VGCulture - Graphics on PC Games

So I saw this on Josué Pereira's "Nerf Now!" comic today:

Source: http://nerfnow.com/comic/image/457

When I play game on PC, it's not so much a matter of reaching the FPS rate of 30 or 60 as much as it is in making the game playable, especially for a First-Person Shooter.  I generally turn the settings as high as possible and look at what the graphics would look like if I had it on the highest.  I would stare in awe for several minutes and once I'm done drooling over the graphics I set it back to a setting that allows me to play without too much lag.  If I'm playing an RPG or something non-action intensive, I sacrifice a bit of a smoother gameplay for nicer graphics.  But there are times where it can't be ignored and I have to put the settings all the way down to avoid graphics lag in order to play at my best such as competitive First-Person shooters, racing, or anything that requires immediate action.  I love gaming on PC for many reasons (lots of freedom with the data, all sorts of peripherals that will work, controls more suited for certain games such as FPS and RTS, largest library of games out of all the systems) but the biggest problems I always face when playing on PC is incompatibility and games that run on settings my computer can't handle and would have to turn down in order to play effectively (I play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on 640 x 480, that's pretty bad).  The strange thing is, it hasn't driven me away from PC gaming.  I've come to accept the limitations of my laptop and tower and play games at lower settings and perhaps go back to them when I get a better computer to play them again in the best settings (the way they were meant to be played).  I heard Nvidia patented a new computer chip that allows games to be loaded instantaneously and have zero graphics lag.  I'm willing to wait for chips like those to come out and invest in those technologies to create the best gaming PC I could possibly have (I've always had average to low-end computers in the past).  I think the worst thing in buying a PC game is finding out that the graphics are so laggy or problematic that it's unplayable, even at the lowest settings.  Other times, it's finding out that there's a game breaking bug that prevents the player from even playing (I'm looking at you Red Faction Armageddon!).  EDIT: I meant Red Faction: Guerrilla, haha.