Breaking Dad's Big Bad Gaming Discussion - For all things to do with PC Gaming !

[BreakingDad]

I thought I'd make a gaming thread as I tend to go off topic on other threads on occasion due to my obsession.

So in making this thread there are no offtopics as long as it's kept to gaming, be it playing, hardware, voice coms, vr, lans or anything else to do with Gaming.

Thought it could be "interesting"


I'm 51 and consider myself a pretty hardcore Overwatch Player, I run a discord server with about 60 members of varying ages and skill.
We play other games as well, but largely Overwatch.,

Some say I should grow up, but others say why the hell not.

The people in Discord I have met some in RL, others I have gamed with for upwards of 15 years in some cases and not met in RL, but we are almost family.
We even had people come over from Europe for Lan Parties when I was younger.
It's great and my spiritual home, along with this place, with like minded people from around the EU. I used to play CS and Wow with some of them

It's my main hobby and has been such the BBC Micro in 1981, followed by an Amiga, an Atari ST, Various Consoles and then PC's.
I think now I will be gaming till I die, don't like it, then GTFO (as they say (think that's a bit out of date now)). Even my 80 year old father still plays Chuckie Egg!

My love of Networking came from gaming, back in the day when I had an apartment and we would hook up through a Windows NT box with ICS to play Command and Conquer and Quake. Network Games Blew My Mind.

In fact my whole family are gamers, my eldest son a very hardcore wow player, my younger son into everything gaming, my wife into light wow and daughter a roblox player.

Rest assured though we do not just sit in the dark 24/7, we all have jobs, and go out into nature, climbing, skating and gardening as well (That is important to mention)

So my current rig is the worst in the family ( i sadly put my kids needs first), I'm pushing it to the limit to run OW at 144fps, looking at upgrading soon.

So that's part of my gaming story, don't want to bore you to much:

What's your gaming story?

 

[Paliv]

I have a very similar story, but a few years behind. I got into gaming on an old 486 on games my dad programmed when he was learning to code. From there I moved onto shareware games and eventually got into WarCraft (the original rts) and console games.

I consider myself kind of immersed in the culture. I follow the industry, the journalists, the streamers. I used to play every major release I could get my hands on, but now whatever I have time for. I love a good online FPS and have had some good times with Overwatch, but I’m definitely more eclectic. I also developed my interest in networking from gaming. I never had much luck finding a community of gamers to play with, but do play online quite a bit. I’m 37 now with 2 young kids, but gaming is still my main hobby. Recently, in 2020, I got lucky to get parts for a pretty decent new PC before the prices went haywire, and found a PS5 at retail price.

Thumbs up for this thread.

 

[L&LD]

I love gaming when I don't have to do it, support it, or troubleshoot it.

In reality, I simply have little time for myself (let alone gaming) when work and health issues are top of the list daily.

But MS Flight Simulator was what I did 'as a fully grown kid', back in the day.

 

[BreakingDad]

Thank you for the kind replies,


Just found some great pictures of me at LAN in the 90s Look how great my hair was and my baby face, no grey or beard at all
Also love the creative labs soundcard interface.


Rest assured I no longer use cursors for movement All about the WASD now.

Check out that switch

The main hall

I also found another random article about BBS sysop I found interesting and brought back some memories.

My secret life as an 11-year-old BBS sysop

Revisiting the wonder and betrayal of online life circa 1992.

arstechnica.com

@L&LD I heard the latest flight sim is pretty amazing, would be great with 3 screens, I heard they added helicopters as well recently

 

[sfx2000]

What's your gaming story?

ZORK I: The Great Underground Empire
Copyright (c) 1981, 1982, 1983 Infocom, Inc. All rights reserved.
ZORK is a registered trademark of Infocom, Inc.
Revision 88 / Serial number 840726

West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

>open mailbox
Opening the small mailbox reveals a leaflet.

>read leaflet
(Taken)
"WELCOME TO ZORK!

ZORK is a game of adventure, danger, and low cunning. In it you will explore some of the most amazing territory ever seen by mortals. No computer should be without one!"

 

[sfx2000]

ZORK is a game of adventure, danger, and low cunning. In it you will explore some of the most amazing territory ever seen by mortals. No computer should be without one!"

And the most recent game...

 

[RMerlin]

And the most recent game...

I almost bought that one, but I think at the time I found another game that looked more interesting as I was looking for something new to play. I might still eventually pick it tho.

 

[BreakingDad]

I almost bought that one, but I think at the time I found another game that looked more interesting as I was looking for something new to play. I might still eventually pick it tho.

Agree, I am intrigued by this game, how do you rate it @sfx2000 ?

I remember those crazy Go North, Open Door text adventures. They were good fun back then.

