UltraMega

Odd. The screen color flickering sounds like a hardware issue, but everything else sounds like it could just be software. How inconvenient would it be for you to reformat? Seems like it would be a good idea to wipe the C drive and reinstall at this point. Would rule out a lot of things. Download Windows 11 WWW.MICROSOFT.COM Download Windows 10 WWW.MICROSOFT.COM

You guys remember lan centers? VR seems like it would be a great thing to have a modern lan center kind of thing for. VR might even sell a whole lot better if people had a way to try it before they bought it. I would pay $10 an hour or whatever to try VR in a lan center if there were any.

I think there's more than just cost keeping VR from taking off. The amount of space it requires is a big deal, but mostly that most people don't tolerate it for more than an hour or so before they get a headache or feel nauseated.

Did it ever fail to boot to bios without any storage drives plugged in?

I think their issues were pretty short lived. I remember Newegg going down hill for a little while, but that's all be resolved.

https://www.newegg.com/promotions/nepro/23-1322/index.html?cm_sp=Head_Navigation-_-Under_Search_Bar-_-Trade-in&icid=760123 As someone who buys a lot of used GPUs, I think this is really neat. I understand a lot of people would hesitate to buy a used GPU, but since the mining craze the used GPU market has actually evolved quite a bit and there are some sort of unwritten standards that have become prevalent. For example, it's rare for me to buy a used card these days that doesn't come in near-perfect condition with new paste and pads. Given that GPUs (and CPUs for that matter) almost always last longer than their useful lifespan, it makes a lot of sense these days to consider used GPUs as a totally viable option. Newegg sells these GPUs as "certified refurbished". This is really the icing on the cake because it creates a whole new force of pressure on GPU prices. The prices they sell these GPUs for ranges from very reasonable to completely absurd. ~$350 for a used 3070, but there is a 2080Ti listed for ~$800. I'd imagine this will evolve over time. What's more, the site doesn't filter out these listings by default, meaning when people look for a GPU on newegg, they will see these listed along with new GPUs unless they manually filter out the used ones. These used cards come with a 90-warranty from newegg. https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007709 4016&cm_sp=tradein-landingpage-certifiedrefurbished Price wise, what they offer isn't bad but it's not as much as a seller would get from selling a GPU on ebay. Newegg offers 209$ for a 3070 and on ebay they usually go for about $300. Minus ebay fees, the seller would make about $260. On the AMD side things are a bit further off. An RX6800 would go for about $380 on ebay, seller would get about $330. Newegg only offers $255. All and all, seems like a pretty good option for Nvidia users who don't want to bother with ebay, while AMD users should probably stick with ebay.

Microsoft’s data centers are going nuclear | Computerworld WWW.COMPUTERWORLD.COM A job posting suggests that Microsoft is planning to explore the use of small nuclear reactors for its major data... I wonder if this tech is at all related to the research the Gates Foundation put into nuclear tech.

Just finished the game. 9/10 plot 7.5/10 gameplay Will return for big side quests, probably not much else.

