The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Are you playing any of the new GTA V? If so, how is it?

 

Holding out for the PC release, personally. The only next-gen console I own is the Wii U and I wasn't all that fussed about getting the game for the PS3.

 

Indeed. I too, am waiting for the PC release. But I'll also probably be waiting for my tax return. Money is rather tight at the moment. But we'll see

 

The Wii U is poorly made and poorly thought out. Just like the Wii there are multiple parts they've cheaped out on. Wiis were secretly one of the worst consoles of their gen for reliability. Nintendo doesn't want to put forth the money, talent, and time necessary to develop software to truly take advantage of it. Totally disappointing, unimaginative, and underpowered console. Entirely uninterested. The Gamecube was a vastly better console than the Wii or Wii U.

GTA V PC release quite soon...

 

Anecdotal evidence only goes so far, but I'm one of very few of my peers who retained a working 360 from the original generation. Most of them failed. Quite a few of us owned Wiis and I don't recall any of them having issues. I will agree that the original Wii was underpowered though (i.e., being an overclocked Gamecube and nothing more) - I never really accepted the 'it's about the games not the performance' argument from Nintendo - whilst that's true, there's concentrating on the games and then there's just being a last-gen console. The Wii U is much better in that regard though, while it's not up to the spec of the others, it still has the capability to produce nice enough high-def stuff for the sort of games it will be used for.

 

The Wii U's design is its only asset. There are multiple parts of the device and controllers where there is clear and indisputable evidence that they cheaped out on the console to protect their bottom line. It is not well made, period. Poor quality just like the Wiis. Fortunately it avoid many of the Wii's major issues with the use of HDMI. It just has bad quality, not bad engineering.

Also, over half of the first gen Wiis have lost their ability to play Gamecube games. The drive simply quits reading them properly and there is no known fix(AFAIK). Second gen Wiis have the Gamecube capability entirely removed. This is about half of the Wii's purpose for existing; playing progressive scan Gamecube games without paying $200 for the Japanese cable like I did.

Also, when used with component, the Gamecube outputs far better image quality than the Wii. Like drastically better. The Gamecube has easily the best 480p image quality of its gen, while the Wii has easily the worst quality period of its own gen. The Wii U is following that trend. It just doesn't have the power/features to keep up with Xbox 360 and PS3 games let alone XBone/PS4.

Sure, Nintendo exclusives are great, but exclusives alone don't make a product. I'm not paying hundreds of dollars for a selection for 20 okayish games... The Gamecube had a very good selection of games, and I don't recall EVER hearing of a failure. Pampered Wiis dropping like flies and horribly abused Gamecubes still running like a champ? There's something wrong there.

 

Sign of the times perhaps - I don't have enough evidence to disagree with any of that. I know the Gamecube I've ended up with (not mine, but a friend I lived with moved out without it and said I may as well keep it, so I did!) still appears in full working order whereas the PS2 of similar vintage works OK most of the time but did crash periodically playing stuff like Guitar Hero II. I've not had any issues with the Wii but I've not really experimented with GC functionality on it, for all I know I have one of the ones that can't do it. Since I have the PS3 that doesn't play PS2 games, that's nothing new to me - I still have both the older gen consoles, and they're not exactly bulky by modern console standards, so not an issue, but I see where you're coming from.

 

My brothers first Gen Wii, and my black wii, have been through hours and hours of use. Standby for hours on end. No failures. But his mother in laws failed within months. I think it may have been used, but it's the only one I've heard of failing. Not suggesting failure is uncommon, because clearly according to you, it is common. And I trust you. I don't know why you would make that up

 

I am a lifelong diehard Nintendo lover. I have zero reason to make this up. The first video game I ever learned to insert in a console was StarFox for the SNES. I have every interest in seeing Nintendo flourish and innovate. The reason the Wii's issues never got to be a big deal is because the majority sold weren't used for Gamecube games, and I would guess that over half have less than 100 hours on them as the Wii was a fashion accessory and a fad. Both of my Wiis had 500+ hours on them after having bought them new. My parents used the second one for Netflix and Youtube quite a bit but it otherwise sat in standby in a stereo cabinet. Plenty of breathing roomm and airflow. Both first gens. A sad result considering my N64 from about 1998-1999 is still playing games like new literally as I type this. Star Fox 64.

