The Big Bad Console Thread - Sway your Station with an Xboner !

It just isn't true. The only reason I think people say things like that is because they haven't used a system with a SSD a lot and then had to go back to systems with mechanical drives. When you have a mechanical drive EVERYTHING about the computer is slow.

The CPU is important, sure. But after a certain point you have enough CPU horsepower. Same with the GPU. Motherboard is hardly a big deal anymore really, with how easy CPUs overclock. Cooling? I guess, but since you can run 4.5Ghz all day on an i5/i7 with a Hyper 212 Evo which is like $35 bucks we're not talking much budget there. Power supply? Again, not really. People usually have more PSU than they need. A quality 650/750 is gonna be fine for almost everyone and they're usually in the $100 range.

Also, your last sentence belies your whole post anyway: You have a SSD as your OS drive. I was talking about having a "gaming" computer without a SSD at all. That is why I quoted a poster who said he considers SSDs a "luxury". While they may be a luxury for gaming/storage drives they absolutely are not for your OS drive. There is no reason that everyone can't have a 120gb SSD as their OS drive and also the drive that houses the 3 or 4 games they play most. That is the ideal budget setup.

I disagree. We are talking about seconds here in loading times not minutes. I can certainly understand seconds being important enough for you to be essential for your needs and those seconds are important to me be also but they are certainly a luxury that you and I could game without.

Maybe the difference is age. I don't know how old you are but I was building computers and gaming on them when long load times where the norm. Going from that to the difference between starting up in 5 seconds or 9 just doesn't matter to me.

Well they matter but they aren'tessential.

Dunno man, after going to 4-7 sec boot times from 45-90 sec boot times, its really hard to go back to the old way of thinking - gains for games are really hit or miss in my experience (I try everything on the SSD first and move it to the physical drive if I'm not noting any performance difference) but the boot time difference is heavenly - I used to hate leaving my machine off at night since the boot up would take a while, now it's literally usually on and completely ready before I've settled in my seat.

Perhaps that's luxury to some, but to me, being able to turn off my PC overnight to use it without any substantial delay no doubt has already paid for my drive probably twice over.

Vaclav_sl said:

Got a Logitech one since as well that's "360 styled" and wasn't fond of it either - I think it's just alien to how I'm used to PC games feeling an adaption process that I just need to muddle through at some point.

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That's still no better than a PS3 controller. You gotta get an actual 360 controller. The second you plug it in, it just works flawlessly. Games instantly convert over to XBOX controls, in-game tutorials reflect the correct buttons (letters and colors), and you don't have to do a thing to it. Playing a game on a PC with a 360 controller is 100% the same as playing a game on a 360(only with the added benefit of better graphics, faster load times, and access to mods)

Honestly, I felt like the SSD jump was HUGE for me. I had been playing fallout new vegas when I installed mine, and load times went from "sit around and wait" to "holy shit I can't even read the help tips, its loading so fast." Aside from the enormous benefits to the PC/OS itself, I definitely feel like the SSD was one of the best purchases I've made for PC gaming. Some games it isn't a big deal, but others it's definitely noticeable. And just having the OS on it is a huge boon in itself. I don't think I could ever go back to a pure mechanical HD setup.

Gotta be a wired one, right?

And yea, the BethSoft engine games LOVE SSDs.

Vaclav_sl said:

Dunno man, after going to 4-7 sec boot times from 45-90 sec boot times, its really hard to go back to the old way of thinking - gains for games are really hit or miss in my experience (I try everything on the SSD first and move it to the physical drive if I'm not noting any performance difference) but the boot time difference is heavenly - I used to hate leaving my machine off at night since the boot up would take a while, now it's literally usually on and completely ready before I've settled in my seat.

Perhaps that's luxury to some, but to me, being able to turn off my PC overnight to use it without any substantial delay no doubt has already paid for my drive probably twice over.

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If we are Comparing apples to apples here Windows 7 on a decent sata drive didn't take anywhere near 40 more seconds to load maybe 20 which is annoying if you turn your computer off.

I'm counting stuff like the router being ready to go and everything and everything being fully booted in the background for the couple TSRs (ATI Catalyst/etc) - fully responsive everything loaded. I timed the before and after on my own machine at 42 sec or so before down to 7 sec these days. But some of the people that had me put together wimpy CPU machines for them, or wanted me to cheap out on their physical drives - I've absolutely seen over a minute, 90 sec might be stretching it, but I know I've seen over 60 for sure.

Remember I build machines for people - some people are cheapasses.

Regardless parsing out minutiae - the bootup gains are huge.

I agree that if you build a crappy computer with a 90 seconds load time that installing an ssd will net you a massive performance gain. I was assuming no one here would have built a computer like that to begin with.

"The customer is always right" - damned if I wouldn't try to convince them against the mistakes though...

Tuco_sl said:

If you have 90sec boot times something is wrong with your system.

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Not to mention there's no reason to fully shut it down everytime. I put my mechanical drive gaming system on sleep and it takes just a few seconds to come up with everything I kept open ready to go.

Utnayan_sl said:

Doesn't need to be a USB Wired 360 controller, you can still do wireless. I recommend the wired controller though because you will be fairly close to the PC i am guessing anyway. Even when I have my system in the entertainment. Trust me, once you plug this in, you won't go back to a console unless you see a very good exclusive title you just absolutely cannot wait for.

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Not to mention that you can get a 10-12 foot USB extension cable for about $1 online if you need more distance with your controller. I used a wireless controller with my 360 for all of about a week, until I tried to use it one day and it wasn't charged. That was the end of that. Spent a couple bucks on USB extension cords and have used them ever since.

hodj_sl said:

I haven't turned my pc off in like 3 years for longer than it takes to reset it or replace a busted part like a dead hard drive.

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Used to be that way, still do sometimes - but now it's a nice option to reset it overnight. (i.e. will leave it overnight if I'm torrenting - but otherwise why waste the electric?)

I wake up and I see pages of PC MASTER RACE being PC MASTER RACES in a console thread. Clearly we need a PC MASTER RACE thread.

I think people are underestimating how much power you will need to run a game well. No longer are you going to be able to buy low-mid level stuff and get away with running a game at 90% of its potential. Just look at the leaked Watch Dogs specs (which have actually gone up in a second leak). It's going to take a lot more power to run games, especially going into the next year.

I personally do not want to deal with any of that. I can buy a $400 box and be good enough for the next 6-7 years and being that I'll be playing on a 1080p TV I wouldn't see a noticeable enough upgrade in performance going with a high end PC for me to give a shit.

PC gaming will be great for those who play on 1440p and 2160p monitors that require a boatload of extra power. For those of us who primarily game on TVs these new consoles (or at least the PS4) bring enough to the table that there's not going to be a huge difference when gaming on a 1080p display, especially once they drop cross-gen games and engine optimization gets improved and they push more power out of the little boxes.

Also I'm more poorer than all of you COMBINED. Or something.

Go make a PC MASTER RACE Master AWESOMES thread.

Sean_sl said:

I can buy a $400 box and be good enough for the next 6-7 years

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Except now apparently you need to upgrade your hard drive as well.

That is a good point Sean - going console does allow a certain level of slack that can't always be done on PC.

hodj: Odd, my electric engineer bro-in-law and sister-in-law were always subscribed to the idea of turning them off as well and one of them was the first suggesting it to me to do so. Perhaps they were wrong though - shrug.