-end parts like my 2009 Intel gma4500mhd, it's quite surprising.

[Paul Ferson Veteran]

In strategic view, this one actually plays ok on extremely low-end parts like my 2009 Intel gma4500mhd, it's quite surprising.

I didn't know that, but I might consider a Marathon length game with that tip in mind. (Y) I've always turned off movement and combat animations but this should be even better. I'm guessing it's possible to use the conventional view during your turn, then switch to Strategic before you end your turn and let the AI take theirs? That's actually a great tip though. I'll make sure to keep it in mind when I'm playing.

[Shadrack]

Its funny because common sense tells you that a brand new graphics card released today will be more powerful than any graphics card released 5 years ago...but that just really isn't the case. There are gaming graphics cards and there are light-weight application type graphics cards. The graphics card you currently have is more in the later category. You don't have to be hardware junkie...just read what NVidia says about this card: "...more immersive experience in your favorite applications..." not games.

That being said, there are some really fun games that should run just fine:

Binding of Issac (OMG, I love this indie game so much and wish it were on XBox Live Arcade)

World of Goo

[bgjerlow]

To stay on subject the OP doesnt care about whats better or what else he can get or upgrade.

He asked for games he can enjoy and play at decent frames with his setup.

^ This.

Anyways, thanks for all the suggestions so far guys. I will definitely look into all of them once I've got a bit more spare time. I got a busy week ahead of me at the moment :)