PC Owners Thread

[StevenD]

Thanks for the input!

I looked at Assetto Corsa as well. I need to go through the list of tracks and cars on each one and see which one I want. I would prefer to buy one, play it until I get sick of it or "get to the end" and then I will switch and buy the other one.

What I really liked about Gran Turismo is you had to start out with a crappy little car and build your way up. But you could also go to the "Arcade Mode" and drive anything on any track just to play around.

I probably will never use more than one 4k monitor for playing games. Due to my desk arrangement, there is no way I can use three 32" monitors, and two is a weird setup for gaming. I don't even have a second monitor hooked up right now. The second monitor, once I buy it, will kind of be off to the side anyway. I already had the 960 when I bought the monitor. I never thought I would ever need anything more powerful than that. $700 for a high-end graphics card isn't out of the question. I can easily sell my 960 to recoup some of the cost, or hang on to it as a spare.

My current Windows PS has 32GB of RAM, but it's still only an i7-2600K that I bought on launch day. I have had a hankering to upgrade it, but I haven't really had a need to. I only run SSDs, and like I said, I have that GTX960. So, it should be fairly capable. I have been looking at dual Xeon builds for next time. Maybe next year.

My office is in shambles right now because I've been trying to figure out the best way to hook everything up (my main Windows PC, laptop, Mac and PS3) and be able to switch between things easily. I have discovered that a DisplayPort KVM that supports 3840x2160@60Hz doesn't even exist right now. Well, there is one, but its a "secure" KVM, so it cannot use my laptop docking station or a wireless keyboard and mouse.

I recently signed up for a Steam account. I read that it can get addictive, and take up a lot of space. Samsung 850 2TB drives are fairly reasonable, so I may pick one of those up just to store my gaming stuff and as temp space for video processing.

My fiance travels a LOT in the Fall, so I will have lots of time to play in the near future.

 

[king3pj]

Thanks for the input!

I looked at Assetto Corsa as well. I need to go through the list of tracks and cars on each one and see which one I want. I would prefer to buy one, play it until I get sick of it or "get to the end" and then I will switch and buy the other one.

What I really liked about Gran Turismo is you had to start out with a crappy little car and build your way up. But you could also go to the "Arcade Mode" and drive anything on any track just to play around.

I probably will never use more than one 4k monitor for playing games. Due to my desk arrangement, there is no way I can use three 32" monitors, and two is a weird setup for gaming. I don't even have a second monitor hooked up right now. The second monitor, once I buy it, will kind of be off to the side anyway. I already had the 960 when I bought the monitor. I never thought I would ever need anything more powerful than that. $700 for a high-end graphics card isn't out of the question. I can easily sell my 960 to recoup some of the cost, or hang on to it as a spare.

My current Windows PS has 32GB of RAM, but it's still only an i7-2600K that I bought on launch day. I have had a hankering to upgrade it, but I haven't really had a need to. I only run SSDs, and like I said, I have that GTX960. So, it should be fairly capable. I have been looking at dual Xeon builds for next time. Maybe next year.

My office is in shambles right now because I've been trying to figure out the best way to hook everything up (my main Windows PC, laptop, Mac and PS3) and be able to switch between things easily. I have discovered that a DisplayPort KVM that supports 3840x2160@60Hz doesn't even exist right now. Well, there is one, but its a "secure" KVM, so it cannot use my laptop docking station or a wireless keyboard and mouse.

I recently signed up for a Steam account. I read that it can get addictive, and take up a lot of space. Samsung 850 2TB drives are fairly reasonable, so I may pick one of those up just to store my gaming stuff and as temp space for video processing.

My fiance travels a LOT in the Fall, so I will have lots of time to play in the near future.

If you are set on playing at 4K the GTX 980 Ti is probably your best bet at $670. According to this review it averages 41 fps in Project Cars at 4K with Ultra settings. That's not the golden 60fps that most people shoot for but it's definitely playable and it will look amazing. If you are willing to bump a few of the settings down you should be able to hold 60fps easily.

