Kevin_Walter

You could be hyper-sensitive to the stutters. Don't compare yourself to other people who say they don't have them. There are people willing to play Cyberpunk on last-gen consoles and seem to think it's running just fine. Some people just don't notice poor performance. At any rate, monitor your components while playing. When the stutters are happening, what is happening in your system? Is your CPU maxing out? GPU? Unusual memory performance? Is your storage flatlining when it should be loading assets? Which games are stuttering?

Nah, I don't want to strip it down to bare metal. I want to black out the backplate so it matches the rest of my build.| I just want to have all of my bases covered. If there's a better option than plastidip, I'd like to know about it.

You try updating your driver? Also make sure you're not using any weirdo v-sync settings or framerate limiters.

What exactly should I use in order to avoid changing thermal performance or color warping from heat? I have a Sapphire Pulse Vega 56. Love this card, but I've grown tired of the red accents on it when the rest of my components are black and have RGB LEDs. The only red accents I need to change are the red led behind the pulse logo which is easy enough to disconnect, and the red designs on the backplate. The backplate is super easy to remove and paint. Just want to make sure I'm not going to affect performance in any way whatsoever. I know most people use plastidip for this stuff because it's easy to remove in case you don't like it, so that's what I intend to do... but is there a better option?

I have the same thing on my gigabyte board and the codes never shut off. They also don't change, however. On boot, they'll cycle through a few different codes, but then usually sit at what appears to be "AO" after loading into Windows. According to my manual, AO means "IDE initialization has started". It's listed under normal boot operations, so I'm not too fussed about it. Most manufacturers seem to be putting these debug LEDs on their boards though.

I've wanted an ultrawide for a long time, but it seems like every single game that comes out has issues with support and either requires waiting for patches if the community is loud enough, or mods to make it work. So just how much of a pain is it playing with an ultrawide these days? Has it gotten better, or is it still a dumpster fire of lax support and frustration? Also... anyone recommend a good ultrawide with a nice freesync range?

Hmm. I actually forgot that Bitfenix exists, which is funny considering I just bought Noctua fans to replace the two Bitfenix fans I have in my system. One reason I was asking because I kinda wanted thicker wires/sleeving than what seems to be on offer from the others, but if Bitfenix is the only other option, I'll probably just go with the Cablemod kit. It comes with more combs and one of the reasons I'm not a huge fan of EVGA's cables is their sleeving is really stiff nylon, while Cablemod's ModFlex is softer and more pliable. TBH, I wish I could afford to sleeve my own cables, but beyond the monetary and time investment requirements, EVGA has weirdo pinouts and cable splices, and I don't feel like dealing with that.

Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but... I have an EVGa Supernova G2 750. Currently using a set of EVGA's replacement cables, and it's fine. I'd like to buy a black kit though (my current kit is red). The only options I seem to have (short of ordering individual cables from MDPC or completely custom ones, which gets crazy expensive crazy fast) are another set of EVGA's cables, which I don't really like for a host of reasons, or a kit by Cablemod. Cablemod seems fine, and that's probably what I'm going to end up doing, but does anyone else offer full kits of replacement cables for EVGA PSUs, by any chance? I'd like to compare all potential options before slapping my money on the table.

I guess I'm the only one with a microstutter issue. The framerate is fine. 80+ pretty much everywhere that isn't clogged with dozens of people on-screen. But the framepacing is all over the place. I have a freesync display and it doesn't help the issue at all. I've tried with freesync on and off, v-sync on and off, setting various framerate limits, and even setting my display to 60hz in Windows. The microstutter persists. It's not unplayable by any means, but it's bad enough that I can't say the experience is smooth. Makes me not want to play it at all. FWIW: CPU: i5 6600k GPU: Vega 56 RAM: 16GBs DDR4 3200 Currently have the game installed on a WD Black because it's DAMN HUGE but considering this microstuttering happens even in small areas where nothing should have to be loaded anyway (like just standing in an empty room looking around), I don't think that's the issue.

It's a Kin. One of the small ones. Predecessor to the Windows Phones. Thanks for the suggestions, peeps.

