I love my m4a1, I gotta say I was a massive fan of CS, played from the very beginning all the way to source but it just hasn't progressed enough for me to keep playing. I hadn't really found anything that got me as interested in FPS online games as CS, but I gotta admit I would rank COD4 right up there with it (but in next gen style), and once again, I love my M4 in there too and my knife of course.

I always say my fighting style is "up close and personal..."

ok, firsts things first, I'd advise you to drop all your graphical settings down as low as possible, make sure you have all the latest drivers for your card and latests updates from steam and then run it again, see if you can get past that moment in the game and see if it runs better after that. (there is a graphics glitch with the source engine and 5200 fx, it happens on other cards sometimes but they are strong enough to power through it and it is hard to notice)

For your graphics card, a 5 series uses limited power (250watt I think)and usually runs either on a standard pci slot or agp. Most computers running a 5 series graphics card do so because the power supply is pretty small and/or they don't support PCI Express on the motherboard. This means even if you did buy a fancy new graphics card, it might not run on your clearly outdated system.

Check out your system specs, if you power supply is around 440 to 500 and you don't have pci express, you can still get a 6600 agp card which would run most dx 9.0c stuff pretty well, failing that your best bet is just to buy a new machine or upgrade your power supply and video card, which will cost even more (so might just be better to buy a new one)

Oh, as for the "joys of a pc gamer" comment, we pay more but our games always look better than the console (since PS3's graphics card was outdated by the time the ps3 was actually release. If you get a good PC for the time, it'll last at least 3 years and little upgrades might get you 5 years, consoles lives are usually about the same at which time even the console gamer has to fork out lotsa money just to get the next generation, and in general console games are more expensive (over here they are anyways) so pro's and con's I guess....

not a surprise that ep2 is only 6 hours, I mean heavenly sword was 8 hours and it is a full game where ep2 is just an episode, the fact that TF2 and Portal come with the package is great and probably a better way to do episodes, if ya ain't going to give hours of game play in the main game at least give us a better reason to spend our money

I was getting a pain in my head until bignice12 mentioned DX 10. Crytek are trying to make the ultimate next generation engine and from what I've seen so far they are doing a good job. When talking next Gen we have to consider DX 10 and windows Vista so general specs for upcoming games will all start to state that as a min requirement, since cryengine2 is at the front line of next gen games, they are the first to do so.

Crytek aren't "supporting" GeForce as such. if they recommend a 8800 it is simply because Geforce came out with the first DX10 compatible graphics card followed a number of months later by ATI's attempt which by most standards was inferior (not by a lot, but since they had a few months more development time than the Geforce 8800 you should think it should have out preformed it)

Microsoft and NVIDIA actually worked pretty close during the development of DX10 so NVIDIA had somewhat of a head start in terms of technological understanding on their competition.

If you want to bring UT3's engine into the argument which is impressive in itself, that is quite a bit older than CryEngine 2 and already had a large number of dx9 supported titles on it but also looks very impressive so don't worry! Most games will still run fine (as I believe Crysis will) on pre dx10 graphics cards, but surly games should request gamers to have the latest technology to take full advantage of the features they included.

The graphics in stalker are dated, it had a 6 year plus development cycle so the models have a poly count next that of CS 1.5 (due to the fact CS itself is around the 10 years mark by now, with slight poly count increases from v 1.0 to 1.5). The good thing (or bad to some) is they plugged in graphical updates to stalker along the way to include things such as HDR lighting and Bump mapping which have only really come into play a lot in games in the past few years (Half-Life 2 added HDR lighting with the lost cost demo).

Having said that, Stalker game play is very interesting (although the game has quite a few bugs, but 3 different developers!?! Its surprising it doesn't have more) and really good, the world itself is something unlike anything I've ever played, it feels alive so for game-play I loved it and the graphics weren't terrible, but certainly not next-gen

Command And Conquer 3 feels like Tomb Raider Anniversary (WTF! How can I compare a 3rd person shooter to an RTS?)... wait!, in terms of how it was done. They took an old game (the original C&C feel) and put fancy new graphics on it, and sure, sometimes it does look nice, but I personally want something new out of game-play (which stalker gave me) so I couldn't bring myself to buy it (just played the demo and on a friends computer, then got bored). I love Company of Heroes, so I believe you already made a good choice there.

World in Conflict might be worth a look since you were trying to compare a first person shooter and an RTS, WIC feels like a FPS even though it is an RTS, its fast, ya get frags, it has multiplayer and single player, you can log into a server at any time and it's a lot of fun (I played the closed beta). It is coming out in September, so maybe you need something to pass the time until then.

So my long winded point. If graphics aren't the biggest issue and you'd like an interesting game, go for stalker. If graphics are, perhaps the low poly models will make you sleepy, so go for C&C. If you can wait, maybe check out WIC.

You can't really say which game is "the greatest pc game of all time" since it would really be down to opinion, accroding to gamespot it really wasn't that great, but pretty damn good. I recall they mentioned the story had some holes in it. As for as FPS go it was one of the best I've played (in my opinion) for story telling, the guns were nice (but nothing new, they all appeared in hl with the exception of the grav. gun and the energy ball weapon) the characters were awesome and if you've seen the book "half-life 2 - raising the bar" you'll note that all the characters faces are actually those of real people, even the priest (which I was really surprised by, that guy is freaky).

Anyhoo, great game and may there be many more like it to come but best game of all time, I don't think any game can really take that title without objection.

Rumor had it that COD4 would be released on the PC because COD3 wasn't and at the time it was making all the PC people happy since the PC made COD as big as it was. (however the consoles did their part a great deal too)

Some of the footage from the trailer looked as if it was in game for sure (as it was unfinished, had little or no lighting and was a bit rough around the edges) but quite a lot of it was pre-rendered.  Still, would be nice to see large scale assaults done on a modern context, I always thought the idea of COD with modern day weapons would be sweet. 

COD is like a crazy action movie, it is a lot of run a gun and all about the fun, that is what makes it great!  I look forward to seeing more.

The PC is here to stay because it goes beyond gaming and everyone will always need a PC for work and home.  The price of consoles is going up and they keep adding components including keyboard, multiple connections, internet access etc, which ups the price and actually makes them resemble a PC more and more.

To make console games a PC is used to do all the programming.  Engines like Unreal Technology 3 where programmed on a C++ foundation (C++ uses windows graphics libraries, hence PC) and games developed on it can be translated to run on the XBOX 360 and the PS3 (as you know Gears of War runs on UT3) and at the same time, since it was initially programmed on the PC of course you can make the games run on the PC too.  So with the amount of money they make off engines and license and they very fact that the console wouldn't exists without the existence of a PC, the PC game industry might get smaller but it won't die.

One last note, if the price of consoles keep going up, eventually they will rival the PC in terms of price in which case they won't have a purpose (as a cheap alternative to buying a PC) and will die, but that won't happen.  I'm thinking eventually you'll get some kind of PC / Console highbred which fits under the name "Entertainment System" which does everything (hooks up to your HD TV, runs games, movies, internet, word processing, office documents, etc, etc).

I'm not in America and they still stack the shelves with PC games here in Singapore.  Having said that the last few games I've got were all bought online so I guess that is where all the PC gamer money is going these days.  Just look at Steam, lotsa companies are putting up their games for download off steam so clearly there is money to be made online otherwise they wouldn't do it.  Anyhoo, I hate shopping so I'm happy buying online and I'm not too interested in Shelves full of games, I'd rather a massive hard-drive packed with them! :p