There's a lot of arguments at the moment about how new games stress hardware, you shouldn't expect max settings in a game just because you have the best card. Which I agree with...to a limit.

But PBZ without RT or PT *isn't* maxed settings. And tbh, the game just doesn't look like the performance numbers it pulls. Cyberpunk had a massive world with hundreds of NPCs, cars, just absolutely packed. PBZ is a semi-open world more akin to God Of War. Hell Horizon Forbidden West would be a better comparison as that has as dense a world, but at Native 4K that managed 123fps!

So yes, Ultra settings can sometimes means your HW might not be good enough yet. But the big question is, without RT or PT, does PBZ's world have the sort of fidelity and content that warrant the FPS ? I'm a user of DLSS, in everything, it's auto for me because I wanna hit 4K/120 and I have a 5070Ti. Some games more than others have me turning down more stuff. But it's starting to be a case of more and more games not looking anywhere near as good as the performance hit would make you think

I’m a keyboard and mouse FPS player, gaming since the COD4 and Halo CE days. I don’t want to think about how many thousands of hours I’ve sunk into games but it’s been enough to allow me to hold a 3.0+ KD in most games… until the last few years.

Between being forced to go against controllers with outrageous aim assist, rife cheating, the use of XIM/Chronos, SBMM and generally rubbish game servers…. I’m finding that I’m absolutely despising playing multiplayer FPS games.

Am I alone in this and just a whinging old man or do others feel the same?

I’d love to be wrong so if there’s a game out there that doesn’t have the above but is FPS multiplayer please do show me the way!

I grew up with and loved Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Jade Empire etc etc... but let's not kid ourselves this thing was a dinosaur with its best days behind it. Now I'm seeing the outpouring of sorrow, revisionist history of some of the more recent games and all these posts about how "no bro, Mass Effect 5 was actually going to be the greatest video game in the history of video games"... Nothing they've done in the past 10 years has truly moved the needle, and I doubt EA was going to let it be more than an opportunity for micro transactions.

I'm grateful for the fond memories, saddened that people are out of jobs but otherwise unaffected by this news that you could see coming years ago.

That.. That's good, right?

IN the past 24 hrs or so, i've seen 3 crazy deals on pcs. 1st was a 9700x 32/1tb with a 5080 for 2400. 2nd was a 7800x3d 32/2tb 4070 super for 1100. 3rd was a i7 13xxx with 16/1tb and also a 4070 for 1,000. I made offers to buy on all 3 but no response other than the 5080 saying it's already sold. Here's to hoping the other two i can get.

If you're in the market for a pc. Check FB marketplace, offerup, craigslist etc. Right now you can find some serious massive deals. Just be sure to do your due diligence as, more than likely, you'll be buying w/o a return policy and a warranty. Benchmarks, thermals, inspeciton(s). And most importantly, Be patient and check often.

Click right to see the other charts

5090 cant get 30fps with RT And no, moving from Ultra>Very high> to only high barely changes the FPS even with no RT so its not the graphic settings. The game is super demanding. Being an action game the high fps is needed

5080 getting 37-40FPS with all normal ray tracing Disabled/PT Disabled is crazy

https://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/phantom-blade-zero-benchmarks-pc-performance-analysis/

I'm sorry.

I had no idea shit was this bad.

This last year I upgraded from a 1050ti to a 5080, was finally for the first time in my life able to play games with every setting maxed out, AND have hundreds of frames. I was extremely happy, didn't understand the hate and defended that card and Nvidia (until they went full AI mode, that's indefensible) like my life depended on it.