I currently have a non-smart phone that isn't worth naming, and an Amazon Fire HD 6. I take both of these to work, but I'm looking to replace them. I'm tired of carrying two devices with me everywhere, the battery on the tablet isn't that great, and the charging port on it is dying. I won't even go into all the issues I'm having with the phone... I mostly use my tablet for web browsing (which is stupid slow), watching youtube videos, making notes and lists, running various 2-factor authenticators, and some mild gaming. I mostly play the Kingdom Rush games and sometimes others like Boom Beach, Exploding Kittens, and *coughCandyCrushcough*... I'm basically wanting something that works at least as well as the tablet, but is also a phone. Considering the tablet was only in the neighborhood of $80 when I bought it like 4 years ago, I'm assuming just about anything releasing since then will work just as well with the exception of maybe super-budget $50 garbage, right? I'm not interested in spending $100 a month to have a smartphone. I'd like to pay less than $200 and get a phone that I can use with something like Verizon's prepaid service. I use wifi at home and at work, so I have no use for unlimited data plans and all that. I'm also very phone-illiterate. This would be my first smartphone. Help me, LTT Forums. You're my only hope!

I have an older receiver that supports DTS and DD 5.1 audio, and it's a great sounding system. The problem is that it's from the 90s, so there aren't any fancy HDMI passthroughs or anything like that for me to pipe my audio though. Instead, I use S/PDIF. This obviously works perfectly fine for movies, which have a pre-compressed 5.1 audio signal. However, games don't have compressed audio, for obvious reasons, and the raw 5.1 channel audio needs to be compressed by your audio solution before it's passed to the receiver. The motherboard in my previous desktop was a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3. Actually a really decent board. The on-board audio supported DD Live/DTS, which was nice. However, my current build includes a Gigabyte Z170X-G5... which doesn't support any of it. If I watch video with compresses 5.1, my receiver recognizes it as it should. Just doesn't support 5.1 in any games. So, as the title of this thread asks, could someone point me in the direction of a reasonably priced (~$100 US or so) sound card or DAC that supports compressed 5.1 DD/DTS audio through S/PDIF? The ones I've been looking at either don't seem to support it, or don't have it clearly listed in their specifications. I'm not fussed about the drama between internal sound cards and DACs. The differences, to me, don't matter. As long as it's not so low-quality that it's going to distort the signal, I don't really care which I have. Thanks.

Pretty sure it's preaching about how evil preorders are over and over again and expecting reality to shift to a point where it actually matters.

I'd be lying if I said Andromeda didn't look somewhat decent, but Mass Effect 3 was probably the 3rd biggest disappointment of the last decade for me. Right behind Destiny and Fallout 4. I used to want to play No Man's Sky, but I'm always wary of any games that have anything to do with "procedural generation". I've yet to see a game that does it really well and at least somewhat avoids the quick familiarity with the algorithm. And as for The Division... LOL. I'm glad I didn't buy it. A friend did because he thought it would be fun to play together. I made it to level 30 and finished the story and haven't touched it since.

Good god, they're like vegans...

Well we all have to be adamant about something sometime, I guess.

I generally don't like PvP focused games like this. Never really got into Dark Souls invasions, for instance. Generally don't like fighting games. Personally, with the nearly 30 hours I've put into this game across multiple tests, I consider it worth the price of admission. The $60 base game, at least. Can't really go wrong waiting to get it cheaper though of course.

Games are pretty close to finished within about 3 months of launch. They're generally around that "feature complete" stage, and the remaining time before launch is for testing and squashing bugs. It varies from developer to developer, but to say that people are preordering long before games are finished, while technically true, is completely inconsequential to anything. Also, I feel there should be a clarification. There's a difference between a preorder and a prepurchase. Preorders mean even less as little to no money changes hands before launch. Prepurchases are different, and a lot of online marketplaces don't even let you prepurchase as early as the physical retailers allow you to preorder. So what? The preorder incentives for For Honor are a few cosmetic outfits. That's it. They're completely meaningless to anything. Sure, you can make a stink about games with elaborate preorder incentives that cut out chunks of games and reserve them for preorders. That's shitty. Games that come to mind are Mass Effect 3 and Mankind Divided. And you know what happens with those games? People bitch about them incessantly until the game is changed (as seen in the case of Mankind Divided). Ultimately, this issue has nothing to do with people choosing to preorder and everything to do with publishers who get stupid ideas. At the end of the day, it's the people who go on forums and reddit and facebook and make it known that they don't want those kinds of preorder incentives who get them changed. Not from people deciding not to preorder at all. I mean why should a publisher care whether or not you preorder if you're going to buy the game anyway? lol wow. Talk about a childish argument... First of all, your analogy is garbage. In your mind, everything is reinforced by preorders, because you're arguing about things that are entirely unrelated to preorders. You probably think that games like Battlefield 4 are rushed and riddled with bugs because of preorders as opposed to the reality of tight schedules because Publishers want to be competitive. You don't get to just say "preorders are related to X and X is bad, therefore preorders are bad!". That kind of circular logic is just stupid. Oh, I absolutely understand what you've said, but unlike yourself, I understand the industry and know that what you've said is unrelated to preorders at best, and patently false at worst. Cute. I've spoken to more developers than you'll likely ever know. None of them have cared to bring up preorders when bitching about their jobs. Ever. I'm sure some lament... those who work on games where publishers have their balls in a vice and try to make them work on garbage like Destiny... Your problem is acting as though exceptions are the rule, and think that you choosing not to pay for a game today as opposed to tomorrow actually means something. Good. Have a nice day.

