Latest purchases thread

[Frag Maniac]

Ha, the benchmark is actually a free download here.

I really hope you have a nice 4k 120hz or 144hz monitor to go with that 4090 or you're just wasting cash, but yeah, no way I can compete with that $1600 beast, that's like an 18 wheeler with nitro turbo jets to my classic sports car.

Doesn't mater that it's free, I can't see the sense in benching with something that has content that doesn't interest me.

As for the display, eventually it will be a 42" 120hz OLED most likely, as I've seen prices as low as $900 recently, and they'll be coming down more. DSR is a pretty good way to get a much better picture if you're on a1080p like I currently am though. At the very least it will be a good hold me over until I get a better display.

 

[Ikawaru]

DSR is absolutely pointless your screen is only 15.6". DLSS the other hand....

 

[Frag Maniac]

DSR is absolutely pointless your screen is only 15.6". DLSS the other hand....

Have you been drinking spiked eggnog perhaps? What are you on about with 15.6"? I have a 32" Panasonic IPS display!

Obviously you've never played a game in 4K equivalent DSR on a 32" or bigger screen. Most know that it comes very close in the look and performance of an actual 4K res.

Apparently you haven't learned by now that when you try to argue tech things with me, it usually doesn't end well for you. You're not someone I would call a tech Wizz.

 

[Ikawaru]

Whoops that came out wrong, I forgot to put an "if" between "pointless" and "your" so you took it as some sort of accusation and ran with it...

I am the one with with a 15.6" display. Me. 1080p looks fantastic on small screens so DSR is pointless. DLSS works wonders on small screens because the upscaling is not even noticeable in such a small space.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Whoops that came out wrong, I forgot to put an "if" between "pointless" and "your" so you took it as some sort of accusation and ran with it...

I am the one with with a 15.6" display. Me. 1080p looks fantastic on small screens so DSR is pointless. DLSS works wonders on small screens because the upscaling is not even noticeable in such a small space.

No, I didn't take it as an accusation, just thought you mistook my rig for someone else's. It did occur to me that perhaps I mentioned once I DO actually have a small laptop now, but it was a giveaway as part of a gov sponsored deal to make sure everyone has net access. It's not something you can game on. It even came with a scaled down version of W10 because it's so weak.

I also didn't know you play mostly on a laptop, but if you travel a lot for work, I can see how that might make sense. We ARE talking on a public gaming forum where most use desktops though, so the bit about DSR being useless on a 15.6" screen seemed kind of out of left field all of a sudden. Now that I recall though, you DID recently talk about your new laptop, but my memory is far from as sharp as it used to be at nearly 65 now.

While granted, DSR isn't the real thing, I love that we have it now and I still get a bit giddy when I use it, even at 1440p equivalent. It's also a great way of finding out how powerful a GPU you need for 4K BEFORE you spend big bucks on a 4K display. When you use one TV display for everything though like I do, there's FAR more to consider than how powerful a GPU you need to game at 4K. The lack of 4K TV content for instance, which is an ongoing problem.

According to a local TV station tech I spoke to, all our local TV stations have the new hardware installed to broadcast in 4K, but he said the FCC won't yet allow them the measly 35MB bandwidth needed for it. They have applied for it, but it gets denied, and once denied, it's like a year and a half before you can even apply again. I told him that almost sounds like the feds are being bribed by streaming services that charge for such content, to deny access to broadcasters.

I then called the FCC to ask about it. What I got was some lower tier gal on the phone that didn't know why it was being denied. She said she went and asked someone whom told her any TV stations can broadcast in 4K once they get the license to do so. To be honest, I think it sounds like BS that these stations would invest in the hardware to do so, install it, put in a 4K broadcast application, then not buy the license. I mean does that make sense to you? The US government is getting more and more corrupt every day.

BTW, I called the local TV tech back, and one other TV tech, and told them what the FCC told me via messages I left. Many weeks later I've yet to get a call back from either. It's as if they are afraid of accusing the feds of something they can't prove, even though the FCC are obviously looking quite suspicious on the matter.

 

[Ikawaru]

I also didn't know you play mostly on a laptop, but if you travel a lot for work, I can see how that might make sense. We ARE talking on a public gaming forum where most use desktops though, so the bit about DSR being useless on a 15.6" screen seemed kind of out of left field all of a sudden. Now that I recall though, you DID recently talk about your new laptop, but my memory is far from as sharp as it used to be at nearly 65 now.

