Dirty Keyboards, Gaudy LEDs, and Cheeto Dust: Let's Talk PC Gaming

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Dirty Keyboards, Gaudy LEDs, and Cheeto Dust: Let's Talk PC Gaming

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I'm planning to put together a new desktop setup in June as a little reward for myself. While I know more than the average dope about computers, I've never assembled a PC myself and often get confused reading the performance specs of graphics cards. That being said, should I start thinking about assembling my set now, or is there some highly anticipated card being released within the next six months that will become the de facto standard?

Also, important as Power Supplies are, I think it would help if the OP added in some can't-fail PSUs and their manufacturers to the first post. I know that Corsair is generally a very reliable brand, so I guess I'll be going with one of those!

# ¿ Dec 19, 2010 16:54

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 15:50

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Do any of you have experience buying from ibuypower.com or any other companies that sell all-in-one gaming desktops? I know the general consensus is "just buy your own parts and assemble the computer yourself" but I'm always wary of screwing up and getting a case that's too tiny for the MB, a power supply that won't fit into the system, etc.

Alternately, would I just be able to post my budget and what I want, and some more knowledgeable people point me in the right direction? FWIW I'm not clueless with computers, just paranoid about messing up getting the parts individually.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2011 21:27

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Hed posted:

Warning: anecdotal posting ahead.
Please don't do this. My father ordered a machine from ibuypower and now I'm stuck consulting with him on it. Sure, you could probably do better than he did at picking out a computer from them considering he purchased a riced out model instead of something that is stable and loving tested like an HP or Dell workstation especially since his help (me) lives half a continent away. I spent 90 minutes on the phone yesterday helping him fix a problem with his RAID 0 SSDs. This isn't the first time this has happened, though. He's had problems with his SATA junk before and sent the computer back. Their connector wires were falling out. Their response? GLUE the loving connectors back on.

Seriously, in my opinion you have a far better chance of not loving up if you just roll your own and stick to the parts picking thread. In the end if something doesn't work at least you can deal with the offending hardware manufacturer directly instead of getting lovely service from a lovely, riced-out reseller.

Yeah, after reading the recommendations in this thread I went on over to the SH/SC Parts Picking thread and found their parts + installation guides to be way more accessible and useful than how I remembered them a few years ago. Everything is generally simple to understand and I think I could pretty easily build my own PC.

Welp, time to start setting aside some money now. I want this one to last so I'm willing to drop a little extra on a good SSD and video card.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2011 22:06

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Forgive my ignorance, but is there some industrial reason why computers have become so stupidly overpowered for PC game software? It used to be that you'd need a system two years better than your own to run the AAA+ PC titles of the day, now it seems like any schmuck can run MW2 on full blast.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2011 01:57

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

Because the consoles that they games are developed to be cross-platform with are 6 years old.

Well that makes sense. OTOH I could actually play ME2 on my six-year old system so it's not all bad!

# ¿ Sep 14, 2011 02:00

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Death Himself posted:

GW commissioned a Warhammer game from Blizzard but pulled funding near the end of development because they do that on almost every single Warhammer game for no reason. Seriously look up the history of some of the other Warhammer games like the RTS on Playstation or Warhammer Online, they pulled the funding right at the end.

Anyway, Blizzard was basically "gently caress that noise" and had one guy quickly poo poo out some fresh lore while they redid a few art assets so they could launch it.

And that's where Warcraft came from.

They were supposed to make a Warhammer 40k game too but of course GW backed out of that as well. Blizzard decided to make it anyway because of the success of Warcraft.

Has this ever been officially documented, anywhere? People repeat this story all the time but I've never read it from a reputable source.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2011 17:52

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

NihilCredo posted:

Jesus. I haven't seen a counter-argument this bad since I last read D&D.

---

I think I actually understand many of Blizzard's choices a bit better since I realised one thing. When Diablo came out all those years ago, it was practically the only game in its genre. When Diablo II came out, there had been a few clones (Nox, etc.), but they were all basically subpar full-priced games, which could be beaten by making the same thing but with Blizzard polish and tuning.

But nowadays? There are competitors for the Skinner box / loot-whoring game at practically every single pricing and commitment level. They range from crappy free browser games, to less crappy free MMOs, to good indie games that still cost 25% of a full-price game.

Blizzard can't compete with those. Blizzard is a behemoth that has a reputation for such things as insanely obsessive QA testing and balancing and top-notch (if uninspired) art assets. They don't have the extra revenue stream of Valve to try and make Diablo F2P and see what happens. They've got to price it at $60.