The GTX Titan X is over $1000 but there is no improvement in Project Cars over the GTX 980 Ti because there is very little difference between those two cards besides the fact that the Titan has twice as much VRAM. The GTX 980Ti's 6GB of VRAM is still more than I have seen any current game ask for though.

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You could buy two AMD r9 390x GPUs for about $430 each and beat the GTX 980Ti pretty easily for any game that supports AMD Crossfire. Most AAA games get this support at some point but it's often not available on day one of a new release.

The reason I didn't mention AMD earlier is because none of their single cards can match the best Nvidia single cards and their driver support is sometimes slow. Everything I have read says Crossfire doesn't work well for Project Cars. Even though two 390x should be able to beat a 980Ti in theory the review I posted earlier has a benchmark showing no difference between one 290x or two in crossfire. It gets a little more than half as many FPS as the 980Ti in either case. This is a clear sign that they don't support Crossfire well.

Unfortunately you will see this in lots of games. Games that support Crossfire would be much better on two 390x GPUs but any game that doesn't will get destroyed by a 980Ti. The 980Ti will give you much more consistent performance from game to game.

 

[king3pj]

My post was getting pretty long so I thought I'd break this part into a second post.

My current Windows PS has 32GB of RAM, but it's still only an i7-2600K that I bought on launch day. I have had a hankering to upgrade it, but I haven't really had a need to. I only run SSDs, and like I said, I have that GTX960. So, it should be fairly capable. I have been looking at dual Xeon builds for next time. Maybe next year.

If you need dual Xeon for something else go for it. If you are thinking about doing it for better gaming performance there is no point though. Gaming benchmarks have shown that there is no difference between an i5 and an i7 at similar clock speeds. That's why I put a i5 4690k in my gaming build instead of an i7.

My PC has two GTX 970 GPUs in SLI. This two GPU setup is on par with a single GTX 980Ti I suggested for you as long as a game doesn't need more than the 4GB of VRAM in a 970. Since I play at 1080p this has never been a problem but I would notice a lack of VRAM in plenty of the new games at 4K.

Programs like HWInfo can show you usage percentages for each individual component in your PC. My SLI 970s can average 99% usage but I have never seen the 4 cores in my i5 average above 65% usage. This means that the SLI 970s are the bottleneck in my system, not the i5.

That being said, there is no such thing as having too much CPU power. If you need more juice than a current i5 for other tasks you will just be future proofing yourself for gaming for quite a while.

I recently signed up for a Steam account. I read that it can get addictive, and take up a lot of space. Samsung 850 2TB drives are fairly reasonable, so I may pick one of those up just to store my gaming stuff and as temp space for video processing.

My fiance travels a LOT in the Fall, so I will have lots of time to play in the near future.

Many of us get out of control buying games we will never play when they are dirt cheap in Steam sales, humble bundles, or other sales around the internet. I currently have 292 games in my Steam library and that's not counting games that use Origin, uPlay, or come DRM free from GOG. I have never played most of them.

You don't have to keep most of them installed though. My system has a 240GB SSD and a 2TB HDD. I keep my OS and 3 or 4 of the games I'm currently playing the most on my SSD. Everything else goes on the HDD. Most of my games aren't installed anywhere though.

All of these services make it easy to download and install your games as many times as you want as long as you have a decent internet connection. You can uninstall games you are done with to make space for new games. Since saves are stored in a different location you don't lose your them when you uninstall the game and most modern games support Steam's automatic cloud sync for game saves anyways.

 

[StevenD]

Thanks a lot! Much to ponder.

I need the CPU horsepower for a project down the road.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Also if you see a game that interests you, there's a chance me or king3pj have an extra key floating around that we can spare. Seriously, I have more keys than I can count and I won't get through them in my lifetime, so other than a brand new AAA release ask around because there's a chance you can get it for free (legitimately.)