The caveat here is that while i upgraded my GPU, my monitor was still 1080p, so of course I was getting great frame rates, and I knew that, and I knew that at higher resolutions that's gonna go down, but I had no idea it was so damn dogshit. I just assumed I'd go from say 200 frames at 1080p to 100 or 60 4k.(I had these assumptions because I didn't look at any 4k benchmark data, because I had no reason to, don't judge me)

I upgraded to a 4K tv two days ago, it's the first time I've had any 4k display at all ever in all my 22 years of being alive, and this shit is fantastic. My life has changed. I get the hype. Going straight from a shitty ₹15000 dogshit 10 year old monitor to this has given me eyegasms. What is NOT so good, is how bad the frame rates get when the graphics are turned up or RTX is turned on, on pretty much any modern game.

So far I've played modern warfare 4 and control resonant on this new TV. With MW4 even turning rtx on the low settings tanks the frames to single digits, but weirdly no rtx and everything else ultra gets 30+. Frame gen here is trash there's a lot of artefacting to the point where it's unplayable.

Control resonant I had heard is one of the better optimised modern games, but even there when everything is on ultra(including rtx) the fps is low and there's a lot of stuttering. Turning on frame gen at even just 2x helps a lot with the smoothness, and during gameplay i can't even tell that it's on, but it just reduces the picture quality and softens everything up and makes the edges look mushy. Again, it's not noticeable unless you specifically look for it, but once you do you cannot unsee it, specially on a massive fuck off 65 inch display.

I've got what's supposed to be the best gaming GPU on the market(I'm not counting the 5090 it's just this generation's titan but renamed and it's not even on the market anymore) and still i cannot get good fps at 4k. I finally understand the frustration and anger at the sheer unadulterated incompetence and tomfoolery of these companies. I am one of you now. And I am sorry.

Extra information, not important don't read if you don't wanna. Before you tell me to just turn off the ray tracing or lower the settings, I'll be honest. I don't really want to. Coming from a gt610+ 720pshitty monitor, going to a 1050ti+ 1080p shitty monitor, to finally having a good display and good GPU, a good looking image is really important to me. Because if i didn't care about the image quality I'd have just stayed on my shitty 1080p monitor with the bad textures and horrible pixel density and garbage colours. But good frames are equally important to me because if they weren't i wouldn't have paid so much money for such an expensive gpu. I have yet to find a sweet spot of frame rates and graphics but for the amount of money i have spent on this shit I am so angry and disappointed that this is what the billion dollar corporations are giving us.

I want to start PC gaming and am looking for a system. Is this one worth the money?

I just saw the Phantom Blade performance issue post, and it’s mf crazy.

If you have a top spec pc and can’t play the game properly with max settings, the game shouldn’t have been released.

The goal imo should be 4k 120 max settings for the best possible spec

and then optimize the high, medium and low settings so that people can play without abusing frame gen and other stuff that alters with frametime, image quality etc.

In recent years gaming is getting more and more killed

I mainly game, but I also do SOME local AI and Blender. I'm upgrading from a base 5060. I'm fine with anything that's better than my old GPU, but I still want whichever one's slightly better

Hi all,

I wanted to come and share some personal experience with PC SPECIALIST and warn any potential customers away from them.

A couple years ago I finally used my grown-up money and bought my dream PC through PC SPECIALIST, with their gold-standard 3-year warranty. Well, beyond the fact that it arrived in a state of not-working at all, it's gone through two PSU replacements, two GPU replacements, a motherboard replacement, two RAM replacements, and a handful of re-builds. They keep providing broken / used / non-functional components to put in this cursed rig without actually trying to fix the issues that plague it.

I've also tried FIVE TIMES to speak with a supervisor, but every time they manage to dodge my requests. In my PC's most recent visit back to the shop, their own technician sent the below report:

"I personally inspected and tested the system. During the initial inspection, I found several issues that needed to be addressed before I could consider the system properly configured and ready for testing:

Several required drivers were missing.

The motherboard was secured with only two screws instead of being properly secured.

The GPU was not properly supported and was effectively hanging without a GPU support bracket.

There was no proper cable management inside the system.

The motherboard does not have a dedicated speaker header, the case speaker was incorrectly connected to the HDD LED and Reset headers. This incorrect connection can interfere with the motherboard's header signals and cause unexpected system behaviour, so I removed the speaker."

