Old PC Vs new

[Solid State Soul ( SSS )]

You should have done your research, sandy bride i7 2600 from 2011 can STILL play very triple A games and VR applications fine today, just pair it with a good graphics card and watch it fly.

You dont need the latest and greatest to play games

 

[Deleted member 24505]

You should have done your research, sandy bride i7 2600 from 2011 can STILL play very triple A games and VR applications fine today, just pair it with a good graphics card and watch it fly.

You dont need the latest and greatest to play games

The i7-4790k with a 980ti plays every game in my steam list, inc AAA at 1080 vhigh easily.

 

[Valantar]

A good quad core is still a pretty decent gaming CPU. There are definitely situations where they lag significantly behind a modern 6+ core CPU, but only really when paired with a similarly modern high end GPU. Heck, my secondary/travel PC is a modded Dell Optiplex 990 SFF with an i5-2400 (non-K) and an RX 5700, and that still does a decent enough job at 1080p60 - I just don't expect to play the newest titles at Ultra. But the pace of performance increases has been steadily declining ... well, always, really, but over the past decade it's become visible for anyone caring to look. Even my old Core2Quad Q9450 - with a decent OC, mind you - was viable as a gaming CPU for nearly a full decade. Was it slower than even an i3 at the end? Of course. But it worked fine. I did get a huge performance boost out of my Fury X when I moved to the Ryzen 1600X, but ... the 9450 held me over until I could afford that, and provided a good experience still. And I could even sell it on when I didn't need it any more. I expect a mid-range and upwards CPU from today to last equally long. Though it is a bit hard to predict, as game development was mostly locked to a philosophy of "no more than 4 cores in the system" for near a decade. The previous-gen consoles were of course 8c8t, but slower than a good 4c8t desktop CPU due to their low power cores, so that's mostly the same thing. With current gen consoles actually having powerful CPUs I hope we'll see some innovation in making use of all this available CPU performance for interesting features in games, as the past decade+ has essentially been piling on GPU-taxing eye candy while leaving the CPU nearly untouched. I still don't think games will realistically tax more than 8 threads heavily in the next 5+ years - there are always some outliers, but in general, no. But it'll be interesting to see how developers make use of these new resources.

IMO the bigger change is in GPUs. A decade ago, a 5-year-old GPU was essentially unusable. Just compare a Radeon 5970 (late 2009) to a Geforce 7800 GTX (mid 2005) - the 7800 GTX doesn't even have unified shaders, and the newer card supported DX11 vs. DX9 on the older. The performance delta would have been mind-boggling. Today, on the other hand, a 5-year-old GPU that started out good is still usable, even if it's no performer. But it can play anything on the market as long as it isn't broken. Today's top GPUs are 4-8x the performance of the HD 5970 according to TPU's database (though likely more in real life), while a decade ago the delta between a new and 11-year old GPU ... they would be several orders of magnitude apart. Heck, even 10-year-old GPUs like the Radeon 7000 series still work today, even if they are woefully inefficient. They are still compatible with today's OSes, might not have current driver support but have working drivers, and support most features in most games. That's an astounding development and a great benefit to users, but also goes to show how as products become more optimized, the rate of improvement slows down. That's unavoidable, but it needs to be followed with longer-term support and products being built to last as well. Imagine where we'll be in another decade. If a near 10-year-old GPU (HD 7950, late 2011) is still usable today, how will a 6800 XT or RTX 3080 perform in a decade? Likely pretty decently. But the industry isn't built in a way where that is feasible.

Of course, the companies making these products need tons of money to invest in new tech, and are reliant on a steady rate of replacement for that, so they are incentivized against ensuring product longevity. It's one of the crucial flaws of capitalism - assuming we can act as if we live in a world of infinite resources, when both material and virtual wealth is increasingly limited and unevenly distributed. And when sales drop due to products lasting longer - as we've seen in the smartphone industry - companies fold quickly. It's an incredibly short-sighted and nonsustainable approach to things, and hopefully we can find better solutions in the near future.



Also, given all the car metaphors, no-longer-metaphors, and general car talk, one would think people here could listen to the GPS and bring the thread back on track a bit sooner

 

[Hyderz]

even though your older system is fine, dont sell your newer system
because eventually there might a new game you might want to play and what if your old system doesn't meet the requirements
since you already have new hardware, it doesnt make sense to me to sell newer hardware than old
even though both now you couldn't tell the difference

 

[Mescalamba]

Certain old tech is better than newer, like audio and keyboards. Who agrees with me?

Definitely. Especially in build quality. Its absurd that I have audio card thats literally oldest HW I have and it still works and still sounds good. Yet newer one (some time ago) crapped out just past 2 years. By all logic caps on that old card should be dried out to death. Yet, it was caps on newer one that died.. presumably.

 

[The red spirit]

Also, given all the car metaphors, no-longer-metaphors, and general car talk, one would think people here could listen to the GPS and bring the thread back on track a bit sooner

Why it is such a big deal? I don't get it, in other forums that often happens and nobody gives a shit and here everyone is against that just after two posts.

