Buying a Gaming PC

[DANGERMAN]

Crysis next @retroed

[Maf]

This what my PC sounds like when I put a game on btw 

 

I love PC gaming. It’s so simple, reliable, convenient and easy 

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Video is not working for me, I can't hear your PC over the sound of someone vaccuuming

[Maf]

It must be something to do with the fans in the GPU because it only happens when GPU usage is at 90%+. Just playing some games on less demanding settings, and it gets louder when messing around with the settings, but in game play with GPU at 70-80% usage it’s fine. 
 

Probably where I haven’t used it for games for ages and needs a clean. But I can’t be assed 

[one-armed dwarf]

Mine isn't quiet but not remotely this loud even at 99%. I did use an air blower at it recently but I don't think that is why. 

 

It does have very loud coil whine though, constant zzzzz when running games at a high framerate

[one-armed dwarf]

I suppose the DLSS5 stuff belongs here. This is nvidia's announcement video. It's out today I think but I'm not sure what games have it officially other than that basketball game. They explain things like how it tries to be temporally stable, ie, looks consistent in motion from frame to frame

 

 

imo, my take is that Nvidia are less a gaming graphics company now and are just an AI chip company. So we might not see the huge leaps in path tracing capabilities like we used to. Better denoising maybe, so it looks less fuzzy. But I think they're going to go all in on this from now on.

 

All of the modded examples online have a very similar, greasy look imo. You see the same genAI shiny slime effect in some parts of this video

 

There are aspects about it though that are hard to argue against the same way, like its ambient occlusion/self-shadowing. I think one of the biggest aspects I saw when fucking around in FFVII is how sometimes it basically 'fixes' that games 'unlit' look (reason why it looks like a PS3 game sometimes). But these models are really bad at handling an anime-stylised game so it's a double edged sword.

 

What I find with a lot of it though is when they try to apply it more tastefully, it really has little noticeable impact, like that ramen chef. Or if you go whole hog with it, it exaggerates the lighting and makes everything look a bit chiaroscuro*, very contrasty with the light and shadow. This feels like it's coming from the training data, which probably has a lot of this studio lit stuff in it

 

I wonder if Nvidia will still release a 60xx series card, with the way things are going, and if they're going to just optimise this for 5000 series instead. Also, are developers really going to sit there and 'mask' lots of different objects and characters to prevent them from being caught in the DLSS5 output? Seems like a lot of work

 

*eg, like this image here of Frank West, with the modded DLL

 

[Maf]

Trying to figure out why my PC so loud and downloaded some app 

 

 

Using chatGPT it says the hot spot temp is too high and GPU could be defective. Thoughts?

 

IEDITED: I've had this PC since 2023 wtf. 

[one-armed dwarf]

tbh, I don't know, but this is the type of problem that AI is really good at reasoning with, so I'd be inclined to think it's right

 

On the positive side, reddit says something like that can just be a cooling issue and be a matter of replacing thermal paste. So if you sent it in somewhere it might be an easy job maybe. 

[Maf]

Looked at my invoice and it has 3 year warranty on labour 

 

3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)

 

Maybe if I buy some paste they can fix it. If that's what it is. Just sent them an email

 

Thanks! 

[one-armed dwarf]

An Nvidia guy here says that slop tracing/DLSS5 will be coming to the 4000 series in the future. I guess they kinda have to at this point, given that people already got it working

 

 

[Maf]

On DLSS5, NBA2k is the first game to officially support and implement, the feature. Maybe it’s just the selected shots, but here are some results 

 

 

It’s only marginally better imo, with shot 2 being only a tiny bit beyond that.
 

Posting in good faith qualifying this is only the first game, it looks good already, maybe there are better examples or it’s different when seeing in person, etc. but yeah.

 

Given the price of PC parts, the presumably significant hit on performance, for this result? Be making no sense to me

[one-armed dwarf]

I was a doubter, until I saw how it looks in Trails in the Sky. Massive improvement 

 

 

[Sly Reflex]

If Scotland did anime. 

[Maf]

Spent an hour on call with the PC company with them trying to fix and diagnose the problem over the phone, but no luck. Being sent back tomorrow and said it might take a couple of weeks 

 

£73 to return!(£62 for collection + £11 for packaging)

[DANGERMAN]

Well if they have to replace it you'll probably bankrupt them

[one-armed dwarf]

Serves him right for calling PC a bullshit machine 

 

(I hope your 4090 has a quick recovery, mainly cause I don't want karma to get me and kill mine)

[Maf]

I like that you think this happened because I called it bullshit and not the reason I call it bullshit is because stuff like this keeps happening 

 

Apparently they can test it but not allowed to try repair it, so if it is fully broke I’m hoping I’ll get a refurbished one from the manufacturer (I’ve had it for just under 3 years so I think that means the GPU is still under warranty) 

[Maf]

4090 packed up and sent off. We’ll see if it survives the trip. I realised in the packaging I bought they didn;t give me any foam to put inside the unit, so even though the whole pc is secure as I can make it, that GPU is just mounted in there with no support 

 

Honestly, at this point I’ve resigned myself to a “if it dies, it dies” mentality. Everything around me is just going so fucking wrong, I’m not sure I care

 

In the mean time I’ve bought back the god PC. The 3080 one. Plugged it in to my TV. It’s just, err, taking a little bit to get started. Half a dozen boots, finally got into safe mode, finally got it out of safe mode, now it’s lagging like fuck while I think it tries to understand what year it’s in. Can’t quite open the settings menu yet to download updates. I’m sure it’ll remember how to open the settings menu eventually. 
 

In the mean time. Well, there’s still a lot OoT content to go look at

[Maf]

Got my 3080 PC plugged in to my TV and alls well, which is nice 

 

You might notice the PC is propped up on a thing. Because I had to order a new HDMI ultra fast cable yesterday because all I had spare was old ones. It’s dome the trick. No screen flicker,  120fps, 4K, deep colour HDR. Nice. But I accidentally ordered the 0.5m cable…I thought I ordered the 1.5m cable. So I had to get the PC off the floor and turn its ass towards the HDMI ports for the cable to reach. Maybe I get a longer one, maybe I leave it

 

Been trying to calibrate HDR and colour. Think it’s ok. Maybe too much black crush but not sure. 
 

 

 

The 4090 was reportedly delivered back to the company. See what they say and how much more hassle it can possibly be 

[one-armed dwarf]