Frustrated with the gaming first approach to modern hobbyist computing.

[Takumidesh]

It seems that every topic about building and using computers is tainted with gaming performance. I like to play games don't get me wrong, but it seems that there is always a built in assumption that gaming is the only thing that matters when it comes to having a computer. GPU performance metrics and discussion that is only relevant to games, advice almost entirely focused around games, etc.
Maybe I am being a sourpuss, but the idea that desktop computers are being sequestered into 'advanced video game consoles' frustrates me.

 

[FI Fheonix]

4 minutes ago, Takumidesh said:

It seems that every topic about building and using computers is tainted with gaming performance. I like to play games don't get me wrong, but it seems that there is always a built in assumption that gaming is the only thing that matters when it comes to having a computer. GPU performance metrics and discussion that is only relevant to games, advice almost entirely focused around games, etc.
Maybe I am being a sourpuss, but the idea that desktop computers are being sequestered into 'advanced video game consoles' frustrates me.

 

There are definitely many uses for computers, It just happens that most of the use cases are gaming so that is what most of the topics are going to be about. 

[Dedayog]

3 minutes ago, Takumidesh said:

It seems that every topic about building and using computers is tainted with gaming performance. I like to play games don't get me wrong, but it seems that there is always a built in assumption that gaming is the only thing that matters when it comes to having a computer. GPU performance metrics and discussion that is only relevant to games, advice almost entirely focused around games, etc.
Maybe I am being a sourpuss, but the idea that desktop computers are being sequestered into 'advanced video game consoles' frustrates me.

 

Well, it's primarily due to gaming being the main use for the enthusiast market.  Also, gaming machines can usually do everything else.  Outside of some very serious production machines, gaming machines are the sports cars of the world.  Production cars are the track monsters.  Much rarer.

 

But I think that when a user asks for help and specifies their use case (which people almost always ask about if not stated), then they get a tailored response here.

 

I agree with you but I look at it differently. 

[Takumidesh]

Just now, FI Fheonix said:

There are definitely many uses for computers, It just happens that most of the use cases are gaming so that is what most of the topics are going to be about. 

I guess I just don't see how 'most' of the use cases are gaming, that seems like one use case to me.

Maybe I am out of touch [insert simpson's  'the kids are wrong' meme]

[crazzp]

I mean gaming and productivity (which you left out but commonly mentioned) are almost the two uses for a computer. Were you expecting it to fly or something?

[Middcore]

For 90% of the stuff besides gaming people do with PC's, generally the most basic parts are good enough.

 

"Professional" workloads that benefit from high-performance components of course exist, but the number of people who have those needs are a small fraction of those who play games.

 

So reviews and discussion centers on gaming performance because everything else is either not worth talking about ("How well does this $1000 GPU do at checking email?") or would be talking to a niche of a niche. Nevertheless most professional reviews of new processors and GPU's do include benchmarks for things like rendering and media editing.

 

[RONOTHAN##]

To be fair, most people in the custom PC market are gamers first, so the assumption is that if you're on here asking for help specing out a rig, you want something gaming focused. The people who do need something more production focused generally go for a pre-built workstation from someone like Puget, HP, Dell, etc. for a warranty and support rather than building it yourself. There are exceptions to that rule definitely, but for the most part you fall into one of those two camps. 

[Zando_]

Most people who care about what goes into PCs are playing games on them, and most people look for the best perf/$, so thus the focus on gaming performance. If that isn't your passion in PCs, finding other niches is pretty easy. Puget Systems consistently publishes benchmarks with full focus on creative and workstation render tasks, Level1Techs is a great source for enterprise/server hardware, ServeTheHome for even more focus on home server stuff, etfc. Lots of great spaces without a focus on games. 

[Takumidesh]

2 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Well, it's primarily due to gaming being the main use for the enthusiast market.  Also, gaming machines can usually do everything else.  Outside of some very serious production machines, gaming machines are the sports cars of the world.  Production cars are the track monsters.  Much rarer.

 

But I think that when a user asks for help and specifies their use case (which people almost always ask about if not stated), then they get a tailored response here.

 

I agree with you but I look at it differently. 

Good points. and I see that often. I worry that the already fading idea of 'hobbiest computing' will be completely replaced with 'enthusiest' if that makes sense. instead of the computer being the tool/object that is being tinkered with it becomes a lego piece for the end goal of playing games.

[dilpickle]

19 minutes ago, Takumidesh said:

It seems that every topic about building and using computers is tainted with gaming performance.

 

If you are talking about this forum or youtube then yeah that's who the audience is.

[igormp]

16 minutes ago, Takumidesh said:

It seems that every topic about building and using computers is tainted with gaming performance. I like to play games don't get me wrong, but it seems that there is always a built in assumption that gaming is the only thing that matters when it comes to having a computer. GPU performance metrics and discussion that is only relevant to games, advice almost entirely focused around games, etc.
Maybe I am being a sourpuss, but the idea that desktop computers are being sequestered into 'advanced video game consoles' frustrates me.

