Computer Questions Thread

[radiofloyd]

I’ve never really bothered with graphics settings. I bought a powerful PC back in 2015 and just accept whatever it defaults to on every game. On The Witcher 3 it defaulted to Ultra, on Cyberpunk it defaulted to Medium. Cyberpunk on Medium looks perfectly fine to me and runs as smooth as butter.

[Maf]

Modern Warfare 3 is unplayable then 😕

 

So the game starts at 720p or lower maybe. And anytime I try to change the graphics setting it soft locks the whole computer. I tried it 4 times and same thing each time. I tried Googling a fix but none of the results seem like what I've got. I'm really not sure what I can do. Any change to any graphics option just freezes the whole thing except for task manager and restart. 

Well, 1 game down 2 to go 

[Sly Reflex]

You might be able to alter the resolution in the files before the game boots. Have a look on how to do this before you give up.

 

Also worth setting the game to run in earlier windows version, sometimes they don't play well with later windows versions.

[DANGERMAN]

@Maf Can you choose to run it windowed borderless or anything like that? It might convince it to match your desktop resolution

[Maf]

Thanks for the suggestions, I will try them later today. 

[Maf]

8 hours ago, DANGERMAN said:

@Maf Can you choose to run it windowed borderless or anything like that? It might convince it to match your desktop resolution

 

Yep worked first try lol. Sorry about that one, that was easy. I add it to the list of things to try next time a game breaks.

 

Ayy I can now play the game and it doesn't look like shit, thanks guys 

[Maryokutai]

Has anyone experience with dropdown lists in Word?

 

I'd like to have one in a document that will be mirrored by another field in said document. So when I pick Option A in the first dropdown list, Option A will then automatically appear in the other field further down (marked in blue in my example).

 

I found some tutorials online about how to do it with form fields and such but had no luck finding something involving a dropdown menu.

 

 

[Maf]

Whoa shit 

 

 

Putting this 3080 to work. What else can it do? 

[one-armed dwarf]

I know it's a joke post but fwiw it's mainly a CPU task, emulating old systems. 3080 is probably doing more work right this moment just loading up chrome

 

Higan by Near (sadly deceased cause they were stalked and hounded all their life by kiwifarms) is an almost perfectly accurate emulator for the SNES. Which requires quite a bit of juice to run. 

[Maf]

Oh it can also do this at 1080p 60. This pretty niiiiiice 

 

 

EDIT: Not a joke post! Excited to try some new shit with this PC 

[Maf]

PC problem question. I tried looking at Reddit and YT but not really sure around all the language and if it's the same problem as what I've had. 

 

Playing RE4 a couple of times over the weekend the game would do what I would call "skipping" frames. Like I'm trying to do a head shot and the target is just left of where I'm aiming and didn't even see it move. It's like bad online in multiplayer when someone teleports. I wouldn't say it's as egregious as that, but I would definitely say it got very "choppy".

 

I then tried AW2 to see if it was the game and AW2 was running at half the frame rate it was before. Literally in the 40's instead of the 80-90 range when I turned the game off. 

 

I restarted the PC and problems were fixed. So I think that's a hardware fuck up and not a software fuck up if it struggled on two games and the fix was off and on again. 

 

It happened again today when I was testing the capture card on RE4. After failing about 35 times in one room and constantly reloading it started to do the same choppy thing again. I turned the PC off to go eat, came back, played for about 2-3 hours and everything was fine for the entire time. 

 

Really not sure what to make of it. As I only got the PC Friday obviously I've been using it pretty much constantly. I should say I've started having the FPS counter on to try see if that's the issue. It fluctuates depending on what's happening in the game but that doesn't seem abnormal from what I've seen of PC games. I did see the frame time can be pretty wild though. 

 

I saw a YT video about how to test the GPU using the "Heaven benchmark" but tbh I don't even know if that's the problem. As you can see by my description it's a hard one to Google as well. 

 

What do people think? Does that sound really bad, is there some kind of test I can do to see if my PC has any issues? I don't know. I tried searching online but I couldn't find any solid tips or advice.  

 

I will say it's been really great apart from that. But 4 days usage and already had a couple of issues is like hmm.

[one-armed dwarf]

I wrote a big post and deleted it, I've my theories on what it could be but sharing any of them is FUD without context and the only way to diagnose an issue like that is you share more information (because of how many possible causes there are for strange fluctuations like that). Like a video with a performance overlay of RE4/AW2 crapping out showing things like CPU usage, RAM, GPU usage. Temps as well. Stuff like this. There's lots of programs but MSI afterburner is the one most use (you should have this program installed anyway, regardless of this issue)

 

 

and take a screenshot of task manager, (ctrl alt del), ordered by CPU usage

 

PC is just one of those platforms where you have to get stuck in the weeds like this. It's probably something trivial and I doubt there's anything actually wrong with your hardware itself.

[Maf]

Thanks. I downloaded Afterburner and Rivatuner. Didn't quite get how to use it or what I'm looking for but I watch a YT video tomorrow. Just done another hour of AW2 to see if I can find anything and it all runs fine. 

 

I saw some stuff online that the GPU can send to many frames to the monitor and that can cause issue. Maybe that's the case with RE4 but I doubt that's the case with AW2. It's too demanding. So I guess I can rule that out. 

 

I'm not too worried about it, but I never really had any problems with my last PC except when I clicked on settings without knowing what they do and had to retrace my steps and unclick stuff. But having this PC for 4 days and already having to turn it on and off twice. Eh. Not the worst not great.

 

I feel like this PC is slower than my last one as well sometimes. Like it takes ages for Steam to open when I feel like the last PC just popped open straight away.