Also looking at https://store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds/

and https://store.steampowered.com/app/1446780/MONSTER_HUNTER_RISE/

 

[sfx2000]

Agree, I am intrigued by this game, how do you rate it @sfx2000 ?

Stray was fun... most of the reviews are spot on with the gameplay aspects.

 

[sfx2000]

So my current rig is the worst in the family ( i sadly put my kids needs first), I'm pushing it to the limit to run OW at 144fps, looking at upgrading soon.

What are you rocking for the gaming rig these days?

I've moved over to a laptop - GE76 MSI Raider (core i7-11800H, RTX3060) on win10 for my gaming fix - it's big for a laptop with a 17" screen, and heavy as heck - but it's pretty much parked on the desk - it's also my 6e test unit, with the intel 210 adapter...

 

[RMerlin]

ZORK is a game of adventure, danger, and low cunning. In it you will explore some of the most amazing territory ever seen by mortals. No computer should be without one!"

For some reason I never really got into Zork. But I loved Voodoo Castle on my C64 (can't remember if it was a Scott Adams game), it helped me learn English as I had to play with an English to French dictionary on my table.

Played a fair bit of Robots of Dawn too, another text adventure.

 

[BreakingDad]

Anyone remember Twin Kingdom Valley by bugbyte?

Twin Kingdom Valley - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Was on BBC,C64, and Spectrum, loved that game when I was a kid.

Had ground breaking graphics at the time.

 

[BreakingDad]

What are you rocking for the gaming rig these days?

I was hoping you wouldn't ask.

It, still does the job (just) but it's a custom made M5A88-M Evo, with an amd fx 8350 black edition 4ghz 8 core and 16gb of DDR3 and an SSD and AX6 wifi

I got two ASUS Rog 27inch 165hz 1ms monitors though which are beautiful and worth more than the PC.

Hoping to upgrade early next year, depending on how work goes to a DDR5 Full AMD system, but may go last Gen to save money.

Works gone to S**t this year so the bonus might not allow the former option.

I also have plans to run a proper network cable up to it when I get 900/900, and probably get a Linux box for running game servers on. Looking at the Lenovo boxes for this, but again it's money and the world economy sucks rn.

 

[L&LD]

What's the reason for a full AMD setup? Intel is leading in gaming and productivity environments today and the foreseeable future. Particularly in bang-for-the-buck.

 

[BreakingDad]

What's the reason for a full AMD setup? Intel is leading in gaming and productivity environments today and the foreseeable future. Particularly in bang-for-the-buck.

New AMD gfx card supports PCIE 5.0, Nvidia don't.
AMD use 8pin power adaptors for gfx cards that don't melt under load like the new 4090 12 pin.
New AMD gfx card is way cheaper than the 4090 bang for buck.
My current AMD has done me proud. 7 years of chugging away.
The ryzen 9 7950x blows away intel actually bang for buck.

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X Benchmark

 

[L&LD]

That's not a 'blows it away' product to me.

And you can use AMD cards with Intel platforms too.

 

[Paliv]

Intel is throwing power into their chips at a very high rate as well, just like nVidia. They may lead the pack, but aren’t always ahead in efficiency, even with the E cores. I will say I’ve had more UEFI issues and firmware bugs with my x570 board and 5800x than I ever did with Intel. Intel usually took much less tinkering.

 

[L&LD]

Intel may use more power full tilt (but that is not a common state for home PCs). At idle or close to idle where my computers are usually, they are much more efficient than comparable AMD platforms.

 

[BreakingDad]

Forgot to mention efficiency, good shout.

 

[RMerlin]

I will say I’ve had more UEFI issues and firmware bugs with my x570 board and 5800x than I ever did with Intel. Intel usually took much less tinkering.

The P-core/E-core design of 12th (and 13th) gen did bring its fair share of issues as well. Most of them are resolved now, but I still see mentions that Windows still has room for improvement there, as currently Linux shows better performance than Windows on various 13th gen workloads.

Personally, I'd say that someone choosing Intel or AMD right now can't be wrong regardless of which one they choose. Both platforms are awesome performance-wise, both are pretty stable, and with the recent price cuts on Ryzen 7000 series, they are also competitive price-wise (I don't consider the 13th Gen + DDR4 combo to be a pertinent option here if trying to compare top-of-the-line setups). Whatever performance or efficiency difference that might be found would largely be only visible within a synthetic benchmark, or in very specific applications.

Competition is awesome for us end-users. We can thank Ryzen for forcing Intel to move off their butts and start offering products that are genuinely better, rather than the "more of the same" offerings of 8th, 9th and 10th gen products.

Now if we can (hopefully) see the same thing happening with RDNA3, that would be great. Nvidia would be force to bring their prices down to a more decent offering.