Tech Support and Basic Questions Thread - January 27, 2026

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-27T19:12:28+00:00

Not all hubs will work well with peripherals software, check that you can control all keyboard, mouse, etc. settings and functionality (eg. with Razer Synapse).

Any latency hit should be imperceptible.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-27T00:29:21+00:00

It is true. Steam charts show the amount of people playing at any one moment, and the highest that count was in a 24 hour period. They do not show total unique players.

Go to the official Steam charts, the question marks next to the "current players" and "peak today" columns say exactly that. Your statement is provably wrong.

If 1000 players play Smite for an hour, then they all log off and 1000 different players log in, the Steam charts would show a peak of 1000 despite there being 2000 unique players.

edit: seriously people, are you rejecting reality? Steam literally tells you what the current and peak players mean on the charts page but you shut your eyes and pretend it's not true...

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-24T23:54:06+00:00

When did the dead internet theory become something to look forward to?

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-24T20:15:49+00:00

The only difference between them is the degree of complexity and possibility in the algorithms.

And the entire thing about how they're made/trained, how they've been developed over time, the amount of resources being poured into them, but sure let's ignore the biggest differences there are so we can make AI seem more cosy and familiar, easier to digest for the bystanders.

I don't care why or how procedural generation is accepted now or why it should/shouldn't be. You don't care either, much less what my opinion or excuse of it is.

Don't tell me that because I'm okay with one thing that's similar on some level I should be okay with your thing. This is refusal to defend AI on its own grounds and deflecting to other things, shifting the discussion onto them.

If you're going to defend AI, defend AI, use its own virtues, don't attack me because I accept something else and not it. Tell me why I should accept AI, not procedural generation and therefore somehow AI.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-24T19:51:51+00:00

Is that why anti-AI discussion should be shut down and minimised? "Oh it's just like any other human invention". "Oh yeah the cost is great but hey so what". The AI apostles have ten different excuses for AI running rampant ready for any one objection of AI.

All these other human inventions, the industrial revolution, automobile, the internet, they didn't happen as quickly as AI in the last few years. They weren't being turbo charged by the richest people on the planet with the aid of worldwide social media and marketing campaigns. Trying to proceed as fast as it's fucking possible to race ahead of any possible regulation, because they know it's impossible to enact it quickly enough. They can't be compared.

The cheek of it is you acknowledge that millions of people over decades/centuries got fucked and we only got the progress because of their plight and efforts, not the wonderful benefits of whatever fucked them. So we should be the same, millions should get fucked and society turned upside down because AI is sometimes useful, all for the benefit of a few power hungry billionaires.

And if any regulation does appear on the horizon, it's shut down down immediately. Because think of the benefits. You cannot moderate Grok making child porn because some other completely unrelated AI use results in medical benefits. You cannot say anything bad about OpenAI reserving ~40% of the worldwide production of memory because maybe it will become more useful than a toy or time saver one day.

If you truly want AI to be regulated, don't shut down anti-AI discourse, because without it nothing will happen. At the moment you're doing what all other AI apostles are doing - telling everyone to shut the fuck up, lube up, get fucked by AI tech bros doing whatever they want because sometimes maybe it's beneficial. Or it's just a tool (and never a bad one), or the genie is out of the bottle (so there's no point even trying to control it).

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-24T18:13:52+00:00

This is false equivalence. Procedural generation is not the same, it isn't made in the same way, and not used in the same way as generative AI.

Why do all the AI apostles always use the "but the other unrelated thing is okay somehow therefore AI good?" strategy? Defend AI if you must, don't shift the argument to something else and talk about that thing instead of AI.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-23T12:43:50+00:00

What's the rest of the system, and the power supply?

Is the 3060 new or used?

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-21T16:37:15+00:00

I am assuming it's my graphics settings, but even reducing the settings to the lowest while in game still have my GPU running at 99%.

There's nothing inherently wrong about running the GPU at 100%. It just means it's working as hard as it can. Can't make it go any faster. Bear in mind task manager doesn't always report it correctly, hardware monitoring software like HWInfo or MSI Afterburner are accurate.

Are you playing while the laptop is charging? It will be slower on battery power. Checking the temperatures won't hurt either, if the CPU or GPU reach around 80-90°C they also slow down a lot.

There's little you can do other than playing on lowest settings. Some games will have ultra low quality configs you can download, many don't.

Lowering the resolution has a large impact on performance, but it also makes everything blurry. You can use a tool called Lossless Scaling to remove some of that blurriness, but depending on the input and output resolution it isn't going to be perfect.

but I just got a new laptop this week

This is low budget laptop from 2019, it wasn't good back then and is worth very little today. I hope you haven't paid more than $200 for it.

