imrazor

Linus actually did a video on this use case for Optane: It's better than using your SSD for swap, but it's still a long way from real RAM.

Just noticed this on Dell's web store: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/dell-g3-15-gaming/spd/g-series-15-3579-laptop Note that some of the mid-range models are marketed as having "24GB memory" - which is really 8GB DDR4 and 16GB Optane. Sound like a rip off...

EDIT: For that price, you might want to consider a used, entry-level gaming laptop from Craigslist or eBay.

Really none of the above. See this video for an idea of what to expect from integrated graphics...

If you do decide to go for an RX 560, be careful. It looks like AMD has cut down the stream processors in some models.

i5-3570k

I realize this may be a futile effort, but I'm trying to get some extra fps out of AC Origins. I already know the bottleneck is my CPU because in populated areas it's pegged at 100%; it's an i5-3570k. It's paired with a GTX 970 which isn't overwhelmingly powerful by current standards, but I don't think it's the problem. I've overclocked my CPU to 4.2GHz (I think that's a pretty typical OC), but I'm still seeing fps dips down to 35 fps in densely populated/complex areas. Average framerate with my current settings (mix of low to high) is about 50 fps. I also have a 1600p monitor, which makes dropping the resolution sub-optimal, which wouldn't help much if the problem is the CPU anyway. Anybody know which settings to lower to help out an older CPU? I wish this game had a population density slider, but it doesn't.

If I could actually find a store selling it, I'd recommend this: https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/Radeon-RX-560-4GT-LP-OC/Specification RX 560 has more shaders than 460, making it a little less wimpy than a 460.

It's the T5500 - really old, but I got it for pennies. The GPU in question is a Gigabyte 1050 Ti 4GB. I had to use different audio solutions for each hypervisor. ATM I don't have a long enough HDMI cable to reach my TV, but that can be remedied. In the meantime, I've had to use USB for ESXi (had to use a dedicated USB 2.0 card incl. K+M) but for KVM the best solution (a relative term) was to passthrough the T5500's onboard audio. I tried using an old PCI sound card, but there were way too many modules to blacklist.

I'm wondering what most people here use for GPU passthrough. I have an old Dell Precision workstation that I'm trying to turn into a gaming box/home lab for Linux & Windows learning. I've tried VMWare ESXi and Proxmox KVM (based on Debian Linux) and got GPU passthrough working with both. Neither is perfect, but I'm leaning towards ESXi at the moment because I'm having so much trouble with audio on KVM. On KVM, I've got audio to the point that game audio plays OK, but Youtube has skipping and distortion problems when there's any background activity (downloads, disk transfers, etc.) Setting up GPU passthrough on KVM was also a good bit more painful than ESXi was. That's not to say that ESXi doesn't have problems. I couldn't get USB hotplug working in my Windows VM, so I had to resort to task scheduler to force a USB scan every minute. I also had to find a super-secret config file parameter to prevent "Code 43" errors with my GeForce GPU. But audio work great, even when there's a lot of background activity. Has anyone here had better experiences with their hypervisor of choice? Does Linus' favorite platform, Unraid, make it any easier to do passthrough?