Now is not the time to buy a PC...

Normally, I'm a pretty big advocate of PC gaming - I would class myself as an enabler because I love technology, enjoy playing around with the hardware, but also using it to enjoy technologically advanced games. I spend time online helping people not only to build and buy PCs but also troubleshoot their issues in order to improve their experience with that technology.

 

However, as part of the moral and ethical framework I hold in my head I just can't advise people to buy a PC right now. Let's get into why...

Do we really have things so much better now...?

 

 

You may have noticed that I'm a grumpy sort of person - easily annoyed into rolling my eyes and huffing when things are done which rub me the wrong way. You might even have seen a few tweets of mine on certain "trigger" topics, such as "inflation affecting the pricing of high technology products"*. Well, welcome to a new entry on that list: "modern buyers have it better".

On the face of it, this is a basic truism (or at least we hope so!) but on the other side of the coin, this is, in my opinion, a bad faith argument.  

 

Let's get into why I think that...

*It has negligible effect on the overall consumer price for high technology products. The forces which make a loaf of bread more expensive do NOT act on how much it costs to produce all the components and package a CPU/GPU... They are primarily priced based on COGS and how much the market will bear...

 

Analyse This: The Steam Machine's Specs are bad, no matter what Valve might say...

 

Mana from heaven or a gift from the devil?

 

Much has been made over Valve's reveal of the Steam Machine. With opinions varying from gaming saviour to irrelevant devil. Okay, maybe things aren't quite that polarising - I'm trying to make the intro a bit spicier! However, it's clear there are two main emerging narratives surrounding the soon-to-be-released Steam Machine - one positive, one negative. 

 

Personally, I lie on the negative side of the equation for a couple of specific reasons with orbit around the fact that it's just not good enough. 

 

So, let's get into why I feel that way...

So, What's Next...? The rate of advancement in gaming performance... (Part 2) Is PC gaming dying?!

A couple of years ago, I looked at the rate of advancement of GPUs over time. It's the only way of tracking how the user experiences technological advancement. Recently, we've seen a lot of movement in the industry of various commentators reaching the same conclusions I did, way back when... Or, maybe I'm a particularly pessimistic person and these thoughts are the logical conclusion that people will come to, given enough time and data.

But given that I was ahead of the curve, I feel I have a little more to give than even the current trends in discussion...

Looking back at 2024 and predictions for 2025...

It's, again, that time of year where we take stock of the past and also look towards the future. Last year was fairly busy for me, travelling the world and a huge increase at work resulting in less time to spend on this blog. Unfortunately, 2025 is looking just as busy in some ways given I am now tasked with increased responsibilities at work. So, that will drain more of my focus from the first of January, onwards... But, let's make hay whilst we can!

Microsoft and Intel are on the ropes... what's next?

I'm not known for being a positive person when it comes to certain things. I'm generally critical, analytical, sceptical, and distrusting of processes, industries, and companies. However, I do love tech. I am critically positive about it, and for people in general and it's in the spirit of these two parts of me that I feel like I need to get these thoughts off of my chest.

Two of the biggest players in gaming are dying - their literal death throes are all around us and fill the tech news headlines, background blog rants, literal subreddits, and trending on social media.

I don't even think we need to introduce who I'm talking about but let's get it out of the way:

• Microsoft
• Intel

Their flailing is having a huge impact on gaming and tech in general and I'm a little worried as to what fills the hole they make if and when they do fail or contract away from the segments that I've traditionally engaged with.

We Need to Talk About FPS Metrics Reporting... (Part 2)

There's a well-known idiom that's often said: "There's lies, damn lies, and then there's statistics...". This implies that the "statistics" in question are another, worse form of lie that is somehow obfuscated from the receiver of the information.

We also have multiple well-known sayings which revolve around the concept of, "you can make the statistics/data say anything you want". It seems readily apparent that people, in general, do not like or trust "the statistics".