And that poses a question: who's willing to pay sixty loving dollars or euros for an extraordinarily polished loot-whoring game? The answer is: the hardcores. The addicts. The d2jsp.org mutant fiends. They're the ones Diablo 3 is aimed squarely at, because the casuals like me and many of you, if we get the urge to farm some mobs one day a month or so, we just pick up Torchlight or sign up for a Korean MMO or even simply browse Kongregate.

So you have a game that sacrifices the excitement of picking upgrades, in exchange for allowing continuous customisation even at max level. That sacrifices the ability to wank around offline, in exchange for allowing you to know that that Godplate of the Whale you spend four months farming for (or burnt the price of an indie game on) is something no mere, filthy casual could get by simply playing offline and using an editor. (Of course piracy was also a big factor in the always-on DRM, but I think Blizzard knows that that will eventually be cracked too.) That puts what little mood and story this series had left on the back-burner, since ganking Diablo will be something its target audience will do every Saturday, not the epic conclusion of the arc of an entire game.

After years of the web whining at how "casuals" were ruining their experience, I think we might be actually seeing the first time that such a high-profile game is taking multiple kinds of backlash because it's just too hardcore for most of the people who played its predecessors (i.e. the people who played them for a year or two and then moved on, instead of collecting fifty toons with max gear each).

I feel like this post was made in some alternate reality because none of the statements here are true.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2012 16:36

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Also PSO2 but god knows if that will ever be localized.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2012 00:26

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Playing through Tomb Raider (2013) now and it's definitely one sweet-looking game. TressFX might be my favorite graphical perk since ambient occlusion became a big deal. I can get 60+ fps with TressFX on and ultra everything else by setting Shadows to normal (don't even really recognize the difference) and turning off Post Processing, which as far as I can tell just adds a ton of motion blur and is a big performance hit for no reason. Oh yeah, and the game is fun to play too.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2014 22:16

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

According to some GPU tweaking guides I've read, TressFX on certain AMD-based card makes Lara's hair flicker around uncontrollably, which while sounding very funny does not happen on my GTX 760.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2014 22:24

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Oh yeah, is Tomb Raider one of those games that will let me go back and get 100% when I complete the main story or is there a point of no return where I can't zip around and look for crap anymore?

# ¿ Feb 19, 2014 03:47

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I got Assassin's Creed 4 free with my GTX 760, which when cranked up to high-ultra settings is definitely among the best-looking games I've ever seen. I don't think anything on the market that isn't insanely expensive can play it @ constant 60fps with everything turned up to full.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2014 22:11

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

DA:I is pretty good, if you like pretty graphics and walking around maps clearing out quests then there is a ton of content. There are some complaints about the controls from cRPG grognards but I personally haven't experienced that much trouble besides sometimes accidentally attacking things I don't want to. Again, the game is really pretty. It blows Black Flag out of the water if your computer can handle it, and Black Flag was the best-looking game I've seen to date.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2014 14:34

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Do you think a GTX 970 is worth upgrading to from a 760, or should I stick it out until GSync becomes widely available on new cards?

# ¿ Dec 3, 2014 14:53

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Thinking about maybe upgrading my vidcard to get the most out of latest gen games (Witcher 3, Dragon Age).

i5 4570 3.2 Ghz
GTX 760
16 GB RAM

I was thinking about grabbing a GTX 970 but I'm wondering if my processor is too much of a bottleneck to run everything at 60+ FPS Ultra. If I can't hit 60 with just the card then I'd rather wait until I can upgrade both the card and processor. Anybody with a similar setup want to weigh in?

# ¿ Jul 13, 2015 19:49

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

This would just be at 1080p, sorry.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2015 20:20

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Dodoman posted:

Your CPU is fine, get the 970. If you're not averse to AMD then the new 390 Fury (not the FuryX) is a pretty good buy as well.

I'm looking at the head-to-head benchmark comparisons now. Is it pretty much expected that the 390 will begin to edge out the 970 more when/if the driver support is there? It seems like the GTX still holds its own on the games I actually play with the added benefit of not having to worry about reconfiguring all my settings, but if there's more upside to the 390 then maybe I should go with that.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2015 10:32

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Has anyone had trouble getting their PS4 controller to work on PC since the Windows 10 upgrade? Using the DS4 method here.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2015 11:18

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

You can download Xpadder to map your controller to kb+m, I'm not sure if there's a version compatible with Windows 10 if you've already upgraded though.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2015 23:22

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Is the GTX 970 still the best price:performance card in the $300 range, assuming I just want to play all current-gen games maxed @ 1920x1080?

# ¿ Mar 5, 2016 14:13

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 15:50

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

PC Gaming Megathread: I bought a $600 video card and Deus Ex has never looked better.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2016 23:13

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Dirty Keyboards, Gaudy LEDs, and Cheeto Dust: Let's Talk PC Gaming