Hi, no not really a trick question, and I am afraid of suffering from a bit of PC gaming naivety. I haven't bought a PC game for years when a guy in my IT dept told me that the consoles were max'ed out for gaming, and also easier to write code for (Due to std hardware). Since then I kind of lost my bearing on PC gaming, and haven't bought one for years.
This is a subjective matter, coding the game is much easier and quicker to do for a computer. Standardisation of the console hardware does allow for console games to be optimised with less effort and hence why its generally less buggy. But this very same standardisation is the consoles downfall because it gets to a point where the console becomes so old that the programmers become unwilling to waste time using complex algorithms & techniques to hide the consoles short comings for example, the 360 has only 10MBs of video memory and 512MB of main memory, the visuals for games are becoming increasingly better so the textures are becoming bigger the 360 doesn’t have enough dedicated video memory or main memory to facilitate these textures. As a result the developers give up and lower the texture quality and offload the higher textures for the PC port. Also because the average gaming PC is a lot more powerful than a console i.e. we are seeing PC's boasting 1024MB of video memory and 4GB of main memory as the norm, so developers do not have to worry about optimisation on the PC and they can be as ambitious as they feel and drop higher textures without much thought.
My ATI graphics card was deemed as basic/mid range when I bought it, and I had no idea what this meant till this post. I am really elated to realise my kit has more horsepower than I thought. I also use it for multi media and office apps.
Low end - video card which was never meant for games, you'd manage to run the odd game at low detail and low resolution, but the experience would be poor. Best suited for multimedia work and HD video playback due to low power consumption.
Mid range - video card which can run most games at high detail and resolution. They tend to offer the best performance for the price.
High end - a enthusiast video card, they're very expensive, run any game at high, good for multiple monitors which are way bigger than average.
When did you buy the 4850, about 2 years ago it was in the upper-midrange. I would say it falls in the lower-midrange ATM. It still keeps up with the newer midrange cards like the 5750, GTS 450, GTS 250 etc despite its age.
On F1 I might try to download the manuals if they are around. I think PCs are quite good for simulations, due to the masses of keys available for stuff. I think a real F1 wheel is loaded with buttons, but am not sure how realistic this game is.
I am well happy about my graphics card now.
Should serve you well for at least another year, which is good considering that its over 2 years old already.
