re: PC Discussion - Gaming, Performance and Enthusiasts

Sorry for the repost but I didn't get much info on this earlier

quote:

---

Alright guys I have a friend that needs a computer. He needs to be able to run 3d modeling programs, photoshop, and possibly some other programs of that nature. He would rather a laptop for it to be mobile but that is not needed. I don't know yet if he is willing to build or not. He asked if a mac would be a good idea and i told him no because he wants to keep his price around $800. Also he does not game at all. Knowing these facts, what specs should i be looking at? system memory is important for this correct? above 8gb? Does an ssd help performance with that? How important is the video card for this and how much vram?

---

I'm pretty pumped about playing through the HL2 trilogy again but with HD mods. In the process of Googling the best settings for the Cinematic Mod.. this came up.

Probably the greatest thing I have come across in some time..

PC DISCUSS IS SOOOO DEAD THIS MORNING!!!

this is what makes my day go by quicker.....

quote:

---

eta: i would avoid the movie board. ben afleck named new batman

---

if it is anything like Daredevil, it will be amazing!!!!

quote:

---

I think it's a bad move but I also saw where people freaked out over heath ledger being the joker soooo

---

yeah that was 99% because he just played a gay dude, and well kids will be kids.

we have seen afleck as a super hero. its no bueno. no bueno at all.

I never saw daredevil, and don't plan to.

quote:

---

PC DISCUSS IS SOOOO DEAD THIS MORNING!!!

---

Here's a small preview of the PC Guide I'm working on. Discuss.

----------------
Monitors
...This section is not about actually selecting a monitor, however. Here, we will focus on only two factors that will significantly influence your overall gaming experience: Resolution and Refresh Rate. You probably already know what resolution is, so let’s save resolution options for later and take a moment to discuss refresh rate. In that respect, monitors generally come in two flavors: 60hz and 120hz. Some people mistakenly view this as a direct indication of frames per second (FPS). While this does have a significant and somewhat absolute correlation with frame rate, it’s important to understand that FPS (number of frames per second being processed) is independent of the monitor refresh rate, which is, you guessed it, the rate at which the monitor’s hardware is refreshing the display. Why does that matter? Answer: Just because you have a 60 Hz monitor doesn’t mean that anything beyond 60fps is useless and unnoticeable. You can notice a benefit with a frame rate higher than 60fps, even on a 60hz monitor.

“WHAT?! But the human eye can only perceive [24/30/60/XX] frames per second!”

Forget that bullshite. We aren’t watching a movie. We’re playing a game that requires your physical interaction as well as dynamic input from other hardware (i.e., mouse and keyboard). It’s a different experience, and here’s why.

When you play a game, you have the option to enable or disable vertical sync (VSync). When you enable it, your video card’s goal will be to keep the frame rate of the rendering engine (the game) equal to your monitor’s refresh rate. In this case, 60. Assuming you have a video card powerful enough to achieve this, VSync turns your monitor into the frame rate bottleneck. This isn’t a bad thing, visually. 60 full frames per second is the maximum your 60hz monitor is capable of allowing your eyes to see. It’s the frame rate you want to achieve, minimum, in most cases.

When you disable VSync, your video card will work independently to output the highest frame rate it’s capable of producing under that game engine at the graphics settings you’ve chosen. So, without VSync, you might run a FPS monitoring program and see that you’re getting 90fps on your 60 Hz monitor. What you’re actually seeing is the FPS that the GPU can produce before it reaches your monitor. The monitor is processing all of those frames, but it is not displaying every whole frame. But this surplus of frames, so to speak, lends itself to another absolute necessity in fast-reflex games such as First-Person Shooters, especially online: low-latency mouse response. Mouse lag. That’s why 30 fps and 60 fps and 90 fps are three different levels of performance.

In the simplest of terms, when in VSync mode, your graphics card waits for the monitor's next refresh operation before rendering the next frame. In such a case, when you move your mouse, it must wait for the game engine to respond, which is waiting for the graphics card, which is waiting for the monitor to refresh, and then you see your cursor/crosshairs move. If the frame rate is even lower than the refresh rate, the monitor is now performing more refresh cycles before the next frame is rendered, causing an even longer waiting time for the mouse to respond. The latency between the graphics card and the monitor is the largest, which is why watching a cut-scene at 24-30fps doesn't look bad to your eyes, but trying to manipulate your character in real-time at that frame rate can feel loose, slow, and unresponsive. This is an oversimplification of the process, but hopefully you understand the point...

that is excellent so far.

Stout, why are you getting rid of that 8350?

can i interest anyone in this $7500 dual cpu badassery?
dual E5s
GTX 670 or 780
FD R2XL

quote:

---

you are totally going to confuse most of your audience

---

I'm not even sure I have an audience. This thing quickly morphed into a personal project. I'm trying to make it easy to understand, but I think the monitor/framerate section is probably the most "confusing" for non-technicals. Just that section alone is 2,000 words. I devoted a lot of discussion to it because the monitor you plan on using is the most significant factor in selecting hardware (or at least the graphics card). Not just the pixel count, but the size of the pixels as well, which will play a role in determining whether you'd see worthwhile benefits in hardware based anti-aliasing.

I finally finished the monitor and graphics card sections. 7,320 words. The rest of the sections will be shorter.

I'm sure few people will read it, but I'll consider it their loss.

Speaking of which, I didn't get much response about my question regarding formatting text on this board. Are my options truly limited to bold, italics, underline? It would be extremely handy to be able to use bullets, different font colors, and sizes.