Oh, the irony... Bullshit. There's no commitment. There's just your decision to buy a video game. Whether you buy it before or after launch, you're still buying it. Especially now, when you can return games to digital markets like Steam.Your argument here is entirely emotional. "If you buy X and feel cheated..." preorders have nothing to do with buyer's remorse other than to say that the buyer in question is an idiot for buying something they clearly didn't understand in the first place. Again, an emotional non-argument. Blah blah blah paywalls, blah blah blah locked content, blah blah blah exclusives... none of these things are going to change whether you preorder or not. The only thing that changes is the date in which the money comes out of your wallet. The only thing that can change those other things is severe public outcry, which is never triggered by people not buying a game. Paywalls can, will, and do exist without preorders. Preorders have no effect on them whatsoever. And when was the last time you've seen "paywalls" removed from a game? Locked content? See "paywalls"... unless you're trying to suggest that they're separate things. Exclusives? Really? You think preordering has ANYTHING to do with exclusives? At all? If so, you're dumber than I thought. And no, they don't "already have your money", idiot. As I stated before, you clearly have no idea how games are developed. 1: An idea for a game is pitched to a Publisher. 2: Publisher accepts the pitch and creates a contract that dictates how much they're willing to invest in development. 3: Development begins on the project. Developers begin earning their wages. 4: The game is announced/promoted/market/preorders are opened up. 5: People preorder the game, giving retailers early profits and returning some of the investment made by Publishers. 6: Game is released in exactly the same state it would have released had their been no preorders. Because preorders don't mean jack shit when it comes to launch day, because you clearly don't know how ANY of this works. Preordering has time and time again been used to confirm the biases of people such as yourself, who make emotional arguments with no basis in reality, you mean. Except for the fact that it has no effect on anyone else whatsoever. You're boycotting something that will never go away, and scapegoating something that is completely irrelevant to the shit you want to bitch about. You're trying to fix a flat tire by pissing in the radiator. Preordering is a personal choice that has no effect on anything other than the rare games with bullshit incentives. Though most developers have wised up to that one and just toss in a few cosmetics these days. Oh and by the way, the only logical evolution of preorders is early access... essentially paying to alpha/beta test, which I'm sure you'd also be bitching about. Now please stop derailing my thread. It has nothing to do with your anti-preorder religion. EDIT: The quote system on this site is incredibly frustrating...

Except those aren't "facts" whether you label them such or not. They're your uneducated opinion on what happens because you think you need a scapegoat to blame for your disappointment in games. Preorders have no effect on the state in which a game is released. None. Zero. Nada. Zip. You're not giving anyone anything for nothing. You're giving a retailer or web store money for a code that unlocks your game. They're giving a portion of that money to a publisher that is getting a return on the investment that they placed into development and marketing. The developers were paid a long time ago. Your temper tantrums don't mean shit when you're buying the games anyway. There's literally no difference other than the date on which you pay. Oh, and news flash, you're not the arbiter of when a discussion is over. I'll reply if I want to.

Preordering has no effect on anything other than your wallet. The anti-preorder crusade is really old and annoying.

GreenManGaming has it on sale 20% off. So you can get the Gold Edition for like $80. I'm just curious because I picked it up and I'm wondering how it appears in other people's uplay libraries. I'm preloading it now, but it's listed in my library as "For Honor !!". I'm guessing the !! stands for "Gold Edition" or something.

Diablo 3 is a guilty pleasure. Everyone hates it, but I'm back on it almost every new season. Probably going to get the Necromancer when it's released later this year. Then I can have another character with 500+ logged hours...

No. This has been happening for a long time. Through multiple Windows and driver updates.