bmichaels556

Bump.

Thanks so much for these suggestions! My monitor is an MSI Optix (forget model) 1080p 144hz and I've been pretty happy with it. Can't get a ton more performance than that with my setup anyway lol. Mouse is looking like a good contender but wired will be a pain with my corner desk setup and my tower being a good distance on my side with a complicated path between. However, I think the CyberPowerPC keyboards you mentioned are TOO good to pass up IMO. What switch type should I be looking at? If I'm used to using membrane, would red (linear?) switches be best for me? Just if you had to give quick and dirty recommendation without me having hands on experience with the different types.. (Edit: I'm thinking Brown seems like best for me overall, but not sure.) My mousepad is a good size (as much as I can fit in my setup comfortably) and doesn't seem to really need upgrading IMO. For mic, the Seiren Mini actually seems really good... I'd definitely get that over the mousepad and mouse overall and just use M20x for audio. That seems like a pretty sick setup actually. And then with the keyboard, that ends me up just a little over, which is totally fine...

Seems like the issue is... With what's out, the 4070Ti is the "best" option for price to performance. The problem is, everything that's out is WORSE than shite and should be hundreds cheaper, and so it's sort of the shiniest of the turds. On the other hand, price to performance has never really scaled totally linearly in the product lineup, where you might get like... I dunno, 60-80% more performance from a 1080 vs a 1060 6GB, but you'd pay more than double. Here, the 4070Ti is priced above where it should be in the lineup no matter what, whereas we already kinda' knew there was going to be a big premium on the "Titan" type 4090 or something like that. But correct me if I'm wrong, folks. I've been out of the loop for a while, but it looks like they're going to pass of a bottom-tier card for a 4060/Ti and not even get any performance increases lmao, or they'll be so small as to be an insult for a ridiculous price tag. It's bonkers. In fact, the 4070Ti is PROBABLY really a 4060/Ti that they moved up the stack because of big gains.

To be honest, in my experience, the 1060 6GB was a downgrade to my RX 480 8GB. It just so happened I got a 1060 6GB for SUPER cheap and made a little money on selling off my other card. The number of games you can comfortably play on either is shrinking, and fast. I really wouldn't be looking at ANYTHING under the sort of 2060 Super / RX 6600 non-XT level, like at all. A lot of times, even my 2070 Super feels completely gimped in a lot of new games coming out, although DLSS helps in some cases, but that depends. FSR 2.0 is half-decent as well. I am curious how FSR 3.0 is going to do just as far as framerate, it won't really help latency... I just feel like you're chasing performance that is simply already too far behind the 8-ball to ever justify if you don't already have one of these cards, OR if you're doing something purpose-built eg an emulation rig or something that has fairly reasonable GPU requirements even to run games at like 4K60 w/ anti-aliasing etc etc. But for general purpose? I'd advise against it.

TLDR: I have $50 to burn at GameStop (gift card) and want to make the best overall upgrades to my setup for the money. Priority is a half-decent headset for Tarkov (or anything else, but Tarkov is the biggest deal obviously for that kind of item). Also thinking about keyboard and mouse upgrades. My keyboard right now is Amazon Basics poopy low-profile one, but I have a much nicer (older) also membrane keyboard I could just use a PS/2 adapter with, and something like Razer Cynoza V2 may not be ALL that much of an upgrade. Same issue with mouse - I'm on a Logitech M170 and extra side buttons would be nice and all, but at GameStop, the cheapest wireless gaming mice are still very expensive, and even at Amazon, who knows how decent a cheaper wireless one will even be... My desk setup just isn't conducive to properly using a wireless mouse tbh. Help me spend this $50 wisely! It's find if I spend a little more, but I definitely don't want to match it and spend $100 either. Help me out, folks! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Got a $50 Gamestop gift card for my birthday and I'm looking to upgrade the old battlestation. Right now, I'm looking at trying to get a "good but cheap" gaming headset. A friend of mine is obsessed with Tarkov and it's cool and all, but my current setup is NOT conducive to a good experience. Solo? Yeah, fine. But then I use my phone as a mic but then can't hear him because of the damn headphones! Even if I use Discord on PC, it won't matter because it kicks me out on my phone anyway, so I can't even use my phone as my mic. It's too complicated and I think it's time for a proper all-in-one headset. My only requirement is they sound "decent enough" and the mic is decent enough if I want to do maybe commentary or anything IF I decide to do that. Not gonna' be listening to music or anything, although I will say that my current main proper headphones are Audio Technica M20X's. Not the best, but certainly decent. I don't want to get anything and it's a muffled mess, defeating the purpose of the headset in the first place. I'm looking at the Turtle Beach Recon series, but a lot of the low-priced ones look like they're refurb, although some of them were under $30 and not showing refurb, unless GameStop is lying to me, which I fully expect LMAO. The mic on the PDP LVL40 isn't all that great, but for the price, it's hard to complain too much, as it's similar to other cheap headsets I've had in the past. Corsair HS50 would be great, EXCEPT... I kind of wonder if I should also look at changing keyboards. After my new PC, I didn't have any PS/2 ports or anything for my old (but gold) office-style keyboard from god knows when (probably late 90's, early 2000's). Even though it was membrane, it was a pleasure to use. Now I'm back on my Amazon Basics low-profile keyboard and I'm not a huge fan. It's fine, and the shortcuts I need are there unlike my old HP keyboard, although I could probably set that stuff up and all. Was looking at Razer Cynoza V2 which I don't mind TOO much getting refurbished, but then I have to ask "Is this really even a proper upgrade?" It's also membrane. Maybe a better upgrade would be a better mouse. I have a Logitech M170 and it's also fine, but side buttons and a few extra things like that would be great. But since I'm stuck at GameStop.com, the wireless mice you're going to get there are ALL expensive. And who knows how decent an individual cheaper wireless mouse is at Amazon anyway... I'm trying to spend this $50 in the best way possible lol.