 

[StevenD]

Also if you see a game that interests you, there's a chance me or king3pj have an extra key floating around that we can spare. Seriously, I have more keys than I can count and I won't get through them in my lifetime, so other than a brand new AAA release ask around because there's a chance you can get it for free (legitimately.)

Thanks! I should have participated in the Steam sale a few months ago.

 

[king3pj]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=164655181

Turns out me and yourbeliefs are not PC gaming experts. I just did a google search because I found it hard to believe that there was no private party chat system built into Steam. We were playing Left 4 Dead 2 and neither of us could find that option. Well it looks like there actually is a party chat system.

To be fair to our egos it isn't a very intuitive system. Apparently you have to start a text chat first and then you can click a drop down arrow from there to bring up more options. One of those options is voice chat. There is no option to just invite someone directly to voice chat from your friends list like you can on consoles. This would make way more sense than the current system.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Turns out me and yourbeliefs are not PC gaming experts

Speak for yourself, console peasant (says the guy with the inferior hardware)

So a new game has been released called "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes." It's literally a bomb defusal simulator that you play with 2 people: 1 person has to disarm the bomb while the other has the "instruction manual" that tells you how to do it. It sounds simple enough but there's many variations of bomb and there's NUMEROUS conditionals involved as well. It results in a VERY tense and fascinating gaming experience, which is enjoyable (presumably) to play and DEFINITELY to watch. I was watching this video with TB and Jesse Cox and was literally on the edge of my seat. I had to stop watching just because I didn't want an unfair advantage when I end up playing this game. This will be going on my wishlist. The developer says there won't be any discounts for 6 months other than the introductory 10%, so hopefully this'll come up for the Summer Sale.

 

[king3pj]

Speak for yourself, console peasant (says the guy with the inferior hardware)

So a new game has been released called "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes." It's literally a bomb defusal simulator that you play with 2 people: 1 person has to disarm the bomb while the other has the "instruction manual" that tells you how to do it. It sounds simple enough but there's many variations of bomb and there's NUMEROUS conditionals involved as well. It results in a VERY tense and fascinating gaming experience, which is enjoyable (presumably) to play and DEFINITELY to watch. I was watching this video with TB and Jesse Cox and was literally on the edge of my seat. I had to stop watching just because I didn't want an unfair advantage when I end up playing this game. This will be going on my wishlist. The developer says there won't be any discounts for 6 months other than the introductory 10%, so hopefully this'll come up for the Summer Sale.

Yeah, if it goes on sale it might be a fun co-op game. It's definitely unique.

 

[yourbeliefs]

The Steam Controller apparently just doesn't work for Macs. To make up for it, Valve is giving out a bunch of free games.

http://www.destructoid.com/steam-controllers-straight-up-do-not-work-on-macs-right-now-316322.phtml

 

[king3pj]

I got my Steam Link setup yesterday and tested it out. I'll preface this by saying I have an ideal setup for this device.I have gigabit ethernet run throughout my house so my PC and consoles have always been hard wired to the network. It was easy for me to connect the Steam Link by hard wire too.

So far I have played about an hour of Arkham Knight and an hour of Rocket League through the Steam Link and I'm really impressed. Both games streamed from my PC to the Link perfectly with no lag or any signs of compression that I could see from where I sit in my living room. I am playing with the highest in home streaming visual settings selected since I saw no signs of lag. There are lower visual settings available for people who are having trouble with lag.

If the two games I played are representative of what performance will be like on the Steam Link, Valve has done a great job of imitating the console experience. The updated big picture mode is on par with the consoles' UI in my opinion. I haven't had a chance to test Origin, uPlay, or DRM free games yet so I can't say for sure how smooth that experience is.

There are three things that pull me out of the illusion that I'm playing a console with better performance instead of a $50 streaming box that is just mirroring my PC's display.

