Steam is having their Fall sale right now. It’s generally very similar to their Winter sale (in fact, I think publishers in the Fall have to use at least the same discount in the Winter) but, if you have some extra turkey money left over, you can buy some games with it.
So, I just bought a new Gaming PC. I didn’t get it for games as much as I wanted to try my hand at the free software ‘Blender’, (3D creation suite). Realizing the undertaking learning that program would be for a dude like me, a community college art student drop-out with a learning disability and ADD, I decided to possibly delve into games.
I’m a huge Nintendo guy, and have to get my Switch Pro Controller to work with the PC, I don’t have a microphone or head-set, but I’m cool with that because I’m not interested in competitive/multiplayer at the time. Any advice? You can suggest games, but I’m only looking to buy a few being on a budget. Games are great, but it’s getting more difficult to actually enjoy them, so maybe something innovative, or ‘new’, or particularly captivating. What I’m mainly looking for is advice for gaming this way, because it’s foreign to me.
Computers can piss me off because they’re so complicated. Freeing, but complicated. Once I get this thing to read my controller, and make a Steam account, what do I do?
It’s a HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop, AMD Radeon RX 5500 AMD Ryzen 3 5300G Processor, 8 GB RAM, 512GB SSD… so, is that good? Is it Better than a Steam Deck? I got it on special.
Yes, the RX 5500 is more powerful than the Steam Deck’s APU. I would check and see if you have one 8GB stick of memory or two 4GB sticks. If you have 1x8, consider trying to match it with another stick (or just buy a 2x8 set) since the AMD processor benefits a lot from running in dual-channel memory which means having both RAM spots populated. That will also help a lot for Blender or other software besides just gaming.
Make an account with Epic Game Store and take advantage of their weekly free games. It’s an easy way to get a library of games going. You might not be interested in some but no harm in claiming them or trying them. If you have an Amazon Prime account, they also give games away monthly. Those are mainly little indie titles but, if you’re looking for something different, maybe you’ll find a gem. Follow the free games thread in this forum and you’ll see some other one-offs pop up, often from GOG or a dev giving games away on Steam for some promotion.
The free Epic games change on Thursday mornings so you might want to make an account and claim the current ones now before they switch tomorrow.
If I were starting today and had no games I’d get gamepass ($10/mo for access to a pretty big library) and then just build up a library from free games and cheap bundles that happen all the time. Epic gives away a lot of free games, twitch prime isn’t free but if you have amazon prime anyway they give away games, various other sites randomly give away games. There are various deal aggregator sites like https://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/
I hardly ever buy specific games anymore, even on sale, I just end up buying cheap bundles (and subscribing to gamepass and humble choice) and have a million games I’ll never play anyway.
Thanks guys! I’m kind of busy with family stuff, but I’ll check it all out! I don’t think I’d sighn up for gamepass though, I know it’s a good value, but I have enough subscriptions at the time.
Is there anything to the computer I should do first? For instance, I heard I should adjust the power management settings but I don’t know how to do that. Does that effect anything?
I never really did Nintendo; does that mean you’re looking for arcade style Mario kart stuff?
What do you envision playing look like? Are you solving puzzles? Running around crushing swarms of enemies before you? Sneaking around and craftily killing one enemy at a time? Not killing it all, but mostly exploring and building? Are you scared? Is it a horror game? Operating heavy machinery, like a race car or a jet? Underwater? Or maybe sports; tennis, football, etc… How long does this play session last? 20 minutes? Two hours? You don’t need to answer each individual question, just looking for an idea of what gaming will look like for you.
Ever since I got a gaming computer a couple years ago only a couple games have really grabbed me: Subnautica (500+ hours), Cities: Skylines (800+ hours), and Skyrim (currently playing, still under 100 hours.) I have a bunch more games that are interesting, but they haven’t hooked me in yet.
One thing to check is your memory speed to verify XMP is enabled. Go to task manager, performance, memory, and look for the memory timing. Should say something like 2666 or 3200. (Or possibly 5000 or higher.)
I did everything you said, but I can’t find “memory timing”. There’s “memory usage”, “memory composition”, but nothing to do with timing that I can see.
Thanks for your help! Also, should I put the power settings to high?
edit
Nevermind, Speed is 3200, if that’s what you’re talking about.
Yep, my bad, it’s called timing somewhere else, speed in task manager. Nice, so showing 3200 means XMP is engaged, I think, so all good there. (2133 if it weren’t.)
Thanks Ellis. I put my power plan on High performance… now it’s time to hook up the Switch Pro Controller.
So… first game I got was Klanoa, and the framerate is atrocious.