I don't think many people on this forum have made the jump from consoles to PC, so claiming that most use desktops seems inaccurate. I can say from personal experience to not underestimate laptops, as I can literally run 'Village' with maximum settings, even Ray Tracing up to max, use AMD'S FSR software with a NVIDIA card, and still get anywhere from 90-180 frames per second depending on where Ethan is and how many enemies he's fighting. That's nothing to scoff at and wasn't even all that expensive (By modern PC hardware pricing standards). The only people who could be turned off by this are the types of people that have to have bigass 4k ghetto bling bling screens, which is admittedly probably a large number of people.

So yeah, you get a top of the line PC, at a fraction of the price, with the only catch being that the screen is small, which doesn't require a boatload of video memory to look amazing because all of those 1920 x 1080 pixels are concentrated in such a small window and the games play beautifully and run smoothly.

 

[Frag Maniac]

I don't think many people on this forum have made the jump from consoles to PC, so claiming that most use desktops seems inaccurate. I can say from personal experience to not underestimate laptops, as I can literally run 'Village' with maximum settings, even Ray Tracing up to max, use AMD'S FSR software with a NVIDIA card, and still get anywhere from 90-180 frames per second depending on where Ethan is and how many enemies he's fighting. That's nothing to scoff at and wasn't even all that expensive (By modern PC hardware pricing standards). The only people who could be turned off by this are the types of people that have to have bigass 4k ghetto bling bling screens, which is admittedly probably a large number of people.

So yeah, you get a top of the line PC, at a fraction of the price, with the only catch being that the screen is small, which doesn't require a boatload of video memory to look amazing because all of those 1920 x 1080 pixels are concentrated in such a small window and the games play beautifully and run smoothly.

I never considered laptops made for gaming to fit into the "fraction of the price" category, and I couldn't help but notice in saying so, you mentioned nothing of it's spec or price. Not to mention as well that RE Village is hardly the gold reference standard of resource hungry games to bench.

As far as most here playing on console, I'm used to chatting on forums more geared toward PC gaming, so it's entirely possible I'm a bit out of the loop on what people game on here. I never considered Laptops a good system choice for gaming though, especially since you generally pay more than you would for a desktop with equivalent spec, and their CPU and GPU are typically downclocked from their desktop counterparts to manage heat.

 

[Ikawaru]

Not to mention as well that RE Village is hardly the gold reference standard of resource hungry games to bench.

Name one. If it looks fairly good I'll buy it and get back to you with honest results.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Name one. If it looks fairly good I'll buy it and get back to you with honest results.

I'm not sure one needs help with something like that unless you're inclined to compare boutique PC build houses that build custom gaming PCs and charge far too much. Like I said, I come from forums where people mostly play with and are very familiar with desktop gaming rigs, their hardware, and how to build them, which is the way to do it right IMO. If you're not of that mindset, which it seems you aren't, it's kind of moot because I'd only be showing you places to get the parts at a reasonable price.

That said, at times OEM systems are preferable due to high cost of parts, and right now graphics cards are the main culprit on that front. I know how shoddily OEM PCs are built though, and there's very little wiggle room on part choice, so for me, I don't consider them a viable option. If you are happy with laptops though, fine, but we who have gamed on and built desktops for years know the limitations and high cost of laptops is not competitive to desktops when you build your own gaming systems.

Besides that, how would I even know where to start when you've not even mentioned what CPU and GPU your laptop has so I would know what desktop parts to look for to compare apples to apples?

 

[Ikawaru]

I'm not sure one needs help with something like that unless you're inclined to compare boutique PC build houses that build custom gaming PCs and charge far too much. Like I said, I come from forums where people mostly play with and are very familiar with desktop gaming rigs, their hardware, and how to build them, which is the way to do it right IMO. If you're not of that mindset, which it seems you aren't, it's kind of moot because I'd only be showing you places to get the parts at a reasonable price.

That said, at times OEM systems are preferable due to high cost of parts, and right now graphics cards are the main culprit on that front. I know how shoddily OEM PCs are built though, and there's very little wiggle room on part choice, so for me, I don't consider them a viable option.

WTF? Name a GAME that's considered tough to benchmark these days and I'll buy it! No way in Hell am I spending thousands of dollars on some tower machine, are you nuts? I'd rather buy a new motorcycle.

