The Official "Glorious PC Gaming Master Race" Talkback (Possible Game Spoilers)

[MDawg]

With all the love consoles and handhelds get in this forum, it's time for the original gaming device to capture your hearts and minds again.

Thanks to the likes of Steam, GOG, Humble Bundle, Amazon and a slew of other sites, purchasing games on PCs is easier than ever (at a vastly reduced cost to console gaming in a large number of cases), with dramatic improvements in the games themselves in a lot of instances. That said, what do you play on your PCs (be in Windows, Mac or Linux), what do your rigs look like, what sort of hardware are you looking at or have purchased?

My current setup is a bit old by current standards, but includes an EVGA GeForce 460 SE, 16 GB RAM, Windows 7 Pro and an Intel i5 processor.

I don't play a lot of the newest releases, but when I do, I haven't noticed any sort of lag or struggling. I'm currently in a punishing run on La Mulana which is one of the more-difficult games I've played ever. It really is a throwback to the 80s and doesn't really give you much in the way of guidance or hand-holding, but is very rewarding when you finally figure out something and the game slowly starts to make sense.

 

[Harmonie]

I'm afraid I'm just not a big PC gamer. While I do see great advantages to PC gaming, they're all a bit canceled out by the expense of keeping a machine that can properly run games (which means frequent expensive updating). Even when all I play is The Sims, no PC I can afford can properly play any of them, but the one before (my current PC can run The Sims 2 perfectly, but not so much The Sims 3). Perhaps if I could abandon console gaming and become solely a PC gamer, I could think about putting more money into a gaming PC, but I can't abandon console gaming. Especially Nintendo consoles, as they offer franchises that aren't on the PC at all. Besides, I prefer the ease of knowing that when I purchase a new console it will be all I need for the next several years.

So, overall, I take consoles over PC. I can't really afford both, as PC gaming is just too high maintenance, and I don't even know what I should look for to upgrade my PC, nor would I even know about how to do so. I'll keep it simple.

About the only PC games I have ever really played have been The Sims franchise and Civilization IV and V. The Sims has to be one of my personal favorite series, and I will admit it can only work on this platform. The console versions have all been a disaster. But honestly, The Sims 4 looks pretty underwhelming, and I may end up not ever getting it at this point. So I may eventually get a PC that can run The Sims 3 and its EP smoothly and forget about PC gaming aside from that.

 

[Daikun]

My current setup is a bit old by current standards, but includes an EVGA GeForce 460 SE, 16 GB RAM, Windows 7 Pro and an Intel i5 processor.

What keyboard do you use? As soon as I got my new rig last month, I had to buy a new USB keyboard on impulse (it wouldn't accept older connection types) and later regretted it--the overpriced POS I got isn't very good for gaming or holding multiple keys.

I want to get a new keyboard and not feel like I've been ripped off again.

 

[MDawg]

What keyboard do you use? As soon as I got my new rig last month, I had to buy a new USB keyboard on impulse (it wouldn't accept older connection types) and later regretted it--the overpriced POS I got isn't very good for gaming or holding multiple keys.

I want to get a new keyboard and not feel like I've been ripped off again.

I'm using an ancient, faded PS2 keyboard that came with my first computer (my current rig replaced it). It's over 10 years old, but keeps on trucking along. I keep thinking of replacing it, but it works great in FPSes, so I can't see a reason to swap it out unless it dies.

 

[Beefy]

I only get a new computer about every six years, so I build them to last.

My previous computer was from 2006 and contained:
AMD Opterton 285 processors (4 cores)
8GB of DDR-400 RAM
ATI Radeon 4850 1GB
It served me well, but was showing its age in gaming and working with HD video.

My current computer I just finished last month:
Intel Ivy Bridge-E i7-4960X (6 cores)
16GB of DDR3-1866 RAM
nVidia GTX 770 4GB

I would have went with Haswell, but Intel does not make any drivers for Windows XP for Haswell.
Some of my old games and video hardware do not work with anything newer than XP, so I dual boot with XP and 7.

My video encoding speeds went from 29fps to 105fps, so I'm happy with it.

For games, I have a huge backlog and haven't played anything too recent, but my favorites include:
Command & Conquer series
Unreal / Unreal Tournament series
Half-Life / Counter-Strike series

I remember when Steam first came out, everyone was bashing it as evil DRM. Now everybody loves it.
One thing to keep an eye on is Valve's Steam OS: their version of Linux customized for gaming.

For keyboards / mice, I always try to use a motherboard with PS/2 ports because there's a lot less lag compared to USB.
I have a Zboard gaming keyboard which I like because of the swappable key layouts for different games.

 

[Daikun]

For keyboards / mice, I always try to use a motherboard with PS/2 ports because there's a lot less lag compared to USB.

Aw, crap! I just spent $500 on this thing! I really don't wanna have to deal with more repairs at the moment...

I have a Zboard gaming keyboard which I like because of the swappable key layouts for different games.

Does this work without lag on a USB connection?

 

[Beefy]

Does this work without lag on a USB connection?

I have the older PS/2 version of the board, so I can't comment on the USB version.
The USB version seems to have mixed reviews, some good, others bad.
The USB input lag is more pronounced on Windows 8.1, but Windows 7 should be ok.

How many USB ports does your computer have? Try to keep the keyboard and mouse plugged in the top most ports, as those ports are normally not sharing USB bandwidth with other ports on the board.
Looking at the USB Controllers in Device Manager will also tell you which devices are on each USB hub/controller and how much bandwidth they are using.

