Architecture

The benchmarks on the Nvidia site are for the 980 Ti, not the vanilla 980. My brand new R9 390 is averaging probably 70, with lots of stretches in the 80s and 90s. Though I do have dips down to say...44? This is with literally everything on full blast minus v-sync at 1080p. There are definitely problems, but Nvidia owners have also reported the light flickering (which is most visible during explosions and towns at night). This is compared to a GTX 760 running at probably 33-40 FPS with mostly high settings and lowered LOD. Both cards dropped to a locked 30 with vsync enabled and since only the top 30% of the screen tears at any given time, I turned it off and gained an extra 10-60 FPS. I have had a few CTDs, however. The game definitely needs a once-over, but performance issues have only minimally impacted gameplay. Either way, the game is a hell of a lot of fun and definitely on my GOTY shortlist. I probably need to go back and play a little more MGS to firm my lineup, but JC3 is pretty much exactly what I wanted it to be--a more polished, more open version of the last game with insanely pretty art.

I think I'm going to forego support for Kickstarter and its ilk and just pay for the games or services on the back end, even if the cost increases. It's worked out just fine thus far. Shenmue 3 almost broke me, however.

Screen-space reflections, beautiful as they are, can cause frame rates to tank. I am used to turning it off pretty quickly. I find that Nvidia article helpful yet a bit hilarious--all these things "barely" ding your FPS, but when you add them all together, you're looking at tens of frames per second. It is interesting to see them chart all this stuff, but it would be more helpful if they demonstrated the performance impact on their range of cards and not just the $600 behemoth nobody actually owns.

Sounds like investing in a new GPU this year has already paid off.

This game is fantastic. For those of you with issues, have you tried disabling in-game vsync? Both my GTX 760 and its replacement (an R9 390) exhibit much better performance with it off. I'm running the beta Crimson drivers right now, and I'm north of 60fps the lion's share of the time. My 760 was good for about 30-40fps (with sub-30 dips when shit went sideways in spectacular fashion) on mostly high settings with a couple of tweaks here and there (turn off screen-space reflections!), but still totally playable.

51 GB is too much.

I have never played a Blizzard game before, but I want to start with this one. The art direction (particularly the character design) is so strong that I have to get my hands on it.

I'm gonna be That Guy™ and suggest you get the 4690K. You can easily overlock that chip to 4.4GHz and have it last you 5-6 years. The 4460 looks like a nice proc, but I'm going to guess you won't get the lifespan out of it that you will the 4690K. But if you're firm on prices, I'm going to say yes, the 4460 is absolutely worth the extra money.

I bring it up because Insurgency is the evolution of the old Red Storm games. I don't think Siege plays as well as Battlefield: Bad Company 2 did (in terms of destructible level design), and I don't think it fits the tone of the series. I'm not even sure Rainbow Six has the cachet to make the game stand out this holiday season. No tactical campaign? Call it anything other than Rainbow Six. Insurgency, on the other hand, is a terse cat-and-mouse game where every gun battle is won by position and preparedness. Fantastic coop levels as well, which get brutally difficult.

Let's play Insurgency instead.

The difference here is the games are already at their theoretical flash price, whether you buy it today or Monday. Vastly prefer the new system. If you didn't get on the winning team, you were fucked. Fuck all that, I don't want to play games to maximize my purchases--I'd rather cart home less games and actually play them.

Some of the button placement is bad and there's no option for remapping them. Left trigger for grenades is such a wasted opportunity--it should have been ADS or your grappling device. RB is sprint for some strange reason. Just let me remap the buttons (or maybe MS will come through and the Xbox app will let me do it myself in W10), please.

The most appealing sales to me thus far are: GTAV - $36 Her Story - $3.59 Rocket League - $14 Ori & the Blind Forest - $12 The Talos Principle - $13.59 I just bought a new mouse and graphics card, however, so I probably don't need to spend more money on games when I still have some I've never installed.

Only three games on my wishlist are not on sale. But I just ordered a new video card, so I'm probably going to wait for the winter sale in a month.

Reading this thread is so much easier than reading a long-winded email each week. Maybe one day I'll come back to this game. I enjoyed the time i spent with it, but it wasn't as engrossing as I hoped for.

Everything's manufactured by Apple in the future, so you need a good pentalobe driver.

The controller binds for JC2 are awful. In fact, they're about as bad as Fallout 4's MKB setup. And they both commit the cardinal sin of not allowing you to remap the setup to your liking. It's criminal, really. Has Avalanche released PC specs? I can't seem to find anything official from the quick Google search I did.

When do I get to this part?

What is this updating nonsense?

Pre-loaded and ready to go. Five hours and counting.

Also, this is probably the best game of the year of the Playstation 3.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is a once-in-a-lifetime masterwork. It's the highlight of everyone's career, or close to it: Spielberg in his prime and a giant budget after back-to-back hits; Harrison Ford's middle entry into an insane triple-whammy (The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders, Blade Runner); Lawrence Kasden's script is flawless; Some of Williams's best music; et cetera ad infinitum.

MGS is still mechanically dense, especially for its time. I don't think that Phantom Pain is more demanding of today's players than MGS was 17 years ago. Plugging controllers into port 2. Looking on the back of the game's physical case for a crucial hint. Temperature-sensitive passkeys for Rex. Shipping yourself around with multiple cardboard boxes.

My power has gone out like four times in the last week, so it has come in handy.