This is on top of the issues I have found myself (hardware and software related). It's very clear the company is putting a lot of money towards their customer service department (who are generally very quick to respond and well-trained), and a very small amount of money into the components they use or the technicians who clearly don't have the time or resources to do their jobs effectively.

I sincerely hope the company makes some well-needed changes, but until then BEWARE.

While doing maintenance on my custom water loop, one of the four PSU side of my GPU cable adapter (cable-mod, power supply specific) refused to come out. Literally fused the PSU to the cable, requiring pliers and leverage to remove. Upon closer inspection, slight meltage on the GPU side as well. For context:

PSU: EVGA 1600w G+ Supernova

Cable: Cable-Mod 4x1 12vhpwr

GPU: PNY RTX 4090 XLR8

By some luck, the GPU still works flawlessly with the back up 4x8 to 12vhpwr adapter from Nvidia.

I wont be using that rail on the psu anymore either.

Crazy she melted on BOTH GPU and PSU.

The issues and discs are archived online, but the outer wrappers rarely survived. Here is an especially cool one.

Edit. Umm, shoot. I meant 2003.

I have an older Dell laptop (Latitude E6440 with discrete GPU). Somehow, I smooth brained this specific screw that holds down my CPU + GPU heatsink. I don't think anything else is damaged. The laptop runs but because the heatsink can't make proper contact with the processor, it spikes to almost 100c and then back down to 45c every few seconds just idling on the desktop screen. The fan also ramps up and down as well because it can't get a good tempature reading. Ive tried the rubber band method, as well as using a latex rubber glove to get it to come out but I fear it's probably stripped too badly. Any tips/tricks to get this removed so it can be replaced?

Kinda feels hypocritical to complain about AI and then praise the vibe coding efforts, they're using massive amounts of LLM tokens to break the PS5 source code alone.

I recently got a 1440p 360 Hz gaming monitor and an RTX 5070 Ti because my old GPU had a defect. My build is from 2023 and I got my ryzen 9 5900X for 360 eur ($400) and 32 GB DDR4 3600 Mhz. I thought I would be running less games and more productivity software like VMs but it turned out to be the opposite.

I know AM5 is miles better than AM4 but according to my calculations I would be looking at a near 1000 eur ($1112) upgrade just for some extra CPU performance and I already recently spent money on AM4 by replacing the motherboard due to compatibility issues with my GPU. I play mainly competitive games but I often find myself playing more casual graphically intensive titles like forza horizon 6. I'm really just trying to get as close as possible to my monitor's refresh rate on any game I play. From looking at benchmarks the 5800X3D can provide a pretty huge upgrade and right now I'm able to get it for around 300 eur ($333).

Should I wait for AM5 or cyber monday?

Ryzen 7 5800x

kraken x53 AIO

32gb corsair gskill tridentz ddr4

Crosshair hero vi motherboard

PNY RTX 5070ti 16gb (probably still on warranty)

1 tb nvme (western digital im pretty sure) gen 5 sn500

2x 256gb samsung evo ssds

1x 256gb samsung ssd

1 4tb wd hdd

Fractal meshify c case

Corsair rm850 80 plus gold psu

Phliips evnia 32m2c6500am monitor 3440x1440 ultra wide 175hz oled

Corsair Mechanical keyboard

Logitech mouse g502

Barely have any time to play anymore with 2 babies in the house and decided to sell and build a brand new system in 2 or 3 years time when my babies are more grown. Its harder than I thought letting my baby go but its for the best. Hopefully the new owner gives it the love and care I did. Hopefully prices have settled by then and nvidia is still making consumer hardware.

5090 msi vanguard goodram 64gb 6400mhz ryzen 7 9800 3D bequaiet LX 600

So basically, i'm pretty sure every member of pc master race has gone through that 6 year phase with a shitty thinkpad running at 20fps at best, amirite?