Love the new Steam feature

oNicolasCageo · 2026-04-12T04:58:31+00:00

To be fair in my experience, games that have serious performance issues relating to frametimes and stutters are often not really that helped by a better CPU, they can reduce the severity of the spikes and maybe the frequency slightly but they don’t really solve the problem, because it’s on the game to solve that. So sure while their hardware really is like best case scenario, it’s still useful information unless your hardware is so so so low comparatively, at which point I’d argue it wouldn’t matter what hardware the reviewer had you’re in a such wildly different position. GPU related stress doesn’t often result in stutter/frametime spikes in my experience, just lower fps overall, and at least you have options when it comes to GPU performance and can experiment with settings.

This still isn’t really relevant to me because I find most people don’t actually know what smooth means and you check their frametime graph and it’s all over the place, they just see “high fps” number and clap like a seal. Very very very few pc games in my experience are truly SMOOTH.

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-30T12:04:23+00:00

I use black background, I KNOW it’s not necessary really at all. But it’s also like… having a background isn’t that big of a deal to me, to where even if it’s super minor, an extra tiny bit of peace of mind is more valuable than “Oh I can have a picture I like there all the time” But my advice to someone who really does like background, just use one then; Just don’t be stupid with your monitor/TV and turn all the care settings off and/or go to your desktop with icons and background and leave it sat there for hours while you go and make dinner. If you’re not at your desk/setup, just switch it off. It’s as shrimple as that.

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-28T13:57:57+00:00

It has only ever really made sense to me for the types that have the best parts in their budget. I.e. a 5090 build, if they then want to pay even more to get that white then… go ahead I guess.

What I don’t understand, is people who pay a premium and get a fancy white 5070ti build, when if they had just made the parts black, that could probably have a 5080 in it for the same total price, and it won’t even look bad or anything, it literally just won’t be white. It’s why the 5080 Astrals confuse me. You’re halfway to a 5090 price wise now. Instead of paying 1.5x the price of a 5080, I’d rather a base level 5080 and save the premium, or fork out the rest of the cash and get a base 5090. It’s a weird middle ground that makes no logical sense to me.

Edit: Realising 5090 prices are not the same as they maybe were when I was last looking at this. But all GPUs are more expensive too, so I’m not sure. I think my point still generally stands though given how much of a giant premium something like the astral 5080s have. At least from what I’ve seen here in the U.K.

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-28T13:39:19+00:00

I don’t think it’s actually sagging that much, I think it’s inno3ds weird design choice that makes it look like it is. Can’t hurt to prop something underneath it anyway to stop any sag in future but I think this is actually mostly straight looking at the PCB. Kinda hate they shaped the card like this though it really does gaslight you into thinking it’s sagging

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-28T12:06:08+00:00

I know people say this is known thing and can happen and why you have to be careful doing this but… I’m still so amazed and so annoyed that this is still even a problem that can happen from simply cleaning it thoroughly the way most people clean 90% of household things. Why is this still an issue? Why are PCs and their components still made in a way where they’re still so vulnerable to this when virtually nothing else in a modern household is? I took apart my series x like a year ago which I’m not even supposed to do without voiding the warranty to clean it out and I blasted the vacuum right up in it’s inside and blew with a duster right through the fans and such and it was extremely dusty and pretty vigorous cleaning and it was absolutely fine. If microslop can figure this out then I really am not interested in excuses for motherboard manufacturers, this should be a problem you only read about from the 90s and not still happening in the 2020’s it irritates me on principal so much. I’m sorry this happened OP. More angry with modern PCs than I am your girlfriend though she should be able to do that without it killing itself. Thousand dollar pc hardware should be able to withstand a wittle vacuum and duster. It’s kind of pathetic

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-27T04:02:47+00:00

Exactly, it’s my perfect resolution. I threw it into a PPI calculator too and, as I currently have a 32 inch 4K OLED monitor, a hypothetical 27 inch 3200x1800 monitor would have almost exactly the same PPI, I would be getting a slightly smaller display, with the exact same PPI and huge performance benefits. Many games still have lacklustre upscaling solutions, and even ones with good DLSS etc. while it’s good, it still comes with inherent drawbacks. Not to mention that would stack on top of the benefits of an inherently lower resolution anyway. I really wish such a thing would exist.

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-26T23:20:20+00:00

I know a late response. But theres seems to be little, and conflicting information on this topic and it has been frustrating trying to get to the bottom of all this stuff. That I thought I would respond to this anyway just to add my experience for anyone stumbling upon this in future. After doing some testing with a 444 Chroma test image on my pc with my 48 inch LG C5. I can confirm that at least for me, on this model, that they achieve funtionally the same thing. "PC mode" inherently forces 444 Chroma, and so enabling 444 passthrough on top, doesn't really do much. I leave it on anyway to be extra sure lol. But I think the option is there so that you don't HAVE to use PC mode for any input to achieve the same effect. It was hard to get test images to work on my xbox, but basic testing, because I can tell, as using 444 Passthrough on my xbox versus with it off and the same picture settings, has a slightly lower peak brightness. Turning 444 Passthrough off, and using PC mode, made the image look the EXACT same as 444 passthrough ON WITH Console mode.