 

[95Viper]

Stay on topic; and, it is not cars.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Why it is such a big deal? I don't get it, in other forums that often happens and nobody gives a shit and here everyone is against that just after two posts.

Because you end up with a post about a specific subject, or one asking for help flooded with non relevant posts about other crap that, don't look good, don't help the original post asking for help etc and are sometimes not even relevant in a tech forum.

 

[Valantar]

Why it is such a big deal? I don't get it, in other forums that often happens and nobody gives a shit and here everyone is against that just after two posts.

I'm usually one who very much enjoys a thread going off on a tangent - conversations tend to work that way! - but this one was a) extreme in how OT it was, b) extreme in how it suddenly ballooned in post length, and c) the OP had expressed a desire to actually discuss the topic they created the thread to discuss. Anyhow, I was just making a joke

 

[freeagent]

Old computers are awesome for memories and nostalgia. My old computers wont install windows in 3 minutes though

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

I feel like this is really subjective and depends on game... In cod warzone I found the difference (1080p all low settings) between my old 1070ti and new 2080 super very noticeable.

OTOH casual/story based titles if you can turn down settings to get comfortable framerates, you won't lose any enjoyability in the game. Though being able to turn up a lot of antialiasing and render scale in games like ME:A was pretty neat, definitely looked a lot better than raw 1080p but again, not really changing of the enjoyability of the game.

 

[Sithaer]

Your old system is still better for gaming than what I have since 2018 and stuck with.

Yet I'm havin fun with it on a daily basis playing single player games mainly or casual online solo games, not interested in competitive games nor high refresh gaming either.
Sure I wouldn't mind a ~entry mid range GPU upgrade but its not crazy important, those few games that I can't run well can wait since I have way too many games in my backlog anyway. 'Ugh, bought even more during the recent GoG sale'

If I had a 980 Ti or equivalent I wouldn't even care about upgrading or the current GPU market nonsense. 'like how I ignored the previous mining craze cause I was fine with what I had/games I was playing'

My biggest mistake was to upgrade my monitor before upgrading my GPU or along, sure 2560x1080 is not much more demanding than standard 1080p '~10 FPS less in general if same settings' but its just enough to push it over the limit in newer games when it comes to playable or not or lack of Vram even. 'HZD says hi with the vram issue'

 

[AusWolf]

It's good to be honest about the level of hardware fetishism that most of us here practice every day. Very few of our setups are sensible or practical first and foremost. Upgrade mania is of course very much a factor in this. I'm definitely guilty of this myself - I tend to get into this in 2-3-4 year cycles, but this past half year during covid I've now built/upgrade three systems, so ... yeah. The HTPC did need an upgrade, and the NAS was (mostly) built using hand-me-downs from my main rig, and I got my main rig upgrades covered through a research grant. But still - it gets to be a lot at times. It's a hobby that can easily turn obsessive, and focusing on imperceptible 1-2-3% gains can turn into tons of effort, money, and time. All these builds/upgrades are carefully considered and long-term builds, and I'm happy I've kept my Fury X going for six years, as that at least partly serves to demonstrate that I can be sensible and not jump on upgrades all willy-nilly, but ... yeah. I'm happy I'm running out of stuff to tinker with.

There's a definite issue in PC enthusiast circles (as with most [thing] enthusiast circles I assume) where critical attention to cultural norms and practices is really hard to come by, and enthusiast press tends to morph towards quasi-sponsored purchase advice, feeding into this cycle. How often do you see a tech youtuber advocating long-term planning, considered purchases, and considering the environmental impact of our hardware replacements, for example? While most written sites are a bit less "hey look at this cool new RGB thingy" overall, they still are woefully lacking in critical (self-)reflection most of the time. So yeah, there's a lot to unpack here. Jumping off of that train seems like a very good idea, and I hope I'm able to do so soon myself - I'm still stuck with a GPU that just barely does what I need it to, which keeps me coming back. But soon. Fingers crossed.

I tend to call it "the reviewer's paradox":
1. When you're comparing a product with 20 others in the same category, you're bound to nit-pick on meaningless differences because there usually isn't anything else to it.
2. When you get the latest and greatest to review every year, it's easy to forget that upgrading isn't really necessary for most people. Another thing is that you're meant to talk about the product itself, and not about how pointless it is for most people to upgrade.

Then "the review reader's paradox" is when you start seeing things from the reviewer's perspective (instead of your own), get mesmerised by the extra performance, and forget about the fact that whatever you have suits your needs just fine. Modern consumer society is based on wants, not needs. We save up for luxury hardware, and look at benchmarks and FPS numbers instead of enjoying games. We grow e-penises that don't make us happy because the next generation with promises of even more performance always lurks around the corner.