First, the Steam Link doesn't wake my computer from sleep mode when I turn it on. I have to go upstairs from my living room to my home office to wake the PC before I am able to play. It would be nice if I could just hit the guide button on my controller and have the PC and Steam Link both wake from sleep instead of just the Link.

Second, Microsoft's Xbox One controller wireless dongle does not work on the Steam Link. You can use the Steam Controller and 360 controller wirelessly through their respective dongles or the PS4 controller through the Steam Link's built in bluetooth. Since the extra controller I bought for PC purposes is an Xbox One controller I have to plug it into the Steam Link via USB. According to what I read on the Steam forums, Valve planned to support the Xbox One wireless dongle but Microsoft is taking a hard stance that the wireless dongle is only to be supported on Windows 10 devices.

Lastly, the Steam Link currently only supports stereo audio. I have an nice 5.1 audio setup in my living room and I have been using it to play my video games in surround sound since I got my Xbox 360. I'm using my receiver's Pro Logic support to simulate surround sound but it's not as good as the real thing. I hope that is addressed soon.


Pro tip for Nvidia users. You have to turn off Nvidia's Shadowplay game DVR features if you want to use the hardware encoding chip built into your GPU. Even if you have hardware encoding selected in the Steam in home streaming settings it will use your CPU for software encoding if Shadowplay is enabled because the GPU's on board video encoding chip is being used for game DVR duties.

Before I discovered this my audio in Arkham Knight was out of sync with the video. Sound effects were noticeably behind the on screen action. The video did look fine while using software encoding but if you are playing a game that is highly CPU dependent it will hurt your performance since in home streaming would be taking up valuable CPU cycles.

 

[king3pj]

So I didn't really have any reason for doing this because my system was already performing well but I like to tinker with my PC so I did it anyways. I overclocked my i5-4690k from the stock 3.5GHz to 4.5GHz. I stress tested for about 3 hours and my temperatures are still well within the safe range and my system is completely stable.

I should note that I am using an aftermarket CPU cooler and it's not recommended to overclock like this on the stock Intel cooler. I also have a motherboard that was designed for overclocking but that is mostly a byproduct of me needing a better motherboard for SLI purposes.

It probably won't make much difference in gaming performance right now since the i5's are more than capable of running any current game at stock speeds. It may help me stay above 60FPS in future games that ask for more CPU power or i7s though. Either way this cooler allows me to run a full 1GHz faster and still maintain the same temperature most people get at stock speeds on the stock cooler so there is no real downside.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Thanks to Just Cause 3 you can do this now (slightly NSFW)

 

[king3pj]

Is it weird that seeing stuff like that makes me want to play the game even more?

 

[yourbeliefs]

Seeing stuff like that makes me want to be an NPC in that game.

 

[yourbeliefs]

PSA.. new Steam Sale Buyer's Guide has been released.

 

[yourbeliefs]

If you've been wondering why Valve has been pushing their Authenticator App so much, it's because account theft is becoming a bigger and bigger problem on Steam.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/19618/

 

[yourbeliefs]

FYI: If you purchased Arkham Knight on PC you got all the other Arkham games in your library. I'm in the mood for more beat em up action so I'm installing Origins now

 

[king3pj]

FYI: If you purchased Arkham Knight on PC you got all the other Arkham games in your library. I'm in the mood for more beat em up action so I'm installing Origins now

I already had them all except for Blackgate which is a port from 3DS/Vita. Not super exciting. I never finished Origins but I played some of it while I was waiting for Arkham Knight to be fixed. It's hard to go back after seeing Arkham Knight in action but it did have some cool boss fights.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Sony is awful in terms of account security. You'd THINK after being the victim of the biggest entertainment data breach in history that they'd get their asses in gear and lock down their stuff, but apparently not. That's why I have NO financial account information with them. If I want to buy something, I go to Amazon and get a Wallet code, and then apply it to my account and make the purchase. Seeing as their "account resolution" process is basically "Pay us or lose your account/purchases" with no sort of recourse, I'm not taking any unnecessary chances.