Sorry to revive this dead thread, but I'll say this... I went with the JLAB Go Air Pop at Amazon. Just went ahead and ordered something else I needed anyway to take advantage of the free shipping, since they don't quite hit the $25 requirement. After a few days of using them, I'm quite satisfied. They sound quite good, aren't insanely expensive, touch controls etc are decent, all that good stuff. They're SLIGHTLY bassy, but not by a ton, and overall sound fairly flat and accurate w/ the "signature" equalizer setting. "Balanced" is okay, but it seems to have just a bit TOO little bass, so I'm kind of thinking signature is overall where it's at. Seals against my ear well and all that for good sound and "noise canceling". Or well, you know, dB reduction. I guess that's passive noise canceling? It does well. I was going to go with the Skullcandy Dime but based on research, including the very helpful info at RTings.com, while they may actually have better, more accurate sound by a slim margin, they suffer on battery life. Badly, apparently. The choice became clear to me. Thanks so much for your guys' help!

And so the hunt begins.

Yeah, that's a great point... Proper fit unfortunately seems to be such a big part of earbuds...

Nice. But where do I get them? AliExpress? Walmart? I see Walmart having TWS products on their site, so not totally sure. Any way you could link me to either the same pair, or maybe the closest ones if they've done any kind of rebrand maybe?

Right, so... Okay, so maybe there's extra latency in one of those steps by changing resolution? Which is why I'm pointing to it probably being the display having to scale and process things, whereas the input latency is fine. Well... I will say that in games where I can do it, borderless windowed mode where I simply go up to 4K that way, doesn't seem to have the same increased latency, as say, dedicated fullscreen 4K at equivalent framerate and/or refresh rate. Like, assuming I'm always limiting to 60, it's still higher in 4K dedicated fullscreen, but not higher (noticeably) in 4K borderless windowed. I suspect the latter is being scaled via GPU, and the former by display or both, adding latency..?

TLDR: Looking for great and accurate sounding true wireless earbuds, for a reasonable price. No extra blasting bass, and I think people who do hate that will get me the best recommendation here. They don't need the best looks, and don't need to have insane battery life. Just sound great and accurate at a low price! I'm thinking $30, maybe even less? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I've used a good few pairs of headphones over the years. From absolute junk, the kind of stuff you get in Dollar General and the like, to Audio Technica M40x's and even a BIT of experience with Sony 7506's, which I hear is basically the absolute best there is at its price, though my ears can't tell much difference between say, the M40x's with the exception of they may be just a little bassier, but not too bad. HOWEVER... Over the years, I've also been pleasantly surprised with more reasonably-priced options that I won't cry about losing. An absolute winner in my opinion? - Those cheap Panasonic Ergo-Fit earbuds. They're literally NINE DOLLARS and they sound impossibly good for the price. They're warmer-sounding than is ideal for me, and their wires are super thin, but they get about 80-90% of the way there to MUCH more expensive earbuds and I've had multiple pairs last me multiple years each. No resources wasted into fancy packaging, no fancy wires etc. Same with some old no-name black and green earbuds I got from Cricket back in the day for like $12. Wish I knew what they were also, EXCEPT... I'm on a Galaxy S20 FE and I need something wireless. Man, I miss those things. Still have 'em, just can't really use 'em. - And also, the absolute best of all time for CHEAP was this one pair of $10 bluetooth earbuds I got from Walmart in like 2018. They looked goofy as hell and were the "semi-wireless" kind that have fallen out of style, but they also sounded VERY good, much better than their price would suggest. I truly don't know how they packed that much value into a $10 pair of headphones, I just don't understand. Battery life just wasn't as good, maybe I got like 3.5 to 5 hours which honestly, was fine for me. But they fell between the seats and got all crusted up somehow, so I think I ended up throwing them out. What a mistake. Nowadays, I'm looking for a pair of true wireless earbuds that really capture extreme value. Don't have to be anything too fancy, and don't need insane battery life. They have to be "good enough" in those areas, and sound great while doing it! But man, it's so hard to know what you're looking for. I simply can't trust what sounds good to others' ears because I want something flat and accurate, and NOT something that has a bunch of bass etc. So anything say, Skull Candy, is pretty much out of the question. And that's honestly the trend I've always HATED with a lot of these products. Bass for the sake of bass, and mids and highs often just sound muffled, whereas I want to hear much closer to what the artist put out from the studio. That's always my ideal and the way I've gotten a lot more pleasure from music overall. Sorry for the rant, and thanks so much for your suggestions!