I know this because I'm guilty too. After I sold my Kaby Lake i7 (which I probably shouldn't have done), I went through basically all Ryzen 3000 and 5000 CPUs out of curiosity. If I'm completely honest, the only difference I saw between the 3100 and the 5950X was the benchmark scores and the heat output. The difference I felt was basically nothing. I mean, paired with a 5700 XT, the 3100 did around 80 FPS avg in The Witcher 3, while the 5950X did around 120. A reviewer would be overjoyed for the 50% performance increase, but when I was actually playing the game and not looking at the FPS counter, it felt like nothing. The experience was exactly the same. I've also tried Cyberpunk 2077 on my 2070 with both the 3100 and my current i7-11700, and again, the experience was exactly the same. For that reason, I'd say, anything after Sandy Bridge with 4 cores will play games, only the media compels you to buy something newer. And for the same reason, when I'm reading reviews, I disregard game tests with notoriously high framerates (like CS:GO or R6:Siege). I'm also hoping to jump off of the shiny new hardware train and keep my current build for a long time and stop spending so much on unnecessary PC components out of curiosity.

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

For that reason, I'd say, anything after Sandy Bridge with 4 cores will play games

For a lot of games you have to be happy playing at well under 60 FPS in a pretty big stutterfest for that to be true lmao

When I played rainbow 6 a few years back (when I stopped I was a high platinum-low diamond player for the record) I started out on my old 4790k (4.7GHz) and GTX670 build, that ran me around 80-90 fps with pretty bad stuttering at all low settings, I still had the same 144hz panel at the time. Changing to a 7700k and later 1070ti made a huge difference, I consistently had above 144hz and I could play way better because of it. I had exactly the same experience way back when I played CoD4: initially the base game on my core 2 duo + 8500GT setup (~45 fps 800x600) and later promod on the same pc (80-100 fps at 1280x800, since that mod removes a lot of the lighting effects). Not to mention later when I had an ivy bridge+Fermi laptop and could get consistent 125 fps in the base game and 250 fps in promod which gives you huge jump/speed advantages due to the game engine. And then again with CoD MW/warzone I had the same experience switching from 1070ti to 2080 super, arguably the smallest hardware swap I did. Some time later I tried testing the 2080 super against a 570 and 5600 xt I had lying around from mining and again the difference in render scale and fps made it significantly harder for me to play with the 570.

No, having a faster PC is not going to make you a better gamer, but when you are good enough it *will* impact how much you can stretch your legs on your skill.

 

[AusWolf]

For a lot of games you have to be happy playing at well under 60 FPS in a pretty big stutterfest for that to be true lmao

When I played rainbow 6 a few years back (when I stopped I was a high platinum-low diamond player for the record) I started out on my old 4790k (4.7GHz) and GTX670 build, that ran me around 80-90 fps with pretty bad stuttering at all low settings, I still had the same 144hz panel at the time. Changing to a 7700k and later 1070ti made a huge difference, I consistently had above 144hz and I could play way better because of it. I had exactly the same experience way back when I played CoD4: initially the base game on my core 2 duo + 8500GT setup (~45 fps 800x600) and later promod on the same pc (80-100 fps at 1280x800, since that mod removes a lot of the lighting effects). Not to mention later when I had an ivy bridge+Fermi laptop and could get consistent 125 fps in the base game and 250 fps in promod which gives you huge jump/speed advantages due to the game engine. And then again with CoD MW/warzone I had the same experience switching from 1070ti to 2080 super, arguably the smallest hardware swap I did. Some time later I tried testing the 2080 super against a 570 and 5600 xt I had lying around from mining and again the difference in render scale and fps made it significantly harder for me to play with the 570.

No, having a faster PC is not going to make you a better gamer, but when you are good enough it *will* impact how much you can stretch your legs on your skill.

1. Fast paced multilayer shooters are really not my world.
2. Framerate is not the same as frametime. I remember swapping my Radeon X800 XT for a GeForce 7800 GS. It ran a few games faster, but somehow also introduced stutter. It can happen for various reasons, like CPU bottleneck, lack of RAM, driver overhead or other software related issues. I take a rock solid 40 fps over a fluctuating, stuttery 60 any day.
3. I remember the time when high refresh rate monitors didn't exist. It was a widely accepted concept that the human eye can't see above 60 fps. Of course the truth content of this statement is questionable, but I still think that super high refresh rates and frame rates are an artificially generated luxury. I mean, why do we perceive 25 fps movies as smooth? Because the frametime is consistent.

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

Fast paced multilayer shooters are really not my world

Right so it's a subjective thing based on a limited subset of games, yet you are spinning "sandy+quaddies are fine" as a general thing and that

only the media compels you to buy something newer

It can happen for various reasons, like CPU bottleneck, lack of RAM, driver overhead or other software related issues. I take a rock solid 40 fps over a fluctuating, stuttery 60 any day.

The stutter in R6 siege with the 4790k is because of haswell being 'suboptimal' for AVX which that game uses heavily, there are quite a few other games where this is the case and creates noticeable stuttering at lower framerates (take some of the newer assassin's creed and BF1/5 as examples). Surely that isn't "the media compelling people to buy something newer"...

