Topic: PC Gaming

Well, the whole Unity transaction debacle has ended Bobby Kotick's reign has gaming's biggest douche bag.

All hail John Riccitiello.

Given that John Riccitiello was previously CEO of Electronic Arts for a while, I'd find it hard to believe that this is his first appearance on that list.

You’re welcome.

I tend to upgrade my main PC every 5 years or so and we're now past year 4 so I'm starting to look at where I go next. It's kinda interesting. So when I built this box I went B450M, Ryzen R5 3600X and 1660Ti. So I'm kinda getting close to the point where, usually, I can double my performance by upgrading. And on the CPU I certainly can..... but it also kinda poses a bit of a problem

This motherboard supports Ryzen 5000 series CPUs which are still available. I could drop a 5900X in this which would double my core count. And according to open benchmark it would more than halve the compile time (which matters for me being a developer). My dilemma is it's like $580AU to grab this new CPU new at retail. Maybe $500AU or so if you gamble with used. But if I do that I'm still on DDR4 and PCIe Gen 4

My alternative is to.... see where Ryzen 8000 series lands, maybe swap back to Intel even. Probably end up spending ~$900AU upgrading CPU/MoBo/RAM and getting more or less the same performance as the 5900X (less cores but IPC/Clock to compensate). And then probably shuffle my 3600X components down to my server which is currently on an i5-4590. Does my file/plex/database/whatever sever NEED a 3600X? ..... no. but it wouldn't hurt

..... I guess I'll just wait and see how Ryzen 8000 looks. Also when new Switch hardware comes out and how much it costs

So Cities Skylines 2. Actually pretty good and a huge improvement over the first. If you can ignore the performance issues and bugs that are in the launch version of the game. Though it does kinda make me re-think what my upgrade path from my current machine will be

I might have to go for a new GPU, 1660Ti isn't quite upto the task anymore I don't think. Which annoys me because, frankly, there aren't any particularly good options for upgrades. On paper the 4060Ti 16GB is the obvious choice but..... for the price? .... ugh.... doesn't really feel like enough of an upgrade for a $820AU spend. I mean compared to how far $820AU would go if I put it to networking/storage or to peripherals or just entirely new hardware

Come on Intel and AMD, can you come out with something competitive and shake up the industry pricing please?

How effective are cooling pads when it comes to laptops? When playing Madden my CPU can get way to hot unless I sit in an awkward position to raise the computer up. Would a cooling pad help with that?

@BobTheBunkerGuy
Hmm, so its a wildcard? I may get one on black friday if there is a good price.

PLEASE BE REAL

@Ralizah It's real:

@Grumblevolcano Apparently it's a limited thing. Some warning would have been nice FFS

https://www.theverge.com/23951655/steam-deck-oled-review

OMG this sounds amazing.

@JaxonH Dunno if you'll see this, buddy, but this sounds like you should be all over it.

Another post in my series of "damn I kinda want to upgrade my PC" posts. Cities Skylines 2 post launch updates, performance has improved significantly. I mean it's not perfect but it's certainly playable. So my rush for a new GPU has calmed somewhat. However, I am finding that I'm increasingly playing games on my PC over the Switch. I know to some saying the Switch is underpowered on here is the equivalent to personally attacking their mother but.... the Switch is underpowered... and extra power does improve the enjoyability of games....

Is the 1660Ti I have sitting under my TV enough? I'd say probably yes with one huge caveat. The cooler on my card is very small, very cheap and very loud. Which means I end up running games with hard framerate caps and low settings just to make sure that my GPU doesn't really have to work. I could get some kind of after-market cooler but seems a bit like throwing good money after bad. Not ideal. So I think I might just bite the bullet and pick up a new GPU

I don't like the way NVidia has been pushing prices up but, if I'm being honest, I care about power efficiency far more than any reviewers do. And Nvidia is so far ahead on power efficiency it's not even a competition. And the same is true for the 40 series. Despite the product stack being completely nonsense, the naming is very misleading, it's still a huge jump in power efficiency.

So in my mind I'm tossing up two options. Either I go cheaper and get the 4060 which in some workloads probably gives me a 2X framerate boost but with no change in the amount of VRAM. Arguably defeating a lot of the point of having the extra horsepower, I mean what's the point of having power to render at higher resolutions if you need to wait for system memory to load higher resolution assets. Or I spend a few hundred more and get a 4060Ti 16GB which would actually allows me to run some more modern titles at higher settings

I got very close to spending almost 4 grand on a new PC during Black Friday, however, my understanding is Nvidia is doing some sort of event in January, I believe the 50 series isn't slated to come out until towards the end of 2025, but if in January they announce a 4080 ti / super, I would have been really pissed off spending all that money so I figured I'd just wait.

