Poll of the Day > Whatever happened to the 'PC Gaming Master Race'?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I haven't really heard from any PC gamers recently? They used to never shut up about how much better they were than everyone, like the vegans of gaming.

What happened? Did they realize they couldn't say that you could build a PC that's just as good as a Playstation/Xbox for the same price since the PS5 and Xbox Series X are completely decked out to a point that they can't compete for $500?

It went away with the console wars.

I mean... I dont know about what $500 gets you these days, but my gaming rig absolutely shits on your console, whatever it is.

It's for sure not a casual/frugal person's gaming platform, so I understand your concern.

No console has the processing power to handle Dwarf Fortress

Valve's steam deck is what happened

Notschmendrake posted...

I mean... I dont know about what $500 gets you these days, but my gaming rig absolutely shits on your console, whatever it is.

It's for sure not a casual/frugal person's gaming platform, so I understand your concern.

$500 gets you a mid-range graphics card and nothing else.

PC was the clear winner? Why is this thread being asked like PC isn't the master race?

The consoles are like mustangs and challengers. Us PC guys are now only hanging out with other super car owners.

CaptainStrong posted...

$500 gets you a mid-range graphics card and nothing else.

That probably sucks, but I really dont care about the price tag.

hypnox posted...

The consoles are like mustangs and challengers. Us PC guys are now only hanging out with other super car owners.

PCs are the most extreme.
Best graphics, best response time, best breath of games, with the worst technical problems, highest cost, and most annoying fans.

shadowsword87 posted...

with the worst technical problems, and most annoying fans.

I think you forgot you were talking about PC, you somehow threw in the talking points of the Xbox 360.

Busy playing games.
That's where they are

hypnox posted...

I think you forgot you were talking about PC, you somehow threw in the talking points of the Xbox 360.

With premade systems, you can call up someone, and have them help you fix the problem.

If I have a RAM allocation fuckup, I can't send my PC back to someone fix it, and have them send me a new one for a fraction of the price.

shadowsword87 posted...

With premade systems, you can call up someone, and have them help you fix the problem.

If I have a RAM allocation fuckup, I can't send my PC back to someone fix it, and have them send me a new one for a fraction of the price.

Ram issues are literally some of the easiest to fix. If you don't know how to fix basic computer stuff, you deserve your fast food job.

hypnox posted...

Ram issues are literally some of the easiest to fix. If you don't know how to fix basic computer stuff, you deserve your fast food job.

Agreed. Real life has far more challenges. Just wait till you change the anode rod in your hot water tank or change a modern light fixture or try to replace a failing breaker that is no longer produced.

You can't buy a PS5, just like you can't buy a 3080, it's not really important.

hypnox posted...

Ram issues are literally some of the easiest to fix. If you don't know how to fix basic computer stuff, you deserve your fast food job.

I'm an electrical engineer you goober, my point still stands that computers give wild errors that take an expert to handle most of the time.

Meme spread by awful redditors that never actually watched Zero Punctuation.

Mostly, the meme got old and died, so people stopped enjoying saying that. Spikes in GPU and other component costs have also thrown a bit of a wrench into the cost-effectiveness equation (which used to unquestionably favour PC's, but that's no longer the case) and made first-time building a harder sell, plus being more powerful than consoles is largely meaningless these days because there's barely anything on the market that uses the full potential of a PS4/Xbone, let alone a PS5/Series X or an even better computer. PC's are still the better system, since near-unlimited backwards compatibility, all the other utility they offer, and better game prices justify the front-end cost, but I don't feel the need to proclaim that.

shadowsword87 posted...

my point still stands that computers give wild errors that take an expert to handle most of the time.

Not really. In the decade since I built this thing, I've never run into a problem that I couldn't solve with a bit of googling/asking other amateurs. It's true that I haven't had the option of having somebody else repair it for me, but it's also true that I haven't needed to have somebody else repair it when something minor goes wrong, which is the issue with closed systems.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

You can't buy a PS5, just like you can't buy a 3080, it's not really important.

Basically this. No one can buy a graphics card at a decent price right now, but no one can get a hold of a PS5 either

hypnox posted...

I think you forgot you were talking about PC, you somehow threw in the talking points of the Xbox 360.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg7X-BMSe5c

i build my current PC for about $600 a decade ago and i've put maybe $300 in it since and it's served me fine all this time

i don't have incredibly good graphics but i also don't really care enough about graphics for it to be an issue

I find a lot of gamers these days would rather argue about something like whether or not every woman in video games needs to be half naked with huge boobies.

I was always a Nintendo fanboy but built my own PC in 2017. I'm fairly of the view that PC is defs the best, but I like having the charm of Nintendo on hand most of all.

