imthesoldier

I feel as though I’m prepping myself for the Steam Deck by playing my Switch in handheld mode lately. With the Satisfye Grip, I’m liking handheld mode more and never felt fatigued, or hands cramped. 
 

Let's hope the Deck can deliver similarly.  

4 hours ago, SuperSpreader said:

Y'all old AF. I don't remember any of these. 

TFW 33 years old is consider old AF.

9 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

AMD is not hyper-competitive when it comes to gaming CPUs, moreso with general PC use or workstation use. Intel continues to dominate that area with on average superior performance. Not that AMD's is bad or anything, my 3900X does just fine, but seeing DF after DF video comparison with high-end Intel CPUs it leaves me wanting more.

 

As for stuttering, I was specifically talking about this:

 

AMD to Fix 'fTPM' Stuttering Issues on Ryzen CPUs, But Patch Is 2 Months Out

WWW.PCMAG.COM

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Customers began experiencing the problems after enabling the fTPM module on the Ryzen CPUs.

 

Easily solved by disabling their sad fTPM (if fTPM is enabled on Windows 10 OR 11, you can get this issue) but they've been hearing complaints for months and won't have a fix for months more. I was getting this exact stutter on a few games and it was driving me fucking insane because I had no idea it was related to their busted ass fTPM. Considering how much I cannot stand stutter, this is something I won't soon be forgetting when deciding on a new CPU in the future.

IMO, AMD's competitive edge tends to come in the form of power efficiency, plus in general their multi-threaded performance. Intel I always recall being dominant in single-threaded workloads, and will tend to overtake in raw horsepower, and brute force. AMD's Ryzen though has been the necessary drive to make Intel more competitive, but games, and still many applications don't tend to incorporate more than a few cores. I would've figured by now, given the PS4, and X1's tenure, 8 cores would've been the norm by now, but 6 cores is about the sweet spot, and I believe it'll remain that way for some time.

With AMD's FSR, it won't be superior to nVidia's DLSS, but like FreeSync before it, it's open-source nature will likely drive more adoption.

13 hours ago, legend said:

 

Came to post this one. The greatest piece of promotional gaming material I received in the mail that I never asked for.

I seem to recall one of my older brothers getting it, and told my other brother and I we needed to watch this. We were so excited at the prospect of rumble in a video game, especially towards the end when the guys in the ad talk about feeling the rumble. We kept imagining what the rumble would feel like, and how it would impact the game. "Like you're actually IN the game!"

Nostalgia is a powerful drug.

4 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

  

 

If those results are accurate, FSR 2.0 looks to be a nice step up over 1.0. The use of a Temporal Upscaling method vs. Spacial looks to be the biggest reason why the upgrade.

17 minutes ago, HardAct said:

Not dissing in any way, I'll be getting them and I haven't played any Mario kart other than the 64 version and M8 so they will be nice, I was just stating what I read!

Didn't know about the sale but I waited and waited for a very long time to get in at a sale price {Mario Kart 8} but finally caved! I owned it once before but lost almost my entire library of switch games in the Camp Fire. I had almost all games in cartridge form, I have no rethought my whole idea of physical vs Digital trust me. I bought it for 49.99 and it's the game the kids and grand kids play the most. I only had Breath of the Wild in the switch and it was thrown in the truck was the only reason I had any AAA titles for the switch post FIRE .  I bought the Booster pack because of the courses and the N64 emulations but after seeing what they offer the online pack was enough for me thus making me now have to buy the DLC because correct me plz if I'm wrong, don't you have to have the complete online sub plus booster to even play them? Kind of like games with gold, drop the sub lose the games unlike the PS+ games. I always liked that Sony let you keep them. Not that I'm dropping Game pass or PS+ anytime soon!

To play MK8 online, you must have an NSO subscription, which is typical for all Switch titles. For playing MK8D Booster Pass online though, only ONE person in your online group is required to have it.

Relevant bit at the bottom of the page:

Can I play courses included on the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Booster Course Pass online even if I haven't purchased the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Booster Course Pass and I am not a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack member?

As long as at least one of the players you are matched with online has access to the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Booster Course Pass, it is possible to play on one of the included courses if players vote for it.

A Nintendo Switch Online membership (sold separately) is required to play online, and your Mario Kart 8 Deluxe game must be updated to the latest software version.

1 hour ago, HardAct said:

   Also excited to have more tracks for the grandkids to race on but, aren't the "NEW" tracks just old tracks being remade? I have the Online service +booster but I'm buying the tracks so that I can drop the +sub after this one expires!

