Activision Be ware, Call of Duty 2 not supported by MOST 3D video cards. Ripoff Internet

I have personally built all of my computers since the XT/AT days of the late 80's. Since the "3d revolution" of the mid 90's things have obviously changed in regards to PC gaming. Now days, PC games are hands down the single most demanding software you can run on a PC. Outside of some high-end CAD and military stuff of course. They demand maximum processor, video card, ram, and motherboard bus speed.

Plain and simple if you want to "see" just how your PC fairs.....run a modern game on it. You will see its limitations very clearly, very quickly.

From what I have seen the two most important items for games is FIRST: video card. And SECOND: amount of ram. Now I'm sure many will want to argue these points. But I am also sure that NOBODY will argue the extent at which the VIDEO card matters. It is hands down the single most important thing for playing PC games. I have 2 computers (out of 6) that are capable of playing COD2. One is only a P4-1.5Ghz. Well below the Activision "specs". It plays it fine. Why? Because I have an Nivida G4 6600 GT video card. That card is probably more powerful than the CPU itself!

You can dilly and dally about ram, cpu, bus speed, hard drive space, etc. till your face turns blue. But if you just dont have a video card that can cut it, your toast.

Never in all my days have I seen a legacy video card (meaning built into the motherboard) that was worth a d**n for gaming. Even at the time of the motherboards release. It could be the latest greatest motherboard with a complete and viable Intel chipset. But that means nothing for gaming. You simply cant cut it with a "built in" video card. That "chipset" video is mainly for someone planning on using the computer for office work (lets get real....you dont need to have a 6600GT to run windows...or Word for that matter).

Ed,

Ofcourse Activision, computer manufactuers are in it for the money. And yes it is upsetting that it seems everytime a new game comes out, I've got to go spend a few hundred bucks to upgrade something (lately it was my sound card for Battlefield 2).

"Integrated" anything is going to be low-end. Even if you got a big hard drive, or 2Gigabytes of RAM, and a 21' flat screen monitor.....if you have a integrated Intel graphics chipset, you wont be able to do much gameing.

X-box is different. Yes, it is a computer. But it is a console. Xbox games are created by Xbox makers (microsoft) and are specifically designed to work with Xbox. Activision software is for general PC's, you have to make sure your system meets the requirements on the game box. (A high-end PC will blow-away any console system for gaming). (PC $2000, Console $300 = the cost is in processing ability)

The original Beware is about a game. A PC game had fails to work properly on a expensive high-end PC. The beware is in regards to these gaming company ripping the comsumer off. The beware is about PC, not personal attacks. Sean you missed the point. P.S. on a personal note, I've got tons of PC, some of them probably per date your birth. P.S.S. I returned the COD2 for the XBOX revision. Oh, XBOX writes a gaming program and it works, is it that more difficult for the s/w developers to make sure their product works on standard to high-end PC's. I don't think so. I think the s/w developers just want MONEY, MONEY, MONEY and it appears some PC gamers are willing to spend, spend, spend.....

All games say on the box what your computer has to have in it for them to run. When I bought Black and White 2 a few months ago, I also had to get a new vid card if I wanted to play it. I picked up a new ATI 9250 - 256 RAM on EBay for only 54 bucks including shipping. That's about the lowest end that B&W2 will accept if you want any quality. (I'm sure COD is similar since it's also a newer released game.) My card also handles the 1.1 pixel shader that the newer games require your video card to have.

I'm assuming you don't buy a lot of games or you would have known that any new ones that come out pretty much will only run on the high end computer systems built for gaming. Even with a gig of RAM some of my games will get 'lag' (low FPS for the gamers out there). In the future, remember to read the game box carefully and make sure your computer in in the range of low to high system requirements they give to make sure it will run for you.

Onboard vid cards rarely will work with games. They say 3D, but if you read their stats on the info sheet that came with the motherboard or check online, you will see they are really called something like 'enhanced 2D'. I forget the exact term. They will only handle very simple 3D games. Any with the advanced graphics won't run. You need to buy one made by ATI or nVidia and install it yourself or have someone who knows how to work on computers do it for you.

The intel shared graphics accelerator is the lowest you can get as far as video cards. This is a shared memory video card meaning it uses your hard drive memory, as well as your cpu for graphics. Pretty much any game out there requires a higher end 32mb (at least) video card such as ATI or nVidia. These are the cards with their own memory and processor which enables the 3D graphics on these games to be shown.

I've purchased games, and then had to buy a graphics card because I went cheap on the computer.

You're not being ripped off... You're just being cheap. Besides, I doubt COD 2 will play well on your computer unless you have about 512mb of ram, which I doubt you have since you only have an intel graphics accelerator.

And all this information would have been listed on the box under "system requirements".