I am kind of in the opposite boat, meaning the main quest is pretty much the only thing keeping me interested in the game. First off, I have not beat the main quest yet but I think I'm pretty far. Lvl 32. It does open up and get more interesting, but there is also a lot of slow filler parts that just feels like busy work. The overall quest feels like an amalgamation of several pretty good star trek episodes or si-fi tropes mashed into one. Not gonna say the dialogue is always great, but the overall plot is at least interesting. Not amazing, but interesting. What's killing it for me is that everything else about the game feels empty and meaningless. The randomly generated planets just feel like a series of different deserts with little incentive to spend time walking/jetpacking in long straight paths to eventually find a small cave or a building I have already seen over and over on other randomly generated planets. The sense that there is much to explore wears off quickly, at least in my experience. It feels like I am missing something, like there is some rock left unturned that has all the interesting stuff that I just haven't found but I don't think that's actually the case. It feels like everything in the game is a rearrangement of the same assets over and over outside of a few hub cities. Space is just a small void with a Skybox and some ships to interact with that feels like a tacked on mini game to make your ship feel like it has a reason to exist beyond storage and fast travel. I cannot for the life of me imagine how they came to the decision leave the player with no way to travel faster on planets via some kind of vehicle or mount or anything really, but even if they did there would still be little reason to explore more than a few times because once you have done that, you have pretty much seen it all. I wish I liked this game more, but I just don't and the more I play it the more I feel confused by a lot of design decisions. Like the way you unlock special abilities from the temples... by flying around randomly in circles every single time. I spent probably 2 hours doing that over and over for the main quest the other day, just going from temple to temple to do the same exact thing over and over. I think that example serves as a good metaphor for how the game feels. I have to imagine Bethesda lost sight of the end goal at some point during development for some reason or another and they had to figure out how to hobble together a game with the work they had put into the idea so far, without a fully cohesive vision of what it would end up being. Maybe it was because of Covid interfering with their dev plans, or maybe they just had a lot of ambitious ideas that just didn't work for technical reasons and needed to be scaled back. Maybe they got really far with the procedural generation tech before they realized it was pretty boring after the initial wow factor wears off and just couldn't pivot at that point. I feel like the game would have been far better if they had designed the game and plot around the idea of one solar system. A few planets to explore with a lot more effort put into those locations instead of endlessly generated content with no real meaning to it. All that said, a lot of people seem to be really enjoying it. I'm jealous of those people. I think there may be a few reasons why some people love it and others find it boring. I think if you simply enjoy the looting and crafting grind of a Bethesda RPG in-and-of itself, then Starfield is probably great. Personally, I don't. I enjoyed it in Skyrim because the setting added depth, but inventory management is my least favorite thing about games like this and the game just fails to add depth or incentive for me to care about looting. Another theory I have is that some people have more experience with games that use random procedural generation and are just not impressed by it at face value. Games like Valheim work similarly, but have a lot more ways to interact with the environment. I would imagine if Starfield was my first time seeing big randomly generated environments, I would be more excited by it but I was making maps in CryEngine 1 with its editor that were largely generated at random and easy to populate with assets very quickly so this stuff just doesn't impress me at all. However, you feel about the game, I think it likely didn't turn out the way Tood Howard had hoped. I suspect the overall conceptual goal of the game was deemed too ambitious at some point in development, and they just made due with what they had. /rant

7900XT here. Try this mod. I made a video about it a while ago. It reduces the bounce lighting from 2 bounces to 1. This will make some areas of the map darker, but you will get much more playable FPS.

Lots of interesting leaks from Microsoft right now. Definitely doesn't paint a good picture, but a lot of this info is old. Hopefully they are satisfied with the Zemimax and Activision acquisitions and are able to turn those into a good array of working first party studios. I have no doubt that if Microsoft can deliver 5 or more AAA first party games that are on the same level as something like Starfield or HellBlade 2 (assuming it's as good as it looks) it will greatly boost their game pass subscriptions. They've have really had a hard time getting this off the ground with failed titles like Halo Infinite. High on Life looked good at first but then the creator got caught up in a sex scandal. Atomic Heart seemed cool until Russia invaded Ukraine, which tainted the perception of the game being Russian made and having some political themes. Stalker 2 being delayed for similar reasons, Ukranian devs. Between a pandemic, sex scandals, and international war, Microsoft just can't catch a break with game pass. The lesson they should be taking away from all this is they need to just buckle down and do the work. Make great first party games, don't push them out unfinished, and the audience will follow. I think it's also safe to say that when COD hits game pass, it will make add a lot of subs. They're on a path to success, but they really can't afford too many more mess ups. Important context at the end of the article: "Now, there is reason to believe Spencer may have exaggerated a bit. Microsoft stressed throughout the whole FTC investigation and later in federal court that the acquisition of Activision Blizzard was critical to its plan to grow in mobile and cloud markets. Otherwise, it might as well exit the gaming business." Seems like it was probably political/legal posturing to make their case with the FTC more than anything else. No way MS would ditch game pass in 5 years after the Activision Aquisition. Maybe after ten years they would ditch it, but between Zenimax and Activision they are ~100 billion deep in recent investments. No way they give up in 5 years after investing this much. I think MS knows gaming is going to be an ever-growing business that they simply need to be a part of to be the kind of major player in tech they want to be. It also wouldn't make sense to shut down game pass. If game pass doesn't work out the way they hope, it would make sense for them to scale back their plans on game pass and just let it continue on as a subscription service with whatever games it will have on it with less investment and first party focus from Microsoft. To just drop it entirely would be nuts especially since they can use their cloud servers that they would have either way to stream games. If Microsoft just hits the milestone suggested in the graph presented in the article, the one Phil says is not enough to stay in the gaming business, that would be about 50B in revenue between now and 2027. $11 a month is $132 a year, times 5 years is $660. Times 75 million subscribers, that's 49.5 billion just from subscribers. If they only hit these low projection numbers, in 2030 they will hit 92.4 billion in revenue. They'll still be in the red on their investments, but they wouldn't kill off a business model that's generating billions in revenue year after year. If COD hits game pass and doubles their subs, they will be in very good shape. if it even just had a 20% impact of subs, they would be in pretty good shape.

