[Theydon Bois]

Shamelessly nicked from Chaos's previous post here and updated slightly.

This is the all new official AV Forums PC Gaming FAQ thread. If you have contributions to be made, please PM me and I will collate the information into the main FAQ. In addition if you find any old threads which you think are essential reading, please let me know so we can include them in the list.

Essential Hardware & Software Threads

These threads are a must read for any of you thinking of taking the plunge into PC gaming. Young or old, and whether you come from a Console background or have no gaming experience at all, take a look at these threads for some guidance....

Latest Drivers

Drivers for your spanky new Graphics Card are important, as in most cases updates offer framerate increases or can remove glitches or texture problems, so well worth keeping up to date! This link offers both ATI and Nvidea drivers.

Note that if you have Steam installed, they also provide an update for ATI cards as well.

SSD Drives

More and more popular as the prices falls below a £1/Gb, these drives just make your PC feel a little quicker in response in everyday apps like browsers and they also help games load quicker (if your drive is big enough to install them on). A Guide to install them is here and more discussions on what people think are the best as well as pricing and bargins is found in this thread.

Using a pad on the PC

A few games support the pads natively, but when they do not, this thread gives some sound advice for those of you that prefer the pad over a keyboard and mouse combo.

Steam community usernames

Trawl through this thread and pick up some names. People also have them in their signatures, and the AVForums Steam group also may have some users not listed in the thread. Also, you can add your Steam Card as your Avatar within these very boards by following the instructions here:

How to display your Steam Gamercard next to your posts

If you don't know what Steam actually is, read below.

3D Gaming

For those of you with 3D enabled GPU/TFTs and really want that extra level of emersion into your games, then this thread should be a good port of call.

Member Rigs

Just when you think you have your setup just how you want it, you read this thread and bang! you suddenly need a new case, GPU or fan to match the colour of your dog. If you have upgradeitus, stay away from this thread. In fact, you will need to stay away from this thread as well!

Monitor Info

Our very own Monitor Whore Sega Mega Dave has written up some fantastic info on TFTs, with advice on the different types of monitors and what all the little numbers and acronyms mean.

Console

This thread is for those of you that must bring up consoles at every opportunity. We don't want to know about them here, as they are like a foreign country that exists somewhere far away but we don't need too visit as they have funny tasting food thank you very much. Be warned, those of you that do break this cardinal sin will have to read the entire linked thread, and then answer a quiz to be able to post back in these forums.

However, if you are a console gamer, and want to know what all the fuss is about, then this sums up quite nicely 'Should I move to a PC from a console'

Originally Posted by Sega Mega Dave

Simple and short answer = Yes

More details answer responding to your questions would be.

1) Yes there is a difference, every game i have played looks so much better on a PC than it does on a console even if they are console ports. Higher resolutions, higher frames per second, the limit is pretty much your hardware. It's a much better experience and as you say much cheaper. Unfortunately you can't sell games on though but for the price you pay it's not a big deal. On release i bought Fifa for £23, F1 2012 for £18 and X-COM for £22 with a free game. I don't care about selling them on for that price on release.

2) Yes there is more tinkering with graphics card settings if you want to. Most people though will set up their GPU software once and then just adjust each game once and play. That said the more you get into it you will try and inch every bit out of a game by trying different levels of AA etc... Not needed but fun. I can't remember the last time i had a crash as PC gaming has come a long way since those days and support for hardware is much better.

3) Yes BF3 has 64 players online compared to consoles and it's night and day better, racing games are better and smoother plus you can multi screen. Also no online costs as it's all free to play online, voice comms is better too as you use dedicated software and we have a good community of regulars who have a laugh, take the **** and team up well. Everyone is welcome.

4) 360 pad is supported and is well worth having for football and racing if you don't use a wheel. You can buy game pads like Logitch G13 and Razor Nostromo, these are customisable and remove the need for the keyboard, i use the Logitech G13 and it's fantastic plus it has a screen to monitor in game temps, frame rates etc...

5) The mod scene, games like Skyrim are modded so it's like a completely different game, a lot of games support community modding which means bug fixes, much better textures, gameplay and generally full of awesomeness.

6) Oh and i bet consoles can't do PlanetSide 2 which is a futuristic free to play FPS game that has 2,000 players on each server and the maps are about 100 times than all BF3 maps put together, 64km SQ i think. There are regular battles over stations of a few hundred soldiers, tanks and planes.

7) It's also a PC so it does so much more, you don't need a seperate laptop, tablet blah blah!

9) Look at the video and screen shot thread on here for examples of what you can get.

8) What i'm saying is DO IT!!!!!!

Games

Game Video Reviews

Carnagerover has been doing quite a few 'quick look' reviews of games, everything from Dishonoured to retro games such as Carmageddon. A few naughty words within, so not good for work, not that you should be watching videos of games at work anyway......

Also, a non forum member who's video's I watch a lot of, is Total Biscuits What The Flip [insert game here].

Steam/Origin

Both Steam and Origin are two (free) client installations that are online stores as well as game matchups and messenging services (see above for usernames) and logging achievements for games played.

Quite frankly they are at the core of PC gaming now, and you simply cannot do without at least one of them. Steam is the daddy at the moment, with 6+ years under its belt, and a massive wealth of 1000's of games from A* titles down to Indie clasics.

Origin you will have because you will be playing Battlefield 3, Fifa or The Sims, and its much the same, just on a smaller scale (and always will be unless it entices more publishers away from Steam.)

Pricing for both stores for titles are as normally higher than the bricks and mortar stores (and even online), but when the sales hit town.......you will try holding on to the purse strings, but find them oh so willing to part with your cash.

Popular Games

This section is for the threads that have been talked about so much that they have gone into multiple 1000' post threads:

Battlefield 3

Skyrim

Make sure you read MrIdontKnow's awesome guide to making it all look, well, awesome.

[Theydon Bois]

Updated links and added Star Wars.

[Theydon Bois]

Updated links, added Diablo III.

[Theydon Bois]

Updated Links, added in a little video review section (Total Biscuits 'What the flip' reviews as well as our own Carnagerover Quick Looks), added in Sega Mega Dave's TFT overview as well as his response to a console owner thinking of joining our side of the fence (the best side obviously, where our chickens roam free*)








* Please excuse my likening PC gaming to that of a Free Range chicken, I did have a really good analogy to why this is true, but its like one of those dreams where you wake up and go, yes, we should all do this! ...but cant actually remember what 'this' is.

[Theydon Bois]

Added the link to the Steam User names Avatar - I will update this shortly to reflect that its now 2013 as well....