 

Well, you're also on a forum that's mostly target at... gaming. If you head over to lv1 techs, fast.ai forums or any other non-gaming focused forum you'll likely find what you're looking for.

 

Plenty of people buy high-end hardware for non-gaming usage, it's just so they usually know what they need and don't need to go around asking for help, or do so in other places.

[h0m3]

I think its related to the community around,

Most on ltt community build their PCs for gaming. Thats reflected if you go into some other hardware communities, they arent as enthusiast but they will recommend totally different rigs for your needs.

For instance, if you go into a programming community they will probably focus on RAM which is mostly what its needed to run most heavy IDEs (I'm looking at you android studio). Probably things like graphics cards will be defined as: if show an image its enough.

If you go to the enterprise and server communities, like freenas, unraid, proxmox they will recommend endurance. The most focus is in compatibility and stability, so when you say you're running a Ryzen desktop machine they tell you to run away from that and buy a Xeon with a Intel NIC and thats more stable and compatible.

And im sure that other communities around tech will have different views of the hardware, its just that pc enthusiast on forums like here and gamers are almost together so when you build an enthusiast PC its assumed that you gonna build it for gaming. There are other kind of PC enthusiast, they just aren't here hahaha

[thrasher_565]

i dont get it are we sapos to talk about $20,000 quadro? the most people cant afford? and there are places on here you can talk about that stuff... plenty of other uses for pcs... ied argue that aaa games are losing people thow more people are gaming over all the casual players...  there also a growing build of pcs for work. i seen this for years now.

[porina]

Maybe a slightly different way to look at it is that gaming has been a significant driving force in consumer hardware progress, at least for the gaming GPU era going back over 20 years. Early GPUs, or 3D video cards as they were known then, were primarily sold for the purpose of gaming. If it's an office machine you only needed a 2D video card. It is only over time that 3D video cards got more complexity and were usable for wider roles. Fixed graphics functions were generalised as math functions opening up more uses. Now we have smaller data type support, done in vast parallel quantity to enable the "AI" area.

 

With nvidia as a specific example, for most of their existence gaming category was the biggest earner. it was only relatively recently that datacenter products overtook gaming as the highest revenue segment.

 

Other areas outside the GPU may be less gaming centric. Maybe you could argue some display technologies were driven by gaming. Are there uses for variable refresh outside of gaming? Likely high refresh rates would not have become mainstream available if not for gaming.

[LloydLynx]

@TakumideshWhat do you use your computer for? And if you have multiple computers, what are they and how do you use each of them? I'd like to hear what your non-gaming use cases are. 

[Arika]

10 hours ago, Takumidesh said:

GPU performance metrics and discussion that is only relevant to games, advice almost entirely focused around games, etc.

because most people ask about games.

 

if someone asks "hey i'm guilding a computer for Blender/VFX/ML/CAD" then they will be provided with answers regarding that. 

 

do you have examples of the above where someone has jumped in and asked "well what about gaming?"

[LogicalDrm]

As noted, it's what community decides is main. What are you after? LMG does evaluate (mainly laptops) on productivity, but for them it means general office tasks. Are you looking for more sysadmin or engineering type of content? Or artistic/creative?

[Mihle]

PCs for browsing the web or writing in word, probably the most common use, but it's not much point making videos about it because even weak PCs can do it. And if you do that, but do not game, it's most likely a laptop you are after.

 

When it comes to gaming Vs for example video editing or 3D modeling stuff and topics on this forum, the fact is that gaming on a PC is much more common than what those things are. Especially on this forum. I am guessing that the people that do video editing or 3d modeling for a living and don't game at all, are much less likely to even be on this forum, than those that do game.

 

Also, what a YouTube channel does drives what kind of people that use the forum liked to the Channel.

If you are more in to server stuff and PC for programming and data analysis or whatever else they do, Level 1 tech forum is probably the place you want to go, not here.

[Takumidesh]

8 hours ago, LloydLynx said:

@TakumideshWhat do you use your computer for? And if you have multiple computers, what are they and how do you use each of them? I'd like to hear what your non-gaming use cases are. 

I typically use my computer for a lot of things.
learning new skills, and trying out things like video/audio editing, 3d modiling, cad, and other skills (not claiming to be good, just hobby level). I administer my home server for media (movies and shows), file management (software like paperless), software development. I like to work with hobby electronics, like microcontrollers. research, writing, reading, media consumption, homework (when I was in school), life management (software like firefly, ghostfolio, monica, etc), home automation, automotive (romraider) and of course I do play games too.
I have like 5-6 computers of varying quality and power (desktops, laptops, raspberry pis, a server, and some other random things)
 

 

2 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

As noted, it's what community decides is main. What are you after? LMG does evaluate (mainly laptops) on productivity, but for them it means general office tasks. Are you looking for more sysadmin or engineering type of content? Or artistic/creative?

