Be Excellent To Each Other

Haha, possibly not.

Go on...

The bloody wifi turns itself off for no apparent reasons on it. Boo! I will check the power saving features. Current, HP get 5/10 and 2 of those are for the B&O sticker on it.

Go to the FalloutNV folder in your Steam library, rename FalloutLauncher.exe to FalloutLauncher.exe.bak and then copy FalloutNV.exe to FalloutLauncher.exe

(filenames may not be accurate, but basically you just need to "fool" Steam into launching the game direct instead of going via the launcher - I did similar with FO4 earlier this week)

Nice, cheers!

It's the same for Fallout 3. Bethesda kindly let you boot the game without a CD if you did so that way.

Ever since getting our 65" TV I have wanted to game on it. Sadly at 4k the TV drops to 30hz and so is pretty much useless for PC gaming. Well, not so much useless, but let's put it this way, I would not pay in excess of £550 to play with a maximum of 30 FPS.

So the idea kind of went off the boil but then I got my old Alienware back. I behaved myself at first I really did. It took almost three weeks for me to crack, mostly when some one offered me a AMD 1055T 6 core CPU for free. Whilst not up to the paramount of a modern CPU it should still kick ass at 1080p. The problem then became that 4gb is not really enough to game on these days with some games actually refusing to run on less. It's also really bloody hard to find "cheap" 2gb DDR2 modules, most people are taking the piss. So after a lot of work I did manage to secure 8gb DDR2 (4x2gb) for a mere £20. I then got this..



An Asus Mars 760. The twist though is that this is actually two 760s on one board. Very rare things and incredibly expensive when launched. This should make an ideal card for Fallout 4 at 1080p

I also got a new PSU for the rig because the original had been in use since 2009, and probably actually dated from 2006.



Only cost me £35 in the BF sales. Oh yeah, talking of BF sales, I got this too.



240gb for £39. Right now it kinda looks like this.



But with any luck within a few days should be built and up and running.

Big article on Steam Machines in this month's Custom PC, and whilst they're generally 'polite' about them (probably because they're supplied by companies that advertise with the magazine), the conclusion is quite clearly that they're shit.

Everything we've talked about already really.

Limited games catalogue, clunky OS, the Steam store displays games that won't even run on Steam Machines (so it's like a massive tantalising list of stuff you can't have), sub-standard performance given the hardware, controller is a bit shit and doesn't work properly even with Valve's own games, plenty of little bugbears and gremlins which will undoubtedly be fixed but in the here and now are really annoying and so on. (Left4Dead 2, for example, which you'd imagine would a be a fine showcase for a Steam Machine, runs poorly despite being an old game now, is horrible to control with the Steam Controller, and doesn't even have all the actions mapped, requiring a visit to the options screen to reconfigure.)

Then the real kicker is that they're all supplied in cases that are already used for small form-factor PCs, and you can get the same hardware specification, in the same cases, running Windows 10 for around the same price, and just run Steam in Big Picture mode with an XBone/360 pad and have a far better experience than you'll have on a Steam Machine.

In short, the cost of a Windows installation is worth every penny.

My opinion on the Steam Machines hasn't changed. They're going the same way as OnLive. Well actually, they might not, as Crazy Old Gabe will refuse to accept defeat and keep hosing as much money down the toilet as it takes to keep the things supported and in the marketplace.

To be honest all he needs to do is release HL3 as an exclusive and he would sell tons. I've also heard rumours he is saving HL3 for Rift's release. All quite probably grade A bullshit but you never know

I finished my TV PC.



Connected it up to the 65" TV as as you would expect it's fantastic. I also bought 8gb DDR2 for it too and overclocked the AMD 1055T to 3.5ghz. Thing is Fallout 4 looks like total dog shit at 1080p. I can see why so many people were complaining about it now. I ran it @ 4k from day one and I guess I got used to it and thought it was OK. Not great but OK. Any way, on a 65" screen it looked like a dog's dinner @ 1080p. The TV does support 4k, but the 760 Mars (two GTX 760s with 2gb VRAM) would have crumbled. So instead I used Nvidia DSR to increase the resolution to 1440p. Turned out to be extremely clever and Fallout 4 again looked acceptable. The Mars doesn't seem to struggle with the extra pixels either, running it better than my Fury X runs it at 4k.

So overall very happy. Have finished Fallout 4 now (well, I've discovered every location and can't find any more quests so I guess I'm done..) and have moved onto some South Park : Stick of truth.

After a brief look around, it appears I'll have to spend £800-900 to get a new PC that'll run the Oculus Rift. Unless anyone else a bit more clued up knows better?

Are you happy to put something together from parts?

Do you have any parts you can recycle (keyboard, monitor, drives, etc)?

It's probably worth buying a whole new PC, knobbling a new CPU + mobo + RAM with a clunky old hard drive for example would be a terrible own goal.

Off the shelf is £950, I'm sure cheaper is possible if you shop around a bit - http://www.ebuyer.com/718019-pc-special ... cs-d823290

You absolutely want a decent sized SSD in there, booting or loading anything from a hard drive is spectacularly painful once you've experienced an SSD based system.

£515 for the barebones from Novatech, add in a GTX970 and an SSD and you'd bring it in for around £800 - http://www.novatech.co.uk/barebonebundl ... 60016.html

I have a monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers. Everything else would need to be new.

Yeah I couldn't go back to my OS running on a drive with moving parts. How antiquated. Thanks, as I suspected.

I'll see how much my car costs me this week first. It's literally not firing on all cylinders.

You've checked the HT leads and plugs, right? That's an easy job.

Worst PC hardware post ever.

I've got a trustworthy garage at the end of my road. Also I bluff enough knowledge that they don't try and shaft me.

He got everyone out of the car and in again. He works in IT.

IIRC the GTX 970 does not meet minimum spec for OR. For that you need a 980.

The cheapest sort of entry level card you should get is the Radeon 390. The GTX 970 is actually quite a light design and thus isn't really suited to things like OR. Thankfully the 390 is very reasonably priced right now for a very decent high grade card.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/xfx-rade ... 27-xf.html

You will then need to pair it with something like a I5 I would imagine.

Sadly I suffer from motion sickness caused by flickering light, so I'm pretty confident I won't be able to use VR. Hence why I have not really bothered reading much about it yet. What is of concern though is that there is more than one vendor for these headsets and the last fucking thing I would want to do is spend £400+ on what could turn out to be the Betamax of headsets.

I think I am going to think long and hard and wait before even considering VR. Plus you would look like a complete friggin helmet with it on your head.

Also - who spelled my username wrong?

Craster. what a dick.
I like cock.

It's like the drink but spelt the same

Oops! Fixed

I'm curious as to why they're so specific with OR requiring a 980, when the 970 is the same GPU as a 980 with a couple of bits disabled. (Unlike the 960 for example, which is effectively a 980 cut in half on everything including the memory bus.)

970 vs 980 post here - viewtopic.php?p=887762#p887762

It's possible that OR really does need the extra 8 ROPs that the 980 has over the 970, for example, but I'd be quite surprised.

Wrong. It does not meet the *recommended* spec.

https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/the-r ... am-voting/

The 970 and 980 are pretty lightweight cards spec wise. They are fast because they have such enormous clock speeds, but, those sort of clocks are not possible when you start adding in loads of extra features. The memory bus and bandwidth for example on both the 970 and 980 are fucking shit when compared to AMD cards. I've just checked it and it seems that all of a sudden the 970 is supposedly the min requirement. They've changed that.

