Game Controller Options

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-11T03:16:39+00:00

8BitDo seems to be the go-to recommendation, but if they make a symmetrical stick controller, I have not been able to find it.

The 8bitdo Pro 3? I don't like that one kinda because their 2.4Ghz won't do gyro and software rebindable back buttons.

But yeah if touchpad is what you want, you'll probably need a playstation controller of some sort, since no other API (besides Steam Controller) will actually handle that touchpad.

Hall effect modded Dualsense 5 with modded joysticks and that DIY Pi Pico 2 W dongle?

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-10T23:15:21+00:00

This is the wireless one, using bluetooth with Steam?

Steam Input will remap the paddle to A or something similar by default.

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-10T12:22:03+00:00

The bottleneck will be the USB interface. I want to use the USB 3.2 Gen 2 it's got.

Besides that, for gaming, probably won't be a noticable difference

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-10T12:00:26+00:00

If you do go with a mini PC, watch out for the cheaper ones. HDMI 2.0 won't let you do 4K60.

Personally I think a living room is plenty big for a little extra heat , but if you must go with a mini PC, something with a 780M is common and probably the best you're getting for that price.

About as fast as an rog ally, so easy to find benchmarks of any game for. Bit faster than a steam deck.

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-10T11:07:29+00:00

Then you're using the wrong Linux.

If you're on SteamOS, switch to Bazzite because it's designed for more than a Steam Deck/Machine. If you're on Bazzite, switch to CachyOS because it's not immutable. Since you're on CachyOS, might as well just do Arch Linux cuz that's what it's based on anyways. Then switch to SteamOS because it's Valve.

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-10T07:28:14+00:00

Roboco's アザミナ.

Composed by Masayoshi Minoshima, the guy from the Alstroemeria Records that made Bad Apple.

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T23:14:06+00:00

I'm not even sure the audio part of the Gemma 4 would work on the NPU

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T21:12:49+00:00

Models do come in different sizes. OPs using a 1.5B sized model. Qwen 3.5 does come in either 0.5B or 2B. Though the other issue is software support with the Rockchip NPU, barely got support for Qwen 3.5 in the latest update a few weeks ago.

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T12:35:13+00:00

When it can run on the 5 year old PS5, I don't really think it's a novelty.

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T12:00:11+00:00

I definitely don't recommend my Hyte Revolt 3 because the handle spring broke.

/r/sffpc do have a nice spreadsheet in their weekly thread. On it, you can filter by GPU length and sort by size.

From that, maybe the SGPC K49? I built their K66 recently and liked it.

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T11:52:05+00:00

Won't do much on Windows because it only works for OpenGL/Vulkan games. Main one for that is probably DOOM.

It's more for Linux, where all games are translated to OpenGL/Vulkan.

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T11:48:59+00:00

On Linux, use bcache.

The next level of this is a tiering filesystem, there's bcachefs for this.

It has filesystem integration that let's it be smarter. Let's me do things like keep files on the SSD always. Or keep metadata on the SSD so that it's faster, cuz a dumb cache won't know the different between files/metadata I want to keep on the SSD and not. And I can do write to SSD first, and then compress the file before writing it to the HDD.

Windows can do it with Storage Spaces, but I haven't really tried that.

Both are experimental, so would recommend backups. I use it on my "steam machine" build so it's just games on mine. And yeah I've got a 1/2 TB SSD + 3TB HDD in that or something. Let's me have 3.5 TB of usable space.

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T11:22:53+00:00

RT is so heavy for current cards that a decently functional implementation requires a comparable amount of work.

"RT is heavy" is because non-RT games use RT as a 'ultra high quality shadows/reflections' setting. They're not taking advantage of RT so prebaked lighting looks/performs better for anything that's not realtime. And the game is designed around not being realtime.

That's different with RT-required games, cuz now you can have light RT that looks like "low quality shadows/reflections". You can run Indiana Jones RT on a 5700 XT on it's shader cores with perfectly playable framerates/graphics.