All the 48 tracks included in Booster Pass are existing tracks "remastered" from earlier games, some of which from the more recent MK Tour as well. Depending on your experience with MK in years past, however, that could be a good, or bad thing. For me, I haven't really dived into a MK game since MK64, so all those tracks from GCN, Wii, 3DS, and MK Tour will all be new to me.

Still, for 25 bucks, 6 waves of content, each wave including two new GP Cups + 8 tracks, it's I think a hell of a deal for DLC. And since I bought MK8D just last week during the MAR10 sale, altogether, I'm spending just a smidge over the amount of the full price the game normally would cost. It comes out to a little over 2 dollars per wave in the end over the course of into 2023. If you're a fan of MK8D, you almost can't not buy it imo.

Last week, I finished Doom Eternal on Switch (a Masterclass in Switch ports I might add), and now continuing with Ass Creed Unity on PC, plus just started diving into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Gotta get ready for the new waves of tracks coming out over the next year, you know?

2 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

The most recent rumors suggest that whatever Switch comes next will have both.  Check the Nvidia leaks.

Nintendo haven't said anything about ray-tracing, upscaling or machine learning themselves, afaik.

Looking at the sites that talked about the leaks, it looked to be some twitter user who mentioned "ray-tracing" support (as well as DLSS) because it uses Ampere architecture, which normally it would. Tegra Orin though normally does not have RT cores in it, so it would have to be pretty custom to include it. I do recall the leaks suggested it would use 8 ARM Cortex A78 cores vs. the 12 that is in the standard T234 version. Interestingly, nVidia does have a version of the Tegra Orin chip, named the Jetson Orin NX, listed on their site:

If you ask me, this is the more realistic version of what would power the Switch 2. The memory bandwidth is cut in half (uses 12GB instead of 16), same with the CUDA cores (1024 vs. 2048), uses only 8 ARM cores instead of 12, and can come in a 15w variant, same as the Switch in docked mode. It's almost a perfect upgrade over the Tegra X1.

If the Switch 2 does truly have RT cores, and of course full ray-tracing support, I'll be incredibly surprised.

1 hour ago, ManUtdRedDevils said:

The steam controller had community settings available to download for each game. I think a similar setup would work for the Deck. Let the active community figure out the best settings both for the hardware and software. Then let the regular folks apply those settings to the deck before launching. 

Yeah, this is what I see happening. A "profile" would be loaded similar to your typical optimized settings when playing on a normal PC.

55 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Yeah, I think you're right.  Don't see why they'd leave them out though, when they've been paired with CUDA cores since the start.

 

 

I think it's simply down to die size, plus power usage. Add the fact you're dealing with a mobile chipset, it probably makes less sense to utilize to begin with. That'll probably change in the coming years for sure, but I don't see it happening this go around. Even if Tegra did have RT cores, Nintendo would likely just disable them, or outright have them removed in order to reduce costs. Based on recent patents, plus Nintendo's EAD division, Nintendo themselves are quite interested in machine learning, and upscaling tecniques (hence why something such as DLSS makes sense), but don't appear to have the same feels towards ray-tracing right now. This is the same company after all that opted against including the Super FX chip into the SNES for the NA market due to costs. You could definitely imagine what would've been possible if more developers utilized it if it were baked into each system though.

But I'm sidetracking this whole thread by this point, so apologizes on that.

That's too bad, but sounds like it didn't get fully off the ground to begin with. Hopefully, if Warren Spector is up for it, his "all-original" immersive sim game can be fulfilled now.

Now if the System Shock remake is dead as well, then that would be a shame. I played System Shock 2 a few years ago for the first time, loved every minute of it, and could definitely see where Deus Ex got a lot of its inspiration, and design elements from. Would like to see Nightdive fulfill the remake.

These three immediately came to mind.

11 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

Any modern chip design design should support raytracing in some fashion.  Like Series S, we might not see it much due to the performance hit.  But Tensor cores are used for both DLSS and RT acceleration on NVIDIA's side.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you still need the RT cores to render the image before it's processed through the Tensor cores? Otherwise, wouldn't that put the burden on the CUDA cores because I don't recall any of the Tegra chips have RT cores in them? Obviously, it's possible to render Ray-Tracing through software, but that's very intensive as it is, and same with the CUDA cores, which would mean less resources being dedicated for other work.