 

I dunno. I will keep messing with things and try to learn about these different programs like Afterburner and such 

[DANGERMAN]

When I had a similar issue it was the CPU overheating (it was RE4 Remake that tipped it over the edge as it goes), and it just needed some thermal paste on it 

[one-armed dwarf]

I've generally found AM5 to be a less intuitive and more frustrating platform. I had weird stability issues with my 7700x when I first got it, wireless would turn itself off sometimes (usually after a windows update). Would have to power down and unplug the PSU and for some reason that would fix it. Doesn't seem to have happened lately. Also in the first week or so it would be incredibly slow sometimes on startup. I think that also resolved either from windows or BIOS updates.

 

That's not getting into the weird stuff when the X3D chips first released and it was found that motherboards were providing them too much voltage and frying some of them. Hopefully the guys who built maf's PC here have updated the bios for that, cause it was something which was fixed maybe back in September or something like that. I don't think this has anything to do with the issue described here but it's something which should be followed up on the builder in an email I think, in any event a user can update the bios themselves

 

When it comes to gaming performance, they drive these GPUs very well. My 7700x isn't as gaming performant as the X3d chips but I think I've only seen maybe one bottleneck, and funnily enough it was RE4 again (this game seems to be a problem, eh). The bit where it's raining in the village, there's a lot of physics which hit the CPU hard and it kept the FPS at like 80, which is still incredibly smooth so it didn't matter anyway. I'm happy with that.

 

Pains of pc gaming. Least we don't have to buy remasters over and over tho, we get those automatically

[Maf]

So the game seems to be running fine again. But out of curiosity I've hit chapter 4 and the rain has kicked in and after the game seemed to be hitting 120fps most of the time it's now gone down to 90fps. This is not a problem really, it's still running fine and not choppy like I had said before. But curious as to why. Dwarf said the CPU was bottlenecked? But mine is ranging from 9-15% so - that's not it right? 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

There's lots of different ways a system can bottleneck. It can be a single CPU core or memory timings or bandwidth or some other stuff, I'm not going to pretend to know the intricacies of that (I don't really even know what memory timings do tbh). Usually though you can notice something on like a single CPU core, which that graphic doesn't show (there's 16 of them on that chip, and two separate chiplets within holding 8 each), where it will be working flat out and it might be something like all the NPCs it has to simulate, or physics

 

Looking up re4 tho it might be something else. Point being it doesn't really matter as it's not a problem which can be solved with current hardware, it's just how the game is designed.

 

Here's a post on resetera about that chapter

 

https://www.resetera.com/threads/resident-evil-4-2023-pc-performance-thread.700729/post-103196170

[Maf]

Ok, sorry for going around in circles but I've found something. Basically the 4090 hates the global frame rate cap

 

 

 

So again using RE4 and AW2 - they were running fine but i set the frame rate cap for all apps in the Nvidia control panel and it started getting choppy again. Even taking the frame rate cap off afterward and restarting the game it was still choppy. So restarted the computer again and it's all fixed and back to normal.

 

Also the reason RE4 was stuck at 90fps was because apparently I put a frame rate cap specifically on that game from the NVCP.

 

I don't even remember doing that. I guess I must have done it sometime yesterday and didn't restart the game so it didn't take affect, and now when playing the game today it did take affect.

 

Well, I think that's the lesson for now. You can frame rate cap games, but not globally. 

 

I don't dare mess around with the Bios solution. I'll just leave the FPS caps alone

 

Just have to figure out why Steam takes 20 seconds to open while things like Epic and Xbox app open immediately. Once I figure that out then all my problems solved for now.  

[one-armed dwarf]

Honestly I would just move on and enjoy games on it. Steam is pretty slow on mine as well, it's a heavy client. Has a whole emulation layer built in for linux and stuff like that. I have 300 games or something like that and multiple storage devices to synchronize. Epic is just as shitty client that sometimes loses connection and prevents you playing stuff, and has no features in general. Makes sense it has a lighter footprint

 

If something isn't a show stopper then I don't pay it much mind. There's so many variables in these things that we can forget what they're actually meant to be used for.

[Maf]

Oh, I didn't mean to come on here and be just talk about the problems.

 

I've had this PC since Friday and am pretty blown away by it. Brand new demanding games like AW2? Maxed out. Notoriously difficult games like Elden Ring? 4K60 with RT maxed out. Brand new current gen stuff like RE4. Mostly 120fps, RT at 4K native and still maxed out. Yakuza like a Dragon. Maxed out and the PC is not even sure it's awake. I was playing Wo Long on GP just now. 120FPS maxed out (With DLSS on that one)

 

Starfield...Well it can't make everything good

 

I'm blown away by it. When I ordered it I went back and looked at some reviews and things to check if this really worth it or not and I watched the DF review where the guy says "It basically solves video game graphics" and yeah, that has essentially been my experience. It's amazing to play on. Just...Leave the frame rate cap alone, I guess? 

 

I bought a gaming mouse last year and I'm even getting better and enjoying PC controls a lot more. Now I can move essential buttons like med kits or just hard to find buttons like anything that's meant to be on a number key to MB 3 & 4 it's so much better. Like I still suck at RE4 because I'm a slow thinker but at least my issue with losing myself on the KB is massively reduced. 

 

I guess I've only talked about the negatives on here but this PC is fucking killer. It's so good. I wasn't trying to give the impression of a bad time at all. Just there's that weird FPS cap bug I didn't know about.

 

2 quirks aside, I give the PC a four thousand and ninety/10 so far 

 

EDIT: I honestly just need a new screen for it to really get the most out of the visuals. But I can wait a bit and save some money before splurging again anyway. It's not like this screen is bad, but those ultra wide displays look sick and I would like real HDR back (apparently anything that that only does HDR400 is weak sauce and not real)