To be honest, my PC does the job still for most things. Starfield ran terribly on my PC, but that seems to be more on their end. The Fomo really comes more from things like Cyberpunk. That game is very well optimised from a performance perspective, but my rig cannot handle raytracing unless I wanna play in under 30 fps (which you absolutely do not want to do in a FPS) and DLSS 3 is exclusive to the 40 series, so while I can hit like 100 fps on my PC with RTX and a mixture of settings, I am aware the whole time I am playing Phantom Liberty that at least from a visuals perspective, I am playing a lesser version of the game.

New plan:

My Christmas bonus for this year is enough to cover a 4070 so, I'm just going to pull the trigger on a 4070. Pricey? Sure. But a GPU upgrade is a once every 5 year thing. It's going to be paired with my 10th Gen i3 in my shiny little ITX case which.... is a bit of a lopsided config but I intend to crank the graphical detail. Should be ok for now. The 1660Ti I have in that build? Moves across to my main PC with the Ryzen 3600X. This is step 1, first upgrade

For late-late next year, assuming I find myself with the space to do the same, I go for a CPU upgrade. My trusty old mATX Ryzen 3600X build gets shuffled down to live under my TV with the 4070. The i3 shuffles down to take on Plex/Docker/Unraid duties, retiring my 4th gen i5. Then I think I build a new PC with a high core count CPU in the ITX case that's currently under my TV. Depends on what's good at the time.

After a long time in cs go, I'm now in cs2 results

I went cheap and got a 4060Ti 8GB. Was one of the higher end SKUs with a nicer cooler, complete overkill for what it is but it was heavily discounted and was the cheapest SKU. And honestly, it's a pretty significant jump from the 1660Ti. Obviously it pushes more frames which is nice but also because it's so power efficient and the cooler is so overkill, thing is pretty much silent. Can't hear it. Fantastic

Am I taking full advantage of the 4K/120Hz OLED it's hooked upto? No, not by any stretch. But honestly when you throw VRR onto it and render at 1080p with details cranked? It's plenty good enough. Haven't played that much yet but Hogwarts Legacy at 1080p with pretty much everything cranked, DLSS off, RT off, 1080p, not sure what the framerate was but it was smooth. Horizon Zero Dawn? Forget the settings but was sliders to the right for days, 4K, above 60fps

This thing is paired with an i3-10105F BTW, super low power part. Doesn't really hold it back in game, especially if you're turning up the details and are happy with 40-70fps, but certainly the weaker aspect of this setup. Storage is a bit undercooked also, decent 512GB M.2 drive from a few years back and a 2TB SATA SSD for mass storage. But still, good enough

The 1660Ti has been shuffled back to my main PC, Ryzen 5 3600X, 32GB RAM. Plenty good enough for what I do with it still. Certainly do more CPU heavy stuff on this box. The plan is still to eventually upgrade this to a new CPU probably around 2025. i3 goes to the Unraid server, 3600X pairs with the 4060Ti and goes under the TV. Though that's a while off yet

Next upgrade is probably storage, probably a 2TB SSD in my main box. The 512GB SSD I have in there now is kinda tight for space and I'm leaning a bit too much on an old mechanical 2TB drive for mass storage. So replace them both with a single 2TB NVMe SSD and then both the 512GB SSD and 2TB HDD migrate to my Unraid Server. I think I'll probably also make the jump to 2.5Gbps network gear also at some point. But yeah, probably not many "gaming" upgrades for a bit. Pretty happy with the setup I have now

@skywake
Have you considered a steam deck oled?

It's complely and utterly become my only method of PC gaming. In fact, between it and Switch OLED, it's all I play now.

I think you'd really love it. You wouldn't have to give up your beefy PC either. But on the side, it's sooooo good alongside Switch OLED.

30g lighter and 50% longer battery life with larger OLED screen makes all the difference. Now it feels like a viable handheld and not a heavy device that dies in 1.5 hrs. Now even the most demanding AAA games get near 3 hrs. It feels much closer to Switch battery life.

I got Prime Trilogy running in Primehack with dual analog gyro aiming, HD texture pack mods and HD text and menu mods, it's insanely awesome. Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, despite being "unsupported" per Valve, runs great with unofficial patch installed and gyro aiming. Pillars of Eternity 2, even without controller support, plays magnificently with community configurations for controls.

I slapped a 2 TB ssd in ($130 on Aliexpress) and a 1.5 TB micro SD, and it's become the Terminator of gaming devices. Should look into it, especially as someone with a passion for PC like you are.

@JaxonH
Valve doesn't sell it to Australians. There are ways to get around that but you end up paying reseller prices so the value equation doesn't quite land in the same spot

Certainly a path I want to go down eventually. But not right now. Between my Anbernic 35XX+ on the go and the 4060Ti at home I have both ends covered fairly well. With Switch sitting somewhere in the middle

Honestly, if Valve or someone else was to release a cheap, GB sized device that had access to my Steam library of Indies? That's the device I'd be after

The upcoming Ayaneo Flip looks a lot like the Nintendo DS

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ayaneo-flip-world-s-1st-du...