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

[sfx2000]

I eventually want a VR headset, but have been reserved on them. Any suggestions of a good one that is feature rich with great specs, but will not break the bank? I also want it to work with a PC.

Friends rave about the Quest 2 and PS5-VR2

I really can't help there because of issues noted with the current state of the art and...

I'm not so sure that Apple's VisionPro will be any better...

 

[L&LD]

@Maverick009, sure, you're entitled to your opinion. But it doesn't contradict mine though. You're running a gaming setup. I'm not.

Back on topic,

I was wrong about the ASUS ROG Ally

This amazing device has transformed my gaming life.

www.windowscentral.com

The point I bring up with the link above? Specs are (almost always) irrelevant. The user experience for the intended use, rules.

 

[sfx2000]

Regarding the Steam Deck - and I'm sure we'll see similar activities on the ROG Ally when they become more available...

Long-Distance Wi-Fi With Steam Deck Server

It’s no secret that the Steam Deck is a powerful computer, especially for its price point. It has to be capable enough to run modern PC games while being comfortable as a handheld, all while …

hackaday.com

 

[sfx2000]

Regarding the Steam Deck - and I'm sure we'll see similar activities on the ROG Ally when they become more available...

the point I'm trying to make here is that Handhelds like the SteamDeck and ROG Ally bring a new level of capability beyond just gaming - OS flexibility and the amount of compute resources, both CPU and GPU, really are something new...

Drop Kali on it, and you've got a very handy red-team/white-hat tool for network recon for example - and that's something that one could stick in a coat pocket, and do the post-processing when done without having to export over to a laptop/desktop machine.

 

[sfx2000]

Anybody else get the new Steam launcher?

Suddenly it's kind of nice now

 

[BreakingDad]

https://www.howtogeek.com/898668/steam-deck-2-doesnt-need-a-higher-resolution-screen/ Deck2 2025 maybe

Regarding VR though, we have the Quest 2 and my son loves it and uses it a lot. For me it's to cumbersome to wear, and involves effort of standing up to play. I dont suffer any motion sickness using it though but I prefer to be slouched in a Secret Lab Chair, shooting people., chatting on discord.,

 

[Maverick009]

@Maverick009, sure, you're entitled to your opinion. But it doesn't contradict mine though. You're running a gaming setup. I'm not.

Back on topic,

I was wrong about the ASUS ROG Ally

This amazing device has transformed my gaming life.

www.windowscentral.com

The point I bring up with the link above? Specs are (almost always) irrelevant. The user experience for the intended use, rules.

For One system I am running a gaming setup, but it also does Video and photo editing and a few other things. Just because the parts are gaming oriented doesn't mean, that is it's sole purpose. However if I go to the other end of the corner, my Firewall Router currently running PfSense, is running an AMD Ryzen 1700 8C/16T 1st Gen Zen CPU on an Asus B550M Tuf WiFi Plus motherboard with 16GB DDR4 Memory. It also has an Intel I350-T4 Quad 1Gb NIC and Dual 2.5G Realtek 8125 NIC. That runs rock solid. Another system was running Windows Server 2019/2022 versions, but since has been repurposed to run Unraid also on an AMD Ryzen 2700 8C/16T CPU with Gigabyte Aorus X470 board, Nvidia Geforce 1080 Ti, 16GB DDR4, 10G Aquanta NIC and various drives added. Point is if you build the hardware and install the drivers correctly, it all can be stable. Both Intel and AMD are known to sometimes make a crappy driver version or introduce bugs into an otherwise stable driver. It happens and is a trend not going away. However, if we look at the 2, AMD has been getting better with drivers, while Intel is still hit or miss more lately. It also took AMD longer to get partners and vendor support again after the crash that was Bulldozer. Now OEMs are racing to build the best all out gear sometimes at the cost of recommendations from AMD for instance or to gain market share from bragging rights. To each their own though....I might of also read into it too much as I sometimes do, I also agree on user experience, but also will give more chances when and where warranted.

 

[Maverick009]

Anybody else get the new Steam launcher?

Suddenly it's kind of nice now

I might but haven't looked. I use Lunchbox as my frontend, for all my games and emulators, as it provides a one stop shop.

 

[sfx2000]

For One system I am running a gaming setup, but it also does Video and photo editing and a few other things. Just because the parts are gaming oriented doesn't mean, that is it's sole purpose.

Sure - we have tools fit for purpose - some folks might give me grief for having a Macbook Pro M1-Max, but it's a tool that serves me best for what I need it to do.

I also have a Win10 MSI GE76 Raider for gaming, and it's also the right tool for the job.

You make a lot of good points, but I do suggest you go back and edit your post for clarity - paragraphs matter, as you touch on not just the client machines, but also storage/nas and routing...