Ugh… computers
I’ve been considering buying a new gaming + everything else PC as mine is 6+ years old at this point. For my current gaming needs, I play a lot of Cities: Skylines (very processor and RAM intensive) but also games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Battlefield, and PUBG (Battlegrounds). My current rig is fine, but then again these games are also about 5+ years old.
It’s a bit overwhelming trying to figure out the specs / brand to buy. There are all these new brands I’ve never heard of (i.e. CyberPowerPC, iBUYPOWER) and the ones I have heard of (Alienware, HP Omen) you might be paying for the name a bit.
Just looking at processors, how does one decide between i5, i7, i9, and then 10th, 11th, and 12th gen, and then figure out what the F, K, KF means for my needs vs price. GPU card, and RAM I care less about as that’s relatively easy to upgrade in the future.
These are “boutique brands.” They typically buy unbranded OEM machines and customize them to customer specs. I have several laptops from a company called Sager that have never let me down and were competitively priced with the “big boys” (Sager is the actual OEM for a lot of boutique brands, but you can also order directly from them, which is what I do). In fact I’m pretty sure I got a better machine for the same money than I would have gotten from Alienware or ASUS ROG. They don’t make desktops, though.
As for how to read Intel model numbers:
Ok. So I think I got the framerate running better on that particular game. I also downloaded Killer Instinct and Street Fighter V. When I do a Performance Test it says I “Fail” even with some of the graphics features off.
They look good. but I don’t think they’re playing at normal speed. Ryu’s moves are so slow. Any advice would be helpful. Is there a thread dedicated to computer questions? Or is it okay to stay here with the inquiries?
Cities skylines in particular is an interesting game in terms of building a computer. It will happily use any memory it can find: system RAM, VRAM, whatever… It is also not particularly GPU intensive. For an example, I have an i5 10400 and a 1050 TI. When I replace my 1050 TI with a 3050, I get the exact same frame rates in cities skylines. The 3050 being twice as fast doesn’t really seem to matter at all; my “good enough” CPU is what’s holding it back.
Anyway, where I’m going with that is you might actually consider a 3060, specifically, because that one model comes with 12 GB of VRAM instead of 8 GB. Both a 3060 TI, the 3070, and even the 3050 all come with 8 GB. You’d have to go all the way up to a 3080 to get 12 GB of VRAM, but that’s much more expensive than a 3060.
For regular RAM you’ll want at least 32 GB, and 64 would not be an insane amount to consider.
*Actually, are you an Nvidia or AMD guy? Or do you not have a preference? I think AMD might do a better job putting more VRAM on the lower end cards, but I’m not sure about that. (Or, alternately, are you looking to spend real money, or reasonable budget? As in two grand or more, or more like 1200?)
It’s fine to stay here, but you might want to create your own thread if you think you might have ongoing questions.
Are you trying to run very old games in an emulator? When I looked up the first game you mentioned, it said it was released in 1997.
Help me too, help me too! 
I have a little extra dough to upgrade my computer, I just would like some input on what to do with it.
I’ve built many PCs, but lately (coughcough…the last 10 years or so…) I have trouble keeping up with all the different variations of GPUs and CPUs. I feel like where I should put my money is in a new GPU, but at the same time I don’t want to overshoot and get something that has capabilities way beyond the bottlenecks of my existing machine.
Here is what I’m currently running:
Asus Z170-E mobo
i7-7700K
16 GB GSkill RAM, 2133 MHz (I see room to improve here up to 3466 MHz…worth it??)
GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB
My mouse and keyboard are pretty vanilla, but seem to work well enough. I don’t do any competitive gaming, and they’re comfortable. I am leaning towards a lit keyboard for when I want to turn the lights off.
Speakers are decent enough and new in the last year, so not looking to replace those.
I also have a curved 1440p monitor new in the last year that isn’t a candidate to be replaced.
My headphones, which I don’t actually use all that often, are $35 Amazon things. Good enough so far, but if there’s an awesome difference for a set twice and cost or so I’d look in to it.
I believe, if I interpreted this site correctly, that I have maxed out the processor capabilities of this motherboard.
As I said, I don’t do any competitive gaming. Lately I’ve been playing things like State of Decay, Forza Horizon 5, Snowrunner, ATS, and The Division 2. I can already crank everything up pretty high. I do know that while I can make Snowrunner look really good, I can’t max it out without my framerates dropping to unplayable.
3DMark Time Spy give me an overall score of 5962 (Good), a graphics score of 6143, and a CPU score of 5113.
Ideas?
This will define your build. What’s the max frame rate? It’s usually listed as MHz: 60, 144, etc…
Good call, max framerate for my monitor is 165 Hz. I don’t necessarily require that kind of framerate though. I’ve always been pretty happy above 60, but I open to improvement, heh!
Yeah, I wouldn’t upgrade that monitor either. Nice!
It’s likely your budget will fall short before your monitor will.