ReturnOfFa posted...

I was always a Nintendo fanboy but built my own PC in 2017. I'm fairly of the view that PC is defs the best, but I like having the charm of Nintendo on hand most of all.

Of the 3 consoles, Nintendo is the only one that has proprietary features that the pc doesnt. I dont own a console, but if I did it would be a Nintendo. Otherwise it's just a nerfed pc.

Think outside the box

What are some things a high end PC can do that aren't GPU related?

Lokarin posted...

Think outside the box

What are some things a high end PC can do that aren't GPU related?

That's a pretty tight box though. Almost everything on a pc or console is going to use the GPU. It's kind of the whole point.

See, I'd say something like VR porn, but no, that's pretty gpu intensive.

Notschmendrake posted...

That's a pretty tight box though. Almost everything on a pc or console is going to use the GPU. It's kind of the whole point.

sure, that's not what I meant tho - yaya a GPU is going to be used, but I more was asking about other advantages PCs have

Lokarin posted...

sure, that's not what I meant tho - yaya a GPU is going to be used, but I more was asking about other advantages PCs have

I get what you mean now

3d rendering, vr porn, mining crypto, modding games to name a few.

Lokarin posted...

Think outside the box

What are some things a high end PC can do that aren't GPU related?

Specifically high end? Not much, honestly, presuming you aren't talking about the rare CPU-bottlenecked game when you say that. But a high end PC can do what any other PC can do, which is pretty extensive. The premium you're paying to hit "high-end" just goes toward making games look prettier (or actually run, in some cases).

consoles have been trying so hard to imp PC's that the groups probably just kind of melded into one weird blob.

CaptainStrong posted...

$500 gets you a mid-range graphics card and nothing else.

$500 doesn't even get you that lmao

just get a 1050ti

The fact that tc takes pc master race and console wars seriously is actually sad

older consoles were holding things back a lot a while ago, but these days aren't and things have evened out more with decent games being published on many platforms at once. consolification is still sometimes a thing but it's *way* less common and severe than before.

Notschmendrake posted...

I mean... I dont know about what $500 gets you these days, but my gaming rig absolutely shits on your console, whatever it is.

It's for sure not a casual/frugal person's gaming platform, so I understand your concern.

I like paying CAD $600 every eight years and caring more about gameplay than graphics and WASD-carpal tunnel.

The thing that I found endlessly amusing about that term is that it was originally coined as a tongue-in-cheek insult, mocking the smug/insecure nature of a (very vocal) subset of PC gamers, yet the insult went completely over the heads of those same gamers, who started self-identifying with the term unironically.

Anyways, what happened? Modern tech happened. Games haven't been tech-limited for years; they're mostly budget-limited these days. You can spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing a game and even last-gen machines (whether you're talking consoles or PCs) will still probably have no problems running it. The number of games that actually require modern tech to run well is very small, because very few studios have the budget to make a game that demanding (and those who do understand that it's usually more cost-effective to make a game that's less technologically demanding but still designed well from a gameplay perspective).

Hell, I have what was once a high-end gaming PC that is now eight years old and I've yet to run into a game it cannot play (I'm sure there are some out there - particularly if you get into VR, which I'm not really interested in - but all of the ones I've wanted to play have run fine on this machine).

zebatov posted...

I like paying CAD $600 every eight years and caring more about gameplay than graphics and WASD-carpal tunnel.

you realize it's very easy to get almost any kind of controller working on the pc, right? i even got my ps3 fightstick i bought in 2011 working with melty blood type lumina

darkknight109 posted...

Games haven't been tech-limited for years

That's completely untrue, the whole reason tensor cores and all that jazz came in to being is because classical GPUs couldn't keep up with ray tracing, and no system today can run AAA games at true 4K 144hz that monitors can now do.

We're heavily tech-limited as usual, but if you stick with decade old standards like 1080p 60hz and rasterised graphics, sure, you can play anything. Just like how a PS2 could play modern games if you run it at 360p 20fps.

Adam_Savage posted...

$500 doesn't even get you that lmao

I disagree. It's hard to get hardware at close to MSRP these days, but not impossible. Entry level RTX cards are supposed to be about $350 MSRP. Even low end cards by today's standards can run modern games at 1080p. Even at inflated prices I'm pretty sure you could easily get a mid-range GPU for $500. Maybe we differ in what we consider mid-range.

ps2s absolutely could not play modern games at 360p 20fps lol

kind9 posted...

Even at inflated prices I'm pretty sure you could easily get a mid-range GPU for $500.