I experience this, in my own way, in my day-to-day work. Scientists are currently not the most trusted of individuals - for whatever reason - and one of those reasons, in both cases, is a lack of understanding on the part of the consumer of the results of data analysis, both within and outside of scientific circles.

In the same way people say "science is hard", people say "statistics" is hard... and this is for good reason - though it might not be for the specific reason that might immediately spring to mind!

Statistics is not that difficult once you know what you are doing (at least in my opinion). The difficult part is knowing which statistical test to apply when and where. Yes, the difficulty, as when designing scientific experiments, is understanding the context, limitations and biases of what and how you wish to test.

This is why there are many statistical tests where the number of data points needs to be below or above a certain limit; why it is important to know the relationship between the individual data points and the set as a whole; and how the interpretation of the result of the analysis might be changed based on myriad factors.

Hence, we come to today's topic for discussion: hardware performance testing in games!

Last time, I attempted to communicate the shortfalls and incorrect analysis being performed in the industry at large. Admittedly, I was unsuccessful in many ways and was roundly dismissed by most parties...

Today, I will try a different tack.

Looking back at 2023 and predictions for 2024...

Hap-pey Burf-yay!

 

 

The introduction to last year's post could almost be copy/pasted into this one. Work was even more intense than last year and I know for a fact that 2024 will be even tougher, so my hopes for spending time writing for this blog look set to be a big loss... But, that doesn't mean that I won't try and address things when I feel I can dedicate the time or perform more comparisons and benchmarks for everyone to digest.

 

2023 was a big year for hardware releases - with most of the current generations of CPU and GPUs being released at some point. Sure, we're getting some minor refreshes from Nvidia next year but, overall, 2024 looks set to be quite boring.

 

With that in mind, my predictions for this coming year were quite hard to pin down - what is left to predict? 

So let's start where we always do: the review of last year's predictions.

What went wrong with RDNA 3...?

Much has been made about the performance, or lack thereof, in the RDNA 3 architecture. Before launch, rumours persisted of 3+ GHz core clocks, and I had tried to make sense of them at the time - to no avail, leading to predictions that were around 2x the performance of the RX 6900 XT. 

Additionally, people (aka leakers) were really misunderstanding the doubling of FP32 units in each workgroup processor and so were counting more than actually existed in terms of real throughput performance and, I think it's safe to say that this decision from AMD was a disaster from a consumer standpoint. 

But is that really the reason RDNA 3 has been less performant than expected? Let's take a look!

Let's Talk about System Requirements...

Everyone and their mother, cousin, friend, associate, partner, and long-lost relation has had strong opinions on System Requirements.. Hell, I'm right there with them! We all want detailed listings of settings combined with PC hardware... However, as a group, I think we are a bit too happy when developers give us more than nothing to work with.

So, I want to set the record straight on what are good system requirements for games... and I hope that some developers see this and take the advice on board.

We Need to Talk About FPS Metrics Reporting...

Recently, I've been on a bit of a tear, running around trying to get people to listen to me about what I believe is a better way to analyse the performance of individual games, as well as the hardware used to run those games than is currently being performed by the vast majority of hardware reviewers in the tech space...

As with all new ideas, things are still developing and I'm still choosing what to keep and what to drop - what works, and what doesn't. Today, I'm going to summarise the conclusions I've come to, thus far, and also introduce a new concept that I feel like everyone in the tech space should be doing. However, some are getting it wrong: wrong to SUCH an extent that it literally took me a while to double check the concept because I can't be the only person to have realised this over the last ten years...

DirectStorage, again...

 

It's approximately eleven months since I last trashed on DirectStorage and, helpfully, to ease us into the anniversary, we have the official release of the API and another presentation covering the technology - now of an actual implementation within a game which will release relatively soon! 

Actually, it's quite exciting because I get to see whether I was correct in my understanding of how things were going to play out.

So, let's dive in!

Consoles aren't good enough for Ray Tracing...

[From Henrik, via Wikipedia]

I remember seeing articles and thought pieces before the release of the current gen console hardware regarding their ability to perform ray tracing (RT, for short) in games. Overall, I think they were pretty pessimistic on the whole and, especially towards release, the Series S was never really considered as a serious RT machine. 