 

[defunctzombie]

I have a fairly new asus usb3 board (m925 or something like that), and it came with ps/2 ports, so they're still available. But is the lag really that noticeable or bothersome? Heck I've played games with a wireless mouse even and never got fragged over lag issues (skill perhaps, but not lag).

 

[MDawg]

Try to keep the keyboard and mouse plugged in the top most ports, as those ports are normally not sharing USB bandwidth with other ports on the board.
Looking at the USB Controllers in Device Manager will also tell you which devices are on each USB hub/controller and how much bandwidth they are using.

On Dell systems it's actually officially stated that the USB ports on the same column as the NIC port are the ports to use for keyboard/mouse since they have first detection. I have noticed on some motherboards there will actually be a little black outline or something else to identify these as the top-priority ports.

Steam has a troubleshooting guide to help with lag issues as well. It may be worth looking at.

 

[John Pannozzi]

I have an iMac, and I plan to get Parallel Desktops for it so I can use Windows. Hopefully that will suffice for PC gaming.

 

[MDawg]

I have an iMac, and I plan to get Parallel Desktops for it so I can use Windows. Hopefully that will suffice for PC gaming.

Steam supports cross-buying (buy once, get for all supported OSes) and has Mac support. A large number of games will run on your Mac without virtualizing thanks to this. GOG.com also supports this for a number of their titles as well. Both make natively gaming on a Mac much easier than it would be.

That said, a lot of your Triple A titles don't have Mac support or there is a delay in release to them, so be aware of that.

Edit: Humble Bundle various features, the Bundles, the Weekly Sales and the Store makes it a point for most of their bundles to have Windows/Mac/Linux support for all the titles they sell in most cases.

 

[MDawg]

The big, end-of-year clearing-out of your PC gaming dollars begins as Steam's Holiday Sale starts today.

I picked up Monaco since it was part of the Daily Sale. As a reminder, unless an item is a Daily Sale or Flash Sale (those change every 8 hours), it may be wise to wait. Daily/Flash is the lowest price point an item will get during a Steam sale.

Amazon is also having a digital games sale (and a good chunk of them are able to be activated on Steam, make sure to check the item's page for confirmation though) and as if to further make sure you don't have extra money/no free time outside games, Humble Bundle for PC/Android 8 has launched and the Humble Store is having their winter sale. GOG.com is also running their 2013 DRM-Free Winter Sale currently (and a lot of their games work just fine on older/underpowered PCs since they have a number of classics in addition to modern games).

So if you've recently joined the Master Race, or want to get into it a bit more for great prices, you came in at a good time.

 

[MDawg]

Valve is giving away the gift of Left 4 Dead 2 to any Steam users. Install the game before 1PM EST tomorrow (12/26) and it's yours to own forever (it doesn't need to be completely installed by then, you just need to click the Install button to start the process, so you can do it on older PCs or something you may not want it on if you don't have access to your gaming PC of choice).

Steam seems to be having loading issues (likely related to the deal), so just keep checking throughout the day.

 

[defunctzombie]

Huh... I went to download it and it turns out I already bought it and #1 a while ago. Darn steam sales!

 

[Daikun]

Update on the keyboard situation: It turns out that wireless keyboards work PERFECTLY for gaming on my Windows 8.1 rig.

Sure, it also means that I'll have to swap out the batteries whenever they burn out, but at least I'm not getting awful lag like on the USB keyboard. It's a hand-me-down Microsoft keyboard from my friend, so I'm thankful to him for that. (I really didn't wanna spend any more money for upgrades, anyway.)

 

[Shawn Hopkins]

So what about Steam Machines? Valve just unveiled some yesterday.

Valve Unveils 13 Steam Machines, With Specs And Prices

I had an idea that these would be priced competitively with consoles, maybe even cheaper, but holy crap, that was wrong. Some of these cost thousands of bucks. The cheap ones are $500, and it seems like you could probably get better specs if you built your own PC. Yeah, this will probably not be my entrypoint into modern PC gaming.

 

[GWOtaku]

Yeah.....what's supposed to be the appeal of those, again?! Why would anyone want one of these when they could get a standard PC and both game and do other things with the machine? One could hook a PC up to a television right now with the right equipment if you wanted to. I don't understand. Maybe a handful of years down the line cost will drive down and this will actually make sense.

 

[Daikun]

Yeah.....what's supposed to be the appeal of those, again?! Why would anyone want one of these when they could get a standard PC and both game and do other things with the machine? One could hook a PC up to a television right now with the right equipment if you wanted to. I don't understand. Maybe a handful of years down the line cost will drive down and this will actually make sense.

It's less about the machine and more about the OS.

Do you own a smartphone, or at least pay attention to them? If so, then Valve is employing the same strategy from that industry.

iPhones are only made by one manufacturer: Apple.

Windows Phones are made by four manufacturers: Nokia, HTC, Samsung, and Huawei.

Look at all the manufacturers that run Android:

HOLY COW! Note that Android, Inc. doesn't make phones of their own; they just make the software, and since it's so open, it's the most widely used operating system for smartphones.

Valve has the same idea with SteamOS. You can only play Nintendo games on Nintendo consoles. You can only play PS4 games on Sony's hardware. Valve wants SteamOS to be open for any device that wants to use it, thus providing more options available and making its use widespread.

 

[defunctzombie]

The problem with that being as long as their machines make a profit, you will never see MS or Sony supporting it, and many people are hesitant to shop outside of what they know.

 

[Wounded_Dragon]

Didn't they try this already with the 3DO?