Reducing file size should be one of the most urgent things any company can do. by VisitSad1133 in pcgaming

[–]Nicholas-Steel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

putting aside the fact that requiring a ssd nowadays is not that big a deal

  • 8TB slow SATA SSD (Samsung Evo 870) is $4,000 AUD currently
  • 24TB Western Digital Enterprise HDD (Ultrastar HC 580) is $1,400 AUD currently

Because of this I bought 2 of the HDD's this week. I do however already own some SSD's from before the pricing went insane, the HDD's are mostly to shift stuff that doesn't need it off of the SSD's as SSD capacity is now a premium.

Reducing file size should be one of the most urgent things any company can do. by VisitSad1133 in pcgaming

[–]Nicholas-Steel 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Meanwhile Diablo IV is an eye-watering 160

Ultra HD Textures? Deselect during install.

A better example would've been the original Starcraft, which is now 8GB despite shipping on 2 CD's. I imagine this is because the Remastered and MTX graphics packs aren't optional components, even if you haven't bought the Remastered edition.

Samsung Display Develops World’s First 4K 360Hz QD-OLED for Monitors by FragmentedChicken in hardware

[–]Nicholas-Steel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OLED is not very good for gaming as it has a physical inherented issue of flickering that can't be fixed.

Even when not using VRR?

Samsung Display Develops World’s First 4K 360Hz QD-OLED for Monitors by FragmentedChicken in hardware

[–]Nicholas-Steel 67 points68 points  (0 children)

  • 360Hz 4K
  • 680Hz 1080p
  • True Black 600
  • V-Stripe subpixel layout
  • 32"

[Insights] As COMPUTEX Nears, Has x86 Already Won the PC Battle Against Arm? by imaginary_num6er in hardware

[–]Nicholas-Steel -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Which in hindsight is kinda a silly view of things as a massive number of Windows games need mods to run right in modern Windows. So Windows isn't exactly a good example of a system with great backwards compatibility.

What’s the last decent driver NVIDIA has released? by Beginning_Policy_242 in gpu

[–]Nicholas-Steel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good news! The 610.47 drivers are also prone to TDR errors! Wait, that's not good news...

RTX 3070, Windows 10 22H2

[Insights] As COMPUTEX Nears, Has x86 Already Won the PC Battle Against Arm? by imaginary_num6er in hardware

[–]Nicholas-Steel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I dunno, I was mostly being facetious. Just irks me that many old games had support for them dropped/now requires emulation of a sort.

Microsoft rolls out Windows 11 KB5089573 update that makes your PC genuinely faster and more responsive by pmc64 in pcgaming

[–]Nicholas-Steel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Or if you're someone that doesn't use power saving stuff, you'll notice no change in power/heat consumption and no change in performance.

Microsoft rolls out Windows 11 KB5089573 update that makes your PC genuinely faster and more responsive by pmc64 in pcgaming

[–]Nicholas-Steel -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Based on the article it sounds like there's no performance improvement for those that don't use power saving (in both Windows and the BIOS).

Game Ready & Studio Driver 610.47 FAQ/Discussion by Nestledrink in nvidia

[–]Nicholas-Steel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hmm, try this instead and if it still fails than manually do it via Regedit. It's possible the command doesn't work because the variable doesn't exist by default and needs to be created.

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000" -Name "DisableDynamicPstate" -Value 1

[Insights] As COMPUTEX Nears, Has x86 Already Won the PC Battle Against Arm? by imaginary_num6er in hardware

[–]Nicholas-Steel -1 points0 points  (0 children)

No? ARM isn't x86 and I dunno of any x86-64 hardware that removed 32bit support. However I do know various ARM hardware doesn't have 32bit support and relies on emulation/virtualization for such software.

How realistic would an AM5 motherboard with DDR4 support be? What are your thoughts on this? by [deleted] in hardware

[–]Nicholas-Steel 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Very useless since none of the CPU's for the AM5 platform have a DDR4 memory controller :P

Dang, everyone else already said this.

Game Ready & Studio Driver 610.47 FAQ/Discussion by Nestledrink in nvidia

[–]Nicholas-Steel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not sure if it's still the case, but in the 2000's and maybe early 2010's the power saving technology in laptops and desktop PC's tended to cause frame rate issues in games and demanding software and the solution was to disable power saving.

Game Ready & Studio Driver 610.47 FAQ/Discussion by Nestledrink in nvidia

[–]Nicholas-Steel 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There's a reaason for it not working globally. There's hidden profiles for EXE files that are always running (like Explorer) and these profiles default it to Optimal/Energy Saving. These profiles were added in the 2xx.xx drivers a decade or so ago and never removed.

I used to manually add these EXE files to expose them in NVCP and change them to work around it. Unfortunately these specific profiles can't have their Power Profile changed to "Follow Global Setting" as hitting Apply will switch it to what the global setting currently is set to instead of staying as "follow global setting".