However, since release we've had several games that have proven that there was little to fear and that, if integrated at an early stage in a game's design or within the engine design, ray tracing is perfectly possible. 

So, it's surprising to see this article on Tom's Hardware stating the opposite.

Late to the party: B550...

So by now, you've all read the kerfuffle surrounding the B550 announcements. I was quite annoyed at first but I'm more resigned about the situation now. In this post I'm going to go over why I felt that way and why, although I understand the technical limitations at issue, I do not agree with the way this has all been handled.

The End of an Era...

There are few items of PC paraphernalia that you don't replace or fiddle with very often. Sure, you can keep a PC for 4-5 years without having to mess around with internal components and, with some luck, you can potentially get away with only messing around with a GPU upgrade in the 6-10 year period. I've never been that lucky and there have been component upgrades or replacements due to wear and tear over the last 10 years. However, I have been using the same mouse during that period.

Now its time is up...

Why magic users are often boring to play...

Looks cool, plays a little boringly...

With the release of the teasers for Diablo IV in full flow in the games media I've been reminded of a recurring problem within games: balancing the gameplay for magic users.

This all started when I was listening to the Game Informer coverage of the Sorcererss' gameplay from their few hours of playing the game across the three available classes. The recurring theme throughout the 10 minute video was "this just isn't as fun to play as the other two classes". In fact, the Barbarian gameplay was 24 minutes long and I wonder how long the comparable Druid gameplay video will be - especially since the reporters were mostly talking about the Druid playthrough in this video and practically anything else they could... they event skipped parts of the gameplay.

So, what's the problem and how do we (potentially) fix it?

Diablo IV and the re-Diabloisation of the series...

Diablo IV was announced during this year's Blizzcon in a beautifully-produced CG trailer. I have to say that the game looks really nice, though it is important to remember that this is baically Alpha footage of a game that is not meant to be released any time soon - so anything could change in the intervening period.

I am quite hopeful because the direction of this game is already leaning more towards the aesthetic spirit, if not the identity, of Diablo and Diablo 2 than Diablo 3. However, these early indications really show that Diablo 3 still has its claws deep in the series' beating heart.

So let's take a brief look at what we've seen and why there might still be reason to worry...

Analyse This: The Concept of Health and Balance in Games (Part 3)

Last time I spent some time detailing what sorts of health systems you may run into within a game and the types of worlds that are implemented for games to control the player's progression in general. In Part 1 I spoke about balance in a more general sense. This time, I'm going to explore how all of those choices can result in less interesting gameplay.

Analyse This: The Concept of Health and Balance in Games (Part 2)

Last time I started trying to talk about health systems in games but became side-tracked into a conversation about difficulty and balance in games. Ultimately, the two are interlinked as encounters need to be balanced around the health system in a game.

But back to the health systems of games and back to my premise:

Having a game system which requires no thought from the player or little management results in boring or uninteresting gameplay. Worse still, it results in multiple game systems feeding into that specific game system being unfocussed and underdeveloped because less thought is required for the whole thing to function.

People play games for many reasons but one of the reasons we play games instead of watching a movie or reading a book is that gaming allows us to make choices - whether we are aware of this aspect or not. The choice may be simple enough - a dialogue decision, exploration, who to shoot in combat or which weapon to use... how to solve a puzzle.

Analyse This: The Concept of Health and Balance in Games (Part 1)

I touched on this topic very briefly around 9 years ago but, if I'm honest, it was never a huge topic for me until Bob Case got to his analytical break down of Baldur's Gate this past week and I realised my feelings on the subject were stronger than I anticipated.

The health system of any game is vitally important in order to balance all gameplay elements. While the concept of "health" can be more or less abstract across different genres (what is "health" in a card collecting game (CCG) or a real time strategy game (RTS), for example?), I'm going to focus on its place role playing games (RPGs) and first person shooters (FPSes)...