PCs and Steam: Thread 01

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.polygon.com/2018/8/20/17760448/nvidia-rtx-prices-performance-ray-tracing

Polygon has a short piece pretty much also suggesting users wait on RTX given how much NVidia is shirking giving real data

[MartyG]

Yup, still a lot of unknowns right now. Looking around, 1080Ti cards are starting to appear on the market for close to £600, they might be a a better buy. Meaningless made up metric is meaningless.

[Digfox]

Yup, still a lot of unknowns right now. Looking around, 1080Ti cards are starting to appear on the market for close to £600, they might be a a better buy. Meaningless made up metric is meaningless.

I get the impression that the secondhand prices aren't going to fall through the floor on the 1080 series either. Which means it might be an OK time to sell. Nvidia have basically abandoned the middle-ground GPU segment.

Also aren't you going from the 1080 to 1080Ti then?

That said I'd still wait for reviews to see what the numbers are like. As you say meaningless is meaningless.

[MartyG]

I'm not in a mad rush to upgrade, it's not like I need to game at 4K in ultra. I suspect that there are enough buyers out there to pre-order all the 2080 cards up despite the prices and unknowns, such as these launches go. If they under perform, there might be a glut of 2080 cards on the second hand market

I definitely think it'd be a bad call to spend over a grand without knowing the performance figures in real gaming.

[Dogg Thang]

I have to wonder how much someone would need to love sharp gaming to spend a grand on a graphics card? I mean, I'm not judging you (I am) but that could buy SO MANY ACTUAL GAMES. You could buy a 3DS and every game on it (might not be true) and play games until the end of time (or until you die if that comes sooner and let's face it we're all a lot closer to death than we used to be).

[_SD_]

I’ve never understood the whole PC gaming thing. I have a 55” 4K telly and Fortnite looks really nice on it via the Pro... I can’t imagine what real benefits you’d get from spending another £1200 or so on top of the price of a PlayStation. Surely you’re then just going for DigitalFoundry levels of anal graphics tweaking instead of just playing the sodding game.

[MartyG]

I have to wonder how much someone would need to love sharp gaming to spend a grand on a graphics card? I mean, I'm not judging you (I am) but that could buy SO MANY ACTUAL GAMES. You could buy a 3DS and every game on it (might not be true) and play games until the end of time (or until you die if that comes sooner and let's face it we're all a lot closer to death than we used to be).

I have well over a thousand games on Steam already - they're not mutually exclusive to new hardware.

I’ve never understood the whole PC gaming thing. I have a 55” 4K telly and Fortnite looks really nice on it via the Pro... I can’t imagine what real benefits you’d get from spending another £1200 or so on top of the price of a PlayStation. Surely you’re then just going for DigitalFoundry levels of anal graphics tweaking instead of just playing the sodding game.

You're getting actual 4K and 60 FPS. You're not getting that with PS4 and it means you don't have to tweak. Tweaking is what you do when you can't run the games on maximum settings

[Dogg Thang]

I have well over a thousand games on Steam already - they're not mutually exclusive to new hardware.

We're not all part of the 1%, Marty!

[MartyG]

No danger of being in the 1% and I seriously doubt I'll be spending over a grand on a graphics card - I think the price is pretty ridiculous tbh. However, that's the price currently for ultra gaming in 4K at 60 fps on PC. Do you need it? Absolutely not. Do games look stunning on a 4K screen at 60 fps on Ultra? Yes. Yes they do.

[Baseley09]

What's it struggling with, other than 4K?

You could get a second-hand 1080Ti soon which will last you until EVERYTHING is pushing ray-tracing, which I'm guessing will be around four to five years from now.

I think its been dodgy since i got it tbh paired it with a 3570k and now a xeon something and on BF1 it often struggles to keep 40fps, often 60fps with major dips, you never know what you will get sometimes its fine. Need rid.

[Digfox]

I’ve never understood the whole PC gaming thing. I have a 55” 4K telly and Fortnite looks really nice on it via the Pro... I can’t imagine what real benefits you’d get from spending another £1200 or so on top of the price of a PlayStation. Surely you’re then just going for DigitalFoundry levels of anal graphics tweaking instead of just playing the sodding game.

For me it's the library of PC games which is nearly reason in itself. Games I simply can't play elsewhere. That being said I need a PC and sometimes the horsepower of a gaming rig comes in handy, for me encoding video from home movies or BluRays for use on the Plex server. So when you already need the PC the gaming side of things like the GPU are the only additional costs.

I suppose its similar to why some people might spend £3,000 on an OLED TV rather than a £400 LCD TV. Or why they might buy a more expensive audio equipment.

That being said the costs of these Nvidia cards is simply too much for me. I just don't need to spend that much on a gaming PC.

[Neon Ignition]

There's a lot that goes with PC gaming that doesn't come with console gaming, you buy a PC and effectively lose the first few months time with it just exploring the possibilities. After that a powerful GPU does plow through requirements so little tweaking is required.

Don't forget, you have to knock £400 off the value of the PC from the outset as once you own a good one you'll never need to own an Xbox One ever again as you'll have the hardware equivalent of an Xbox One X Pro Bargain!

https://www.techradar.com/au/reviews/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti

Techrader has messed around with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, they say its early state but realistically its not given the games release is imminent now. With Ray-Tracing on the game runs at 55-57fps, no word on resolution though. They say some other stuff ran at around 100fps at 4K Ultra but won't state what so it's a pretty meaningless claim too.

[MartyG]

Reports from the game floor at Gamescom with people trying Battlefield V with ray tracing was that it was running between 30-60 fps at 1080P and looked grainy (grain is a result of the RT - more rays traced, the less grain there is).

You also need to take into account that it's still an early build and the drivers will still have plenty of room for optimization, however, my sole reason for spending £1000 on a card would be for that to give me 4K60.

[Neon Ignition]

I've heard a few times now about the ray tracing on early build games and it's a claim I don't buy as the key games involved are either already Gold or about to be in the next few weeks. If Battlefield V is genuinely at that level then it'd be a massive indicator that the new cards aren't suitable for pushing that element and are more a stop gap to the real deal in a couple more years.

[Digfox]

It's like Nvidia have found a way to require you to need everymore powerful GPUs, more often. Clever resetting of the graphics card market. Ray tracing will be the new 4K.

As you say even with optimisations, it looks clear Ray Tracing could be extremely demanding.

I've pretty much decided I'm going to order an ASUS laptop later on. With the kids, summer holidays and decorating atm the last thing I need is another project, but it feels like a good time to downsize my PC. The existing parts will finance the new laptop which is cool. Also my Unraid box is getting a nice upgrade.

I would buy an AMD laptop out of principle but unfortunately Nvidia dominate the laptop gaming market.