From what I have been seeing and reading lately (and it could all be FUD and completely wrong) the AMD 390 in both VR and DX12 will beat the 970 very easily, due to the fact it's a much more 'grown up' card than both the 970 and 980. Articles like this -

http://wccftech.com/amd-r9-290x-fast-ti ... r-gtx-980/

And Ashes of singularity (DX12)

http://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2015/08 ... or-nvidia/

Seem to show that Nvidia literally did what was best for DX11 at the time. Obviously they have been doing this since Fermi, given that it really was a hot mother fucker of a kitchen sink. Since then they have basically ripped out anything that wasn't of importance (like Double Precision and so on) and that is why their cards can be ran at enormous clocks, off setting the fact that they have removed all of the heavy gear.

The problem is that with DX12 and VR that stuff is very important. And, due to AMD's much more grown up and mature design their cards are better for these new upcoming techs.

Example. GTX 970 memory bandwidth max = 224gbps. AMD 390 memory bandwidth max = 384gbps.

Initially this was not a problem, until of course you go up to 4k. That's when the cracks start to appear, even in DX11.

I was going on what I see and read every day. From what I have seen on forums and so forth the 970 was considered not good enough for VR/OR and would not meet the minimum requirements. That has since changed, god knows why (meaning I know why, they've probably been contacted by Nvidia).

I'm not sure you can really criticise Nvidia for producing cards that worked well with the API of the time, which was DX11. Perhaps AMD were designing with some future-proofing in mind but I'm not convinced that's a great idea for something that gets outclassed/replaced as often as graphics cards do. AMD have been notoriously poor on DX11 so I'm not surprised they're really banging the DX12 drum.

There's also no getting around the fact that AMD's cards consume a ridiculous amount of power compared to their Nvidia counterparts, in terms of efficiency Maxwell was, and is, fantastic.

All that said, if AMD are the clear winners in the DX12 era then I'll have no problem making the switch back to them. I was AMD for years (or ATI as they were then), until Nvidia had the better cards on offer. (See also CPUs, I was AMD for years there too before ditching them for Intel once the Core Duos came around.)

I'm not sure where you're getting the clock speed stuff from though, 390s tend to run in the 1050-1100MHz range, 970s in the 1100-1200MHz range, hardly a massive difference.

In the here and now (i.e. the DX11 era) all an AMD card has to offer is being bigger and more power-hungry than an equivalently performing Nvidia card, with very little between them in terms of price. Yes that might change once DX12 goes mainstream, but all we have for now are synthetic benchmarks and tech demos.

There may be more work that Nvidia can do with their drivers for DX12 on existing hardware, and their Pascal hardware is due to hit around the middle of this year I believe.

I certainly wouldn't switch from Nvidia to AMD based on what we can see at the moment, but will keep an open mind.

Ashes of the singularity is not a benchmark or tech demo dude it's a game.

AMD made a mistake with the 7970. It was their Fermi. Luckily it was still good compared to Kepler but it should have been much better.

Just seen news of Polaris, supposedly using half of the power running a game of the GTX 950. Impressive stuff so far

And no, of course I don't blame Nvidia for doing what was the right thing to do and learning from early Fermi, which was completely the wrong thing to do.

I don't know if it has been changed or what, but it now says:

Yes, sorry. He's wrong twice.

I spoke to a friend of mine earlier who has had both of the OR devkits and he basically told me the following.

OR runs a resolution similar to three times that of 1080p.

That's quite a hefty resolution for both the 970 and 980. That apparently isn't the main cause of concern, though. The 'screens' are 90hz. He says that with anything less than 70 FPS it starts to become less than ideal. Or rather, it becomes less than smooth and starts to make you feel quite ill.

You're right that the 970 isn't that much slower than the 980 but the 980 isn't exactly ideal either. 3x1080p @ a minimum of 70 FPS is an awful lot to ask of either card, thus you're better off with something like the 980ti or next gen Pascal (which is rumoured to be more of a 'full fat' solution than mid range Maxwell)

So basically Nvidia now have to go back to making heftier silicon.

