Be Excellent To Each Other

Just a bit. Hopefully for Steam Link II they'll put a power switch on the device itself - or just make sure it's always-on like a Chromecast.

You're always-on like a Chromecast!

#sickburn

Ok, so I've been trying to play Half-Life: Opposing Force (it's alright so far, thanks for asking) but, at the same time, I've been annoyed by the controls being different to Black Mesa (weirdly I'm totally nonplussed about the drop in graphics as the enemies are easier to shoot. I think there's some auto aim going on that was missing from Black Mesa) (or maybe I never turned it on) (fack me, I'd be pissed at myself if I missed something that should have made it much easier and like the original) (anyhoo), but anyhoo I've been looking for this Manage Game thing and I'll be fucked if I can find it. Seriously, where the fuck is it? Do I access it in-game? I can't get into BPM from the shift-tab menu. Do I access it from BPM outside of the game somewhere? When I click the left bumper in BPM there's that menu with the internet Windows and I can't see anything from the limited choices on the front page.

Come on, ese, help a brother out here wontcha? Don't be a puto, vato. Erm...homes.

Looks like you're launching the game from BPM there, sonny Jim. I have never done that. Ever. I'll check it out laterz.

Well don't expect to have all the options for the controller then. It's designed to be used in BPM.

That is pretty fucking stupid to be fair, there's really no reason for certain options to only be available in one version of the ui.

They're probably there, just hidden in the menu somewhere. In BPM where it's geared towards the controller it's front and centre (well, left).

Not wishing to be massively outdone by Myps dirty hipster PC, new PC get.

Look at all the LEDS!



And just for JC, an interior shot...



Phwoar, eh lads.

Spec is something or another.
Skylake i7 4Ghz, GTX 980Ti, 16Gb DDR4, Some SSD thing, Some other thing. WIndows 9+1. An optical drive of pure joy. A motherboard. With gaming in its name. A stupid magnet thing. No noise. Really, If it weren't for the LEDs I wouldn't even know the thing was on. Is it turned on? But seriously, those LEDs, eh!

You always have to outdo me, don't you? Mine's got some awesome red LEDs, if that helps.

Very clean I like it. That stock cooler though ! boak !

Of course I do.

I was it's amazing LEDosity and knew I had to get it, because there's just no way you could compete with it.

It's completely quiet and it keeps it cool. It's about all I care about.

Of course, this may all change when I chuck something more taxing at it.

Mine is overclocked to 4.6GHz so probably better tbh.

Take a better picture of those LEDs. I've got my pants off in anticipation.

That's a very tidy build Dave, did you do it yourself or buy it in from somewhere? (And if so, where?)

The 980Ti is a monster of a graphics card, are you targeting 4K or something?

As for the stock cooler, if not overclocked it'll be fine, and they generally stay pretty quiet too. (The stock cooler on Mrs Hearthly's i5 favours low noise so much it actually lets the chip throttle rather than spin up too much, which I'm not entirely sure I agree with, but there you are.)

Mine has an overclock button, apparently. IBut I iamgine I'd have to sort out some kind of better cpu cooling were I to hit it.

First time I've bought a new pc rather than building it myself - The PC it's replacing is still theoretically the first pc I bought secondhand from a friend back in 1999 just upgraded a lot (Although that's just getting repurposed anyway). Came from Freshtech. (Mainly as they seemed to be the only people I could find that would sell me a pc that wasn't also some absurd lightshow at the same time. I'll admit I didn't search too hard though).

A 4K screen is on the list of things to get in the next few months. Probably also some kind of technohat. And not having to worry about upgrading for years. Hopefully.

I have a laptop with an i5 from a few years ago, integrated graphics whatnot thingy. Anyway, as soon as any sort of 3d graphics is used the fan wacks to full and the chip gets super hot, recorded temperatures of 97C. Can this be controlled in anyway?

Your wish, my command.

Like this?

I miss the turbo button on my Pentium MMX 133Mhz

My PC has blast processing.

Heh.

Nah, it's a button on the motherboard. I think it's hiding behind the optical drive.

Only reason I know its there is a part of the manual which states "The OC button helps enthusiasts and overclockers not only get the most performance from their hardware, but also the absolute most enjoyable OC experience. Press this button to load the most optimized GIGABYTE overclocking configuration for your hardware"

So I assume it starts playing the mid 2000s TV program "The OC" and then bursts into fire to stop you from watching it

I can't help but feel that enthusiasts and people not wanting to set their computer on fire might want to know more about it other than "It's magic"

Your computer may have lots of crap in it. reducing cooling efficiency, and so making it hot and need to run the fans hard.
Your computer may just be poorly designed. (See: The toshiba laptop I had 10 years ago. Sounded like an aircraft taking off the moment it was remotely taxed.) Did it ever not do this?
Your computer may come with software which manages this. Check for intel software in the start menu to see if you can set it up (assuming its interl on cpu gfx)
I'm guessing your not actually pushing it too hard from your description, so I'll not tell you to reduce settings on stuff.
You may have a dirty, dirty piece of Malware.
It may be your computers way of telling you it doesn't have enough LEDs. Buy more LEDs. Then shove them up your arse.

486 sx33.

If we're having that competition we had a 386 running Win 3.11 that my dad brought home from work (I assume it was legit and he didn't just steal it). I got a 9600 baud modem for it to browse Korn and Radiohead fan sites.

Turbo button?

Windows? Luxury. Didn't have that on my 286.

