Any PC Gamers Around?

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by weederr33

Ah, games of yesteryear. It was great when games gave you little to no help or tips.

Sierra On-Line games were the "best" at that. Per Al Lowe they sold more hint books for some of their games than they sold copies of the games.

[Captain Snooze]

I'm guessing the game will be over 12GB in size and if I don't get at least 14 hours of game play before finishing the main mission I will be disappointed.
"obviously the game is big" Todd Howard.

[soundman98]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Sierra On-Line games were the "best" at that. Per Al Lowe they sold more hint books for some of their games than they sold copies of the games.

Some of that was in the era where cd-key sharing was common as well. Knew plenty of people that would pool money for a single legal copy, then all used the same cd key for access

[weederr33]

Ooof, yeah that's at least gonna use 16gb of VRAM

[weederr33]

Also, GN addressed the Gigabyte backdoor issue and he didn't go on his tirade over it. Which sucks cuz it's a pretty big deal.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by soundman98

Some of that was in the era where cd-key sharing was common as well. Knew plenty of people that would pool money for a single legal copy, then all used the same cd key for access

The Sierra games, when they came on floppies, used a less sophisticated method where you had to look up something in the manual. I remember looking at the images in the manual trying to figure out the subtle differences between some of the images.

[Captain Snooze]

System Shock Remake
51 hours and I don't mind admitting I have resorted to using a guide. Not a detailed walk through, just the goals on a level. Because there are no waymarks/arrows pointing the way one has to pay attention to audio logs to find out what you have to do. Given that I don't pay much attention to audio logs I have been bogged down a couple of times not knowing what it is I'm supposed to be doing.

I'm so impressed that the original came out in 1994. It must have revolutionary at the time.

[Captain Snooze]

System Shock Remake
80 hours. I'm getting close to finishing the game but it wouldn't surprise me if it took another 10 hours. I can't imagine trying to play the game without help. It would have been so tedious, repetitive. I'm glad I'm playing now and not way back when.

In other developments give the dearth of games I've been wanting to play it comes as a bit of a surprise that there are 2&1/2 games that are now on the agenda: Starfield, new STALKER and Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty. I give it a 1/2 because it's an expansion. Because of this I've decided to upgrade my computer with the exception of GPU and PSU. I was quite lazy and didn't do a lot of research; I gave the computer shop a list of parts, with some preferences, and they will get back to me soon.
The list is
Windows 10 (11 can wait)
DDR5 16GB x 2 (6000 or 6600MHz)
Motherboard? <- I have no idea, they suggested an Asrock. I said fine.
AMD CPU? <- After a bit of discussion it was decided upon AMD Ryzen7 7700 (not X)
1TB M.2 SSD They pulled a Crucial 3500Mhz SSD off the shelf and I said no no no, I want something fast. They suggested a different model of Crucial or a Samsung. Not being familiar with Crucial I've just had a look at their website and omg! They have an SSD rated at Read speeds up to 12,8000MB/s & Write speeds up to 11,800MB/s. I've never heard of such speeds before. I'll be right back.

[Captain Snooze]

Ok, just having spent 10 minutes researching ssd I am now an expert.
Those insane speeds are for sequential reads and writes. Linus says that random reads and writes happen in typical day to day use. Also, if the cache fills speeds drop significantly.
Ah well, back to more conventional speeds for me.

[cjd]

Originally Posted by Captain Snooze

Ok, just having spent 10 minutes researching ssd I am now an expert.
Those insane speeds are for sequential reads and writes. Linus says that random reads and writes happen in typical day to day use. Also, if the cache fills speeds drop significantly.
Ah well, back to more conventional speeds for me.

Attachment 221136

Texture loading and such are (typically) sequential I believe. Done right anyway. So sometimes maybe if you're lucky.
I'm tempted to upgrade the write cache in my nas... It is the current backup bottleneck maxing around 3.8gb/s but is SATA SSD...
Also, heat destroys those numbers.

[Captain Snooze]

Originally Posted by cjd

Texture loading and such are (typically) sequential I believe.

This is a theoretical concern for me. That is, I'm going to get new parts and be happy with the result. There will be no "test driving" components to see which is better. A 6500MHz SSD is only slower when compared to something faster.

Computer philosophy 101.




Oh no, I'm now fantasizing about a 27" OLED.

[Sasquachulator]

computer stuff always advertises the maximum values for stuff, because just like the Horsepower wars, higher numbers = better.

[Captain Snooze]

Originally Posted by Sasquachulator

because just like the Horsepower wars, higher numbers = better.

Uh oh, I can feel a mega pedant attack coming on, no no no, tell it to stop, arrgghhh.
I'm suggesting a pixel response time of 0.03 sec is better than a response time of 0.05 sec.
A 0-100 time of 5 seconds is better than 7 seconds.

[cjd]

To a point... It matters. Sim racing glitches if texture loading is too slow whenever someone enters or leaves the event. Though I think even gen3 speeds were adequate to make it inconsequential. So yeah. Get good parts and have fun.