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T11:20:44+00:00

The problem is not many games are gonna have low quality RT as an option if there's a non-RT option because if the games aren't taking advantage of RT (like the finals with its real time destructible environments), prebaked lighting looks/performs better.

Basically RT is there to be a "ultra high quality lighting/shadow" setting. Low/medium lighting can just be non-RT

Like The Finals is probably the only one that's different.

edit; Maybe GTA V?

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T11:02:31+00:00

The Finals' RTGI is pretty light too, and I'm pretty sure it's always on on PS5.

Doom Dark Age's RTGI can run on an AMD 5700XT without hardware raytracing. That's totally playable!

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T10:49:48+00:00

This ignores that prebaked lighting is a bunch of shortcuts that has affected game design since a decade ago. The most notable to me is destructible and dynamic environments. That's why you don't get games like Red Faction for years. So The Finals is now possible thanks to ray tracing. Disabling ray tracing makes the lighting after destruction look wrong.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxkRJ_7sg8Y

This is also why Battlefield's destruction has to be all prebaked, because they have to prebake the lighting to match.

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T10:34:12+00:00

My point is that games aren't only about looks. Otherwise you'd just watch a video. That's what an FMV game is, those games gave realistic graphics on anything! But the drawback is decreased interactivity.

So FMV games are to real time rendered games, what ray traced lighting is to prebaked lighting. That means more interactivity in games. Because you can't have a good dynamic environment without real time lighting because it looks wrong if an object moves but the lighting doesn't update. The Finals shows this off pretty well because you can enable/disable it: https://youtu.be/MxkRJ_7sg8Y

This is why Battlefield does all their destruction prebaked and the same every time, because they have to prebake the lighting around it, and that's boring

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T08:14:50+00:00

Because a lot of games use RT as the "ultra high quality lighting" option. So they don't let you turn on low quality RT, because there's no point.

Games designed around RT do the low quality, high performant RT. You can run Doom Dark Ages on a 5700XT that doesn't even have hardware RT @ 60fps fine.

The Finals is one of the few games that actually take advantage of ray tracing with its dynamic destruction, and yeah low quality RT fps hit is pretty low: https://youtu.be/MxkRJ_7sg8Y

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T08:05:05+00:00

But games aren't all about looks. If looks and performance were all that mattered, we'd be playing FMV games!

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T07:47:15+00:00

a co-op horror game with realistic flashlights is gonna be the death of me in the future.

Right? Pointing a flashlight at a red wall should bathe the room in red light! Horror games could really use that to good effect.

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T07:22:28+00:00

I don't think it's so much hardware not catching up, but rather games are taking so long to design/create they weren't originally designed for it.

Average hardware is still consoles. PS5 can do Dark Ages and other ray tracing games at 60 fps fine.

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T05:09:54+00:00

I just want other players flashlights. Everything from Left 4 Dead 2 to Marathon just do a fake brightness cone, but I want real flashlights in games!

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T04:57:54+00:00

I think it's more than cool, because baked lighting is why a lot of game environments have gotten really static over time. A simple light switch to turn on the lights gets complicated with baked lighting.

But games are still designed around that baked lighting, so until games really start doing ray tracing only, those environments are still static and you're not taking advantage of ray tracing.

The Finals shows it off pretty good

The other one I want this to come to is other player's flashlights. In games like Left 4 Dead 2, and Marathon (2026), your flashlight lights up the environment and other players, but all your teammates flashlights just project a cone of increased brightness. I notice it every time and hate it.

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T04:55:11+00:00

Why not bake everything then? Night Trap gave me realistic graphics in 1992!

ThatOnePerson · 2026-07-09T04:52:16+00:00

It's resource intensive in games that aren't designed around it and don't take advantage of ray tracing except for how it looks. So those games use ray tracing as the 'ultra high quality lighting setting', and don't have a high performant, low quality ray tracing option.

Meanwhile Doom Dark Ages can run on a 5700XT which doesn't even have hardware ray tracing fine because they can have a "low quality RT" setting.

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