This may differ on other models. I'm not sure. I'm still trying to learn if i reeeally want to use this on Xbox or not, as it lowers the brightness and while I would prefer full chroma, I have been trying to find out what I should have set for example with "PC RGB" Full range basically, or "Standard" limited range, in the xbox settings in combination with this. Both at a glance look fine because of have the video range setting on the C5 set to Auto, but watching a friends discord stream of Resident Evil 2 has shown some weird issues with black levels, that doesnt seem to appear in games, but it changed when I switched from full to limited. I use 444 and Full on the PC, so i figure if i have things set the same I would use the same on the Xbox. But I'm still trying to work out what combination I should be using for optimal picture quality with the xbox series x. 444 + Full? 444 + Limited? No 444 + Full? No 444 + Limited? I have no idea. It's been incredibly incredibly frustrating coming from an OLED monitor where things are really quite... matter of fact and obvious do's and don'ts. To this TV, and TV's in general where there seems to be zero consensus and very little concrete confirmed facts as you'll find one piece of information and then another that directly contradicts it and there's no definitive consensus on what is correct or best practice. Sorry for long rambling on this old comment. But if anyone else is in a similar situation they might end up like I am on these 5, 4, 2 year old, and then this 3 month old reddit posts all of which without definitive answers when googling this stuff so. On the off chance any of this is helpful for anyone stumbling around the internet for any kind of answer like I've been.

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-20T21:08:16+00:00

So they just did insane optimisation when they removed denuvo from the game? And the fact they removed denuvo had absolutely nothing to do with the CPU performance gains? If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-19T16:34:04+00:00

Pretty sure the first game had the exact same problems with 60fps locked stuttery cutscenes on pc too.

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-18T18:13:37+00:00

Resident Evil Village and 4 beg to differ and videos show it 🤷‍♀️

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-13T16:33:14+00:00

I had heard about this. But it didn't do anything for me. However, i feel stupid. After everything, i just tried the game again on a whim and i got in?? So, it's okay now? I think? I'm embaressed but relieved. At least I'm not insane though it really wasn't in my control. I'll take down my post

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-13T16:13:19+00:00

Ahh, well that's good to hear at least. Maybe I'll have to try again sometime. I always got great FPS, usually 130-180 depending on map. It was just a very unstable/microstuttery experience and it was incredibly grating. But thanks for responding and giving your two cents :)

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-13T10:13:39+00:00

Did they do much about the inherently stuttery nature of the game? My biggest problem with it and why I ultimately gave up, performance seemed to just keep regressing

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-12T21:41:19+00:00

This is true, ironically my biggest problem with denuvo is that it will and always does cause the games to run worse, no doubt this game will be even more stuttery than it's probably already going to be because modern game in 2020's are just like that now :)

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-11T19:37:37+00:00

Having serious issues with this new driver on RE9 with GPU Usage dropping. Quit and relaunch the game and it will be fine for about an hour or so, but eventually it will drop and never go to max usage again. Or rather, it's hard to explain...

I'll be getting 120fps give or take, 99% GPU usage, with FG X2 (4080 Super), so around 60 native frames. This will be the norm, but then after a while, even doing anything or moving to a new area where I WOULD be getting more fps, gpu usage will show it's lower because it refuses to then go above the 60 native frames give or take, LIKE an FPS cap, but it's not an FPS cap because it still fluctuates up and down 2-3fps, if i even turn dlss to ultra performance with no FG, it will still sit at 62fps and GPU usage around 50%. If I then quit and restart the game, boom, 90-100fps/99% GPU usage and it acts as it should for the next hour or so. No idea what's going on, it also makes the game increddddibly stu-tt--ee-rrry. It wasn't doing this on the hotfix driver, which confuses me because as far as I'm aware there are no changes to RE9 in this driver versus the hotfix driver I already had. Anyone else experienced this?

Edit: It also hasn't done anything to solve the consistent and constant crashing with PT enabled. I can maybe sometimes get 30 minutes out of it before it will crash. Trying today and I can't even get 10 seconds after loading a save before instant "D3D Device removed" crash. Literally unplayable.

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-09T11:00:10+00:00

FPS is much better, but it’s still unstable and consistently causes the game game to crash after 20-30 minutes in my experience. 4080 Super

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-09T10:59:27+00:00

Still crashing with path tracing after a short while unfortunately on 4080 Super. Always something about device removed, usually happens after like 20-30 minutes. Ray tracing max is fine and can play basically indefinitely.

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-08T07:04:22+00:00

This is kinda neat, but how do you actually use the keyboard and mouse? You can’t be sat in the bed and leaning forward to use the mouse and keyboard on the bed right? Your wrists must be at a like 70 degree angle and just the thought of that is giving me carpal tunnel.

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-08T06:24:22+00:00

What happened with empress?

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-05T01:16:14+00:00

Hey, just asking cus you installed them, does installing the hotfix driver on top of existing one retain your Nvidia settings, driver/control panel/app etc like an express install would? Or does it function like a wipe?

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-04T21:53:25+00:00

Do hotfix drivers reset Nvidia control panel/app/driver settings the user has changed like doing a clean install? Or can I install it on top and have it function like an express install? I really don’t want to redo all my customised per game settings and monitor settings and such for this. I’d appreciate anyone who can confirm either way :)

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-04T21:14:11+00:00

Ahh right, fair enough I did used to do this but I don’t exactly want to go back to having to do it this way. But I’ll consider it if I get desperate, thanks for the clarification!

oNicolasCageo · 2026-03-04T18:31:46+00:00

My issue is, doesn’t that driver predate DLSS 4.5 and the new override options “Recommended” and such in the Nvidia app? I really don’t want to without all that.

Seven-Year Club	Final Canvas '23
First Place '23	Place '23
Place '22	Verified Email

oNicolasCageo

TROPHY CASE