-Now if you are a avid gamer you need a good joystick and a good game pad. This can mean life and death on a internet game. Its important to the gamer to have a controller that responds quick and is made well. There are a million different controllers out there. Which one is right for you?
-Most game controllers plug into the sound card via a game port on the back of the card. This is another aspect to look at. You want a good sound card that will support that new expensive controller you have.
-Joystick, if you are playing a flight simulator you will need a good joystick to engage a Jap Zero when the time of truth is upon you. Now how does this bad dude work? Again we talk about electric charges and resistors. When you move the stick forward you are applying a charge to a resistor in the base of the stick. When more force is applied forward the more charge that is added to the resistor. Sensors go and check the resistors for any changes in the sticks attitude. After this little task is taken care the software will interpret the signals sent by the sensors and then you go flying down on your game. Of course if you are like me you crash. The time when you run into problems on a joystick is CPU overload. The CPU has to pole the joystick port on the sound card to find out what the latest position is. Not only does the CPU have to do this but will also have to run support for those 3d graphics on the same game. The result is usually a slower running game with less frame rate. One way to help this out is a AGP (accelerated graphics port) Card. Look on your motherboard to see if you have one. This takes some of the load off the CPU.
-The last thing to consider about game controllers is to buy a digital one. Microsoft offers a digital one called Side Winder.
