PCs and Steam: Thread 01

[speedlolita]

I saw a few articles about some folk in China getting mining software running on a PS5 and it had a hash rate similar to a 3090 - doesn't bode well for availability there...

The 3060 limitation apparently only applies to eth so people are buying those and just mining over currencies. Unless the silicon shortage eases or the crypto bubble bursts I can't see cards being easy to purchase for some time.

[Neon Ignition]

Last thing I read somewhere was a ballpark of late 2021 being when things would ease, something that seems easy to slip to 2022 and given the pent up demand it seems the best and obvious option to aim for the least holiday timed periods of the year for PS5. They need to do something though as they can't risk production issues impacting their lead on Series S/X.

For PC GPU's though, with that timeframe, there's absolutely zero need to continue pursuing the 30XX series. By the time things calm the 40XX will be near enough on the horizon to hold off for.

[dataDave]

The 3060 limitation apparently only applies to eth so people are buying those and just mining over currencies. Unless the silicon shortage eases or the crypto bubble bursts I can't see cards being easy to purchase for some time.

We're bang in the middle of a crypto bull run. These things occur once every four years. Once things go bearish 9-12 months from now it might be easier to find something.

I'm honestly extremely tempted to sell off my 3080 for a huge profit, and then put that cash into ADA - or round off my DOT target.

[speedlolita]

Could do that! I like playing video games occasionally so I'm gonna stick with my 3060 Ti. Don't really do crypto trading or anything but I have been letting it mine eth during downtime.

[Brad]

Did they base it on the RRP of the console or the idea that it's sold at a loss? I'm sure it's hard to meet the bar regardless but curious how hard they made it for themselves

Up front he was pretty serious about it. I had to include a controller for example, you couldn't just state you'd have one lying around. What they did in the end was not have an optical drive and chose a 240-gig SSD just to get the price to Series X RRP. Graphically the games they played (on a 4K TV) the PC held its own. They put a GTX 1070 in there.

In summary they stated that you could kinda do it but were quick to point out that this PC couldn't even do ray tracing at all, had no optical drive, the controller was pants etc. I was surprised that a 1070 could keep up (fidelity and framerate at 4k) with the series X.

[MartyG]

Thought it was an awful video myself, there was zero parity between the console and PC - it was a fail the moment an SSD of just 256GB was used instead of a 1TB NVME drive and they were comparing Rocket League, Doom Eternal and Forza Horizon 4 all of which run the same on Xbox One X - there was nothing in there that'd be pushing Series X to the limits where the PC was struggling a bit, so it wasn't exactly comparing apples with apples. Building something with equivalent specs without recycled Chinese X99 boards with server chipsets (like the Zen 2 architecture they're built on) would cost a lot more than $500 - their final build wasn't even $500. If they'd have showed Medium running on both there'd have been a marked difference in performance.

If all I had was £450 to spend and I wanted to game, I'd buy the Xbox Series X or a PS5, especially at the moment when £450 will get you a system with dual core pentium and a GT 710 at best (actually, I'd probably get a Series S and a Game Pass sub and wait for the whole scalping thing to die - they seem to appear on MS's own website for 15 minutes before they sell out).

Even when prices weren't stupid like they are now - you'd have been looking at £800 for a mid-range gaming PC.

[Brad]

I did specify that they failed in my original post. Also Series X and PS5 are as rare as the PC parts so the entire exercise is moot!!!

[MartyG]

I don't even bother checking https://www.stockinformer.co.uk/ any more

And AMD have now revealed another card you're not going to be able to buy, the RX 6700 XT with a supposed cost of $479 - so on eBay for $1,000 shortly after launch on March 18th.

[eastyy]

Sigh some websites being very scummy, got a email saying

We are making available 5 PNY GTX1650 4GB Graphics Cards for Home PC Builders This Weekend. Reduced by €150 Compared to Current Market Price.

This is a premium PCI-E Powered GTX1650 with 4GB of Memory and Made by PNY.

Limited to 1 Per Customers.

https://www.custompc.ie/the-parts-store/video/graphics-cards.html_ireland_custom_gaming_pcs/pny-nvidia-geforce-gtx1650-4gb-gddr6-hdmi-dvi-dp-os-vcg16504d6sfmpb.html_custom_gaming_pcs_ireland?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pc_builders_pny_nvidia_geforce_gtx1650_4gb_5_available_491_at_wwwcustompcie&utm_term=2021-03-06

492 euro which is a hell of a markup

[fishbowlhead]

Probably the only way to buy a new gf card right now is in a pre build, which isn’t ideal at all.

[Brad]

Yep. Literally do not buy a gpu until things settle

[Brad]

This is fascinating:

TL;DW

nVidia cards require 20-30% more CPU than AMD Radeon cards. If you are playing a game that is CPU bottlenecked then upgrading to a new nVidia GPU might not net you any performance gains. In CPU bottlenecked games lower end Radeon cards can net you higher FPS than higher end nVidia e.g. a Radeon RX 5600XT can beat out an nVidia 3090 (extreme case).

In short, pair up your CPU and GPU. A string GPU with a weak CPU is never a good idea but AMD systems are much more tolerant of these scenarios.

This is of personal interest to me as I play DCS which is highly CPU bound and an nVidia card is taking a precious 20% or more of those precious CPU cycles just to run the GPU. Note that this is a driver architecture issue as it is present on older architecture nVidias and also affects Intel CPUs.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-03-11-phil-spencer-says-future-bethesda-games-will-be-exclusive-to-platforms-where-game-pass-exists

Expected but finally a bit more directly stated - all future Bethesda titles barring the ones with pre-existing contracts such as Deathloop will be exclusive to formats where Game Pass exists ergo Xbox and PC. Thereby confirming Nintendo and Sony platforms will no longer see future installments of Elder Scrolls, Fallout etc.

[wakka]

Deffo a Series X for me then once Starfield drops. As long as it's decent, obviously.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-03-12-crash-bandicoot-4-is-heading-to-pc-later-this-month

Crash Bandicoot 4 lands on PC on 26 March