Should I bother with current PC games given my PC's limits?
 

I really want to get games like Bioshock and Quake Wars, but I have doubts about my computer's ability to run them, or at least to run them well. I'm not sure exactly what you would need to know in order to answer my question, so I'll throw out that I have a Dell Inspiron laptop that I bought new about a year ago with Windows XP, an intel duocore processor, and what I believe to be a middle-of-the-line ATI Radeon graphics card (If there's somewhere on my computer where I should be able to find out its number, please tell me because I'm sure that info's useful).

To give a reference, my computer can run Doom 3 on the medium graphics setting, albeit with a little bit of choppiness. What do you think I could expect with a more recent game? How much more demanding have the graphics become?

I think the real question is, "Should you bother with current PC games other than World of Warcraft?" :O

Not into that stuff. Sorry. :(

I don't think you can.

DirectX 10 and Vista are probably gonna be mandatory for Bioshock and Quake Wars and I don't think you'll be able to run any of them. But get lots of RAM and stuffs.

I don't think DX10 is gonna be mandatory for anything developed outside of Microsoft for quite some time until Microsoft gives up and releases DX10 for XP. The attach rate of Vista is pathetic and many stores are packaging new PCs with XP again due to people avoiding the Vista boxes.

And to answer your actual question, you will be able to run a lot of new games just fine, but most modern games are leaning so heavily on HDR lighting, AGEIX physics, and other new fancy effects that absolutely require 3D card support, to the point where the game looks like trash without these options on (see: Oblivion).

If you already have a dual-core processor, you probably only need to upgrade your video card, and there are tons of good ones in the $200 range. http://www.newegg.com

I like Vista :\

Bioshock is THE scariest game I have ever played. When you know that System Shock 2 and Bioshock go hand in hand, it's a terrifying experience.

It's heavily intensive in the graphics department, so I'd do as the Choj says.

At the very least, there are benchmarking utilities out there to see how your system stacks up, i.e. 3Dmark.

Update, in case anyone gives a shit:

So I decided to bite the bullet and just buy Bioshock. I do have to run it on almost the lowest setting, but it doesn't look as bad as I thought it would. It looks like a kick-ass last-gen game instead of a kick-ass current-gen game, which is alright with me. I know I'm missing a lot of the experience it has to offer, but it's better than simply missing out on this amazing game.

Cool beans.