My Dell Gaming PC - RIP

I knew the day had to come sometime but my once high end Dell Dimension XPS Gen 4 (purchased back in December 2004) is no longer capable of playing the latest generation games. Well technically it can install and play them, but only on the lowest resolution possible and with all the graphical goodies turned off which looks ugly as sin. Even then its a side show for some of the latest titles like Crysis and Gears of War. Valve games with its less demanding Source engine was my last hope but even the most recent Half Life 2: Episode 2 slows to a crawl when the flashlight is turned on due to the incorporation of dynamic shadows.

I ended up buying Orange Box for my Xbox 360 and the difference was like night and day. I can now play it at 1920x1080 and it looks beautiful with a silky smooth frame rate. I hate to sound like a console fanboy but I'm officially out of PC gaming for now. It's not that I don't think PC's are capable of playing great games (I still think they are the superior game platform now and years to come), it's just that I can't financially keep up with all the upgrades needed to play the latest titles. A good video card alone costs almost as much as my entire Xbox itself.

Since I originally bought my XPS purely for game playing (all my other computing was done on my Mac), I've been asked what I intend on doing with it now. I've decided to turn it into my MCSE study computer, learn some programing languages, and install some Linux distros on it so it won't go to waste.

You had a good run my friend, and I will miss all the good times we've had on it. Rest in Peace.