PlayStation 2

Sigh. I'm heading back home today after meeting that girl. I'd love to stay another day but I think leaving tomorrow would just be a bit much schedule wise. If I left tomorrow then I wouldn't get back until like midnight and then have to get up the next morning for an eleven hour shift. It'll be nice to have a day to relax first. Plus, I know she has a lot of things she wants to get done before her vacation ends. Also, I don't want to overwhelm her on a first visit.
 
But man, this was such a great trip. I feel such a strong connection with her. We have so much in common, we even watch the same YouTubers. I had a feeling we would inadvertently end up watching some of the same car YouTubers but then she told me she watches channels like The Internet Historian and The Quartering which just further reaffirmed how similar our interests, humor, and political views are. We actually talked a lot of politics last night and yeah, we are just like in lockstep in our views, and unpopular ones at that lol.
 
And even the things that I'm not particular into, like tanks (she is a huge tank nerd), I find it really attractive that she is into them. I'm so attracted to her geeky side. I know there are girls out there who like cars, anime, videos games, or whatever else I'm into but it's like she is into everything I'm into pretty much, except tech. She isn't really a tech person but she is a big gamer. She spent a lot of time showing me all her old games she still has and her old Nintendo handhelds. We both even still have our old CRTs for gaming purposes and both don't have the room to set them up lol. When she told me she kept her CRT for old consoles, I felt like saying "Marry me" lol. Not literally, but you know what I mean.
 
I feel really uncomfortable right now though. Like, I'm worried I might be letting my emotions get a bit too far ahead of me because I feel really depressed that I'm leaving. Like genuinely down in the dumps. I just want to spend time with her. And I feel that uneasy feeling that I haven't felt in a long time for a girl where you feel uncertainty about where things are going when I want them to move forward.
 
Most relationships I have been in, things moved fast early on and fizzled out fast. Unlike most girls I have dated, she is a very slow mover. I think it is a combination of just being a serious girl and only interested in something long term, not a fun time, being pretty inexperienced when it comes to dating, and I imagine her being trans makes her a bit more guarded as well because, well, you know how guys can be. I guess because of all of that, I have been moving a lot slower as well. I've been very cautious not to rush her and to really try to do things on her time. I actually like this about her though. I like that she wants to build a relationship first before getting too serious but at the same time, it leaves me second guessing about how she feels which is totally dumb of me.
 
She told me she likes me and before I left she outright told me she feels like our relationship is moving in the right direction. She has a bit of a sense of humor though because before she said that, she was like "Well, you haven't scared me off". Probably was just funny in the moment because of the look on her face, she was totally being a little cheeky. Honestly, after seeing her in person, my feelings for her have only grown. I just outright told her that and she seemed to appreciate it.
 
She told me I was the only guy online that actually followed through with her or wasn't a total moron. She said she she would get messages from guys asking all kinds of invasive questions, wanting nudes or to send her nudes, and even the guys who she started talking to would just totally disappear somewhere in the conversation. She said a lot of guys just got cold feet. So yeah, I can tell she is still nervous and cautious. But I'm dead serious so I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing and let this move forward on her time. It is going to be total agony though because if she were ready, I'd start dating her now but I can tell she wants things to build more. I know she likes me and I can tell she trusts me because she pretty much told me as much but she is just a slow mover and I'm cool with that. 
 
I just feel honored she shared so much with me and opened up so much the last couple days. And I have a very good feeling about this. I'd be surprised if we don't start dating but damn, do I feel uneasy still. I feel like a kid in high school all over again.
 
EDIT: Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention. She has the coolest fashion tastes. She is really into gothic lolita. She showed me (and sent me yay) some pictures of her all dolled up in her gothic lolita outfits and OMG. She looks so good in them and my geeky anime side absolutely loves it. Kinda hard to wear those outfits normally though so she generally tends to dress in a mix of goth, gothic lolita, and the general adorkable look. Kind of a blend and she pulls it off perfectly. It totally suits her looks and personality. She is seriously the most adorkable girl I have ever met and I love that sooooo much.
 
Yeah, talk about being the luckiest guy ever.
 

Consumer products make a difference to Nvidia's bottom line, but giant firms and corporations have much deeper pockets. Also, it's not that the RTX 3000 cards aren't coming in stock, it's that whenever they're put up online bots buy them in seconds. 

Day 2 was a resounding success, even if @pinksnowbirdie almost lost his wallet lmao

I've been meaning to buy another power supply for more than a little while now - one that has a PCI-Express power pin on it, at least.

Indeed, I did just that.

