The Plight of the Masters

Albino Boo

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Jun 14, 2010
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J Tyran said:
Wait, what? You can actually get paid for pleasuring burly men at truck stops instead of doing it for free?
What I have to pay good money for that sort of thing.
 

Doom972

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Dec 25, 2008
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Does someone actually constantly play with an FPS counter? I only do it in very demanding games, while trying to find the best settings in games that don't allow you to test your settings and see the resulting framerate. I turn off the fps counter afterwards.
 

Optimystic

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Sep 24, 2008
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I always get as close to 60 as I can. It's shadows and anti-aliasing I could give two s**** about.

BRB heading to truck stop
 

lacktheknack

Je suis joined jewels.
Jan 19, 2009
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Once, I used vsync, but for some reason, it kept going at 61 FPS instead of 60. I couldn't see the tearing, but I know it was there.

#thestruggleisreal
 

Kargathia

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Jul 16, 2009
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erttheking said:
You know, maybe it's because I'm a filthy console peasant, but when I'm playing league and it drops from 60 FPS to 30 FPS, I'm too busy focusing on the game to notice.
It really is how much it deviates from what you're used to. I've played WoW at <30 FPS for a solid year on a shitty laptop without being too bothered, but the one time my LoL framerate dropped from its usual 120+ to 40 I couldn't do shite.
 

GundamSentinel

The leading man, who else?
Aug 23, 2009
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Redlin5 said:
I guess I'm just less picky about frame rate than most. I can tolerate pretty abysmal rates. I used to play WoT at 14fps...
I often drop to 5-6 fps in GW2 and I don't mind at all (and I still play much better than most, go figure). I really don't understand what the fuss is with people who absolutely must have 60 fps or better (unless you have medical reasons or want to be competitive in games that require twitch reactions).

I can see it looks a little better, yeah, but I just don't care. And above all, I'm very happy I don't care.
 

Covarr

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May 29, 2009
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I have no problem turning down settings to achieve 144fps... not that I usually need to; the games I've encountered that even support 144fps tend not to be too demanding (mostly Valve games).

But ultimately the biggest reason I'm a PC gamer is Steam. Gone are the days of multi-disc installs and endless fiddling just to get a game up and running; stuff generally works out of the box with no tweaking necessary, it's even easier than inserting a disc. I *can* mess with graphics settings if, depending on the game, I care more about quality visuals or framerate, but if I just wanna jump in, it's super easy.

That said, I'm not JUST a PC guy. I do own a PS4 and a Wii U, both of which get their fair share of use. I've never really cared for the "pick one platform and remain loyal to it for the rest of the generation" mentality; ultimately, you're just limiting yourself when you do that.

P.S. Thanks
 

Xan Krieger

Completely insane
Feb 11, 2009
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Redlin5 said:
I guess I'm just less picky about frame rate than most. I can tolerate pretty abysmal rates. I used to play WoT at 14fps...
I got a kill at 2fps once, my main computer broke so I was stuck with one that had onboard graphics.

OT: 30+ is fine, I'm not picky about framerate and I'll drop some settings if I have to. I'm not one of those everything maxed out type people unless it's actually feasible.
 

CrystalShadow

don't upset the insane catgirl
Apr 11, 2009
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Remus said:
Oh and 120FPS? What are you using, one of those shitty TN panels with their dithering? Come on over to the IPS side, it's better here!
nyeh. tn? ips? I prefer a decent VA panel. XD



Charcharo said:
Good thing that takes over 6 years to come to :)

My 2009 ATI HD 5770, 4GB of RAM and i5 750 STILL play the newest games. And it is often on medium :)
Wow. we have almost the same pc. (I have more ram), and yes, it can still play most things easily enough. (though I did check, and for what my 5770 cost me you can now get a card with about 5x the performance, so things do change somewhat over time...)

GundamSentinel said:
Redlin5 said:
I guess I'm just less picky about frame rate than most. I can tolerate pretty abysmal rates. I used to play WoT at 14fps...
I often drop to 5-6 fps in GW2 and I don't mind at all (and I still play much better than most, go figure). I really don't understand what the fuss is with people who absolutely must have 60 fps or better (unless you have medical reasons or want to be competitive in games that require twitch reactions).

I can see it looks a little better, yeah, but I just don't care. And above all, I'm very happy I don't care.
I know right? I don't get it either. Well, I mean in games where timing is critical, maybe (mmost competitive shooters, also rythm games like guitar hero and such)

The other thing where I really care is for VR uses. because low framerates cause nausea. (well, specifically, high latency does, but while latency can be higher than the framerates suggest, they can never be lower)

VR would actually benefit from stuff as absurd as 1000+ fps.

It sounds crazy, but in VR low framerates increase the chances of nausea quite a bit. (and i seem particularly succeptible to vr sickness, so I really notice it)
 

inkheart_artist

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Jan 22, 2009
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I don't think I've ever played a PC game at the highest settings (except for games that were, like, 10 years old) I love mid ranging it and never having my computer break a sweat.
 

Darth_Payn

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So much for the glorious PC master race. A dirty console peasant like me cares only for the platform running smoothly, that I may concentrate on the game I'm playing.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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Tarfeather said:
If my FPS counter were that big I'd be distracted, too.
You must be a filthy console peasant; that FPS counter isn't nearly large enough.

What, did you think that we of the Glorious PC Master Race actually play games? That's for scrubs who buy sub-$500 GPUs! For we elite, pegging that FPS meter is the real gameplay. You have your high game scores; we have our high 3DMark scores.
 

OverEZ

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Nov 12, 2011
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Why does this have to be so true? You couldn't have lied a little bit to soften the blow?

I hate you guys.

Keep up the good work.
 

CrystalShadow

don't upset the insane catgirl
Apr 11, 2009
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TopazFusion said:
Dis... Disabling shadows? You speak blasphemy!
What do you mean? ;p

Clearly you have never experienced the joys of running something on a really weak old laptop.

Where turning shadows off can quadruple your framerates... XD
 

LazyAza

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May 28, 2008
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I've never been too obsessed over the whole graphics thing myself. I've been primarily a pc gamer all my life because I simply find it to be more convenient and to have a far far greater range of game types to play than any console ever has.

It is the platform that birthed the first person shooter, the rts and the high end rpg and the mmo. All game types I was there for the very first versions of and have been able to play the best versions of as time has gone on with zero worry about performance even though I only upgrade to new modest specs every 3-4 years.

I can play super high end big budget games, or simple goofy indi titles, or anything in between and all I have to do is literally just load the same program I have running 24/7 (as its my primary means of socializing online also) ; Steam and clicking a buy button whenever a new thing I want comes along. Steam has made gaming so incredibly easy and worry free and GoG has allowed me to revisit old titles I otherwise couldn't that all consoles have been to me since the day the 360 came out is less convenient more annoying low spec pc's.

And I bought a 360, and I bought a ps3 and I'll probably have a ps4 some day, but the only reason any of these machines make their way to my house is exclusives and nothing else. And right now the ps4 doesn't have any exclusives I wanna play and I never buy consoles that have less than three.
 

CrystalShadow

don't upset the insane catgirl
Apr 11, 2009
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TopazFusion said:
CrystalShadow said:
TopazFusion said:
Dis... Disabling shadows? You speak blasphemy!
What do you mean? ;p

Clearly you have never experienced the joys of running something on a really weak old laptop.

Where turning shadows off can quadruple your framerates... XD
Oh I know. I've been there, done that.

Turning down shadow quality (not off completely, just down) is a great way to boost framerate. Because shadows tend to be real framerate hogs, and you usually don't notice some slightly blockier looking shadows while playing. (In contrast, you DO tend to notice lower resolution textures, or lack of post-process effects)

Hell, I had to considerably lower the texture quality on Far Cry 4, because apparently any texture setting above 'Medium' requires more than 1GB of VRAM, which I don't have.
This, despite the fact that IT'S THE SAME GAME AS FAR CRY 3, which I could run on maximum graphics settings.
Mmm. Yes. Shadows are real resource hogs. And you often can turn them down a little without noticing. (though not off completely. That stands out pretty dramatically. XD)

Personally the first thing to go for me is always AA. On older systems especially you always seemed to take a pretty big performance hit for having it on, and I always end up wondering what the point of it is.

I mean, yes, it's nice if you have the performance to spare, but given a choice between AA and simply running the game at a higher resolution, higher resolutions win for me by a large margin.
(Of course, if you're already at the limits of your monitor resolution you can't do that).

Post-process effects can add a lot to a game, as can effects in general (shader effects, water reflections and so on) so I try to leave those alone where possible.

Turning down anisotropic filtering is OK too, but it rarely helps all that much anyway, especially on hardware from the last 5 years or so...

But shadows... Shadows are always a tricky one to balance. Because the performance cost is so absurdly high a lot of the time, but it may significantly affect visual quality in some games, but not others...