At 33yrs old I have joined the PC master race.

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

2 hours ago, Pungee said:

Cool. It looks like it's £39.99 to pre-order on Steam. I'd be happy to swap it for Boneworks on Steam, which is currently £23.79. If anyone is interested in swapping the AMD Rewards code for HZD for you Steam Gift-ing Boneworks (and is sure that AMD Rewards will work on their system), drop me a PM! 

 

I'm up for that deal. PM me your steam name and I'll gift it over (if horizon hasn't already gone).

[Dudley]

4 hours ago, davidcotton said:

Crysis surely

 

Nah you can run that on a Switch apparently

[skittles]

Hiya.

 

Played some Warzone last night with all settings on max and i'm hitting 100 FPS. Is this normal for my rig? It sometimes dropped a little below.

 

FPS vs Hz of monitor. If my refresh rate of my monitor is 100hz, can I only see the up to 100 FPS? Or have I not understoof something.

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

A lot of games will read the Hz of your monitor and cap frames accordingly.

 

I've never seen the point in running games at higher FPS than the screen can display, but some seem to think it makes things smoother.

[skittles]

5 minutes ago, Opinionated Ham Scarecrow said:

A lot of games will read the Hz of your monitor and cap frames accordingly.

 

I've never seen the point in running games at higher FPS than the screen can display, but some seem to think it makes things smoother.

Ok, so first thing I should do is upgrade my monitor...

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

1 hour ago, skittles said:

Ok, so first thing I should do is upgrade my monitor...

 

What settings are you playing Warzone with? If the frames are dipping below 100 you may be GPU limited anyway if you are pushing everything fully maxed settings at 1440p.

 

If I were playing a competitive game like COD, I'd dial back a few of the more expensive settings (particle quality/tessellation) to keep the frames above 120.

 

 

[skittles]

12 minutes ago, Opinionated Ham Scarecrow said:

 

What settings are you playing Warzone with? If the frames are dipping below 100 you may be GPU limited anyway if you are pushing fully maxed settings at 1440p.

 

 

Nice. Thank you. I have the RTX 2060 with all options on max/enabled, which must be why its dropping below 100 at times.

 

Are my options to 'overclock' the GPU or drop a couple of the settings from max/enabled?

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

2 minutes ago, skittles said:

Are my options to 'overclock' the GPU or drop a couple of the settings from max/enabled?

 

A mix of both.

 

Firstly, I would always recommend overclocking a GPU. With any card, there's a silicon lottery, and what this means is how far it can be pushed. You may just get a 5% boost or you may get 15%, that's all part of the fun. In any case, even 5% is better than nothing and if you don't mess with the complicated stuff (voltage etc) there is zero risk.

 

I've not watched this video (I'm at work) but this guy knows his stuff so hopefully it will help:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Also, regarding settings, there's this feeling when you get a new PC or graphics card that you MUST max out the settings. Thing is, there will be proper enthusiast stuff there that's basically just for tech demos and screenshots. Particle effects, fog effects, ultra water reflections. This stuff can tank FPS for what are really very small gains in image quality. The two settings that make games look the best are textures and AA in my opinion. IMO always prioritise those. Everything else is fair game for the frames in a shooter.

[Gabe]

@skittles Download Afterburner from MSI's website (it'll work on non-MSI cards too). It has an automatic overclocking tool which should be fine for your needs (and means you don't have to get down and dirty yourself) - see if that gives you a bump.

 

I should really give it a try on my card, too.

[simms]

I've yet to overclock my cpu and gpu.  I just want a one click overclocking tool that does it for me as I'm not really into frying my PC into oblivion and introducing wear and tear.

[Lying Cat]

6 hours ago, skittles said:

Ok, so first thing I should do is upgrade my monitor...

 

Please prepare yourself for some pain here. I know you're a guy who enjoys the best - but sadly there is no "best" monitor, no matter what you do you're compromising something, even if you're willing to splash the big bucks. I suspect that this is a deliberate tactic by an industry who could deliver something all-star but doesn't want to because it's really hard to get people to upgrade their monitors.

[Gabe]

1 hour ago, simms said:

I've yet to overclock my cpu and gpu.  I just want a one click overclocking tool that does it for me as I'm not really into frying my PC into oblivion and introducing wear and tear.

 

Afterburner will do that for your GPU, but I don't think there's anything similar for CPUs?

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

3 minutes ago, Gabe said:

 

Afterburner will do that for your GPU, but I don't think there's anything similar for CPUs?

 

Ryzen has Precision Boost Overdrive (cool name bro).

 

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3491-explaining-precision-boost-overdrive-benchmarks-auto-oc#:~:text=Precision Boost OVERDRIVE is what,Overdrive portion is not spec.

[Gabe]

@Opinionated Ham Scarecrow Before buying my 3600, I read that you wouldn't get much more than the boost it already has (to 4.2Ghz, which I just set in the bios to run at all the time anyway). Have you had any experience of getting above much above that to make it worthwhile? 

[milko]

This seems as good a topic as any: I've got my PC overclocked in the BIOS for some fairly hefty gainz on CPU, and pretty good ones on RAM. Then there's a utility for overclocking the GPU that runs in Windows, all good there.

 

Sometimes it feels a bit OTT for just running a web browser and suchlike for a day though. Is there a way to have these things be selectable on boot or something?

[Flub]

I was going to do a nice safe overclock of my CPU/memory in my bios settings but found that Scan had already done it for me. I just used Afterburner after that for a safe GPU overclock.