20 hours ago, TwinIon said:

I think of Windows support as essential to the goal of the Steamdeck, which I see as being able to play your entire library of PC games on a handheld. It is, and will remain, the case that some games will simply not work (or work well enough) on Linux. It greatly increases the value of the device to me if I know I can play PC gamepass games or games like Destiny that won't be playable on Linux.

 

That said, it's clear that the Windows experience is far from complete for now. Until you can dual boot Steam OS and Windows and Windows itself is a better experience, it doesn't seem like Windows is a worthwhile option on the deck.

I can see that.

For me, the Deck presents as a stop-gap between PC Gaming, and Console Gaming. We've already seen this occurring though with PC Gaming becoming more Console-Like, and Consoles becoming more PC-Like. For something like the Deck, the purpose is pick up, and play. Hit a button, select a game, and begin playing almost immediately. That's actually one of my favorite features of the Switch for example. If I have a game already suspended, I get get back into the game in less than 10 seconds. That's exactly what I want for the Deck, and Windows cannot do that (I do not know if the PS5, and Xbox Series can do that as I don't own those, but I know the Base PS4 takes a little time to boot up before you can get on with gaming).

17 hours ago, Raggit said:

 

Might not want to install Windows just yet...

Yeah, at this point, I doubt I'll ever install Windows on it. Sure, it can be done, and some will certainly do it, but overall, I think it's the antithesis of what the Deck was designed for. Quite frankly, I'm more interested in Linux gaming, and Linux in general now that the Deck exists. If I want Windows, that's what my work laptop, and my Windows Gaming desktop is for.

On 3/12/2022 at 1:41 PM, Xbob42 said:

I have zero expectations that the same will apply with FSR. AMD has done nothing but let me down over and over and over. Weak GPUs, stuttery, underpowered CPUs, tech that arrives late and is inferior to the competition, and every time they "finally do it," it's always some raving review by someone who apparently only uses AMD. I fully expect this "way better FSR" to have massive issues that early adopters ignore.

I'd love to be wrong because a more universal competitor to DLSS would be great, but with AMD behind the wheel all I can hope is that when the car impacts the tree I'll be ejected through the windshield and into the passing nvidia truck.

I have a love-hate relationship with AMD, and formerly ATI Radeon. Some of my first PC gaming experiences were done on ATI GPUs, but in the mid-2000s, AMD was lacking in the shaders department, so I dumped my X850XT (which had Shader Model 2.0), and went with an nVidia 7800GS (which had Shader model 3.0). On paper, they were both about the same in performance, but crucially, there were shader advantages the nVidia had, the AMD card did not, which many games at the time took advantage of.

After that, I still have yet to go back to AMD when it comes to GPUs. I think AMD though have something good going in the console space for Microsoft, and Sony, and while nVidia only is in that pie via Nintendo, it's still a profitable endeavor for them. Call the Switch underpowered all you want, the Tegra X1 has shown the potential of nVidia in the mobile chipset realm, and their future. While things such as Ray-Tracing are highly unlikely to be used in the next Switch, Tensor cores for DLSS I have a firm belief they will.

DLSS gets all the rage right now, but wasn't it the case that DLSS 1.0 was rather dogshit, and it wasn't until 2.0 where DLSS finally hit its stride? Not saying the same will apply with FSR, but I'm cautiously optimistic this'll fit the bill for many. Even FSR 1.0 from what I've been told from a buddy of mine that FSR Ultra Quality for a game such as RE Village worked very well, and even the FSR Quality setting.

The tech can only get better at this point, and this is good news for all.

12 minutes ago, HardAct said:

   We made it out, Paradise was the worst fire in California history, not in Acres but in homes and displacement. My wife and I along with all our friends and family there all survived. My wife and youngest daughter had the closest call to harm. We had no time to pack, just flee. over 14,000 homes lost, only 1300 have been rebuilt in 3 1/2 years. We ended up in Oregon starting over. I lost my job of 19+ years and my wife job of 26 years, that was the biggest hurdle. Netflix had a documentary on the Camp fire in paradise and Magalia California. Paradise was a complete and TOTAL loss and half of Magalia where we lived.

   Of course in that time we lost our son to Cancer {He was 30 at the time, with 3 kids}, and then of course Covid, the loss of my dad to a heart attack, and my wife's dad just last month, this is what I meant when I said we have been "KICKED IN THE TEETH" the last 3 1/2 - 4 years. I'm humbled still we have our lives and a new home and complete new start but income wise losing Jobs like of that long each, we lost a lot "Income wise" starting over in a new state, still I'm so very grateful, I TRUELY AM. we have learned to be a bit more conservative and not take to much for granted and take one day at a time.