A lot of people I see flouting their newest hardware are just doing it for epeen points... I know a guy playing league of legends and this genshin game on a 3090, I can guarantee you even purely theoretical performance was not a factor in his decision to buy that card.

 

[AusWolf]

Right so it's a subjective thing based on a limited subset of games, yet you are spinning "sandy+quaddies are fine" as a general thing and that

Well, we could argue about the entertainment value of Fast-Paced Multiplayer Shooter A against that of Fast-Paced Multiplayer Shooter B, and what makes them different from Counter-Strike 1.6 (if anything at all), but that's not the point here. I generally class such games as e-sports, as they are designed for competition, not entertainment in the purest sense. Besides (elaborating on my previous post), Counter-Strike 1.6 existed far before 144 Hz monitors, and we still had fun. That's what's missing from the current generation of gamers in general: the ability to just have fun without overthinking things or wanting to be the top of the internet. But that's not the point, either.

The stutter in R6 siege with the 4790k is because of haswell being 'suboptimal' for AVX which that game uses heavily, there are quite a few other games where this is the case and creates noticeable stuttering at lower framerates (take some of the newer assassin's creed and BF1/5 as examples). Surely that isn't "the media compelling people to buy something newer"...

I happen to have a 3770T-based system. Which games does that apply to exactly? It would be fun to test it out.

A lot of people I see flouting their newest hardware are just doing it for epeen points... I know a guy playing league of legends and this genshin game on a 3090, I can guarantee you even purely theoretical performance was not a factor in his decision to buy that card.

Totally. Though I'm guessing his age might have been a strong factor.

 

[Valantar]

Right so it's a subjective thing based on a limited subset of games, yet you are spinning "sandy+quaddies are fine" as a general thing and that



The stutter in R6 siege with the 4790k is because of haswell being 'suboptimal' for AVX which that game uses heavily, there are quite a few other games where this is the case and creates noticeable stuttering at lower framerates (take some of the newer assassin's creed and BF1/5 as examples). Surely that isn't "the media compelling people to buy something newer"...

A lot of people I see flouting their newest hardware are just doing it for epeen points... I know a guy playing league of legends and this genshin game on a 3090, I can guarantee you even purely theoretical performance was not a factor in his decision to buy that card.

Wow, that's ... choices! At least my upcoming GPU upgrade will be stretching its legs with a long backlog of games my Fury X hasn't been up to handling at 1440p. Plus some RT titles, which will be interesting.

You're right that there are some titles that utilize newer instruction sets or tons of threads, but they are still few and far between. Still, if that's your main thing, obviously something more recent is better. There's also background tasks stressing lower core count CPUs more, leading typically to not much worse average fps but much worse lows and thus a more stuttery experience. But again, it depends on the types of games you play, your settings, your monitor, your tolerance for low frame rates, etc. I've had a really great time playing some games at 40-50fps (on a non-freesync display, no less) with my Fury X. But others (Ghostrunner stands out) have been a complete mess.

I tend to call it "the reviewer's paradox":
1. When you're comparing a product with 20 others in the same category, you're bound to nit-pick on meaningless differences because there usually isn't anything else to it.
2. When you get the latest and greatest to review every year, it's easy to forget that upgrading isn't really necessary for most people. Another thing is that you're meant to talk about the product itself, and not about how pointless it is for most people to upgrade.

Then "the review reader's paradox" is when you start seeing things from the reviewer's perspective (instead of your own), get mesmerised by the extra performance, and forget about the fact that whatever you have suits your needs just fine. Modern consumer society is based on wants, not needs. We save up for luxury hardware, and look at benchmarks and FPS numbers instead of enjoying games. We grow e-penises that don't make us happy because the next generation with promises of even more performance always lurks around the corner.

Completely agree here. There's also that companies only want to show off their "best" products, so high-end SKUs are the ones that get seeded for review most often. Heck, it's often even difficult to find any reputable reviews at all of lower end hardware. You'll find dozens upon dozens of reviews of every single Ryzen 7/9/Core i7/i9 SKU and every different AIB version of the 3080, 3090, 6800 XT and 6900 XT. But lower end CPUs or cards? i3s or cheap i5s? 1/10th the number of reviews, at best, despite those selling 10-100x as much.

That's another reason I'm so positive about GamersNexus recently - they buy most of their own review samples, so they're not dependent on review samples. But that's not something that's possible for 99% of the reviewers out there, and thus we end up with a culture fixated on high-end hardware that most of us will never use, let alone own; performance differences that are utterly meaningless except on paper; and overall a focus on statistics and "objective" numbers above experiences, and so on.

