this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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PC Gaming

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[–] Ecksell@lemmy.one 75 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I hope I dont need to upgrade my Sound Blaster audio card!

[–] Ep1cFac3pa1m@lemmy.world 18 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Still rocking my SoundBlaster X-fi Titanium Fatal1ty edition. It’s not necessary, but I have it and it still works, so I may as well use it.

[–] HidingCat@kbin.social 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Wow, that's gotta be like, 15 years old by now? Creative stopped using the Fatal1ty branding around 2010, I think!

[–] Ep1cFac3pa1m@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

If I still had the receipt I’d look at the purchase date, but even I’m not that much of a hoarder. I’m pretty sure I bought it for the first PC I ever built myself, which had a Phenom II 965 Black Edition CPU, so it was definitely a while ago…

[–] ares35@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

that would be awesome.

[–] r00ty@kbin.life 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The AWE32 was the best sound card ever change my mind.

[–] NaoPb@eviltoast.org 1 points 2 years ago

2 words: no pci

[–] simple@lemm.ee 39 points 2 years ago (9 children)

I'm a bit baffled that some people still use HDDs considering how cheap SSDs have gotten. You can get a 2TB M.2 for around $100. If you've got the specs for new games, there's no excuse.

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

I'm baffled that some people update their hardware before it stops working.

But then I just keep playing old games that run on my system, so I'm probably not the target demographic.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well what do you mean by "stops working?" Like, literally the hardware no longer functions, or would you also consider hardware that just doesn't run the newest stuff as well as older stuff?

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

More the former than the latter, because I have the same attitude towards the software, too. I don't need to be able to run the newest stuff because the oldest stuff works just fine. I'm not doing CPU or GPU intensive stuff, and I try to run lightweight software that doesn't bog down my computer.

I can absolutely see how that would be different if I were gaming, video editing, or doing any sort of data modeling.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I tend to see others in gaming upgrading all the time and I'm fine with most mid-range stuff for anywhere between 6 and 10 years, depending on advanced in tech. I'm currently behind because of raytracing and DLSS becoming a thing only like a year or two after building my current rig; but I don't need that stuff (it's not even mind meltingly good anyway; I've compared stuff side by side with RT on and off between mine and another machine and couldn't really see a difference unless it was with full RT reflections) and most new things still run acceptable for me.

[–] Crashumbc@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

RT isn't worth it unless you're already upgrading IMO

[–] HidingCat@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

Then why're you even commenting in an area that you don't partake in? This is like saying "I don't get why people buy sports cars" in a forum of racing enthusiasts. Or saying "I don't see the need for cast iron woks" when you're happy to have boiled pasta every day.

[–] rasensprenger@feddit.de 16 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I can get a 10TB HDD for under 250€, and there are some technical advantages. For example, if you have an ssd lying around unpowered, it will lose data much quicker than magnetic storage

[–] the_q@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago (3 children)

You run programs or operating systems off that 10 TB HDD?

[–] ThunderingJerboa@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I have a 6TB one and yes mostly for single player games since loading screens typically aren't that big of a deal. OS always goes on your best drive and you know you can have multiple drives in a singular pc since you are sort of implying you can only have 1 drive.

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[–] paultimate14@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The PS4 has an HDD, and only partway through its life upgraded from SATA2 to SATA3 even.

Personally, I've got my boot drive, plus a 2TB SATA3 SSD for games that benefit from it's plus a 12TB HDD for the vast majority of games that don't need it (or to temporarily store games- it's faster to move them between drives than re-doenload them). So if I was planning on playing this games hearing this from the devs would let me know I need to free up some SSD space.

[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 12 points 2 years ago

The PS4 has an HDD, and only partway through its life upgraded from SATA2 to SATA3 even.

And has load times measured in minutes on many games.

[–] HidingCat@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

Some games do load quite fast on the HDD, I keep those there. Most games do go to the SSD first.

[–] 30p87@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago

HDD as data storage is fine, but neither will you need 10 TB of storage for games nor will it lie around for 10 years or so.

[–] paultimate14@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Games keep getting bigger and bigger. This game is expected to be about 100GB, and that's not uncommon for modern AAA games. The CoD games have been over 200GB for a while now. Previous FF games have been similar size. RDR2 was 120GB.

