The Dog That Caught The Car: Why I Left Modern PC Gaming

“The dog that caught the car, refers to someone who achieves or attains something they’ve pursued, but then doesn’t know what to do with it. I was the dog that caught the car”

I originally planned to write about the problems with Windows 11 and Microsoft as a whole. I sat on the idea for a few weeks and the more I thought about it, Microsoft is not my main problem. The best way I can describe what happened to me is, I became the “Dog that caught the car”. Let me explain.

I got my first computer Christmas of 1997. It was a Packard Bell Multimedia D135. It came equipped with Windows 95, an Intel Pentium with MMX clocked at 133mhz, 16MB of EDO RAM, 1.6GB Hard Drive, 28.8k Modem, and Onboard graphics with 4MB of memory and a 8X speed CD-ROM. The first PC game I played on it was 3D Realms’ Shadow Warrior. I bought it at Walmart in the $9.99 jewel case section. The best thing I had experience up until then was Nintendo 64. To me, Shadow Warrior, a Build Engine DOS game, was light years ahead of Nintendo 64. While, that can be debated, to me at the time you couldn’t convince me that Build Engine games were not the future.

At the start of the game, I’m in Lo Wangs dojo where I’m presented with a single enemy to defeat. After that I make my way out onto the street. While leaving, a bus comes speeding down the road and crashes, causing a big explosion set piece. The moment the explosion happened, my Packard Bell D135 slowed to a crawl for roughly 5 seconds. Before then, I had no reference point for how fast computers should be. What made a fast computer. I didn’t know about graphics cards, processor or any of that really. The only reason I was able to spout off the specifications here was because nearly every home computer back then came with giant stickers listing off features and components. That moment of slow down would end up sending me chasing after the smooth frames of that bus crash for nearly 30 years.

Christmas of 2000, I was gifted a Dell OptiPlex GX100. The specs were a huge upgrade from the Packard Bell. It had Windows 98 SE, an Intel Celeron 466Mhz CPU, Intel i810 Onboard graphics with 8MB of Memory, 56K modem, 8GB Hard Drive, 24X speed CD-ROM and 64MB of RAM. Yep, I finally got my ram upgrade, and it was a hefty one. I had learned a lot during my time with the Packard Bell computer, so I knew this time would be different. The first game I tried on it was another Walmart $9.99 jewel case game. It was Unreal Gold. The first Unreal game. Let me tell you, when I booted the game and seen the Nali castle fly by demo, my jaws dropped. It was really something to behold. It wouldn’t take long to realize I was faced with a familiar problem. Stuttering. I did finish the game and would play through it multiple times, but the chase for smoother frames was on yet again.

I squeezed every bit out of that Dell OptiPlex that I could. I would go on to run a bunch of different games on it. Ghost Recon, Tony Hawks Pro Skater series, Oni, and even an N64 emulator running Mario 64. Even that was playable with no issues. Though it did run on a low power emulator named, Corn, but still. The one game that was still a stuttering mess was Unreal Gold.  I had upgraded the RAM to 512MB, CD-ROM to an HP CD Writer Plus and eventually a DVD-CDRW Combo Drive. The graphics were not left out. My girlfriend picked up a PNY GeForce 2 MX200 card that I had my eyes on. Finally Unreal Gold was smooth. Well folks, Unreal 2: The Awakening released February 2003. I was a long way away from the original specs of the OptiPlex. Surely my GeForce 2MX wouldn’t have any trouble, right? I mean this machine even ran GTA3 and Madden 2003 which had a new 3D engine. Well, to the surprise of no one, I was wrong. I was back at square one.

By the end of 2003 I had moved on to an AMD Duron system. Duron was the equivalent of an Intel Celeron, while it’s big brother, the AMD Athlon was more like a flagship Pentium. The AMD Duron was clocked at 1.6Ghz. I was still rocking 512MB of RAM, but I had upgraded to a GeForce FX 5500 card. Now, Unreal 2 ran smooth at modest resolutions. Over the years I would upgrade consistently for games like Oblivion and of course Crysis. I would go on to use CPUs like the AMD Athlon 64 and Phenom and mid to high end graphics cards. Every upgrade or new system, I would install the same games to test, Oblivion and Crysis. I didn’t know it at the time, but that giddy feeling had, was about the chase of it all. I didn’t notice because tech kept humming along with games and hardware getting better consistently and I was able to keep getting my dopamine fix.

Fast forward to now and there are no “slow” computers. Even the slowest of the hardware you can buy today is light years from what we had just 6-7 years ago. Games look incredible and today’s low settings is nothing like the low settings of previous years. Console hardware is made up PC components rather than the custom chips of the 360 and PS3. Now consoles and computers share DNA and game titles. We have access to more games than ever before. There are constant sales and free games, allowing for maximum over consumption. I, like some of you reading, have a huge library on Steam as well as other stores like GOG and Epic. The choice paralysis and fatigue are real. The last system I built had an AMD Ryzen 9 5900 XT 16 core, 32 threads, 64GB of DDR5 Memory, an absurd amount of SSD storage, and a Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080. Everything ran great and I hated it.

“The dog that caught the car”, refers to someone who achieves or attains something they’ve pursued, but then doesn’t know what to do with it. I was the dog that caught the car. What would the dog do if it caught the car? The thing is, it’s not expecting to ever catch it. It’s all about the thrill of the chase. I was the dog chasing the car and I had finally caught it. With exceptional hardware and games and applications running smoothly, I realized there was nothing left for me here on the Windows PC Platform. It was time for me to move on.

I bought a Sony PlayStation 5 and an Apple silicon Mac Mini. I considered Linux since gaming works great on there for the most part, but I do a lot of music production and video editing. While there are some solutions to that, if you work with audio and video, you know there’s a lot of roadblocks and headaches that come with it, so the Apple Mac Mini seemed like the best fit. Now, I use my Mac as a tool. I’m no longer chronically at my computer for everything. I have my PS5 for games and I built a retro Windows machine for my old school Windows games. This way I get to have fun with Windows without the horrible after taste and I don’t feel morally obligated to play through my Steam library anymore. I’m more creative than I have ever been. I also have less anxiety. It’s been a blast so far. I don’t know if I’ll get bored with this soon or ever, but I’m here for the ride and I’m having fun again.

Thanks for reading! I’m not a professional writer. I just enjoy sharing my thoughts and making videos about the stuff I enjoy. I’ve been working on other projects mostly dealing with retro hardware. I documented the recent retro Windows gaming PC build. The video will be up on January 3^rd and is linked below as well as link to another good read on our site.

Ashton Stevenson