Building the Ultimate Gaming System V

Halo PC
Halo for the PC is simply a port to the PC rather than an game exploting the advantages of a PC. That in mind, lets look at the specs of the Microsoft XBOX:
Processor: Pentium III 733MHZ
Video: 250-MHZ 64mb Custom "X-Chip" by NVidia
Memory Bandwidth: 150M/sec

Look at that for a second. Looks EXACTLY like a "High End" computer from three years ago or so, sans a Pentium 4. With that in mind, its obvious that even the slowest, crappiest computers can give Halo a run for its money.... or can it?



The answer is no. First off, your computer always has to run your Windows extentions behind-the-scenes, taking up an select amount of Processor and/or RAM. Second off, this port of Halo isnt as good as it would have been if they would have built the engine on the PC from the ground up, meaning there are some select issues with the engine itself.

There are no easy points about this game. A few factors, of course, are as follows, though these don't apply as stringently as the points with Doom 3 and Half Life 2.

1. Halo is known to have AA/AF (Anti Aliasing and Antiscopic Filtering) issues. Both of them, apparently, have issues running on ANY PC.
2. Halo has compareably small levels and simply gaming, meaning that this (Might) work on older systems more effectively than any other next-gen games.

Overall, don't take these as gospel truth. The time I have spent playing Halo on PC, I'm inclined to say that it all depends on your situation as opposed to your actual specs. Case in fact: Halo at one point wouldnt run on my borrowed computer (Mentioned above in the Half Life 2 comments), but now it will with a considerable amount of lag. I've seen similar situations with different people- I honestly don't know what to say about this game.


The Sims 2



I decided to use the Sims 2 because, unlike me, some people actually think this new game is a GOOD IDEA and a FUN GAME. Now, its very obvious that I wouldnt touch this game with a 10 foot pole. But, I can give advice to people as to what might be issues.

1. The game needs a shitload and a half of Video RAM and sheer clock power, period. Tons of things on screen going every which way.
2. This game ALSO needs a shitload of processor speed, because all those things on the screen can be interacted with, for the most part.

Keep in mind that this game is just a sheer clock speed hog. The more speed you have, the faster it will go, but I guarantee you any system will lag if you push it enough with this game. This is something that is both good and bad about this game- its expandable, but if you're playing on a bad computer, I would seriously reccomend cranking down everything humanly possible.

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