I can't help but connect that to the strong undercurrent of logical positivism that seems to dominate tech circles (probably largely due to this branch of philosophy still being dominant in many STEM fields, despite being fundamentally flawed), where so-called "objective" measurements (as if what is measured and how measurement is done doesn't add a significant level of subjectivity to the matter, let alone what is not measured) are treated mostly as ultimate truths despite these often being woefully poor representations of the experiences they are supposed to inform us about. It's obvious that FPS numbers, frametimes, etc. all significantly impact play experiences, but those impacts are non-linear and interwoven with dozens of entirely separate factors. Yet the people shouting "SCIENCE!!!" all want us to trust these numbers above our own perceptions. Which, to me, is rather absurd - our perceptions are literally our only points of access to the world. Of course in reviewing a GPU you can't account for the difference in colour rendering from your viewers' monitors, their response times, the nuances of their eyesight, or the myriad other relevant factors, but that's why IMO it falls on reviewers to remind people that what they are doing is providing a baseline number for a single factor in a complex experience, not the be-all, end-all measurement for what makes for a good gaming experience. It's obvious that there are context-dependent differences where these numbers play a significant part (while many might not notice a difference between a 144Hz display and a 360Hz one, there is reason to suspect the latter gives a slight competitive advantage) - but you can't put that down to just the numbers alone. Everything involved in play matters, from your body and senses and mental state to your various equipment to the supporting infrastructure (internet, power, etc.).

That's of course another reviewers' paradox: using high end hardware eliminate variables, but this also establishes a de facto baseline for everything, leading to both the expectation and the desire for everything to be just so, and inherently labeling anything not high-end as inferior. Which feeds mindless consumerism and that never-ending chase for 1-2-3% (and typically entirely imperceptible) differences.

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

Well, we could argue about the entertainment value of Fast-Paced Multiplayer Shooter A against that of Fast-Paced Multiplayer Shooter B, and what makes them different from Counter-Strike 1.6 (if anything at all), but that's not the point here. I generally class such games as e-sports, as they are designed for competition, not entertainment in the purest sense. Besides (elaborating on my previous post), Counter-Strike 1.6 existed far before 144 Hz monitors, and we still had fun. That's what's missing from the current generation of gamers in general: the ability to just have fun without overthinking things or wanting to be the top of the internet. But that's not the point, either

You are again applying subjective logic and presenting it as being an objective truth. The bar for competition has gone up in these games, in part thanks to more people playing them, but also because the hardware everyone has access to is better. If anything, by your logic, it is the mere existence of better hardware that creates an arm's race in competitive games, again nothing to do with the media or reviewers making you feel the need to upgrade just because of +30%.

I happen to have a 3770T-based system. Which games does that apply to exactly? It would be fun to test it out.

R6S and AC odyssey/origins are the ubisoft ones I know off the top of my head that struggle with those parts, and BF1/5 as I mentioned are also suspect.

I'm guessing his age might have been a strong factor.

Mental age yes.

least my upcoming GPU upgrade will be stretching its legs with a long backlog of games my Fury X hasn't been up to handling at 1440p

Fury X is a pretty competent card but yeah 1440p and newer games are starting to become hard if you would like to keep the settings above medium...

There's also background tasks stressing lower core count CPUs more, leading typically to not much worse average fps but much worse lows and thus a more stuttery experience.

This was what lead me to ditch my 7700k after only about 8 months of use (I bought it used and sold it for the same price), it ended up getting bogged down when I had a lot of browser tabs and discord open while playing R6S. The 3600 I got after was a pretty adequate upgrade in that regard though, 6 cores is fine for now I think.

That's another reason I'm so positive about GamersNexus recently - they buy most of their own review samples, so they're not dependent on review samples. But that's not something that's possible for 99% of the reviewers out there, and thus we end up with a culture fixated on high-end hardware that most of us will never use, let alone own; performance differences that are utterly meaningless except on paper; and overall a focus on statistics and "objective" numbers above experiences, and so on.

I have been pushing HUB Steve to take a look at more of the other 10 series cards for this exact reason, it's an accessible performance class for most people (when you can find them at non-stupid prices) and a lot of people still have these cards so it can be useful for them to see if they need an upgrade for a new game.

 

[AusWolf]

Completely agree here. There's also that companies only want to show off their "best" products, so high-end SKUs are the ones that get seeded for review most often. Heck, it's often even difficult to find any reputable reviews at all of lower end hardware. You'll find dozens upon dozens of reviews of every single Ryzen 7/9/Core i7/i9 SKU and every different AIB version of the 3080, 3090, 6800 XT and 6900 XT. But lower end CPUs or cards? i3s or cheap i5s? 1/10th the number of reviews, at best, despite those selling 10-100x as much.

Even then, they mostly focus on the K-skus because they assume that more performance is the only indicator of a good product. I had a really hard time finding a review of my 11700 before I bought it. I mostly had to extrapolate from 11700K reviews, clock speed differences and Hardware Unboxed's famous B560 motherboard roundup video (that by the way also made the mistake of focusing purely on peak performance, and labelled every motherboard "under-specced" that kept true to Intel TDP values by default).

I can't help but connect that to the strong undercurrent of logical positivism that seems to dominate tech circles (probably largely due to this branch of philosophy still being dominant in many STEM fields, despite being fundamentally flawed), where so-called "objective" measurements (as if what is measured and how measurement is done doesn't add a significant level of subjectivity to the matter, let alone what is not measured) are treated mostly as ultimate truths despite these often being woefully poor representations of the experiences they are supposed to inform us about.

Unfortunately, objective measurements and comparisons are the basis of a PC component review. There is no other way to describe a product in this sector than being X% better than the other one (I would say quality matters too, but I'm sure most people don't care as long as it's faster). The problem is the logical positivism that readers and reviewers alike apply to these measurements: the assumption that more is better - where in reality, you can't tell the difference between a game running at 200 fps and 250 fps (I can't even tell the difference between 45 and 60 if we suppose that both of these framerates are stable). The reason why I'm positive about Gamer's Nexus is that they provide frametime data, which is much more useful than pure fps in my opinion.

You are again applying subjective logic and presenting it as being an objective truth. The bar for competition has gone up in these games, in part thanks to more people playing them, but also because the hardware everyone has access to is better. If anything, by your logic, it is the mere existence of better hardware that creates an arm's race in competitive games, again nothing to do with the media or reviewers making you feel the need to upgrade just because of +30%.

I would say it's the existence of such hardware and the media combined that makes people opt for it. Companies want you to believe that you need ultra high framerates to be competitive - which might have a grain of truth in it, but you definitely don't need it to be entertained.

R6S and AC odyssey/origins are the ubisoft ones I know off the top of my head that struggle with those parts, and BF1/5 as I mentioned are also suspect.

I don't have R6S, or any AC game after Black Flag, but I might have a "try if it's good and buy later" version of BF5 somewhere. I'll try it sometime this week, and see how it works. I'll target the same average framerate on both my main PC and the 3770T with the settings (if that's possible), and we'll see how stuttery it feels.

This was what lead me to ditch my 7700k after only about 8 months of use (I bought it used and sold it for the same price), it ended up getting bogged down when I had a lot of browser tabs and discord open while playing R6S. The 3600 I got after was a pretty adequate upgrade in that regard though, 6 cores is fine for now I think.

That's weird. I sold my 7700 (non-K) because I wanted to try the shiny golden apple of 16-core Ryzen. The only difference I saw in gaming was due to the 5700 XT also replacing my 1660 Ti. I only noticed the CPU usage being significantly lower, but that's not an indication of gaming performance.

 

[Valantar]

Even then, they mostly focus on the K-skus because they assume that more performance is the only indicator of a good product. I had a really hard time finding a review of my 11700 before I bought it. I mostly had to extrapolate from 11700K reviews, clock speed differences and Hardware Unboxed's famous B560 motherboard roundup video (that by the way also made the mistake of focusing purely on peak performance, and labelled every motherboard "under-specced" that kept true to Intel TDP values by default).


Unfortunately, objective measurements and comparisons are the basis of a PC component review. There is no other way to describe a product in this sector than being X% better than the other one (I would say quality matters too, but I'm sure most people don't care as long as it's faster). The problem is the logical positivism that readers and reviewers alike apply to these measurements: the assumption that more is better - where in reality, you can't tell the difference between a game running at 200 fps and 250 fps (I can't even tell the difference between 45 and 60 if we suppose that both of these framerates are stable). The reason why I'm positive about Gamer's Nexus is that they provide frametime data, which is much more useful than pure fps in my opinion.

Yeah, the main challenge is in reading/interpreting comprehension mostly (i.e. readers/viewers assuming a linear relationship between numbers and experiences), but of course that also points back to a lack of a basis for this in the reviews. Of course I realize the absurdity of prefacing reviews with some kind of disclaimer saying "hey listen here now boys and girls, remember that numbers aren't everything!" - not only would nobody ever read that part, but I imagine reviewers would tire of repeating rote lines day in and day out. Again GN does a relatively decent job of this, highlighting the meaninglessness of their ultra-high FPS benchmarks ... but they still include them.

Which brings us to ... well, not another paradox, but at least a conundrum of serving multiple interests and markets: those numbers are likely interesting to them as reviewers as well as well-off hardware enthusiasts who enjoy benchmarking, (semi-)extreme overclocking etc, but serving both that and the common gamer at the same time inevitably leads to misunderstandings and misreadings - especially when the group with the legitimate interest in niche and overall relatively low-impact results is also the enthusiast group with a high level of expertise, that then gets deified by low-expertise common users who too easily assume that "enthusiasts think this is valuable, so it must be for me as well". Of course that isn't helped by many hardware enthusiasts being woefully bad at adapting the advice they share when talking to people who don't share their means and niche interests. Bringing back the car metaphors (sorry! please don't take this and run with it!), it's like asking a race driver for car buying advice and them insisting that what you need is the firmest possible suspension and a roll-cage, despite what you need actually being an affordable, economic and low-emission car that fits your family and groceries. Of course not all hardware enthusiasts fall into extremes such as these, but understanding the situation of others and adapting advice to fit is not a simple skill to master (one of the many reason why good salespeople are woefully undervalued - the good ones are the ones who can sell you the thing you'll be happy with because it does what you need within your means, not the one that sells you the high-margin upsell their bosses want them to).

