Yeah yeah I ain’t post ever. Not sorry, been busy. Got a new job which just started this past week so I’m mentally and physically drained right now, but happy.
Another reason I’m drained right now is I just spent yesterday building a new PC, which is something I only rarely get to do but really enjoy when the opportunity comes around. I ain’t built a new PC since 2019. I was running on an old 9900K and a 2080ti. Both great in their time, but today it struggles to get medium settings on most new games at 1440p.
So there came a time. Now I’m running a 9800X3D and a 5080 with a big ol’ swingin’ dick 42 inch OLED screen and I’m wading into those 4k waters. I’ma be spending some time trying out some things to see how they compare, and trying out some new things to see some stuff I couldn’t before. Maybe I’ll post a bit about it, but you know how it is with me.
I’m also gonna talk about that GameCube FlippyDrive I mentioned in the last post when I can – mine’s not arriving until August so it’s gonna be a minute. I also talked a little bit about the dozens of Desert Strike homage games coming out – more of them are either out or have demos available now, so I definitely wanna get on that and try as many out as I can. I highly doubt any will truly live up to the original, but I’ll be very glad if any of them surprise me.
Comments
It would be cool if you can do a mini review or say some words about your experience upgrading. Like, I think the human eye has a limit to what it can actually see so are high resolutions and frame rates, etc., really worth it? I don’t know the limit of that perception. Which is the bit that actually helps more, rig or screen?
I feel I have a strong computer and decent monitor but I don’t really notice a significant difference. Nothing has made me go, “Wow!” for as long as I’ve had them. I have an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X and RTX 3080. I have a 32″ LG Ultragear monitor. I’ve liked your tech reviews in the past like the retrotink and related things.
Well I won’t bother making a full post about it because that topic’s been done to death and I can’t add anything to the discussion.
There’s no way that hardware, presently available at reasonable costs to the consumer, could ever come close to what the human eye can perceive as far as “framerate” goes. Don’t underestimate just how insanely fast we can perceive and process motion.
That being said, I think it differs wildly from person to person and it isn’t just about how fast our eyes work but how fast our brains can ingest and understand that information, and there’s literally no point discussing that because I know no fucking technical information whatsoever about the biological and mental aspects of the workings of the eye.
What I CAN say with 100% certainty is that higher framerates in videogames are always, invariably, with no exception, BETTER. Every time, always. The faster the framerate, the smoother the gameplay, the better the experience will be because it removes a barrier between you and the game. Better, smoother, faster performance means information getting into your brain quicker and with fewer bumps in the road. Framerate and refresh rate go hand in hand in that respect. If your monitor doesn’t have a high refresh rate, then the framerate is only going to do so much. Your computer could be outputting 144fps but if your monitor is only 60hz you’re not gonna see or feel that benefit.
I should also make it clear that ridiculously high framerates and refresh rates (like 200-300+) ultimately don’t matter for gaming much unless you’re highly competitive and playing incredibly fast paced games that require the absolute craziest of twitch reflexes. If you’re playing RPGs and basic action games then none of it REALLY matters. Keep in mind that modern games are developed for bottom of the barrel, shitty cheap hardware consoles that sometimes can still barely handle 45fps at 1080p, so they aren’t aiming high and don’t expect you to perceive or care about how shitty the performance is because they think very little of you.
I LIKE high performance when it comes to gaming. Low framerates to me feel like rubbing sandpaper in my eyes. I’m not exaggerating, it FEELS bad to me to play games with low framerates. I get used to it after a while, of course, if I’m playing something that has low framerate and no options to improve it, but that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. And I LOVE PC for that reason. Almost every game I play, I’m tweaking the settings first and getting it just right for how I want it, and for me that means as smooth and fast as possible, preferably with as high as I can get the visual quality without compromising the framerate. My new PC can do that with ease for everything, so that’s nice, even at 4k. Also thanks to PC as a platform, I can mod the shit out of everything to get rid of bad performance that isn’t hardware related, like FF7 Rebirth’s shitty shader optimization that means it stutters constantly on even the highest performance PCs. Mods take care of that bullshit and give a consistent, smooth experience. 100% of the time there’s a mod to fix any issue you have with a game. PC is the peoples’ choice.
You asked about rig vs screen – that’s chicken and egg stuff man. You can have the best screen in the world but if your PC isn’t man enough to output graphics at a quality and resolution that are equal to the monitor, you’re wasting the screen’s capabilities. Likewise if you have a monster rig but cheap out on the screen, then you’re outputting high resolution visuals at high framerates and not even seeing it because the screen can’t physically output it. The real answer is you need both in equal measure.
If you have a rig that can do 4k at 60+ fps, then you better get a 4k screen that has at LEAST 60hz refresh rate to make the most of it.
If you have a rig that can handle 1440p at 60fps but can’t handle 4k at those framerates, then don’t go with a 4k screen and just get a 1440p screen with good refresh rates.
I will say this upgrade for me made a huge difference in multiple areas. My old rig was a 2080ti and a 1440p screen, which I’ve been using for like 6 years. It was decent and could still handle most games at absolutely max settings at 1440p up until very recently, now that ray tracing and path tracing have started to take off it couldn’t keep up all of a sudden. I made the jump to the 5080 with an LG C4 TV, which is a TV that’s exceptional for use as a computer monitor. 4k was a MASSIVE leap in visual quality, and I needed both the PC AND the screen to make that step up. If I stayed at 1440p I’d be wasting the hardware and not getting to experience the 4k quality and tasty HDR. The screen size and that HDR specifically are a huge step up from what I was used to, and the sheer power of the CPU and GPU have meant I can get away with really blasting the settings on every game I play.
Anyway. I’ve ranted and raved more than long enough about dumb shit that doesn’t matter. See yas.