Just going through my steam list installing games I want to play. The amount of games I own that I don't remember even hearing of, let alone buying, is staggering.

Is that it? I'm barely at a semi.

I have 4 on the back panel. 2 per ethernet port.

And I think there's some "debugging" LEDs on the motherboard, but I'm not taking the side off to see.
And I suppose I could have a picture with the hard drive LED lit as compared to unlit, if that'd get you fully engorged.

Your PC was well shit mate. I had Windows 2.something on my
Amstrad 8086@8MHz, rocking 640 KB of RAM, with an outstanding EGA graphics card and blazing 10 MB ISA-card-mounted hard drive. Obviously I didn't use Winblows. I used DOS 3.1 like all rockstar ninja hackers.

Did it have a turbo button?

MS DOS eh? Bit too mainstream mate. DR DOS was what the real pc users used.

Was it a real doctor?

No. Too old. IIRC the way turbo buttons worked was to drop the CPU multiplier to 1x, thus dropping it back to the bus speed; in that PC, the CPU and FSB both ran at 8 MHz.

Did anyone ever (other than me) use the turbo button to slow down the computer ever?

My Amstrad pre-dates DR-DOS by two years ('86 vs '88), although I'm not sure when exactly I had mine. I'm sure it had DOS 3.2, though, because I remember upgrading to 3.3; DR-DOS starts at 3.3.

Now I've looked it up (it was a PC1640), though, I've found two lies above. The HDD was 20 MB, not 10 MB. And it didn't ship with Windows; it shipped with Gem, an Atari-ST like GUI that was pretty awful. I must have pirated Windows 2.whatever a bit later.

Only nerds had PCs. Amiga kids were cool kids.

Cool kids had Amigas and PCs. (And CD32s)

I had my Amiga and my PC next to each other on the big ugly desk in my room as a teen. I remember doing some school essays on the PC while having Ultimate Soccer Manager running on the Amiga. Good times.

Nah, no one had a CD32

Yeah all the cool kids were playing "Gloom" LOL.

I didn't have a CD32 at the time but I have one now and it's great.

http://www.amigapd.com/cd32-compilation-download.html

edit: and http://unofficial-cd32-ports.blogspot.c ... ation.html

I did. For the most part it was a Guardian playing machine. It appears that it got quite crashy when you got up to world 14 or so.

That second site is already in my bookmarks but thanks! I was slowly working my way through them and even went as far as printing off the cases. My collection looks great!

Personally speaking Dave I wouldn't do that...

I initially got my 4k monitor in the summer of 2014 and thought it was a great idea. My initial plan was to throw two Titan Blacks at it (£1400) in the hopes that it would nail 4k. I thought by getting Titans with their ridiculous 6gb VRAM that I would be easily able to run 4k games and be happy. But I wasn't because 4k is by far and away the most demanding thing I have ever used. My Titans were made to look pretty stupid, as if I went anywhere remotely past 'medium' settings on a game and dared to touch the higher settings or above it immediately turned into a slide show. After a lot of deliberation (and benchmarking with friends who had Fury X / 980ti) I concluded that one Fury X / 980ti @ 4k was actually faster than both of my Titan Blacks. So, I sold the TBs for £550 and bought a Fury X from a friend who had bought one to benchmark with a week earlier for £440. Result.

Thing is, even with one of these new 'muscle cards' things weren't much better. My monitor is 'only' 60hz but with VSYNC on 60 FPS was nothing but a pipe dream. I mainly had to game at 25-40 FPS which isn't ideal, especially when you are used to 60 FPS. So the only way to 'fix' this was to buy another Fury X (this time £395 from another friend who ran 1440p and wanted to switch to a 980ti) and now finally I can run games with half decent image quality settings and get the magic number (60 FPS). However, some games still dip into the 40s and of course then you open up the "multi GPU" can of worms (Fallout 4, Just Cause 3, Star Wars : Battlefront etc all refuse to scale) and so I'm still having caveats, even with £1100 worth of GPUs.

My advice on 4k? leave it well alone and get yourself one of those lovely swanky 1440p screens. 1440p with X4 aliasing looks almost as good as 4k. Some games though in 4k are miles better than 1440p but those are the ones that demand SLI/CF in order to get even a half decent FPS from.

A 980ti will ruin 1440p without even breaking a sweat.

Looking back? 4k was one of the mistakes I've made with computers. If Polaris/Pascal can do what 980ti/Fury X did ? (IE - achieve double the FPS at 4k as their previous gen cards?) then 4k could actually become a thing. Right now though it's ridiculous and a complete passion killer.

Yeah I'm not convinced on 4K yet either, no single GPU can handle it, and dual-GPU setups remain temperamental and far too reliant on developer/driver support.

Basically everything JC just said.

When Custom PC talk about 4K gaming they consider 'playable' framerates to be anything north of 30FPS, which says it all really. (I mean, some folks might be happy with that but if I'd spent the best part of £1000 on graphics cards alone, I wouldn't be too impressed with then capping my framerate at 30FPS to keep things consistent, when you consider that's the same framerate a £270 PS4 will knock GTAV out at at.)

1440p is the real sweet-spot at the moment for PC gaming IMO, and a perfect resolution partner for a lovely 27 inch screen. The 980Ti will damn near max everything out at that resolution, at 60FPS with v-sync engaged. (My 970 isn't an auto-max on everything at 1440p, the 980Ti should manage it though.)

I think we need another GPU generation before 4K goes mainstream.

I've run SLi since, ooh, 2004 I think. Should I have noticed problems?

I haven't, if that helps.