Analyse This: Performance of Spider-man: Remastered on PC... [Updated]

Released on PS5 a few years ago, Marvel's Spider-man: Remastered made its way to the PC sphere recently and, surprisingly, granted the opportunity to look at the hardware side of things more closely due to the way the engine works and how Nixxes chose to port that engine to the PC. 

Looking into this is especially important, from my point of view,  because the performance of this game on various hardware appears to be poorly understood by many... Additionally, it may provide an indication of where, in the PC hardware, future games may require more brute strength. 

Spider-man is also the third game released on PC with the inclusion of both FSR and DLSS, allowing for us to actually compare different implementations in different game engines to get a handle on how the two stack up in terms of performance increases, as well as power savings. 

[Update]

I've now updated the article with the data from the 12400 system...

[Update 2]

Updated Resizeable BAR results for the 5600X...

An ITX Build experience...

I'm pretty sure this is a combination of a Space Marine chapter's colours and a USA college fraternity... i.e. an inauspicious start!

I've been building PCs on my own since the early 2000s and with my father since the early 90s but I've always built in half-size ATX tower cases (and once for my dad in his full-sized behemoth!). Mainly because I like the form factor, space, and options available... plus, the prices for these builds are more standard and thus cheaper because they are produced in larger volumes.

However, over the last couple of years I have had some longing looks at various small form factor (SFF) cases and because of various reasons*, I decided to take the plunge and dip my toes into the now very mature SFF sector... As part of that, I decided to give some feedback on how this sort of experience is in the here and now in 2022, amid semi**-shortages and with a backdrop of huge shipping price increases.

*I was tired of using a 2007-era laptop to watch Netflix and other video content on TV (slowdowns, lack of repsonsiveness were the main complaints)... and I have been working incredibly hard over the last few months and had an itch to build a new PC as a way to reward myself... and my PS4 broke and there are ZERO PS5's to be had in my country below €1000 (still) so I would really like to be able to play games in the living room once again instead of always being at a desk and monitor.

**Not "semiconductor"...

Inflation... (A reality check)

Is that centered? Well, guess what?! Inflation isn't balanced either! ;)

The rumour mill has been highly productive this last week*, especially with regards to the next gen GPU output of both Nvidia and AMD, and as we near the release window of those products, we are likely to see more and more said about them. However, there is something that's concerning me a little and it might not quite be what you think:

I'm worried about performance inflation...

*Yes, I know all those links are to RedGamingTech... but I'm tired and don't feel like searching across multiple youtube channels and websites for the same information...

In Defence Of: Dead-End Platforms...

AMD have recently released the much-awaited 3D stacked processor: the Ryzen 7 5800X3D and the opinions from various commentators and pundits have been flying left and right. "It beats Intel on efficiency and price/performance." "Is it worth it? It's hard to recommend."; "No overclocking is bad!"; "It's the best!"; "It's not the best"; "It's a dead-end platform..."

Everything that has been said can be made as a useful point of discussion, except for that last one. And I'm here to tell you why.

The power curve of the RTX 3070... and improving system energy use.

Literally what happens...

Summer is here and temperatures are on the way up. I live in a hot climate, meaning that an average daily temperature from May to September is in the mid-thirties degrees celsius, if not higher. I don't have AC in the computer room and, even if I did, it doesn't make much sense to purposely heat up the room only to spend more money on cooling that extra heat to a comfortable level.

This situation is why I care so much about airflow in cases because in a hot environment it really matters how much quantity of already warm air you must pass through the case in order to cool components that are, relatively, less hot (though still hotter) than that air compared to the scenario in a cooler climate.

But there is something else you can do to improve component temperatures that will help in not only this situation, but also as a general principle. Let's do a quick dive into whether undervolting, underclocking, and power limiting your components (specifically the graphics card) is worth trading performance for...