Of course it's impossible to imagine anyone really doing split target audience component reviews - e.g. one review for enthusiasts/overclockers/benchmarkers and one for more average users - that would just double the production labor, and of course continuously generate conflict around where lines are drawn and which groups are included/excluded. Different sites/outlets targeting different groups helps somewhat, but when there aren't many with the resources to do really good reviews of a broad range of products, that's not really feasible either.

The only real "solution" I see as feasible: outlets actively engaging in discussion around what is valuable and meaningful and why. Preferably not in the context of discussing review methodology alone (though that's a reasonably natural spot for it), as that would be too limiting in terms of differences of opinion and room to expand on other important aspects of the experience. But I would really appreciate if some outlets from time to time did some slightly unusual content in this direction. A panel debate? Or just chatting on the subject in a podcast-like way? Of course expecting highly technical reviewers to also be very proficient in discussing the nuances of overall experiences outside of technical aspects is asking a lot too. Not to mention that there's no guarantee that audiences would actually read/watch such content at all.

Tl;dr: it's complicated. Too damn complicated.

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

The biggest problem imo with benchmarks is they are disconnected from what people actually play... Yeah if you go look at cyberpunk benchmarks and have the intention of playing cyberpunk then sure the numbers are useful... But taking my personal upgrade from the 1070ti to 2080 super, I had to spend a lot of time digging to actually find evidence that I would get the performance upgrade that I wanted in that game... And I already know from other games what going from 90 to over 144 fps feels like, and what visual advantages I can get by bumping up AA/render scale... My expectations were pretty conservative so in reality I got more than I expected from the upgrade, but the important point is to evaluate whether *you* want/need the performance that is offered in the workloads *you* are doing.

Making that evaluation is a time consuming process at the end of the day, especially when a lot of games where performance is relevant are not touched by hardware reviewers on account of them being difficult to benchmark.

I personally advocate, particularly in competitive games, that people who are experienced in that game should do the benchmarking as they have better access to understanding what players in those games strive for and need in terms of performance and settings and what constitutes a useful/relevant performance change for a player of that game.

 

[AusWolf]

Yeah, the main challenge is in reading/interpreting comprehension mostly (i.e. readers/viewers assuming a linear relationship between numbers and experiences), but of course that also points back to a lack of a basis for this in the reviews. Of course I realize the absurdity of prefacing reviews with some kind of disclaimer saying "hey listen here now boys and girls, remember that numbers aren't everything!" - not only would nobody ever read that part, but I imagine reviewers would tire of repeating rote lines day in and day out. Again GN does a relatively decent job of this, highlighting the meaninglessness of their ultra-high FPS benchmarks ... but they still include them.

Which brings us to ... well, not another paradox, but at least a conundrum of serving multiple interests and markets: those numbers are likely interesting to them as reviewers as well as well-off hardware enthusiasts who enjoy benchmarking, (semi-)extreme overclocking etc, but serving both that and the common gamer at the same time inevitably leads to misunderstandings and misreadings - especially when the group with the legitimate interest in niche and overall relatively low-impact results is also the enthusiast group with a high level of expertise, that then gets deified by low-expertise common users who too easily assume that "enthusiasts think this is valuable, so it must be for me as well". Of course that isn't helped by many hardware enthusiasts being woefully bad at adapting the advice they share when talking to people who don't share their means and niche interests. Bringing back the car metaphors (sorry! please don't take this and run with it!), it's like asking a race driver for car buying advice and them insisting that what you need is the firmest possible suspension and a roll-cage, despite what you need actually being an affordable, economic and low-emission car that fits your family and groceries. Of course not all hardware enthusiasts fall into extremes such as these, but understanding the situation of others and adapting advice to fit is not a simple skill to master (one of the many reason why good salespeople are woefully undervalued - the good ones are the ones who can sell you the thing you'll be happy with because it does what you need within your means, not the one that sells you the high-margin upsell their bosses want them to).

Of course it's impossible to imagine anyone really doing split target audience component reviews - e.g. one review for enthusiasts/overclockers/benchmarkers and one for more average users - that would just double the production labor, and of course continuously generate conflict around where lines are drawn and which groups are included/excluded. Different sites/outlets targeting different groups helps somewhat, but when there aren't many with the resources to do really good reviews of a broad range of products, that's not really feasible either.

The only real "solution" I see as feasible: outlets actively engaging in discussion around what is valuable and meaningful and why. Preferably not in the context of discussing review methodology alone (though that's a reasonably natural spot for it), as that would be too limiting in terms of differences of opinion and room to expand on other important aspects of the experience. But I would really appreciate if some outlets from time to time did some slightly unusual content in this direction. A panel debate? Or just chatting on the subject in a podcast-like way? Of course expecting highly technical reviewers to also be very proficient in discussing the nuances of overall experiences outside of technical aspects is asking a lot too. Not to mention that there's no guarantee that audiences would actually read/watch such content at all.

Tl;dr: it's complicated. Too damn complicated.