Just an update on this. I've sold 3 PCs on Etsy since I started doing Etsy, and one or two locally that were prebuilds. Some of the Etsy orders I thought I had were scams and payment didn't clear (nothing shipped), so 3 total real Etsy sales. Admittedly, the Etsy PCs haven't been moving as fast as I would like them to, so for the next build I am building something less catered to buyer looking for a solid PC at a good price and more catered to women, so my next build will be a white case with a white heatsink and rbg fans. My last Etsy buyer told me his girlfriend picked out the PC for him and that made it clear to me I need to do more to appeal to female buyers. I still think Etsy will be a great way to sell PCs, but to have the most success I'll need to adapt more so to Etsy's core audience. I also think once I have 5 or reviews built up on Etsy, it will be a lot easier to sell. So still in the start up phase here as far as Etsy, but the path the success with selling prebuilds still seems entirely doable.

Definitely not missing anything, I had the exact same thought. This will be Nvidia's first chiplet design, AMD has been doing that for a while now.

Rumors Suggest Nvidia Next-Gen Blackwell GPUs Will Adopt a Multi-Chiplet Design WWW.GURU3D.COM Nvidia has historically refrained from adopting a multi-chiplet design for its high-end compute GPUs. However... Also this: NVIDIA RTX 5090 Rumors: Blackwell Architecture 70% faster? WWW.GURU3D.COM Recent disclosures suggest developments within Nvidia's upcoming video card generation. A Chiphell user...

I was playing this way until a friend mentioned to me that you unlock new abilities from doing the main quest. Might be worth doing it so you can play all the side quests with those abilities.

Does anyone know if this will stress the RT and AI cores?

That's the logic. CPUs that are a gen or two behind and usually only ~15% or so weaker end up being around 50% cheaper, maybe more sometimes. It's just a good way to get more for the money in general, at least for CPUs and GPUs. I wouldn't do it with anything other than a CPU or GPU since those tend to last a long time as long as their thermals are kept in check. it especially makes sense for 1440p/4K gaming where the demand lies more on the GPU. Most of the CPUs and GPUs I buy used and don't send back are in such good condition, they might as well be new. Sometimes better than new, because a lot of GPUs will come with the thermal pads and paste replaced which clears up any Vram throttling issues in a lot of cases. I've never had a long-term issue with any of the parts I've bought used, thus far. If there is an issue, it will be apparent right away and I'll just send it back for a refund or fix it myself. I send back so many GPUs on ebay that I had to talk to an ebay rep about it because my account got flagged for doing so many returns, but when the rep looked at my account and saw how much hardware I was buying in general (the vast majority of which does not get sent back), and I explained to him that I buy these parts and then simply test them, and if they fail the testing for any reason I send them back (if I don't fix them myself). He completely understood and he essentially gave me the green light to continue doing that. The issue I have most often is thermals. If a GPU runs at 100% fan speed and is very loud during testing, I consider that failing the testing and I may send it back. Sometimes sellers get butt hurt about that, but they just have to live with it. If a GPU is listed as working normally, to me that means it doesn't have thermal issues. That said, I also will redo the thermal pastes and pads myself sometimes, it's just a case by case basis. I had one that was a Gainward 3070 with a giant heatsink and the fans were ramping up real loud. I knew there had to be an issue with the pads because the GPU temp wasn't that bad and the heatsink was more than big enough for a 3070. When I took the thermal pads off, they had clearly been replaced recently but there were two squares of pads that still had the plastic cover on one side, and it had melted onto the heatsink to become like glue. I removed it, redid the pads, and the fans were normal after. So sometimes you do have to put a little work into it, and be willing to send something back and piss off a seller who is just looking to offload poor condition GPUs, but it's a solid way to go as long as you're OK with those factors. I've gotten it down to a really good routine. It would be interesting to see what the results in gaming benchmarks/performance would be on a 100% new system with no profit involved in the cost (like someone building a PC for themselves) vs a PC sold for a ~$150 profit with a used CPU and GPU, if the overall cost to the buyer were the same. I think in anything other than 1080p CSGO style gaming, the used PC would probably pull ahead.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/unity-backlash-why-gamers-and-devs-united-against-the-popular-game-engine/ar-AA1gIR2r I suspect a reversal of this new policy is imminent based on the backlash.