 

[Wesker90]

FF VII Crisis Core Reunion(PS4)

 

[Frag Maniac]

WTF? Name a GAME that's considered tough to benchmark these days and I'll buy it! No way in Hell am I spending thousands of dollars on some tower machine, are you nuts? I'd rather buy a new motorcycle.

Then again you aren't nearly 65 like me, so looking at a tiny screen is likely no problem for you. And why on Earth did you even quote my latest post, which was in response to your find me a comparable priced desktop and I'll buy it comment, not my prior post that mentioned RE 8 not being the end all be all for gaming benchmarks.

I can see you don't read up on such things, maybe mostly because you play primarily just RE type survival horror games. There are a lot of more demanding games though, like even A Plague Tale Requiem.

Aaand all this talk of high prices and laptop vs desktop comparisons and you STILL haven't mentioned what your laptop spec or price is, which kind of makes discussing this topic pointless.

 

[Ikawaru]

Aaand all this talk of high prices and laptop vs desktop comparisons and you STILL haven't mentioned what your laptop spec or price is, which kind of makes discussing this topic pointless.

*Sigh* you may perhaps be getting a bit too old for this. I posted a picture of my laptop along with the specs on the previous page in this very thread. If that's too hard to process and do that research with clicking the right buttons to lead you there and absorb the details, my laptop is a Lenovo Legion 5 with a 3070 TI GPU, Ryzen 6800H CPU, 32 GB DDR5 RAM, and 2 TB SSD. Is that sufficient info or do I need to elaborate and correct things further and be more patient so you understand what I am posting?

 

[Frag Maniac]

*Sigh* you may perhaps be getting a bit too old for this. I posted a picture of my laptop along with the specs on the previous page in this very thread. If that's too hard to process and do that research with clicking the right buttons to lead you there and absorb the details, my laptop is a Lenovo Legion 5 with a 3070 TI GPU, Ryzen 6800H CPU, 32 GB DDR5 RAM, and 2 TB SSD. Is that sufficient info or do I need to elaborate and correct things further and be more patient so you understand what I am posting?

Still nothing about price. Since that's what you're prattling on about most when comparing to desktop, it just seems strange you don't mention it, even after my saying you haven't, what, 3 times now.

 

[Ikawaru]

It was about the same price as a brand new Geforce 4090, I got it on a winter sale directly on Lenovo's website. All that stuff included for roughly the same price as the ridiculously over priced 4090. Do the math.

Also just played 'A Plague Tale Requiem' with 'Ultra' settings, DLSS on 'Quality' mode and can get in the 100-150 frames per second range when GPU utilization is in the 90-99% range.

But that's the problem, 'A Plague Tale Requiem' is so poorly optimized that GPU utilization barely ever hits that high so frames per second tends to hover around the 80's on average. This is purely the fault of the developers for not optimizing the game properly so this is not a good example of a game that should break hardware limits, it's a good example of developers screwing up on optimization.

It is a great game though, aside from the fact.

 

[Frag Maniac]

It was about the same price as a brand new Geforce 4090, I got it on a winter sale directly on Lenovo's website. All that stuff included for roughly the same price as the ridiculously over priced 4090. Do the math.

Also just played 'A Plague Tale Requiem' with 'Ultra' settings, DLSS on 'Quality' mode and can get in the 100-150 frames per second range when GPU utilization is in the 90-99% range.

But that's the problem, 'A Plague Tale Requiem' is so poorly optimized that GPU utilization barely ever hits that high so frames per second tends to hover around the 80's on average. This is purely the fault of the developers for not optimizing the game properly so this is not a good example of a game that should break hardware limits, it's a good example of developers screwing up on optimization.

It is a great game though, aside from the fact.

Well, you weren't specific about "same price as a brand new Geforce 4090", why can't you just say what you paid and get on with it? Even if I assume that means the very base priced one, which goes for $1600, I've been scouting some deals today on desktop 3070 Ti GPUs and Newegg has the Peladn at $600. You didn't say the RAM speed or CAS latency, so I'll wait on that. Your CPU according to UserBenchmark.com is roughly 10% slower than a R5 5500 desktop CPU, which goes for only $99 at Amazon.

The MB then has to be a DDR4 AM4, otherwise AMD's high prices of their new AM% platform kick in. Their have been many test from competent review sites such as GamersNexus showing near identical performance loss using DDR4 though. The ASRock B550 PG Riptide is the MB I picked for $160 at Newegg, and I found some G. Skill DDR4 2x16GB RAM at 4000 speed with a CAS timing of 18 for only $103 at Newegg.