Honestly I think the most important part of the generation was crossplay.  Microsoft really pushed it and now all three have it in games.  You no longer need to have all three consoles to be able to play with friends unless you just want all three for their exclusives.  All that is important, and I agree with your points.  But I think crossplay was the most important because it basically opened up gaming a lot more, in a way that was needed.  

Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated's resolution settings operates independently of anything else in the game. It also has a setting for general visual quality and anti-aliasing. I know my eyesight's starting to get on at my old age of... 20, but I could quite easily pick out how much shittier 60% scale looked compared to 80%, much less 100%.
There's a point where resolution scales can work - I play Tower Unite with an 89% resolution scale and it's almost unnoticeable to me compared to a flat 100% scale at 2560x1600 - where I'm sitting much closer to the monitor instead of when I play BfBB on my phone with a controller. It helps that the game's TAA solution isn't bad at all. But playing something like Team Fortress 2, a game that very much leans on MSAA rather than anything post-processing, at anything besides native resolution makes the game look rough.
 
And it's not like I can't play a game at native resolution. Just ask my boyfriend. I've managed to trudge through more than a few PS2 games scaled up to my monitor hooked up to a capture card. My name is very much relevant here, for once. But I'd rather not run shit at native resolution, it can make things look ugly very quickly. I learned that when I played The Crew 2.

I'm gonna be honest: resolution plays far more of a factor in image clarity than anyone ever expects it to... I say that because most people don't realize this until you've experienced how chunky shit can look on a phone screen.
Case in point: SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated. From a ~2.5ft viewing angle on my iPhone SE, I can't tell much of a difference from the High settings and Epic settings for resolution scale. I believe High is the equivalent of an 80% scale while Epic is native resolution. Medium is roughly 60%. I could see a very noticeable difference between Medium and High.
If I can tell the difference between Medium and High on a tiny ass phone screen (for reference, an iPhone SE 2020) then I'd most certainly be able to discern it on a much larger laptop screen - much less my 30" Behemoth from Another Era. I really dislike playing at non-native resolutions in most of what I play for that reason alone - because it looks unclear. I couldn't put up with an APU unless I could really play most of what I wanted at native resolutions.

Why bother saying this if you aren't willing to even look at it?

I have a very hardline stance against drinking and smoking anything - much different from the rest of my family. 
I'm an extremely dry and hard-edged person, if me being here for five and a half years didn't give that away.

Orange juice Apple juice Lemonade Chocolate milk I'm very boring, but unlike my mom, I can tolerate lactose! I also don't drink because that shit's fucking garbage and you're probably garbage for drinking liquor.

Orange juice Apple juice Lemonade Chocolate milk I'm very boring, but unlike my mom, I can tolerate lactose! I also don't drink because that shit's fucking garbage and you're probably garbage for drinking liquor.

I'm gonna be honest: resolution plays far more of a factor in image clarity than anyone ever expects it to... I say that because most people don't realize this until you've experienced how chunky shit can look on a phone screen.
Case in point: SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated. From a ~2.5ft viewing angle on my iPhone SE, I can't tell much of a difference from the High settings and Epic settings for resolution scale. I believe High is the equivalent of an 80% scale while Epic is native resolution. Medium is roughly 60%. I could see a very noticeable difference between Medium and High.
If I can tell the difference between Medium and High on a tiny ass phone screen (for reference, an iPhone SE 2020) then I'd most certainly be able to discern it on a much larger laptop screen - much less my 30" Behemoth from Another Era. I really dislike playing at non-native resolutions in most of what I play for that reason alone - because it looks unclear. I couldn't put up with an APU unless I could really play most of what I wanted at native resolutions.

Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated's resolution settings operates independently of anything else in the game. It also has a setting for general visual quality and anti-aliasing. I know my eyesight's starting to get on at my old age of... 20, but I could quite easily pick out how much shittier 60% scale looked compared to 80%, much less 100%.
There's a point where resolution scales can work - I play Tower Unite with an 89% resolution scale and it's almost unnoticeable to me compared to a flat 100% scale at 2560x1600 - where I'm sitting much closer to the monitor instead of when I play BfBB on my phone with a controller. It helps that the game's TAA solution isn't bad at all. But playing something like Team Fortress 2, a game that very much leans on MSAA rather than anything post-processing, at anything besides native resolution makes the game look rough.
 
And it's not like I can't play a game at native resolution. Just ask my boyfriend. I've managed to trudge through more than a few PS2 games scaled up to my monitor hooked up to a capture card. My name is very much relevant here, for once. But I'd rather not run shit at native resolution, it can make things look ugly very quickly. I learned that when I played The Crew 2.

Let me lay it out this way:
 
I have a GTX 1070. It's a nearly 5-year-old midrange desktop card. It's not falling short of what I need, but it's not overkill either. It can maintain 144fps at 1080p in pretty much all the games I play, and it's used to its full potential doing that.
 