The prices are more inflated than you may be aware

Metalsonic66 posted...

The prices are more inflated than you may be aware

Hmmm, indeed. By the way what would be considered the bottom end of mid-range these days? I didn't realize that even 1080s are like $800-1000.

I never heard people gloat about it

Kyuubi4269 posted...

That's completely untrue, the whole reason tensor cores and all that jazz came in to being is because classical GPUs couldn't keep up with ray tracing, and no system today can run AAA games at true 4K 144hz that monitors can now do.

Fortunately, 4K 144hz is pretty difficult to justify as the standard for "looks good enough that I don't feel like I need to spend more improving it," and far lower resolutions still look perfectly fine.

darkknight109 posted...

The number of games that actually require modern tech to run well is very small, because very few studios have the budget to make a game that demanding (and those who do understand that it's usually more cost-effective to make a game that's less technologically demanding but still designed well from a gameplay perspective).

Eh, that's kind of debatable. Making games that genuinely cannot run without top-end PC hardware is indeed very expensive and rarely worthwhile, but making games that could run on a toaster but end up needing higher-end hardware to compensate for how poorly optimized their PC ports are is much cheaper and not at all uncommon, especially in the AAA space.

darkknight109 posted...

Hell, I have what was once a high-end gaming PC that is now eight years old and I've yet to run into a game it cannot play (I'm sure there are some out there - particularly if you get into VR, which I'm not really interested in - but all of the ones I've wanted to play have run fine on this machine).

I'm in more or less the same boat. Built something mid-range in 2011, upgraded the GPU to upper-mid in 2015, and I've pretty rarely found myself hardware constrained. I cannot, however, run Elden Ring. I don't come anywhere close to the minimum requirements there (though that's likely From sucking at PC optimization more than the game being genuinely that demanding), so I'm going to need to upgrade to play it, and that's just not in the cards right now (not that upgrading for one game is a particularly good idea in the first place).

adjl posted...

I cannot, however, run Elden Ring. I don't come anywhere close to the minimum requirements there (though that's likely From sucking at PC optimization more than the game being genuinely that demanding),

Have you tried running Cyberpunk? That was the first game I ran that was a clear slap in the face that I need an upgrade. Ran like a fucking slideshow for me. I can actually run Elden Ring pretty well despite not meeting the minimum requirements. I saw a video of the game running on my GPU and there was practically no difference in frame rate between all the graphical presets. That does kind of seem like a sign of poor optimization.

kind9 posted...

Have you tried running Cyberpunk?

I haven't, but I also don't really plan to. The way that release went kind of turned me off of supporting the game at all, especially where I was only ever mildly interested in it to begin with. By the sounds of things, I'd also struggle there.

kind9 posted...

I can actually run Elden Ring pretty well despite not meeting the minimum requirements. I saw a video of the game running on my GPU and there was practically no difference in frame rate between all the graphical presets. That does kind of seem like a sign of poor optimization.

It might be worth a shot, if I make sure I can refund it, but I've got a stock 2500K in here, which benchmarks way below the minimum, and an R9 280X isn't exactly up to date either, nor are my 8 GB of RAM. It looks like some people have been able to get it running on my GPU with some tweaks, but I don't think the rest will be up to the task.

kind9 posted...

Hmmm, indeed. By the way what would be considered the bottom end of mid-range these days? I didn't realize that even 1080s are like $800-1000.

1660Ti maybe

adjl posted...

I'm in more or less the same boat. Built something mid-range in 2011, upgraded the GPU to upper-mid in 2015, and I've pretty rarely found myself hardware constrained. I cannot, however, run Elden Ring. I don't come anywhere close to the minimum requirements there

adjl posted...

It might be worth a shot, if I make sure I can refund it, but I've got a stock 2500K in here, which benchmarks way below the minimum, and an R9 280X isn't exactly up to date either, nor are my 8 GB of RAM. It looks like some people have been able to get it running on my GPU with some tweaks, but I don't think the rest will be up to the task.

hmmm

I have i5-2310, GTX 1060 3GB, and 24GB DDR3, and I can run it ok (not perfect, although basically perfect in some places) on low settings. it will run on high settings, but somewhat painfully. I guess your GPU is the main weakness. there are a lot of wide views with tons of stuff in the distance and I can tell that contributes to the slowness (more claustrophobic areas run noticeably smooth in comparison).

(I don't always mind a game running poorly anyway if it's my machine that makes it slow, since I know I can upgrade it later and it'll be awesome. one reason I love PC.)

(the GTX 1060 seems to be one of the best pieces of hardware I've ever gotten. cost only like ~$300 and is the main thing that makes my ~10 year old PC still work.)