I think I confused the names. Yeah, I used DSR and didn't fully understand it, and honestly, it didn't seem to look very good, at least in my limited testing. It's also not 100% clear to me how I know if I'm using "4K Regular", vs 4K DSR and downscaling to 1080p. Also if I'm recording, would Nvidia GeForce Experience be recording the native 4K before it's scaled, or would it be recording the 1080p downscaled that I'm getting on my monitor? I would think it's the former, but not entirely sure. Will look deeper into this though. Maybe I'll just delete any custom resolutions for 4K and see how that goes, which is how I remember trying it and it not looking good. Maybe I gotta' play with the smoothing %.

The latency is higher than the input latency difference of using 60fps vs a higher frame/refresh rate.

Hey folks, I'm on an MSI 1080p 144hz monitor. "Optix" line, but forget model number. Have been quite happy with it! I'm almost always playing at 1080p for higher framerates, but often times, especially for older games, I like to play at 1440p or even 4K. Especially for just messing around and extra supersampling detail, or even recording etc. One thing I've noticed is that when running non-native, especially at 4K (but also at 1440p), I'm getting a LOT of extra input latency. One issue was that I had vsync (maybe was fast sync?) on in Nvidia control panel, so I turned that off and that helped. I think what happened was... When I'm running monitor at 144hz, it was letting framerate run mostly free, but when I would change to 1440p or 4K, it was limiting monitor to 60fps, which sort of forced vsync to work, which was adding latency if that makes sense? I also made custom resolutions in Nvidia control panel for 1440p120 and 4K120 to make sure it wasn't limiting framerates and monitor seems to be fine with it. Everyone knows the deal with vsync adding latency, no big deal, so these steps seemed to help. But there's still extra latency. Greater than with say running 1080p at a locked 60fps, so it's more than just the input latency of a lower framerate. Like, 1080p60 still feels relatively smooth. Not buttery like running higher at even 90fps, but DOES feel RESPONSIVE, just not as visually smooth if that makes sense. Not the case with 1440p, but even worse at 4K. I assume it's from the monitor first having to convert the image down to 1080p and then display it, adding whatever amount of latency. Is there any way to fix or at least alleviate this more than I've already been able to? Letting framerate run free and THEN using MSI Afterburner / Rivatuner to 60fps to cut down on any choppiness etc (or just run at 120 fps if it's a much older game for double 60 for recording..?), but there's still the extra latency. I've also tried Nvidia image sharpening or whatever it's called, and honestly... It didn't look good to me, and I didn't even fully understand it. I dunno, it was weird. Any ideas? Thanks so much for your help!

True, great points. I think if you can get a 4070Ti at that price (shockingly reasonable from what I hear about much of European GPU market and other factors), that really ain't bad at all. Also, I don't think any normal person would be disappointed with performance of a 4070Ti. Price? Sure, maybe, but obviously we both kinda' know how that is. I do agree with trying to buy and sell, that's just extra labor, and that does cost $ when you really think about it... Honestly, I'd say if you simply look at performance in the most demanding games right now, like Plague Tale: Requiem as an example and that amount of horsepower is looking good for you, I think you'll be very satisfied with a 4070Ti and shouldn't look back! And hey, if it suddenly drops $100 and you take even 4 years to upgrade, you "lost out" on 25 Euros per year but you've got a good working card in your hand, and that still counts for a lot. Or if you're interested in 5000 series after getting 4070Ti, you could wait 3 years (2 for initial release, and another year waiting for potential price drop or whatever the case, and it's still 33 Euros a year...)