Pedz wrote:Cheeky Devlin wrote:Pedz wrote:Cheeky Devlin wrote:Knoyleo wrote:That's not a growth wrote:I remember the days you could get a decent machine for £600 if you were thrifty with a few parts. There used to be articles about building a PC with better performance than the then current consoles for less cost. Those were the days.
The potato masher /potato masher pro series is still going on YouTube, but even then, the cost of the parts in the machine are higher now than they were when it was built, meaning it would now be more expensive than the "4K" consoles. He still playtests a lot of big new releases on it, and it goes a long way to showing how even a low-mid range set up still generally handles 1080p60fps with ease.
Kind of related, and I go into this a little more in the Emulation thread, but I just bought a refurbed Dell Optiplex 3020 and a GTX 1030 based on this video:
Arrived yesterday and while I've not got the graphics card yet I'm very impressed with how well it managed Dolphin and Citra just using the built in Intel Graphics chip. Citra ran Metroid and Ocarina/Majora's Mask at what appeared to be full speed (At their native resolution to be fair) and Dolphin allowed me to get 40-60fps on F-Zero GX straight out of the box.
I'm expecting a significant bump to the performance once I get the card into it.
All that for the low price of around £190 (Half of that is the Graphics card).
Plus it's small enough that I can easily take it round to friends houses and just hook it up.
Haven't looked at the vid yet, but how would it do with more modern games?
I'm hoping to check that out once I get my graphics card, but it should be able to handle GTA V, Rocket League and some other more recent games with some tweaking to their settings. The 1030 card only has 2GB of DDR5 RAM so it's not a huge amount.
EDIT: That said PC games aren't really the focus of what I want to do with it. It's a nice bonus, but I'm not going to be too annoyed if it's not fantastic. Definitely going to load it up with as much as I can though. I'll probably need to double the hard drive space though. I've got about 2Tb in it right now and I've only got about 400Gb left after putting all my ROMs in. Something like GTA V or Doom is gonna chew through that.
I was thinking it it had retro games on it and was able to play modern games, recently, then I could buy it for the kids and they came stay away from my pc
So I've posted a little bit more about this in the emulation thread, but feel like it would be worth sharing here as well.
Basically my GT 1030 came through a week or so ago and it's turned the system into a legit emulation powerhouse. PC games run about as well as you would expect for the spec, with more recent, heavy stuff requiring lots of tweaking and dropping of quality settings to run acceptably (Or at all). But I can run FIFA 19 at a playable level, as well as GTA V, Rocket League and a few others so it'll do for a system that's hooked up to the same TV as my XB1X and PS4 where I get better performing versions of these. Obviously the further back you go the better it runs PC games, with anything 360/PS3 era running pretty damn well and often at 1080p/60fps depending on the port.
Emulation has been a revelation though. I'd already said how impressed I was with Dolphin and Citra without the GT 1030 card, so it was even more impressive when I was able to crank up the resolutions and get pretty much flawless performance from both of them. Even managed to get 4K out of Dolphin. PCSX2 runs pretty damn well too, though I will admit I've not spent too much time with it just yet.
But for me, the biggest surprise was just how well it handles Cemu. I had absolutely no expectation for it to run Wii U games. At best I expected sub-10 framerates and constant crashing. So imagine my surprise when I get Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8, New Super Mario Bros U, Super Mario Maker (With online functionality), Captain Toad, Twilight Princess HD and many others running at a mostly stable 60fps. Even more so when I got Breath of the Wild to a state that's probably on-par-with if not
slightly better it's native Wii U performance. There are some crashes within games and lengthy load times in places, but considering that I wasn't looking for it to run this system at all it's genuinely blown my mind how well it handles it.
RPCS3 however was a bit of a write off. I could boot Demon's Souls, but it kept crashing and I never quite managed to get it in game. I've not completely given up on it, but it's not anywhere near Cemu levels on this system yet.
It's definitely got me thinking about a few upgrades for it down the line. RAM is the first obvious one as 4GB just limits my options too much. Getting it up to 8GB will be a good start. Beyond that I'm considering a bump to the CPU as this will have the biggest impact on emulation and definitely help push a couple of the more intensive Cemu titles into more playable territory (Tokyo Mirage Sessions is a good example) as well as give RPCS3 a helping hand. If I can get another low power, SFF GPU with more RAM then I'll definitely consider that as well. The 1030 is a phenomenal card for the price, but 2GB Video RAM is very limiting.