100% that makes sense, and I didn't really mean to target any given community (or this one!) maybe it is just my perception, but it is also what I see a lot of people IRL seems to focus on. Maybe I am just being an old man, but the thing that drove my interest in computers was the freedom they provide to teach yourself skills and build (software or hardware) a machine that can do amazing things for you.

 

To everyone in the thread, I didn't expect this many replies! I hope it wasn't perceived as an attack on anyone's interests.

 

[Giganthrax]

Gaming and video/3D rendering are the two most demanding tasks the vast majority of people will do on their PCs, hence why reviewers focus on gaming benchmarks and rendering benchmarks such as Blender tests.

 

There's really no reason to focus on other things in a review since a computer that can run AAA games well and deliver good rendering times will automatically also be able to do anything else you may need it to do as well.

[igormp]

7 hours ago, Giganthrax said:

There's really no reason to focus on other things in a review since a computer that can run AAA games well and deliver good rendering times will automatically also be able to do anything else you may need it to do as well.

Nah, even the most powerful mainstream desktop will be shit for CFD due to the lack of memory bandwidth and lose to any entry level HEDT platform 

 

Jokes aside, yeah, if it can game well it can do other stuff as well, probably.

[Imbadatnames]

9 hours ago, Takumidesh said:

I typically use my computer for a lot of things.
learning new skills, and trying out things like video/audio editing, 3d modiling, cad, and other skills (not claiming to be good, just hobby level). I administer my home server for media (movies and shows), file management (software like paperless), software development. I like to work with hobby electronics, like microcontrollers. research, writing, reading, media consumption, homework (when I was in school), life management (software like firefly, ghostfolio, monica, etc), home automation, automotive (romraider) and of course I do play games too.
I have like 5-6 computers of varying quality and power (desktops, laptops, raspberry pis, a server, and some other random things)

At a hobbyist level you don’t really need a powerful computer for any of that. A M1 MacBook would handle it all. 

9 hours ago, Takumidesh said:

100% that makes sense, and I didn't really mean to target any given community (or this one!) maybe it is just my perception, but it is also what I see a lot of people IRL seems to focus on. Maybe I am just being an old man, but the thing that drove my interest in computers was the freedom they provide to teach yourself skills and build (software or hardware) a machine that can do amazing things for you.

 

To everyone in the thread, I didn't expect this many replies! I hope it wasn't perceived as an attack on anyone's interests.

 

The gaming market is huge therefore most discussions are about gaming PCs, if you go onto idk a photography/videography forum you’ll see more about the best computer for photoshop or Sony vegas would be, if you go over to AutoDesk or DS forums you’d get people talking about if a quadro is really worth it for Solidworks or inventor. LTT is mainly a gaming PC founded forum which is where the conversation goes as are most other places that talk about PCs currently. 

[Rex Hite]

With the GPU playing a more useful role in workstation tasks like with Photoshop, the Topaz suite of photo enhancers, etc, it would be nice if there could be videos benchmarking the relative merits of GPUs for those sorts of tasks. As well, LTT could take a look at the large line of  'pro' video cards that AMD makes specifically for productivity and creativity applications.

 

LTT makes videos about servers so workstation videos shouldn't be too out there for them.

[Zodiark1593]

On 12/14/2022 at 1:45 PM, Takumidesh said:

It seems that every topic about building and using computers is tainted with gaming performance. I like to play games don't get me wrong, but it seems that there is always a built in assumption that gaming is the only thing that matters when it comes to having a computer. GPU performance metrics and discussion that is only relevant to games, advice almost entirely focused around games, etc.
Maybe I am being a sourpuss, but the idea that desktop computers are being sequestered into 'advanced video game consoles' frustrates me.

 

Thb, the use cases for high-spec PCs are relatively rare. The vast majority of non-gaming (and even casual gaming) users will see little benefit from high end CPUs and GPUs in their day-to-day work. So long as they have enough RAM, decent-ish CPU + iGPU, and not total hot-garbage SSD, they’re set. 
 

This is a pretty far cry from 90s and early 00’s computing where going with a faster CPU would help with common applications of the time. 
 

Nowadays (quite frankly, for a long time, since 1st gen Core i), outside gaming, the only applications to be picky with components are fairly specialized use-cases, such as production, or a home-built server. 

[Majinhoju]

I'm willing to bet that most people who are building a decently powerful computer are doing it with gaming in mind. Sure, there are productivity uses but that's likely not the majority.

 

The next computer I put together will largely be based off the gaming performance of its hardware. Nothing else I do on my computer requires a high end cpu or gpu.