COMPUTER EXPERTS PLEASE HELP: Does playing computer games affect the performance of a computer?

Question

I play computer games just a little too much (1-2 hours per day) and my dad says it's ruining the computers performance. Is that true? We also have a whole bunch of songs, photos, and movies on our computer that has 180 GB of memory. My dad spends 1-2 hours on news websites everyday to. Please help.

Answer 1

Well, Bah Humbug to Dad! Playing computer games does no more damage to the computer than spending hours on a news website. Maybe 1-2 hours a day is a bit much, and you might put your time to better advantage studying, but ruining the computer performance? Pure hogwash, and tell Dad I said so. And I'll put up my 25 years of computer experience against his any day!

Answer 2

If you mean does having a game installed hurt your computer's performance, the answer is no. It will only use up hard drive space for the installed files. If you mean when the game is running, will it slow down other applications, the answer is yes, and it varies depending upon how memory/processor intensive the game is. If you are playing Half-life 2 or some other new-age shooter with great graphics, this will really cripple your system if doing other things simulatenously (like downloading songs, etc)

Answer 3

Unless the game is downloading viruses or deleting a bunch of your files, it is not hurting the computer beyond taking up space upon the initial installation.

While actually -running- the game uses computer resources, after exiting the program everything returns to normal. Your dad's browser uses the same resources the game does, just less of them at a time, as it doesn't take near as much processing power to put some text on a page as it does for your elf to fire flaming arrows into a horde of orcs.

Answer 4

Graphics intensive computer games require much higher computing resources than most other applications do. If you use a home PC (and not a gaming PC), your games could stretch the limited resources of your PC, affecting its performance.

180 GB is only the storage capacity of your hard disk drive. The processor, RPM of the hard disk drive, the RAM and cache memory are placed under severe burden by graphics intensive games, due to memory overloads and overflows.

Answer 5

Hi! have a good day!! I will answer your question at my own ideas and experience if you believe me or not, now here's my answer - playing computer games does not affect your computer performance especially that you have a greater memory but some computers may be affected if they have a low memory but for your pc I think that is good for gaming. Computer performance are only affected if there are many programs installed in your PC

Answer 6

You have not given your RAM and processor speed. But I can presume that 1-2 hours a day is OK. Games do not remain in the background, they are on-demand software, so they put pressure on memory only when they are running. If you have 512 MB RAM or above (1024 MB is recommended), then there is no need to worry.
And as for dads and moms, it is time they realise that we are not foolish kids, after all.
:-)

Answer 7

A computers life is only so long. Be it your processor, ram, hard drive everything has a life span.
Im sure hes tacking it just as much as you are and if you ask me surfing the web is more risky then playing a game. If your installing and uninstalling a bunch of crap just be sure to cleandisk and defrag it every now and then. to be safe get your dad to do..... Blame cant be placed for weird errors(because ive seen some strange stuff over the years)
Try to get your dad to clean disk it often if he surfs, it cleans out all the pics, headers and crap that the comp has to download to veiw every page.

Answer 8

The songs, photos, movies and websites are more likely to slow down the PC than the games.

Answer 9

all saved media slows ur computer down like music,pictures and videos

Answer 10

It depends on what game it is, like sometimes games WILL slow your system down...