AMD have taken a gamble with GCN which until now has not paid off. It's hot, large in die size and needs lots of power. They also took a huge risk with Fury X, given that it only truly shines with 4k.

Whether it will pay off? No idea tbh. Right now it's looking that way but we only have one game and one synthetic benchmark to go on.

Rift DK1 was 640×800 per eye @ 60Hz
DK2 was 960×1080 per eye @ 60 Hz
CV1 is 1080×1200 per eye @ 90 Hz

Your friend is an idiot because none of this is close to three times 1080p, and you could at least read Wikipedia for the scant thirty seconds necessary to avoid parroting nonsense.

http://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/powering-the-rift/


On the raw rendering costs: a traditional 1080p game at 60Hz requires 124 million shaded pixels per second. In contrast, the Rift runs at 2160×1200 at 90Hz split over dual displays, consuming 233 million pixels per second. At the default eye-target scale, the Rift’s rendering requirements go much higher: around 400 million shaded pixels per second. This means that by raw rendering costs alone, a VR game will require approximately 3x the GPU power of 1080p rendering.


It seems I got a little bit confused. Overall it pretty much equates to the same, though.

OK, that's a bit more sensible as source! But I do not understand this bit at all:

I think what he could mean by "eye target" is 90 FPS? He's comparing Rift to 1080p/60hz, so maybe that's why the requirements are that much higher because you need 33(or so)% more FPS to keep it smooth?

*eats popcorn, watches geek off*

No,

1920 x 1080 x 60 = 124M
2160 x 1200 x 90 = 233M

I have been trying to google eye-target scale, but all I get is articles quoting the statement.

Refresh rate and fps are very different things. Where's anyone getting 90fps from?

Eye-target distance doesn't seem to be a term that has any widely accepted meaning

That's what they say is needed to avoid getting sick.

Oh yeah, so it does. Huh.

Is it possible to render graphics out of focus in such a way that the eyes have to focus on a point slightly further away than screen, you know, to avoid eye fatigue? Maybe it's something like that.

Apparently it's perfectly fine for OR to hit 70 FPS. Any lower and yeah, puke 'o' fest.

Also for any one interested. Here is a post from a fellow forumite chum of mine on a different forum. I asked him if he knew of a list of supported games. This guy has had both of the OR dev kits.



TBH it hardly makes me want to rush out and buy one. Especially if it's not really compatible with many existing games and or makes you want to hurl.

It sounds like an Atari VCS with Space Invaders and "Bat 'n' ball". I know it goes further than that with movies and other 'cool things' (like roller coasters and so on) but right now as a strict gamer it's not exactly exciting me. It sounds very primitive.

Sort of - you cheat it by making the point you want the user to focus on the only point that's in focus - but I think that makes people more sick if they're not looking at it.

No, that's not what I mean. I mean rendering the entire image out of focus. Presumably they are using a constant focal point (everything being sharp) in any case, but by rendering everything slightly out of focus uniformly, the screens would appear to be further away than they actually are. Otherwise it would be like reading a book a few inches away from your eyes, which could cause strain.

That's what gave me massive headaches with 3D films until I learned not to try and focus on things that aren't what the film wants you to focus on

That's why 3D films are shit. I sometimes want to look at background stuff and it doesn't want to let you do that.

I try not to watch 3D normally, unless it is a sci-fi like Star Wars etc

Thinking further about this, it would probably have to be combined with physical lenses that puts the image back into focus (I'm not really sure, I don't know that much about optics).

But, if this is how it works, imagine looking at a painting on a wall, through a window in another wall in front of it in such a way that the edge of the window lines up with the edge of the painting from your point of view. The painting would take up a larger area than the window due to perspective. So maybe the larger resolution needed corresponds the larger area of the image actually being rendered.

It makes sense in my brain.

Pretty sure that you can't render something blurred and then put it back into focus with a lens. The screens just have a lens in front of them which requires your eyes to focus at a given distance to view them giving the appearance that it's further away than it really is.