Daaaaumn that looks chronic.

Haha, a resurgence? As if this even had traction before... No way this is ever more than a niche of a niche.

Moved thread out of news, renamed to Starfield Discussion Thread. Now that I have a good amount of hours in the game, I am enjoying it but it's definitely not as good as Skyrim. Perhaps my opinion will change as there are a lot of mechanics I haven't touched yet, but I have a feeling it won't change much. The game is so similar to Skyrim in how it plays, but Skyrim benefited from having a setting that really made the player want to care about the mechanics. Smelting ore to craft gear, collecting ingredients to make potions, enchanting armor and weapons... these things made sense and had a lot of appeal in the Skyrim setting. In Starfield, those same mechanics feel dry and uninteresting because the setting of the game just doesn't add any depth to them at all. The nature of the way the worlds are divided up also makes it feel harder to get a sense of immersion. I understand and appreciate the way they designed the game, and the loading screens between planets and space doesn't bother me in and of itself, but the lack of any attempt to make it feel connected hurts the game a lot. For example, I don't know why the player can't take off in their ship and fly it up towards space until they hit a certain point that would just trigger a loading screen and load into space, and vice versa for landing on a planet. It feels like two completely separate games in one; a Skyrim style RPG with no hub world but instead larger dungeon style instances on procedurally generated planets, and a very simple space combat game. Some simple changes to the way the game is played would have made a big difference, and it does feel like Bethesda didn't try hardly at all to come up with ways to hide the seams. It feels like they looked at the way people play Skyrim and said "players just fast travel everywhere so why bother to try to make the world feel connected". While that's mostly true, you still had to walk to a location at least once to unlock fast travel for that location, and that made the world feel connected. It doesn't matter that once you get to the location, it's just a door or cave entrance with a loading screen. The travel gives the player that sense that the world is believably connected. Overall I was not super hyped for this game because I didn't know what it was trying to be, but I am a bit disappointed that it feels sooo much like Skyrim but with a totally different setting. Instead of designing mechanics for Starfield, they took too much of what worked in Skyrim and shoved it down Starfield's throat without adapting it to feel like it fit in the game. Overall a good game, I'm pretty hooked on it for now despite the flaws. Still, it feels a little under baked.

Some mods I recommend using: This one I had to manually install. I just dropped the inventory folder into the Starfield data directory in the "My Documents" folder and it worked. Very useful: StarUI Inventory at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) I think the rest of these worked with Vortex Mod Manager: Skip Launch Video at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) Undelayed Menus at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) - speeds up menus/interface navigation. Starfield FOV at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) Icon Sorting Tags - Starfield Edition at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) - adds icon-tags to loot to make them easier to categorize. Enhanced Player Healthbar at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) - Health bar will more color stages Enhanced Dialogue Interface at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) And then probably the most needed mod: Round Butt Sarah at Starfield Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)

I'd be surprised if this was more than just an updated VR headset/hardware refresh. It's my understanding that Alyx was Valve's push to give legs to the VR market and it failed massively for them to the point that they dropped any other VR projects they had planned. Clearly Alyx is a great game, but it's just one game and it wasn't enough to bring VR into focus. However you feel about VR, it hasn't really found any good footing in the market still to this day. IMO Sony is the only company to achieve modest success with VR in terms of bringing it to the market in an effective way. VR is too segmented on PC and until that changes, I don't think it will ever get very far.

Sold two PCs yesterday, one local and one online. Pebuilding is continuing to work out for me so far.

Sarah is a stage 5 clinger. Flirt with her successfully once and it's a done deal.