 

 

[Gabe]

27 minutes ago, milko said:

This seems as good a topic as any: I've got my PC overclocked in the BIOS for some fairly hefty gainz on CPU, and pretty good ones on RAM. Then there's a utility for overclocking the GPU that runs in Windows, all good there.

 

Sometimes it feels a bit OTT for just running a web browser and suchlike for a day though. Is there a way to have these things be selectable on boot or something?

 

You can set up and use profiles once you've booted into Windows via Afterburner, not sure if there are easier ways than that.

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

42 minutes ago, Gabe said:

@Opinionated Ham Scarecrow Before buying my 3600, I read that you wouldn't get much more than the boost it already has (to 4.2Ghz, which I just set in the bios to run at all the time anyway). Have you had any experience of getting above much above that to make it worthwhile? 

 

I used it once or twice and eeked out a few extra points on 3DMark, but it really didn't improve things enough to bother doing again. My understanding is that Ryzen chips are unlocked so will reach their max potential anyway provided that cooling is sufficient.

[amc]

Yeah I use Afterburner. Can't be bothered with getting into anything else and getting too technical for an overclock and although my 2080Ti is one of the cheaper iterations I've been lucky it seems and have a decent chip. Can manage a very healthy overclock for a significant improvement.

 

What I did notice though is, at my top end overclock if running a heavy game that uses RT, say Control, I will encounter a crash after an hour of play. So I have several profiles set up.

 

I have a fairly minimal OC that launches on boot up, fans etc at normal. This is great as it's very quite and is what I stick to for browsing etc. For a non RT game I then launch my highest OC with a decent ramp up in fan speed. And for Ray Traced games I have my middle setting, which is still a fairly tasty OC and a ramp on fans and has zero issues. I'm able to game on these profiles all day without a hiccup.

 

I do similar with my CPU through my mobo software. It boots at a low OC and low fans but jump to 5.2Ghz for gaming with faster fan speed. Ram is always overclocked to 3600Mhz.

 

When it's all ramped up it can mean the difference in a locked 60 at 4K to and a variable frame rate at 4K.

 

Afterburner is a great bit of software and is pretty safe and easy to use.

[jonamok]

3 hours ago, Opinionated Ham Scarecrow said:

Ryzen has Precision Boost Overdrive (cool name bro).

You ain’t seen nothing yet.

[Flub]

I redid my nerd cave last week to gain more space and clear out old cables and stuff that accumulate but don't actually connect to anything. In the process I discovered I now have space for a full size keyboard and can have my numpad back.

 

I browsed around for a bit and eventually settled on a Cherry Red version of the Corsair K70 RGB MK.2. On sale at Amazon for 114 at the moment which was nice.

 

 

 

[skittles]

12 hours ago, Opinionated Ham Scarecrow said:

 

Ryzen has Precision Boost Overdrive (cool name bro).

 

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3491-explaining-precision-boost-overdrive-benchmarks-auto-oc#:~:text=Precision Boost OVERDRIVE is what,Overdrive portion is not spec.

 

15 hours ago, Gabe said:

@skittles Download Afterburner from MSI's website (it'll work on non-MSI cards too). It has an automatic overclocking tool which should be fine for your needs (and means you don't have to get down and dirty yourself) - see if that gives you a bump.

 

I should really give it a try on my card, too.

Chaps, is it OK to use these for GPU/CPU boosting if I don't have liquid cooling? Or will they dynamically adjust according to the temperature?

 

Thanks a lot for the info.

 

I'm also in a tropical climate where the room temperature without AC will be 25-34 degrees, if i'm gaming at night i'll have the AC on to 20 degrees or so.

[Gabe]

@skittles Both GPU and CPUs have thermal limits to protect against damage - CPUs will usually just shut down if they get too hot and for the GPU, if using Afterburner, then it won't overclock to an unsafe temperature anyway.

 

I've never had liquid cooling and never had an issue without overclocking.

[strider]

Holy shit, I've just found an up in the Microsoft Store that lets you turn your photos into jigsaws that you can then build. And there was me thinking my £1,500 couldn't get any better 

[iknowgungfu]

Er......could you send a link to that or let me know what it is called.  Might be a good idea for a gift.

[Pungee]

What's my best bet for streaming games from my PC to front room TV? Steam Link app via something like an Apple TV? Or using Nvidia's tech through a Shield? The device at the TV end can be wired in to my router but the PC is (unfortunately) on wifi, but 5ghz wifi at least. 

I would've gone for one of those dedicated Steam Link boxes but it seems as though the prices have shot up since they stopped making them.

[Dudley]

If it helps the Shield supports both Steam Link AND Nvidia's tech.

[bradigor]

Hello, is it safe to come in?

 

I did some work for someone recently and instead of money payment, due to me being on Universal Credit, they instead gave me their 'old' gaming PC. 

I think I did ok out of it. 

 

 

[bradigor]

With older games. If ANYONE can help me get Droplitz, I would Be ever so thankful. 

 

Ideally as legally as possible. 

[iknowgungfu]

There is an EPIC summer sale on.  Just bought FTL for less than £2 which seemed like an essential purchase.  Any recomendations to be had from the good PC playing folk on  here?  I keep getting tempted by Control (£23.99 I think) but have heard mixed things ranging from terrific fun to shallow but lovely shiny graphics.

 

Assassins Creed Odyssey is quite cheap too but I don't usually get on with these games despite really wanting to!