So far on CPU, GPU, RAM, and MB I've tallied roughly $960.

 

[Ikawaru]

get off your high horse

I'm not on a 'high horse' nor am I being ostentatious. I am merely demonstrating that there's an affordable middle ground between consoles and spending $3000+ on a new rig, especially if all you do is surf the internet, forumize, and play games.

I mean yeah, if I already had a 4k60hz tv laying around and I was at a loss between a laptop and a PS5, I would probably go with the PS5. If not I would definitely look into much better performance in games in a laptop than spending the same amount on a PS5 and a new TV.

Unless I was wealthy I would not even consider going balls to the wall and spending multiple thousands of $$$ on a massive rig, totally not worth it to me unless doing so would net me cash as some kind of person who gets paid to put that kind of hardware to the test. I don't make money dabbling with computers so that is all pointless to me.

 

[Frag Maniac]

I'm not on a 'high horse' nor am I being ostentatious. I am merely demonstrating that there's an affordable middle ground between consoles and spending $3000+ on a new rig, especially if all you do is surf the internet, forumize, and play games.

I mean yeah, if I already had a 4k60hz tv laying around and I was at a loss between a laptop and a PS5, I would probably go with the PS5. If not I would definitely look into much better performance in games in a laptop than spending the same amount on a PS5 and a new TV.

Unless I was wealthy I would not even consider going balls to the wall and spending multiple thousands of $$$ on a massive rig, totally not worth it to me unless doing so would net me cash as some kind of person who gets paid to put that kind of hardware to the test. I don't make money dabbling with computers so that is all pointless to me.

First off, I'm talking about your comment saying find me a better desktop deal than the laptop I got, and I'll get it. I'm not taking about your take on my considering a mega gaming PC. Something better than what you have in the laptop CAN be built as a desktop and perform better and have better warranty coverage and cost even less. I thought I was conveying that well with my last post, but now it seems all you see it as is me trying to get you to buy a several thousand dollar PC, which I have no intention of.

The high horse comment was in reaction to your implying I'm not understanding what you're saying just because I missed the spec you say you posted about your laptop. All I can say is I hadn't seen you post it in this conversation we're having, until you finally said you did, OR the actual price you paid STILL.

It's also not at all hard to build a gaming rig, you only need learn how to once, and that's it. Pretty much all the parts are plug and play now, and the MB settings are mostly automatically applied, except for XMP, which sets your RAM to it's rated speed.

At any rate I found a decent Corsair case and Thermaltake PSU at Amazon and Newegg for about $150 total, bringing the amount to $1110 so far. The case has a 2 yr warranty, the PSU a 5 yr.

That leaves $490 for storage and a monitor. I found a killer deal on a WD SN850X 2TB NVMe drive that's Pci-E 4 X Gen 4 and blazing fast for $180 at WD. I am pretty sure this would be at least as much storage capacity as your laptop has and WAY faster. We're talking well over 7000Mb/s speed. That brings us to $1290, leaving $310 for the monitor. BTW I checked spec on the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro on their site and it DOES have 2TBs of gen 4 NVMe storage, but the RAM is only 4800 speed.

Lastly, I found an ASUS TUF 27" 1080p 165Hz monitor (supports 144Hz too), for just $219 at Newegg, and it has 1ms response time, FreeSync Premium, DisplayHDR 400, Extreme Low Motion Blur, Eye Care, two HDMI 2.0, one DisplayPort 1.2, and a headphone jack. It has a host of other features too, like cinema and game HDR modes, Shadow Boost, Swivel, Tilt, Pivot, and 120mm height adjust. This thing gets rave reviews.

So that comes to $1509 total, and I guarantee you it's a far better gaming PC than your laptop. That gives you more than enough to get a wireless adapter to make connectivity more modern, and STILL come in at over $60 less than your laptop!. But alas, you may need to put it toward W11, so I didn't count that. Newegg has a Wavelink Wi Fi adapter for $30 that is 3000Mb/s capable and one of their best sellers. So please don't assume after ALL this work I did that desktops can't beat laptops on performance for same or less price. And you get better parts and warranties too.

 

[Jonipoon]

Got another sweet collectible on sale at a local store. The original Japanese Dreamcast box for Code: Veronica. It came complete with two discs and a manual, although I'm not sure why there are two discs. One is the soundtrack perhaps?

 

[Springhosen]

@Jonipoon The Dreamcast version had 2 discs.