No integrated graphics solution has ever come within even a fraction of that gaming performance in visually demanding titles, which I legitimately enjoy playing more when I can turn up detail settings. It wasn't until Ampere that even a dedicated mobile graphics card beat the desktop 1070 by more than about 20%.
 
I do own a laptop. It's an integrated-graphics workstation model from 2013, with a fairly competent CPU but very little gaming ability at all. Having a desktop graphics card means that I don't need to replace my hardware every year to get acceptable gaming performance, meaning my total hardware spending -- and total waste footprint -- is vastly less.

What if I want to play something that isn't ten years old on my 34" monitor tho, bro

You may have glasses to see really well but you still missed the point. Real estate. Aka scaling. For example, my 13" MacBook Pro with a 2560x1080 screen gives me 4 scaling options (1024x640, 1280x800, 1440x900, and 1680x1050):
 

 

 

 

 
Important note: these do all look crystal clear on my end. But I very much notice the amout of information I can see on screen, and I can still read text fine at the highest setting, so I keep it on that as to have more usable screen real estate. 

you're completely right... but you forget one major aspect:
 
- high end graphics cards push the bounds for what developers can do, so the overpriced halo products of today drive the innovation we see tomorrow.
- high end products contribute FAR mote to the R&D budget than low end products. sure your ryzen 3200G is awesome, sure a GTX1050 in a laptop with nvidia optimus is awesome, but the only reason they were possible to make amazing budget offerings is because of the amount of R&D dollars nvidia can swim in because of what titan RTX and quadro users pay for what is essentially the same base resource: a piece of fiberglass with a piece of silicon on top.
 
it's not about the "what most people have", but about the possibilities. getting R&D dollars from those who can pay for it, to develop technologies for those who cant.
 
also, i'd like to argue there's a difference between "playable" or "okay" and the experience one can get from a high end card. isnt there an argument to be made for "just because you can"?
 
in a different comparison.. having a car with 20 horsepower is enough, it gets you from A to B, it'll just barely squeeze in highway speeds, and it'll be a dang bit cheaper and more economical than a bigger engine.
BUT... i'd dare say most car owners will agree with me that even just an 80 horsepower turbo diesel is a far better driving experience, even though you will NEVER floor the throttle.
 
fun sidenote.. koenigsegg developed a new way of operating engine valves to get better horsepower per tonne ratios in their hypercars.. that same technology is now a few years old and having a huge boon for fuel efficiency on the tiny cars many of the chinese population are buying. it is in essence the car world's equivalent of proving your statement wrong: because those who really like going overkill on cars bought a hypercar, average joe (or rather.. average Tao) can now buy a car with a lighter engine, which in turn saves on fuel.

This statement is just wrong, depending on the resolution. At around 2ft viewing difference on a 15" screen, you still need 1080p at a minimum to avoid seeing individual pixels. 

Buy a console instead.

Probably There's still a lot of 17" laptops floating around, plus even on 13" if you have good enough eyesight to handle smaller scaling, higher resolutions mean more usable real estate (sure something as high as 4K isn't practical, but it is not a statement of fact that it is indiscernible) There are many mobile GPUs that perform far above the level of an APU, even a 2060 max-Q (common GPU in many gaming laptops I've seen) is far past what even Ryzen's good APUs can do Uh yeah... prebuilt desktops? With desktop GPUs in them? As you yourself said, all opinion. Graphics matter to a lot of people, even if they don't to you. 
If they agree without your opinion on what matters in a gaming experience (most don't). 
Opinion.
 
It's all opinion with no actual facts to back any of it up. Even your "facts" at the beginning were mostly not facts. Or only parts of facts without the consideration of any of the broader context. 

It's fine to have something that's completely a subjective opinion, but if it doesn't instantly appeal to someone else, and you have no actual facts to reinforce it with, you may as well preach to a brick wall. 

.....no.
Playing at 720p on a laptop screen isn't an experience for many.

On a similar note as the last post, not sure how popular/unpopular this opinion is but one of the many random little things that really grinds my gears is when people have notification sounds on when they definitely don't need to. I get it when you are home and leave the phone in a different room, but when you are in public or otherwise in a situation where your phone is always on you, why can you not put your phone on vibrate and let everyone else around you live in peace without constantly being distracted by a loud beeping sound?

I'm not the biggest on 80s cars (and anyone who knows me can say the same thing), but that GN is fucking fresh.

Well in that case the head cultists will just upgrade your rank!
 
Also perhaps, I think I got my CX430M in like 2014.

I've been meaning to buy another power supply for more than a little while now - one that has a PCI-Express power pin on it, at least.

Indeed, I did just that.