I think that problem could be alleviated with well-written commentary. What if I say:

• "Product A scored consistently 5% faster than product B in our benchmark suites, therefore it represents a 5% better value to the customer at a similar price. As such, considering product A over product B is highly recommended."
• "Product A scored consistently 5% faster than product B in our benchmark suites, although this advantage is too small to bring any perceptible difference in gaming experience. In our opinion, both are excellent products well worth the price."

The biggest problem imo with benchmarks is they are disconnected from what people actually play... Yeah if you go look at cyberpunk benchmarks and have the intention of playing cyberpunk then sure the numbers are useful... But taking my personal upgrade from the 1070ti to 2080 super, I had to spend a lot of time digging to actually find evidence that I would get the performance upgrade that I wanted in that game... And I already know from other games what going from 90 to over 144 fps feels like, and what visual advantages I can get by bumping up AA/render scale... My expectations were pretty conservative so in reality I got more than I expected from the upgrade, but the important point is to evaluate whether *you* want/need the performance that is offered in the workloads *you* are doing.

Making that evaluation is a time consuming process at the end of the day, especially when a lot of games where performance is relevant are not touched by hardware reviewers on account of them being difficult to benchmark.

I personally advocate, particularly in competitive games, that people who are experienced in that game should do the benchmarking as they have better access to understanding what players in those games strive for and need in terms of performance and settings and what constitutes a useful/relevant performance change for a player of that game.

On the one hand, I agree. There are too many specific use cases for reviewers to consider. But then, if a review provides enough data, you can see tendencies and draw a conclusion to your specific use case.

 

[The red spirit]

For that reason, I'd say, anything after Sandy Bridge with 4 cores will play games, only the media compels you to buy something newer.

As much as I agree with other statements, this is no longer correct:

It sometimes fails to reach average of 60 fps and if you want consistency in 60 fps, then it's done for sure. 4 Sandy Bridge cores were great for a long time, but at this point it finally should be upgraded. And the problem with 4 Sandy Bridge cores is that they don't perform nearly as well without hyperthreading, which helps to smooth out fps drops.

And also more cores, mean more consistent frame times:

If like you said, you don't want inconsistent 60 fps, then you pretty much have to have more than 4 cores or at least SMT/HT.

I don't have R6S, or any AC game after Black Flag, but I might have a "try if it's good and buy later" version of BF5 somewhere. I'll try it sometime this week, and see how it works. I'll target the same average framerate on both my main PC and the 3770T with the settings (if that's possible), and we'll see how stuttery it feels.

It's mostly DRM that makes BF5 perform poorly. Low Spec Gamer covered that. Or maybe it was BF1?

 

[AusWolf]

As much as I agree with other statements, this is no longer correct:

It sometimes fails to reach average of 60 fps and if you want consistency in 60 fps, then it's done for sure. 4 Sandy Bridge cores were great for a long time, but at this point it finally should be upgraded. And the problem with 4 Sandy Bridge cores is that they don't perform nearly as well without hyperthreading, which helps to smooth out fps drops.

I never said I wanted consistent 60 fps. I said I prefer consistency to higher but inconsistent framerates. "I take a rock solid 40 fps over a fluctuating, stuttery 60 any day" - literally this is what I said.

Anyway... I only saw two cringeworthy moments in the FX 6300 vs i5 6400 vs i5 2400 comparison video. One of them is the stutterfest on the 2400 in BF5 at 0:46, which also presented itself on the 6400 at 0:55. The other one is when CP77 dipped below 30 fps on the 2400 at the end of the video. Neither of these are deal breakers, though, as the general gameplay experience is largely stutter-free. Also, I wonder what point the video's maker wanted to make by including the middle game (was it GTA5?). It looks buttery smooth on all 3 systems. Maybe that's the point?

If like you said, you don't want inconsistent 60 fps, then you pretty much have to have more than 4 cores or at least SMT/HT.

For a trouble-free gaming experience, I agree. For any gaming experience, just 4 cores are still enough. It's still rather impressive, considering that the first 4-core 8-thread consumer-grade CPUs were released 12 years ago (Core i7-860 and 870), and also considering that you can get a modern 8-thread CPU for about £80 with delivery brand new. That's £10 per thread, or £20 per core. I remember the '90s and early 2000s when you had to upgrade almost every year just to be able to run the newest games at any fps - and I was still rocking a Celeron MMX 300 MHz with an S3 ViRGE "3D decelerator" for 6 long years, dreaming about owning a 3DFX or GeForce 3 one day. This might have something to do with why I don't give a damn about super high framerate gaming.

It's mostly DRM that makes BF5 perform poorly. Low Spec Gamer covered that. Or maybe it was BF1?

I don't know, maybe. I'll try my best to test it out, though, as I'm genuinely interested.

Here's another video to illustrate what I mean by stuttering and inconsistency:

The Cyberpunk part is an excellent demonstration, but I really mean the GTA5 and AC:V parts where the average fps is quite alright in my opinion, but the stutters (shown as frametime spikes) just make it uncomfortable for the eye.