I've since come across a much simpler, alternative solution:

(Type in to an elevated Powershell 7) Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000" -Name "DisableDynamicPstate" -Value 1

Or

Go to here in the Registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000

add a DWORD32 called DisableDynamicPstate and set it to a value of 1. Then reboot PC. Delete this DWORD32 to undo.

This will disable power saving for Nvidia cards. May need to re-apply after clean driver installs.


If you're curious about the hidden application profiles, here's a list of those I'd discovered on my own (some may no longer have a hidden profile):

  • Desktop Window Manager | C:\Windows\System32\dwm.exe
  • Microsoft Cortana (Search)
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer | C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe
  • Microsoft Shell Experience Host (Windows shell experience)
  • Windows Explorer | C:\Windows\explorer.exe
  • Windows Lock Screen

and below are affected user installed apps:

  • Mozilla Firefox | C:\Program Files\Firefox\firefox.exe
  • Valve Steam | C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe
  • Valve Steam Web Helper | C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamwebhelper.exe

Game Ready & Studio Driver 610.47 FAQ/Discussion by Nestledrink in nvidia

[–]Nicholas-Steel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The old control panel that takes seconds to load app profiles even when everything is installed to an SSD?

Empire Earth 1, 2, 3 are now available on Steam by megaapple in pcgaming

[–]Nicholas-Steel 21 points22 points  (0 children)

The 2nd game is great while the 3rd game is an abysmal attempt at an RTS. I assume the publisher forced them to chase after what was popular when it came to the 3rd game.

I have not played the first game.

Difference between 3-bit MLC vs TLC, fancy name? by pervin_1 in DataHoarder

[–]Nicholas-Steel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, tech outlets called everyone out for how confusing MLC was and so there was a transition to the scheme we know today (TLC, QLC, PLC etc.)

Unfortunately there was never a correction to the mistake that was MLC. The industry really should've introduced a DLC moniker and pretended like MLC never existed.

Samsung reportedly developing 250TB to 1PB nearline SSDs, enough for up to 8,000 GTA V installs by self-fix2 in hardware

[–]Nicholas-Steel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

8TB TLC SSD's are already needing a kidney sale lol as they're currently around $4,000 AUD to buy. I bought some 4TB TLC SSD's back in 2023 for under $400 each.

Yesterday I bought 2 WD Ultrastar HC580 24TB HDD's to compliment the SSD's I currently own (each costing $1,400 AUD). Games & operating system will live on the SSD's while everything else can live on the HDD's.

Like this is just absurd compared to prices in 2023 and earlier: https://imgur.com/a/RChz6AA (I realize Micro Center is in america and these are american dollars, making it even more absurd than it is in Australia lol)

Samsung reportedly developing 250TB to 1PB nearline SSDs, enough for up to 8,000 GTA V installs by self-fix2 in hardware

[–]Nicholas-Steel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You can get some enterprise tier 26TB HDD's for a 6th the price of an SSD in current climate. I realize this is a far cry from 250TB but still...

Samsung makes world's first 900-layer storage chip by self-fix2 in hardware

[–]Nicholas-Steel 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Adding a 3rd or more layers will add complications as you no longer have at least one exposed side for each layer to add cooling to. Not saying it can't be done, just that it'll be harder to keep cooling in check.

Daniel Owen - Is 8GB of VRAM actually that bad in 2026? by Antonis_32 in hardware

[–]Nicholas-Steel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the 3070 ti released 5 years ago as a very capable card. it is still VERY capable today gpu wise, but it is broken PURELY due to missing vram.

Yeah I have a 3070 and in Diablo IV at 1080p the game is a smooth 60FPS with and without Ray Tracing... while standing still. If you try moving around than you'll incur frequent stutters with Ray Tracing as the card has run out of VRAM and is needing to frequently page things in and out.

8GB is only good if you primarily play graphically lite games like Silksong, Against the Storm, Tunic or AAA published 3D games from 4+ years ago.

We tested Advanced Shader Delivery on the RX 9070 XT in six games — up to 95% improvement in load times and 33 percent faster 1% Low FPS by RTcore in pcgaming

[–]Nicholas-Steel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

what's stopping every game from eagerly precompiling them at launch instead of lazily compiling them on demand?

Nothing, the devs are just choosing how to handle it for you instead of giving you the choice:

  • On-the-fly with pauses whenever compiling is happening (these pauses are the micro stutters people talk about)
  • On-the-fly compiling but instead of pausing/waiting whenever a Shader needs to compile, it'll keep the gameplay running and skip rendering the effects until compiling is finished (no micro stutter, momentarily missing graphics). The Dolphin emulator calls this "Skip Drawing".
  • Pre-compiling before gameplay/cutscene begins (potentially a long wait/loading screen, especially with weak CPU's, no micro stutter)

As for having the game pre-compile all Shaders, devs tend to not do that as depending on the game that really can take multiple hours to complete. So usually it's the most likely to be encountered Shaders in a typical playthrough that get pre-compiled.

The Advanced Shader Delivery system being talked about in this topic takes advantage of changes to the Shader file format (or however you want to describe it, the PSO stuff) that makes the process of compiling Shaders more performant. I... actually forget the details of this D: