popcorn_skollie

Team Green's new GPU MSRP vs local retail pricing RTX 3070 - $500 (R8,000) RTX 3080 - $700 (R11,000) RTX 3090 - $1500 (R24,000)

Besides the monitor and peripherals. You could build a console killer pc for 10-12k off the shelf easy. And game comfortably at 1080p for the foreseeable future. I mean the new i3 craps all over my 6600k and the Ryzen 3300x is a fantastic alternative that wont break the bank. Then you also have the option of staggered upgrades over time. And, if you have a keen eye and lurk like a parasite on carb. You could score deals on some great parts. A pc will always be a larger initial investment. But long term it always going to be way better value overall.

I still think the PS5 is the winner. Especially if its your primary gaming device. Xbox exclusives are just utter *** in comparison. I have my reasons for the xbox. But I'll always be a pc gamer first.

I'll eventually get the S. Perhaps a year or so after launch. Keep an eye on specials and bundles. Who knows. Maybe I can score it over black friday 2021. I still sub to game pass which covers my current xbox and pc titles. I don't intend giving that up. I also heard that the sub would include EA pass games from November at no additional cost. That's fantastic value. There are things to bear in mind here if opting for the X. Remember baseline performance aims are 4k 60fps. And with variable refresh rate support we're talking 1440p at 120 frames easy. Thats unheard of. If your TV can't push that you're wasting your money. We're at a point now where the line between console and pc are basically the peripherals. I'd go as far to say that if every game on every console had native support for a keyboard and mouse without the expense of input lag. Then the casual pc gaming market would be in serious trouble. For the first time you're looking at consoles that warrant buying a new display or tv to actually benefit from what it has to offer. The disk drive. Look. I get that its nice to pop in a disk and play. Its even nicer to get some cash back when you're done with it. But remember. Game development these days are moving towards a digital platform all together. I read reports about the new Halo being the only Halo intended for release for the next decade. Meaning that any new content will come in the form of updates and dlc's. I remember having a copy of fifa 18 and the first time I popped it in I had to wait for a 2gb update before I could even play. Then your library tries to update games every other day. Its crazy. New content is being dropped all the time. Bugs are fixed. etc. It really makes me wonder what the point is in having the convenience of an optical disk at all.

I pulled some strings with old friends in the local distribution supply chain. After a few months of cherry picking parts I came up just short of 15k. The psu which is valued at around 2k is excluded because I just happened to have an old sealed unit from a previous rma. The case was all I overpaid for by a couple hundred. Because I was fussy. So I think its fair to say you're looking at around 18-20k retail for the stuff above. Then I also have to buy a gpu. Which I expect will set me back between 10-15. When all is said and done. Maybe 25-30k. At which point I'll try and recover some of the expenses by flogging my old parts on carb. Conservatively I should get back roughly 8k for my old machine. The worst part is once this build is done. My existing monitor wont be able to take advantage of all the horses under the hood. I have a 75hz ultrawide. For me to actually benefit from all the frames the build will be able to render I'm looking at spending at least another 5-7k for a high refresh rate display. But I will be able to cap frames in the meantime to keep things smooth until I'm able to afford it. I've always been in the habit of staggering upgrades over time. I can't afford to drop all that money in one go. But if I'm smart and patient. It will eventually pay off.

I've splurged a bit on a new build. 3600xt on the B450 platform. I've struggled to decide between opting for b550 or x570 instead but the deal was too good to pass up on. Considering things like pcie4 and forward compatibility with the new upcoming Ryzen processors. I realized that this build will still be so far ahead of what I have now that the cost to performance gains make sense to stick with b450. Pcie4 is still an option with bios updates and if I ever want to upgrade the cpu in the next few years. And I could probably get a better deal on current gen Ryzen 7 or 9 upgrade as apposed to trying to go up an entire generation. Even then the performance gains per rand will be better value. This will be my first AMD platform in over a decade. I will also have nvme storage which is new to me and light years faster than sata ssd I have now. Now I wait patiently for big navi and 3rd party benches of partner cards between team red and team green before I decide on a new gpu. Exciting times ahead. Parts so far Gigabyte B450 Aorus Elite mobo paired with a Ryzen 5 3600xt processer. I got this cooler new on carbonite. Sticking with air for now. With no real intention of moving to water if I'm honest. I think I'm over it. This cooler in particular is actually intended for the Ryzen 7 processors. Which means that its capabale of a higher tdp that the Ryzen 5 I will slap it onto. Giving me more thermal headroom for a bit of OC should I decide to go that route. The fastest ram I've ever owned in both latency and frequency. With OC headroom to boot as well. The nice thing about this kit is that despite purchasing 2x8gb dims. It comes with with 2 additional dummy dims to populate the empty slots. Which is a nice aesthetic touch for a small price. For the case I went with Corsair's Carbide 275R. Paired with their CS850w modular psu. More than enough power to keep things going even if I upgrade in time to come. I've also settled on 2 ssd's for storage. 1tb Klevv nvme and 1tb Hikvision sata ssd. I'll think about additional hdd storage later. The highlight of the build remains. But lets see what these new cards do before I decide

I got smashed by a double after riding one almost all the way to shore. Fences circa 2008. That year brought some swell to remember. The last thing you expect to see after you kick out is an over head that close to shore. It threw me down head first. I was so close to shore that the nose got lodged in the sand underwater and the force of the wave snapped it clean off. Dunes and Hoek always make me feel like its out of my league. I've only scored a few to remember there. Most times I just had my ass handed to me. 4 to 6 days and a random 8 footer just swings by to clean up. That's when I get nervous. They say false bay locals are soft. But the dangers manne are quick to refute that. Wave sizes being equal. The west coast just feels like it has more power per foot. And when it gets bigger. That power feels exponential.

Dude. I have a super retro windsurf setup here at home. My cousin does interiors and a few years back he was tasked with this divorcees house in van riebeekstrand. She threw out a stoep full of her ex husbands ***. I scored a board, sail, straps and some things I don't know the names of. They need some work but definitely usable. The wetsuit was a real gem though. Proper 80s/90s era. And mooi condition. Neoprene in good shape. Must not have seen much sun or sea. Best of all. Its bright blue, with like this yellow and red stripe trim. Man I hate that its too big. I'm hoping it fits when I try it on in a decade or so. If I could hipster this suit with a short fat pintail singlefin. Man, I would like grow the mustache and everything.

ffs Patch. That laugh burst out of me like a xenomoprh. Where's my inhaler.

I also find it weird how localism is still a thing. There's so many websites that would describe to you in detail, exactly how to find certain spots. When you should go. Which conditions will work. With directions, instructions and even tips on where to park. From like hundreds of countries. Thinking back I was probably one of those guys. Young. Stupid. Following a senseless trend of defending my home break. But I wanted to surf 'other peoples' spots too. Sigh. You know a couple years back there was some surf article showing off Elands Bay. I was so upset at the time. But in hindsight I remember meeting a brazilian there. He came so far for a few solid lefts. Thinking back I thought that was pretty cool. Meeting him in the water. He worked as a farmer. Avocados. And he found his way to this this little remote fishing town on the west coast of South Africa. Before I derail this thread by too much. I do have a wife story I can throw in. A friend of mine was involved in this youth outreach program called Palama Metsi. Talking years back now. They had teamed up with a backpackers lodge over in Ebay. My buddy was like: Hey, If you want you could stay there for free this weekend. Conditions looked lekker and I sell it to the wife as our romantic getaway. She agrees. Now if you don't surf. Ebay has very little to offer you. And she was not impressed with the accommodation either. Communal kitchen type setup. There wasn't a microwave never mind wifi. At least we had our own room. Romantic it was not though. Those walls were paper thin and she was like nuh uh mister. I surfed some clean 4 footers the next morning and we drove home.

Haven't ridden my bike since lock down started. Then when trails opened. It was too late for me. I was already so lazy and demotivated. What started off as legitimate work related stress just became silly excuses eventually. And so. Over the last couple weeks the wife has been on my ass. Like legit pestering me. Why don't you go ride? Why don't you go surf? Dammit woman leave me alone.

Posts some pics and we'll be able to help you better. But it should be pretty straightforward. The important bit for now is how your chain rings are fitted to the crank. Whether they are held in place with rivets instead of bolts.

For a build that's quite literally been collecting dust in my garage for 3 years. The original artwork was just a bunch of vectors I sampled online. The company I used calculates the cost of decals based on scale, colour and shape of cutouts. The final pdf I sent for print was A3 in size. Black and red only. With the Giant and Psylo logos being cutouts. I was quoted a final price of R360.00. A-type Graphix in Stikland. Both the print quality and decal material is quite good and I can't complain. But for peace of mind I intend applying decals after colour has gone onto the frame and lowers. Then seal it all up with a final clear coat. Worked out quite well the last time I did it. Keen to see the outcome although I suspect further procrastination will ensue.

Any of you watch Xbox's live title reveal and showcase for the new console last week? I have to say. What an absolute **** show compared to Sony. I feel like they rushed it, didn't show enough actual gameplay, and the footage that was shown was very underwhelming. There was nothing to blow me away. Especially when I reflect back to Sony's reveal. The games featured did not in anyway seem like next gen footage. I think Fable may have had me interested for a moment but I certainly didn't feel engaged or amped for its release in anyway. But with sony reveal? Hell even the new ratchet and clank had me amped. There was such a diverse array of games showing off what different kind of titles will look like on the next console. It blew me away. Everything just looked so dope that I couldn't help be impressed. Their presentation on the whole also seemed so much better. Like they were cramming as much of what they could into such a short amount of air time and I got the feeling like there was so much more they wanted to show but couldn't. Xbox on the other hand stretched out the content they had with unnecessary irrelevant fillers which just didnt help them in anyway because when they did show actual gameplay it just felt so unprepared, haphazzard and luke warm in terms of appeal at best. I mean. I'm saying this as an xbox owner here. I should be rooting for them. But it was just trash

Mind if I ask what you paid for those titles on switch? I ask because on PC I downloaded Samurai Shodown from the Epic store. It was free a couple weeks back. WRC8 was also free on xbox gold fairly recently too. And then Witcher 3 is also on game pass. To be fair. Gold and Gamepass are paid subs that I have. But I sub to ultimate which includes both for around R150pm on average.

https://youtu.be/2mFHRlVNP3Q When I first heard about it I thought it was a parody. Or at least they pulled the plug once they realised what a bad idea it was. But this thing is due to drop in September. Jeez if ever there was a low point for humanity. @Gen Some sage advice for a mom of avid gamers. Keep your kids off Twitch. I mean it. Just don't allow it. At all. Most of my children's activity online I've been able to moderate and apply parental controls. Roblox, tiktok, youtube, etc. But Twitch is just poison if left unchecked.

It's certainly not my intention to cause any buyers remorse. Just presenting value as I see it. If we talking from a purely gaming perspective here. If it was my 20k. 144hz baby. No doubt. It's one of those things pc gamers dangle like a carrot condascendingly above console peasents. High refresh rates were impossible on television sets only until very recently. Meaning that most games even now on current gen consoles run at around 30fps. Yes seriously. Because 99% of television sets dont support high refresh rates. But gaming monitors for pcs do. High refresh rate gaming on console is very early in development. And we will see it become more prevalent once new consoles kick off. But while consoles struggle to achieve 120fps. The pc market already boasts a plethora of gaming monitors as high as 240hz. It's why the debate has always had this derogatory tone from the pc master race. If you game on console exclusively. You dont know what high refresh rate gaming is. And once you've experienced it. You'd never wanna go back. The difference is chalk and cheese. And often means the having the upper hand if playing competitively. For some perspective on how big a disparity we talking here. Google monitor pricing for 60hz and and equivalent spaced 144hz. The pricing difference will shock you. Anyways it's still a bloody good machine that most gamers will drool over irrespective. I would love to know what that reason is though. Keeping the old option. Probably something I missed. Possibly work related? What field of study are we talking here? Is it the IO? Support for external media or connectivity? Didnt check that. Congrats on the purchase. I'm still jealous either way

Lets do a pros and cons of the new consoles to help everyone decide. PS5 Pros Much better exclusives. Just way better. This might change moving forward. But I doubt it. Sony just bought into a chunk of Epic Games. Its not huge as far as investments go ($25mil) but it eludes to Sony's future plans. The line between console and pc really are starting to blur and if Sony is in bed with Epic it doesn't bode well for Microsoft. Their already loose grip on devs actually prioritising their kits for title porting and development means that not only will Playstation have an overall better selection of games. But they will get ports before Microsoft and it will probably perform better on that platform too. Sony has already showcased their games using the Epics unreal engine. This was before they bought into Epic. They clearly have big plans. Microsoft devs will have to pay Epic to use the engine to create games while Sony's grubby little paws will have unfettered access Market share. I predict that Sony will continue to dominate market share. Last I checked ps4 players were double the global xbox players. While new games released on both platforms will probably have similar if not identical pricing. Title volumes will favour Sony. It doesn't mean much if you're already adopted the habit of buying games digitally. But the market for used game discs will be in Sony's favour. Used playstation games will be cheaper than used xbox games. We've already seen this happen with previous the gen. It also means that console specials which include certain titles will favour Sony too. Not to mention the exclusives Sony already has an upper hand on. Once titles start flooding the market. Don't be surprised if console bundles with Sony just seem like much much better value. Cons Subscription. Microsoft's subscription service offerings is just far better value for money. But this is best explained in the pro's section for xbox.Backward compatibility. While both consoles promise to play almost all of the previous gen games. Its pretty safe to assume that Microsoft will have the upper hand here. Especially when you want to play games that go back more than one console generation. Sony has had quite a few architecture changes between generations while Microsoft architecture remain somewhat similar. Sony has managed to somewhat circumvent this problem by offering previously loved classics as digital downloads on the playstation store which work on the new console through emulation. But this means that your old playstation 3 disc of a game probably wont work on the new console. And if said game is available as a digital emulated port on the store. You will probably have to pay for it. Essentially asking certain consumers to pay for the same game twice. This doesn't mean that all xbox games will work on the new xbox. But I'll touch on that later. Xbox Pros Windows and the Microsoft ecosystem. Let face it. Xbox doesn't have the best hand compared to Sony. But this is ace up its sleeve. The integration of the xbox your windows pc is huge. Especially if you're a pc gamer. And lets not forget. We're talking about the operating system used globally by just about every computer today. Well mostly. This has several benefits. The first of which is their subscription service. Lets try and put this in perspective. Ubisofts subscription is around R300 pm. Nice selection. But for pc versions of games only. Ubisoft games only. Origins subscription service is around R250 pm. Nice selection. But for pc versions of games only. EA (and associated studios) games only.Playstation plus. Around R150 pm. Lots of great games. Probably the best overall selection but only Playstation compatible variants. Microsoft game pass. Around R150 pm. Decent Selection. But, and this is a big one. Any game owned through purchase or through subscription will be owned on both Xbox and Windows PC. Provided said title supports it. This in independent from whether a title supports cross play. So lets say a game has an xbox version and a windows version. Whether players on both platforms can play said game together is irrelevant. Your subscription will still grant you access to both versions. Its practically the same app for games used by your xbox, running on your pc. But skollie. Why would I want to own 2 different versions of the same game? I don't need the same game on both my computer and xbox. Thats silly. You need to look at the bigger picture here. Certain games you prefer to play on computer. Others you prefer to play on Xbox. Lets assume for now that the primary reason you make this preference is based on the controls. You play soccer and racing with a controller. But prefer playing shooters with a key and mouse. With your microsoft sub you can this fulfill this preference for one measly subscription fee. If you ever intended paying for a single title in Microsofts library. Whether you wanted it on xbox or computer. If you subscribe instead. You've gotten way WAY more value for money. Because now, not only can you play the game you wanted at a fraction of the price. But every other game in the library is now available for you to play on windows or xbox. You choice. Nobody else can offer that. The Xbox Control. I'm not talking about preference here. Whether you like the feel of a PS or Xbox controller is a personal thing and they both do the job equally well.I mention the xbox control because of its unmatched integration outside of consoles. Anyways I've been tapping away at this post between work and emails for the last 2 hours. My power will go off shortly so I'll finish up later

Here's the benches from practically the same laptop. You'll see that most games run well over 60 fps. Bare in mind that performance will be even better with the alternative I posted. The 2060 is a newer better performer gpu than the 1660ti. What this means is is that the actual horsepower within the laptop exceeds the performance of the display. And ALL your games will be capped @ 60fps because the 60hz diplay. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Gaming at 60fps is fine. Its just such a shame to settle when there's a better alternative at the same price.

Gen. This machine ticks all the right boxes except for the display. I'm pretty sure the new gen TUF series comes with a 144hz display Edit: Found it here, Same price too. There is a small compromise on the nvme storage. But there's a hard drive too which more than makes up for it. Also the 2060 over the 1660ti any day of the week. And a 144hz display for the same price It is much much better value for money. https://www.takealot.com/asus-tuf-gaming-amd-r7-3750h-8gb-256ssd-1tb-hdd-rtx2060-15-6-gam/PLID68585180?gclid=CjwKCAjwr7X4BRA4EiwAUXjbt1MkH2qtplnyLY18b5ZaUqXkuCNgiiPXcS_xYlAaIi3vTAFvnz2FDhoCVzEQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I'm lucky enough to own a few gaming pc's and consoles. Despite opting for gaming on my pc 90% of the time I cannot imagine life without my xbox. It doubles as my media centre. Which is actually its primary function. It just works so much better than the built in app on the TV. Navigating youtube, plex, netflix, spotify and what ever else is just so much quicker and far more intuitive and reliable. And using the controller instead of the tv remote? Nooit bra there is just no going back. Sure I could have a dedicated media player instead for cheaper but. Those have *** remotes too. Plus, with my xbox subscription which is around R150 a month (depending on exchange rates) I just never, ever, ever buy any games. I just play whatever they have in the library. Which is a monthly rotation of around 100+ games. Then there's the connection. Now I haven't been able to figure this out yet. But I'm not gonna risk jynxing it while trying to do so. For some reason. My connection to the xbox network is quite literally 10x faster. There is no fibre or adsl where I live. So I'm forced to use wibre. Which is a wireless connection to fibre via a dish on my roof. All installed and configured by my isp. Because of my location and current equipment, I'm limited in terms of the achievable bandwidth they can offer through my existing connection. I also have a 10:1 contention. Which is fine actually. My internet is slow (10mbps) compared to modern standards but I can download a 50gb game overnight (~1mbps dl speed) and latency is great for gaming, overall priority management is also really good so downloading something almost never affects simultaneous streaming etc so no complaints there. But for some reason though. I get ~10mbps dl speeds on xbox. Its as if my contention ratio just disappears once I connect over azure or microsofts network. Strange. But true. Games on my xbox download 10x faster and funny enough it also scales with the network management in the rest of the house. If someones on youtube on the phone through wifi and I'm downloading a game on xbox. The phone will automatically take priority to eliminate any chance of buffering but the remaining bandwidth that goes to the box is still scaled at 10x what ever bandwidth remains. Its great! I'm quite litterally getting the same speeds on my xbox over a 10mb wibre line, as friends who have a 100mb fibre line. We tested and low and behold for some reason xbox internet at my house is 10x faster with no reason why. No static ip. No dns flushing, no wizardry of any sorts. Just default dhcp connection. So because of this it means that Netflix, Youtube, Plex, Crunchy Roll, even Twitch. WHich has the worst upstream out of the lot. 10x the speed. Meaning I can stream at great quality pretty much all the time. (1080p+) Other devices however suffer from sharing the same amount of limited available bandwidth. Then, with new consoles looming. Reasons to have a gaming computer really are starting to dwindle. I said this back when they release the ps4 pro and xbox one x. Once these consoles (and game developers) release native support for a keyboard and mouse on ALL titles. The pc master race will have very little to offer. (Apart from the free games I mentioned in previous post) Higher refresh rates and higher resolution arguments? Probably our current gen consoles cant compare but then again they've already hit the 4k@30fps and 1080p@60fps. If new consoles can hit 4k at 60fps (which I'm pretty sure they will) Then 120hz+ gaming on consoles will no longer be a pipe dream. And with the recent emergence of high refresh rate TVs and the emergence of HUGE gaming monitors. The lines between a gaming monitor and a tv are getting blurry too. Then. Just to rub it in. If rumours about next gen console pricing of around $500 are true. Than would mean that building an equivalent desktop pc would cost around double. Man, times sure are a changing.

Heads up. There's also some racing game free on uplay. Looks like a rocket league clone. But you can claim it through the epic store as well.

For some context I've never bought a game on Epic. Ever. Every title you see in my library was free at some point. The greyed out games are ones I have claimed but not yet downloaded.

Blasphemy. Don't sell your computer unless you're funding a new one. It might not play all the latest titles at the best settings but it is still far more useful than any console will ever be. A 7 year old pc isn't that bad come to think of it. My daughters pc is around that age. 4th gen i5. The gpu is admittedly a bit newer and the additional ram and ssd also helps tons. But she plays pretty much any game new and old without issues. Fortnite, Apex, Sims, Roblox and Minecraft she plays them all on max settings with no hiccups. A friend of mine still runs an i7 2600k. I think he's on his 4th GPU now. He bought a used 1080. He might have had a few upgrades along the way. But he is still kicking new titles with what is still essentially the same pc for the last 10 years. I can't drill it enough. Just ho versatile and useful your computer really is. Even if we're talking just about using it as a gaming platform. Its cheaper to upgrade. You don't have to get a whole new one all at once. Think of it as your oldish bike and the difference new parts make to it. No console would ever allow you to play literally thousands of games new and old for free. And I don't mean piracy either. There are websites peppered with nostalgic abandonware, roms and emulators for arcade and console classics. And if those don't fancy your interest. There is simply no shortage of free games these days. CSGO and Dota are still the two most played games on steam. They will always be free and will still be able to run on any potato PC. Then Epic has been on a roll lately with some shockingly big titles dropping free of charge. Some nice indie titles in between too. You could quite literally play a new game, every week, for free. Try doing that on console. I mean Ark and Conan alone (both free windows lapsed on Epic recently). Jeez take your pick. Either game will suck the life out of you if you ever allowed yourself to really get invested in playing them. I've said this to so many people who play games regularly. If you've never played an online sandbox PVP survival game. You haven't truly experienced what gaming can be. Not because the games in themselves are good. But because of the significant impact theses types of games can have in your life. Ark and Conan are both games where I've forged real life relationships (both good and bad) with people I've never met before. Man I could tell you some stories. Anyhoo. Keep your pc.