Questions from a new PC gamer??

[clemson8177]

Hello everyone.I am new to pc gaming.I have a few questions....these are probably dumb questions,but here they are....

1) under system requirements for games,they show you the operating system that I assume you will need to play it.For older games,it will show older operating systems like windows 2000 or xp for example.My question is,will a windows 7 machine play these older games? I have already bought some older games,that I dont know will even work.Just wasnt paying attention I guess.

2) If windows 7 wont play older games,why does steam and other places sell these old games when no one can play them? I find it hard to believe people still use these old operating systems.

3) I have bought a lot of games so far.Everyday a game is on sale.I see all these games for $5 or $10.Sometimes even less.So I just buy them.I have noticed that steam wont let you choose which hard drive to download your games on.I am using a 128 gb ssd drive.So I can only download a certain number of games at a time.My question is,if I play a game,then delete that game from my hard drive,will I lose all my game saves? Is it saved to the cloud or my hard drive? If I download the same game again,can I resume playing from where I left it?

[FlamingDeath]

1) They should work, but if they dont, that will be money poured down the drain as valve do not give refunds as its against their company policy. Its because we're all potential bootleggers.

2) profit, the one with the most money wins the game!

3) some games use the steam cloud, in which cas savegames "might" be saved, or it might just save the controls config. I'm not 100% sure of the answer

[Kauldwin]

1) Many games will work on newer systems; however, there is no guarantee. Some of the games have workarounds that allow you to play on a newer system. Many people run their systems in compatibility mode - this will allow you to play most of the older games.

2) See above

3) The latest update of Steam is allowing you to install certain games to a different HD, so you may want to look into that. However, to actually answer your question, your game saves should remain in tact. Should does not always translate to will, but that is the idea. You can also use this feature to install games on more than one computer (although you can only be logged into your Steam account on one computer at a time).

Hope that all made sense.

Edit: Ninja'd!

[clemson8177]

thanks for the replies

[Evolvei]

There is a program I use to put the current games I play on the ssd and move them back to the regular hard drive afterwards:
http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover

There is also a program to backup your saves and config information:
http://savegamebackup.net/forum/download/file.php?id=403

[Deadlylag]

1. Some old games do not work on window 7. You can see your hardware by entering dxdiag in the search field.

2. The majority of PC still run win XP. Either they can't afford to upgrade or they don't want to (for one reason or another).

3. See above.

[TeKraken]

Origineel geplaatst door ZedHunter:

There is a program I use to put the current games I play on the ssd and move them back to the regular hard drive afterwards:
http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover

There is also a program to backup your saves and config information:
http://savegamebackup.net/forum/download/file.php?id=403

Just to add to these tools there is also gamesave-manager.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/

[Satoru]

There are only 2 real 'roadblocks' to gaming

1) Operating system. XP is dead. Go to win7 or win8 and you'll be fine for at least a decade

2) Video card. This is the real place where the rubber meets the road. If your video card sucks you won't be able to play anything. My suggestion is to pick a budget and buy a card.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html

You can go wrong with whatever budget you have. Obviously if you spend $100 don't expect to run say Crysis3 at UBER awesome graphic mode. But it'll run at moderate settings.

Everything else isn't really 'critical'. CPU doesn't really matter since most games aren't CPU limited. Memory is nice but these days most systems come with 4GB minimum anyway which is plenty. As long as you address the 2 points above you'll always be able to play games.

To address your other poitns

1) Steam now lets you choose where to install your game. Though to be honest having steam on ssd is pointless. 95% of games dont' benefit much from SSD so it's hardly worth putting a game on SSD anyway. Games aren't IO limited

2) Most older games still work on windows 7. Some games like fallout3 need some minor ini tweaking. Other games just don't work at all, but these are extremely rare.