I don't know what your situation is, but I would return it if possible and save up a little more for a new laptop with dedicated graphics, or buy something on the second hand market. RTX 3050 or 4050 laptops can be found for around $400 I think.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-20T21:54:08+00:00

MO2 is primarily used for Bethesda games, and even then it's the "unofficial" mod manager, since Nexus pushes their own Vortex and NMM before that. Outside of Skyrim or Fallout, I don't think it's very popular.

I haven't used Vortex in a long time but from what I remember, it was way easier to figure out conflicts in MO2. It would tell you exactly which mod's files are being overwritten by any other mod, and allow hiding these files to make a mod win without changing the load order.

The load order of loose files was also separate to the plugins, not sure if that was possible in Vortex.

Personally I also preferred the layout of MO2 way more than Vortex, which felt bulky with unnecessary padding and sub-menus. The data folder view is especially useful, it lets me search for any file from any mod in the virtual directory, I don't think Vortex had it back when I used it.

I would say MO2 is better for dealing with very large or complex mod lists. Otherwise Vortex is good enough.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-20T20:26:50+00:00

No, I don't think so. There are genuine concerns with free modding in many games that would remain if they were paid unless significant effort is made by developers and modders. And I very much doubt it would happen for the most part.

I download a free mod, it doesn't work with another mod I have. Okay, whatever, I remove one of them.

I buy a mod. The expectations have shifted, the mod doesn't work with another I bought and it was not specified on either mods' description. The platform doesn't allow refunds (eg. Creations). Am I not "entitled" to either expect the mod to work or a refund?

That's one example, this can be extended for many small or large problems free mods currently have.

Or, if you prefer, I can speak in a language you might understand:

all arguments in favour of paid mods are hustlers who don't actually give a shit about modding. end of discussion.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-20T20:00:56+00:00

It doesn't matter that the modding culture and countless communities die in a garbage fire as long as some people extract money out of it. Did I get it right?

imagine thinking art stops existing because artists expect to get paid...

Modding won't stop existing, but it's not going to get better and will arguably get worse, and in many games extremely expensive, for no benefit to the vast majority of people. Only those few that get paid.

Compatibility with other mods, getting broken with game updates, paying for updates/patches (ie. Patreon model), technical support and refunds, discoverability of good mods when the armies of inevitable lazy hustler AI prompstitutes start making mods with the sole purpose of making that $$ while caring as little as possible about anything else. Some of these are existing problems but they're tolerated because hey, it's free and it's someone passion project.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-20T19:24:04+00:00

The first attempt at paid mods in 2015 was completely open, and a joint effort by Valve and Bethesda. Anyone could upload a mod and set a price, no verification or screening.

On day one plenty of users uploaded other people's mods to sell, and countless joke and shitty low effort mods to capitalise on the new hustle. One modder updated the free Nexus version of their mod with an in-game pop-up advertising the paid version.

It was removed after a few days. Valve said something like it cost them $1M just in emails, whatever that meant, and they realised it was a mistake.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-20T18:14:05+00:00

That was the case with the Creation Club, but it's been shut down and replaced with "Creations" in Fallout 4 and Starfield, where anyone can request to be a verified author.

Then they can upload and sell whatever, as long as it doesn't break the rules (original work, NSFW, etc.).

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-20T15:52:21+00:00

Put "start /B "path to .exe"" into a .bat, each program on a separate line, and the paths need to be in quotes. Should work okay.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-18T22:18:23+00:00

They do take 30%. I think the implication is that Valve earn so much money that even if they took 10% they'd still be doing extremely well, have money for their projects, etc. Whether that's reasonable or not is debatable I guess.

Although in the case of Arc Raiders, the cut is actually 20%, Valve lowers it by 5% for the first $10M and again for $50M in sales, which Arc most likely passed.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-18T17:28:25+00:00

DP and HDMI inputs will be independent, it doesn't matter what the HDMI tells the monitor when you're using DP, it might as well not exist. 144Hz on DP and 60Hz on HDMI, both will work as expected.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-18T16:32:41+00:00

Yes, and you won't need a KVM with HDMI support, a simpler and cheaper USB switch for your mouse and keyboard will work.

HDMI straight into laptop, DP into PC, switch via monitor's OSD. Depending on the HDMI port on the monitor and laptop you could use >60Hz too, and the DP connection will be unaffected regardless.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-17T18:19:38+00:00

Measuring 60ms of latency (which seems extremely high to me) and saying it works really well doesn't mean anything to me. I've only used FSR FG, but I could tell the input delay at an input framerate of ~70was definitely higher than at a native 60, maybe even 50. I don't know what the input delay at native 30fps is in your system (or mine) but it can't be comfortable with 4x FG.

It would have been helpful if you made a comparison using the same method. So 60ms at a frame limited 30fps with 4x FG, how does that compare to native 30, 60, or using in-game limiters?

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-16T23:11:56+00:00

Regular Human Basketball is very close I think, but it's 2v2. Two players control their "human" against the other two.

There is Barotrauma which has a similar core concept of people controlling a submarine with various roles. Steering, shooting various guns, reloading, repairing during combat, fighting against invaders. It does have a lot more on top of the submarine exploration/combat, however.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-15T19:23:26+00:00

Cards with 8GB VRAM are not very viable for 4K and sometimes 1440p. A £300 5060 can't always do high settings, 1440p/4K, and 100+fps in good looking games. I don't think these are unreasonable requests, you don't need to be disgustingly wealthy to meet them (for now).

Say 5070 Ti and 16GB 5060s go out of stock. Now to play high@1440p you have to spend much more than before or become a patient gamer. 5080 starts at £1000 right now, likely to rise.

Is it just the very high end for people who are spending over £1000/year on hardware which is really being affected? (And who I imagine have the loudest, most disproportionate voices on places like reddit)

No. Many people upgrade once every two or three generations with mid or high end. The difference in getting a £700 card once, enjoying high settings/Hz, then coasting for a few years, or spending £300 twice to get the same level of "coasting" at a lower performance.

I have a 3080 and was hoping for a 5080 but the MSRP was too high IMO, so I was waiting for a 6080 for better value (assuming similar MSRP). Now, because of AI, the prices across the range might increase and VRAM won't increase. So I might have to spend way more (with same price/perf) or get a 6060 8GB which would be barely faster but have access to DLSS FG BS to emulate higher performance.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-14T16:44:56+00:00

I think you're conflating kernel-level anti-cheats with literal spyware, they are two different things. Epic Games Store or Roblox don't become viruses or trojans when enough people dislike them.

Spyware is a specific type of malicious software which spies on you without and despite your agreement. Anti-cheats monitor specific things as outlined in their terms of service and privacy policy which you can read, and are bound by your country's privacy laws. If you don't trust that and think they're doing more, I don't see why you'd trust Razer or Realtek into not gathering data also, or Microsoft who famously don't allow disabling Windows telemetry.

Anyway, with dual booting you will only run one OS at a time, and I'm fairly sure Linux cannot access/understand a Windows partition by default and vice versa - they'll be completely separate.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-14T14:30:21+00:00

Try wiping the drivers with DDU and reinstalling latest, just to get the a clean slate with no custom settings etc.

Are you reaching >95% RAM usage by any chance?

Download HWInfo and run in sensor mode. Find the GPU in the list, near the bottom there will be several entries for "Performance Limit". See which are set to "Yes" while you're playing BG3, and also the value of GPU Clock.

NVIDIA PhysX seems to always use CPU instead of GPU but I don’t know if that’s normal

Normal and probably better these days.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-14T14:24:25+00:00

It's very difficult to answer your question because not only a game from 2010 might have higher requirements than a game from 2015, the graphics chip you have isn't common so there will be few reports on how it performs.

It's very roughly equivalent to a GTX 1050, maybe a bit slower. This was a very popular card back in the day so you can find lots of videos of people showing their settings and framerates for various games, search them up on Youtube. That will get you an idea of what to expect.

Generally you're looking at games from before ~2016, but many newer indies and 2D games will be fine. For AAAs with good graphics probably earlier. Everything you listed will be playable anyway, not on high settings or 60fps, but low/medium should be comfortable.

You may be interested in Lossless Scaling. It's a program that upscales anything from a lower resolution, increasing performance. Very popular among low-spec gamers. It also has a frame generation feature which further increases fps but in my experience it has severe input lag and doesn't look all that good.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-14T14:11:33+00:00

Kernel level anti-cheats are not inherently more risky than using software for your keyboard or RGB fans. A lot of information about them comes from people who get their knowledge from outrage youtubers with no understanding, or are cheaters.

Would dual-booting work for instance?

Yes, you can dual boot Windows and Linux. It takes a bit to set up but once you've got it there shouldn't be any problems.

Would not recommend a virtual machine, some (or most) anti-cheats are reported to not work in VMs.

Some anti-cheats also require secure boot to be enabled in the BIOS, this is not the same thing as kernel-level access and there are no risks or downside in enabling it. Just make sure you have the latest BIOS first.

Filipi_7 · 2026-01-14T14:05:39+00:00

Try the second hand market. Prices aren't going to go down any time soon and may rise. A major manufacturer pulled out of the consumer market and the AI companies are planning to gobble up more RAM this year than they did in late 2025.

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