The second gen has better reliability and slightly better component image quality, but still nothing approaching a Gamecube. Really crystal sharp quality from the little blue box. Proprietary hardware DAC in the cable.

Mmmm more Diablo II lately.

 

I see that GTA V is now March 24th. Grrr! lol! I wonder why they pushed it out 2 months.

Oh... I see...

 

Perhaps they were having difficulty shrinking the install below 100 gig.... I knew this was coming when steam obfuscated the release date. Despite Rockstar denying it initially, it was pretty obvious what that meant

 

Wow... and I thought the new wolfenstein was huge! According to my buddy anyway, it's over 40Gb :S

 

It's 65GB, as of the current build. I don't imagine it'll change a great deal between now and release.

 

That'd take me 2+ days to download :S

 

It'd take me about 2 1/2 hours, but on the other hand it'd use up a minimum of £2 worth of disk space if it was on a 5400rpm disk, which let's face it, isn't happening. If on an SSD it'd cost as much as the game itself to store...

 

JEALOUS! I MIGHT get that speed if I lived in a large town. But no... I get 5 - 7Mbps on average I'm patient though It's enough for video streaming, and quick browsing though. So I can't really complain.

 

You mean Mbps right?

 

Yes, that's what I meant lol. I have OCD, you'd think I would have realized that :S

 

We get 100 Mbps but that's way overkill - I was quite happy when we were getting 12, and my steam downloads were two different streams at 750 KB/sec each. Now I get downloads at 5 or 6 MBps and 12 gigs comes down in - what - about 45 minutes or so.

But which one were you talking about - was it you Kevin, or maybe it was Jeff or Sam, when you said 60 gigs on a new release (oh yes, I heard you say they're probably trying to get GTAV PC version to be UNDER 100 gigs.) You were saying "new wolfenstein." As in - newer than the one that JUST came out like 6-8 months ago - or is that that one you were talking about, which I think was 40 gigs - the one that ends in that ridiculous fiery shootout in the "boiler room." Other than that finale that I totally hated - couldn't see a damn thing - I really liked that game. Wolfenstein The New Order I think.

I have several hundred screens of Far Cry 4 - will I ever post them? I don't know. I'm not done playing, but I sided with Amita, finished the game, then came back to that decision point where I had saved it, and sided with Sabal which is what I really wanted to do. And this time I'm not killing off Pagan at the end. So now I'm finishing Shangri-la, and I have about 7 more forts to liberate, including 4 "very hard" ones. (Lots of patience and a silenced sniper rifle and it can be done without being detected - meaning no alarms and no reinforcements.) It's now very late in the game and for almost a half million rupees I bought the way overpowered buzzsaw light machine gun signature weapon which recently became unlocked, which the game says is a WWII remake - like the Nazi MG - very fast fire rate, cuts through everything including the heavies and also including vehicles, but this one has zero recoil, and comes with a zoom sight (equal to the lower zoom setting on the sniper sight) and best of all 800 rounds, in two 400-round clips. (The other LMG has 500 rounds in 100-round clips, and the rest of the automatic weapons have about 300 rounds in 30 round clips.)

I got my fill of flying around and killing things below, and now I sometimes like to get back on the ground, especially on a quad 4-runner, and drive like mad launching grenades at the bad guys. But even that is getting old, so I guess I'll just finish pretty soon, and go back to Assassins Creed Unity, which so far has been kind of meh, but I haven't played that much of it. Oh, and I still have about 100 Arma single player missions to go through. That gives me until March when we'll start hearing from you, Kevin, about GTA5.
Rich

 

If you get 5 or 6MB/s downloads that's not 100Mbps - nowhere near it. 6MB/s would be 48Mbps, and even at that speed you'd receive 12GB in 33 minutes or so, so it doesn't sound like you're getting that much. A proper 100Mbps connection can do 12GB in 16 minutes.