Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]
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davis.anthony
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For those needing a new CPU, here's what I did a few weeks ago.
I changed from an i3 12100f and MSI B660 motherboard to a 12400f and Asrock B660 Riptide PG
Now my CPU upgrade makes sense as it has six P-Cores rather than the four the 12100f has but you might be wondering why I changed motherboard?
Simple, the Asrock board has an external clock generator chip meaning it can BCLK overclock locked Intel CPU's.
My 12400f is sitting pretty at 5.2Ghz and at these clocks offers the same gaming performance as a 12700k.
The 12400f was £130 off eBay and the motherboard was £140 off Aliexpress (I had to order from Aliexpress as the cheapest motherboards in the UK that offer BCLK overclcking are £230+)
Total cost of the combo is £270, in the UK a 12600k alone is £269.99 so this package really is a bargain.
The Asrock board is compatible with 13th gen too, so the new 13400f (That has six P-cores + four E-cores) is a drop in upgrade for me in the next 12-18 months, or I drop in a 12700 that has six P-core + 6 E-cores.
This package should easily last the rest of the PS5 and Series console generation.
I don't think there's a singe CPU+motherboard combination that offers any where close the price to performance ratio this combination does.
I changed from an i3 12100f and MSI B660 motherboard to a 12400f and Asrock B660 Riptide PG
Now my CPU upgrade makes sense as it has six P-Cores rather than the four the 12100f has but you might be wondering why I changed motherboard?
Simple, the Asrock board has an external clock generator chip meaning it can BCLK overclock locked Intel CPU's.
My 12400f is sitting pretty at 5.2Ghz and at these clocks offers the same gaming performance as a 12700k.
The 12400f was £130 off eBay and the motherboard was £140 off Aliexpress (I had to order from Aliexpress as the cheapest motherboards in the UK that offer BCLK overclcking are £230+)
Total cost of the combo is £270, in the UK a 12600k alone is £269.99 so this package really is a bargain.
The Asrock board is compatible with 13th gen too, so the new 13400f (That has six P-cores + four E-cores) is a drop in upgrade for me in the next 12-18 months, or I drop in a 12700 that has six P-core + 6 E-cores.
This package should easily last the rest of the PS5 and Series console generation.
I don't think there's a singe CPU+motherboard combination that offers any where close the price to performance ratio this combination does.
Last year was a disaster for PC games - here's how things need to change
Digital Foundry presents its recommendation to PC game developers in delivering better ports after a dire 2022.
www.eurogamer.net
Remembered this 2014 article by Durante 
www.pcgamer.com
The features PC gamers want—an open letter to developers and gamers
For developers: the graphics options and features PC gamers expect. For gamers: insight into how much work it takes to implement those features.
www.pcgamer.com
It’s sort of crazy that 30 years later or PCZ games and settings and we’ve never really had a standard for them to follow. Devs sort of just made menus randomly which could have made their lives harder for no reason.
following a standard like this should reveal issues quickly and make settings easier for the developers on testing the final product.
I hope this picks up
Cheers, I'm wanting to avoid a full platform upgrade again at the moment though. I don't like to swap the mobo out too often (nothings gone wrong before but I'm always conscious of it!)
I'm toying with the idea of picking up a used 5800X3D on ebay which is the fastest CPU by current system will support and will likely give me an easy 50%+ improvement. But for now I'm not hitting any real issues on this CPU outside of the Witcher, and I can live with them tbh with frame generation in place. I'm not actually playing the game anyway, just playing settings
Yeah I can get it a fair way slower than that too. That said it's less the city that I had a problem with (which outside of the flickering hud elements was much better with FG, albeit far from ideal), and more an area in a small village I was testing which was likely a mix of both CPU and GPU bound. Here when I turned on FG the frametimes went crazy and input latency went through the roof - unplayably so (and I'm pretty tolerant in that respect). Eyeballing it I'd say 2-300ms! However after resetting the game that settled down a lot so was probably just a bug related to changing the settings, perhaps in combo with RTSS which at that point I think may have still had a frame cap engaged, albeit a generous one.
A lot of these are great but I'd be happy with 1,2,6,12,13 also ultra wide support
Last year was a disaster for PC games - here's how things need to change
Digital Foundry presents its recommendation to PC game developers in delivering better ports after a dire 2022.
That's 7.
It's not like they're unaware of what a good PC port involves. Perhaps for some Japanese dev who is very new to the open world of the PC ecosystem maybe, but in the vast majority of cases, PC ports are delivered subpar simply through because there's either complications that are too much to deal with, or the team just doesn't have enough resources(time, money, manpower) to do what they'd like to do. And sometimes just straight up lack of ability.
That's probably true, but sometimes you just have to scream loudly enough to be heard. Having an explicit "ask" from customers via a well-loved and reputable outlet like DF goes a long way into convincing devs that this stuff *matters* to PC gamers. Some of this is probably not that onerous to implement either (menus, FOV, better-separated quality settings, etc.).
I would wager a huge chunk of them don't actually know. Because western devs have pivoted into console gaming for enough time now from PC that you'd have to be over 40 now to remember being a pc only developer and what shit needed to be done.
From the more recent Santa Monica dev who said in a GOW PC port interview how mouse and keyboard became his prefered way of playing the game and he's been playing it like this for 2 years, only for the game to launch with negative mouse acceleration and that needed to be patched and have a new control option in the menu. To seeing two Shadow of the TR devs react in one of those speerun videos IGN used to host until recently and saying he's so used to playing with a controller that its weird seeing various actions done on PC. To seeing (modern) devs be shocked that PC gamers play games ... like a pc game and not a console one ...
Hellblade developer 'surprised so many people played the game with mouse and keyboard'
"Going forward, we will make sure that we get our interface and everything right for the PC audience."
www.pcgamer.com
If these devs are on the younger side and spent their entire lives playing console games, they wouldnt have where to know all the nuances from.
Inuhanyou
Veteran
That's not even an excuse. Even if your older and only played on console it's not an excuse.
If you don't have the knowledge or resources, hire someone who does have that knowledge or resources about the PC platform. That's why Sony bought nixxes. So that they can bring PC know how and knowledge to the side of gaming that doesn't need to worry about pc
The PC userbase doesn't need excuses they need results. Preferably yesterday
Read this response from a developer, its likely more than possible that developers may not have put enough thought into how much players prioritize certain things for the game to be playable.
if this is a standard list and this becomes the 'norm', and it results in increased sales - this would be the target for developers, because they are putting their resources elsewhere and failing on sales because reports of the games being unplayable is certainly more dire.
Digital Foundry || 13 Ways To End Lousy PC Ports in 2023 - Improved Settings, Smoother Gameplay, Essential Features Tech
Definitely need to keep these tips/suggestions in mind. This might be one of the rare DF videos which is just as useful to devs as it is consumers.
www.resetera.com
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