 

   I thank you for your well wishes, I tend to rant like this at least once a year, you sparked the need to say it all again. Hoping I don't bother the boards with my story to much more in the near future, trust me they know it already!! I still thank the boards for just being here and there are some really compassionate and fine people in here there really are! 

Shit, man. I'm sorry to hear that about your Son, as well as Father, and FIL. I have no words really.

Core i7 6700k's look to be selling on ebay for around the 100 or so US dollar mark, and a 1080ti could easily net you 400 dollars or more, depending on condition. Not sure about Mobo + Ram though. There are websites out there that will take your old parts, and give you a quote, although there's no haggling for price. What you see it what you get. If you want the most money, then Ebay is your friend I think.

If you decide to just upgrade the GPU, and go with a 3080, it'll likely bottleneck your CPU unless you game at higher resolutions. 6700k is certainly old, but not THAT slow, and it sounds like you're running DDR4 memory? One option is to upgrade your GPU, and hold onto the res of the build until maybe AMD Zen 4, and/or DDR5 are more mature.

I guess the biggest question right now is how do you typically game? 1080p, 1440p, 4k? 16:9? 21:9? 30fps, 60fps, 120fps, or higher? The 1080 ti is still to this day a great card, and puts it at, or close to RTX 3060/3060ti horsepower.

18 hours ago, HardAct said:

I BuiId them "USUALLY" average every 3 years, usually all brand new nothing reused. I have given old ones to family, sold a few and parted a few over the last 20+ years. Only ever had one motherboard come DOA, and 1 GPU fail in less than that time. Been lucky so far.

 

This one was different as we lost everything in the 2018 camp fire {Everything I mean everything, town, jobs, our vehicles, our home of 25 years and every possession we ever had!} and I had just built a 1080Ti rig 5 months before. The folks on the board were great on advise on some parts, they talked me into saving some on the power supply "Still a 700 watt gold corsair, because it was white " and only going 500gigs one operating system etc, instead of 1TB at the time. A few upgrades too, so tatal now is right at 3k I love it!

 

MY NEW PC

 

Bounce Back'n-forth really. If I want RTX then it's 1440p. Having the LGC series TV's with VRR is so sweet no more Vsync! 4k / 60+ - 1440p/120+ It really has outshined all my expectations by far. It's a modern beast, built buy me and 100% and I love it. It's silent almost all the time too. I have a h100i Cpu Cooler and the 2080Ti extreme amp edition Zotec 2080Ti is really so impressive. Custom fan curves for winter and summer 32 gig Corsair 3200 DDr4, 2x Samsung 970 Evo M.2 SSD's,  500gig for Operating system & 1Tb for gaming, also a 870 Evo 1Tb backup and gaming drive

Sorry to hear about the fire, but it sounds like everyone made it out safely? It sounds like you, your family, and your town are getting back on their feet?

58 minutes ago, Zaku3 said:

4k and 32:9 ultrawide have me on the upgrade race again. I'll probably keep my CPU as is until Zen 5 or 6 but soon as I can buy a 7800 or 7900 XT I am there.

*hides in corner with 1080p 16:9 60hz PC Gaming*

Truth be told, I'd like to dive into 1440p gaming, specifically 21:9 1440p gaming as I feel that's a good balance in terms of resolution, and required horsepower, plus how it's being implemented in more games natively. 120hz gaming would also be nice, but again, horsepower requirements at 1440p ultrawide. One day maybe...

45 minutes ago, HardAct said:

   I planned a ground up build late 2022 anyway. This I79700k / 2080Ti has been a great PC and really holds up well and though it should. I love new tech and have enjoyed watching and reading all the hype around these cards but It was an easy pass as I have never upgraded from one year to the next. This PC was 3k and has given me a wonderful 2+ years. When we can just buy a 3080ti I'm on board and am excited to watch the shit show all over again...lol Theoretically a 4080Ti could as much as 65-75% faster that's humbling! I might even have to find a way to integrate the new pc into my Livingroom hooked p to the LGC1 83"! Seriously though, the LGcX has been a great gaming PC monitor too.

Dude, that's a baller PC imo. I wouldn't touch that thing for at least another 2 years, but I'm more of a mid-range PC Gamer, so preferences vary. Sounds like you game in 4k? You aim for 60fps, 120fps, or even higher?