I would expect most people playing FF16 on PC to have a small SSD drive with their OS, key programs, and maybe a couple of games, then a HDD for bulk storage.

I'm not interested in the FF series, but if I was this message from the devs means "clear up some space on your SSD". Which can sometimes be an inconvenience.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 years ago

It’s because the upgrade for this console generation was an SSD

[–] Centillionaire@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

It is an inconvenience. AAA games will alway try to push hardware, and SSDs just happen to be one of the things that can do that.

[–] ares35@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

i don't play 'new' games, i don't have the hardware for them. most my gear is older salvaged stuff that didn't cost me anything to get. between constant rent increases and the cost of groceries these days, i simply can't afford to upgrade unless i get lucky and salvage something useful.

[–] Numpty@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 years ago

You're not the target market for FF16 then.

[–] zhenbo_endle@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago

I’m a bit baffled that some people still use HDDs considering how cheap SSDs have gotten. You can get a 2TB M.2 for around $100. If you’ve got the specs for new games, there’s no excuse.

I don't know why you got some downvotes. Buying an SSD to store the latest games is much more cheaper than buying a GPU. If one already has a powerful GPU, I don't know why they consider an SSD "not affordable"

[–] datavoid@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

SSD for newish games, OS, and programs, HDD for videos, photos, music, and old games.

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[–] Chobbes@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

If you’re just buying a terabyte or two of storage there’s absolutely no reason to buy spinning rust at this point. If you want many terabytes of storage 12tb+ hard drives are going to be a fair bit cheaper than SSDs currently. SSDs have been rapidly dropping in price and increasing in capacity, though, so hopefully it just gets more and more cost effective to have a bunch of storage with SSDs.

[–] x4740N@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

SSD's with more than a 500gb-1tb start to get way more expensive than hard drives

[–] ono@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

It's simple: My SSD can only fit so many 100-300 GB games, while I already have hard drives with plenty of free space.

(Also, running Linux means that an SSD doesn't help game performance much anyway, outside of initial loading time.)

You can get a 2TB M.2 for around $100.

More like $150-200 if you want a good one.

If you’ve got the specs for new games, there’s no excuse.

What a very privileged perspective. I don't have much money, but most new games are playable on my existing hardware if I tune the graphics settings. I would rather spend what money have on things like food and heat. (Or if the basics are covered, then maybe a newish game.)

[–] ftbd@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Just to share my recent experience: I found that games of that size compress quite well. So if you're using a filesystem like btrfs that supports transparent compression, you can fit much more onto your disks, at the cost of slightly slower reads and writes (M.2 ssd). With my HDD, compression actually increased write speed!

[–] Chobbes@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Compression can increase read and write speeds to storage because you’re sending over fewer bits. The tradeoff is that you need CPU resources to do the compression (and decompression).

I haven’t found games to compress that well. On my steam folder 809GB compressed down to 724GB, so I save maybe 10%. That’s certainly not nothing, but it’s not game changing either. That said I don’t install a lot of hundred gig plus games.

[–] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 26 points 2 years ago (4 children)

In 2023/4 you should not be running a hdd in your gaming machine anyway, SSDs are so affordable now

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[–] KISSmyOS@lemmy.world 22 points 2 years ago

Oh no, does that mean I have to replace my Radio Shack CTR-41 cassette drive?

[–] theKalash@feddit.ch 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I probably also need at least a dual core CPU.

[–] CJOtheReal@ani.social 3 points 2 years ago

Same with GPU...

[–] TwoCubed@feddit.de 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So what? I accidentally installed Baldur's Gate 3 on a hard disk and it was unplayable, because the assets took ages to load. Transferred everything over to an NVMe drive and it's butter smooth. Just don't put anything that requires interaction on a hard disk and get with the times and plop in an SSD. Best bang for your buck in terms of an upgrade with a massively noticable effect.

[–] Sarmyth@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 2 years ago

Too true. Upgrading to NVMe was the most noticeable speed boost I've experienced all at once in my history of building my own rigs. It's was like black magic. Wouldn't shut up about it to all my friends for a month.

this is nothing new... fuck game journalism

[–] CJOtheReal@ani.social 8 points 2 years ago

Don't fucking dare me! My fucking magnetic tape drive does the job just fine!

[–] satans_crackpipe@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

Are you telling me I should stop gaming using a raid10 set made from 8x500GB HDDs?

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