 

[harry]

Anybody else get the new Steam launcher?

Suddenly it's kind of nice now

I did but some of the games came up with error. eg: cod advanced FW, Payday 2

 

[Maverick009]

Anybody else get the new Steam launcher?

Suddenly it's kind of nice now

I might of if it came to Steam through the normal update when launching the app, but for my go to launcher, I am using Launch Box as it connects all my game apps and emulators together in one easy to go to app launcher.

 

[follower]

I can't believe that there are still Radeon users for gaming or editing video something. I thought we could find Radeon as a fossil for gaming. It's cheaper than NVIDIA though.

 

[RMerlin]

I can't believe that there are still Radeon users for gaming or editing video something. I thought we could find Radeon as a fossil for gaming. It's cheaper than NVIDIA though.

AMD is really close to nVidia in terms of rasterized performance. They are only lacking in tensor-related performance, such as ray tracing.

If you want more VRAM, AMD offers better products than nVidia. In the low to mid-range where you won't be using ray tracing anyway, AMD's 7000 series are much better cards than nVIDIA's 4000 series.

For video editing, if you don't use CUDA cores, then the extra VRAM from AMD might be a better pick.

 

[L&LD]

The Intel GPUs give the best bang for the buck. Particularly in productivity (photo/video editing, transcoding, etc., among other things).

 

[sfx2000]

Hmmmm.... thinking outside of the box - if you look over in the HPC space, you've got ZEN4/CDNA3 with HBM - the Instinct MI300

AMD Instinct MI300 Data Center APU Pictured Up Close: 13 Chiplets, 146 Billion Transistors

AMD's biggest chip yet.

www.tomshardware.com

Now obviously we're not going to see this on even high-end desktops - but trickle down the approach... Solder it down to an ITX sized board, put some fast PCIe 5 storage, and let it boot regular Windows... Yeah, one would lose some flexibility, but look at the performance possibilities - it's like a console on steroids - and one has to acknowledge that PS5/Xbox Series X do pretty well - can't run a productivity desktop OS, so that's a limitation....

Apple likes to talk up their unified memory for their M1/M2 chips, this is the same approach, but with AMD64 vs ARM - with HBM, that's a bottleneck for both CPU and GPU removed...

Before M1/M2 - unified memory for PC's was the iGPU on Intel and the AMD aGPU's - and more focused on cost, not on performance...

 

[sfx2000]

The Intel GPUs give the best bang for the buck. Particularly in productivity (photo/video editing, transcoding, etc., among other things).

The FPS rates on Solitaire are off the charts



Seriously though - Intel's iGPU's deserve more respect than they get - as mention, transcoding with QSV is pretty impressive, and for a lot of daily driver tasks, they're no faster/slower than any other GPU...

Intel, for whatever reason, didn't put their best iGPU's in the desktops, just in the laptop processors - I suppose maybe it comes down to thermals perhaps...

 

[RMerlin]

The Intel GPUs give the best bang for the buck. Particularly in productivity (photo/video editing, transcoding, etc., among other things).

Intel has made some impressive progress with their drivers over the past 6-8 months. For entry level gaming they are a good choice, as long you stick to newer titles, as old Direct X 9 games will have performance/stability issues due to their reliance on a translation layer rather than using native DirectX calls.

 

[sfx2000]

Intel has made some impressive progress with their drivers over the past 6-8 months. For entry level gaming they are a good choice, as long you stick to newer titles, as old Direct X 9 games will have performance/stability issues due to their reliance on a translation layer rather than using native DirectX calls.

I think it depends on the chipset - I've got a project laptop with a Core i7-1165G7 w/Xe (Intel Gen12, 96 EU's) - it's comparable to the nVidia MX330 dGPU that is in the same machine...

The Xe iGPU in that laptop CPU is a lot more than in any of their desktop CPU's...

MX330 is nvidia Pascal - GP108

Which is similar to GTX 950 for a desktop board - GM206

 

[RMerlin]

I think it depends on the chipset - I've got a project laptop with a Core i7-1165G7 w/Xe (Intel Gen12, 96 EU's) - it's comparable to the nVidia MX330 dGPU that is in the same machine...

We're talking ARC here, not iGPU...

AMD's Ryzen 6000 and 7000 mobile series run around Intel iGPU in circles.

 

[sfx2000]

Just saying - Intel brought on two of the smartest guys for CPU and GPU as free agents - Jim Keller for CPU, and Raj Koduri for GPU's...

Gelsinger has a lot of work to catch up with Lisa Su (AMD) and Jensen Huang (nVidia)... I would add that Cristiano Amon has a big part to play as well..