Is hardware withdrawal a recognized disease yet?

digitalwanderer

digitalwanderer

wandering
Legend
Having went from an FX9590 with a Radeon Duo Pro down to a phenom 965 that I had paired with my faithful 5870 so I could at least still play NFSU and Dirt 2 on it.

Just had to swap out the 5870 to my daughter's PC for the HDMI out, I'm now using a <choke> nVidia 9800 GT. Basically a 1GB 8800GT. In windows 10 even scrolling is jerky and sometimes there's a delay between typing and input it's so damned slow.

Is hardware withdrawal a thing or am I just being whiny? I've REALLY been jonesing to lose myself in some gaming, and the only thing I can play right now is XIII and I'm trying to stretch it out. :s

I doubt it's gonna last long, but DAMNED you don't know how good you have it until it's gone and then man do you miss it! :(

It's constantly in the back of my mind too, I can't shake it. I've been doing cleaning projects around the house to get my mind off it and that gets me even more hateful over the lack of an IT budget. <sigh>

At least tomorrow I'll be hooking up my dauhgter's PC in the basement to her big screen TV. She's loving it down there since I've been cleaning it out, and tomorrow is gonna be a big cleaning/setting up day for us. (Both kids are helping me with it, it's been weirdly enjoyable) My wife is having her staff over to play pool and cards against humanity on Tuesday night so that's my absolute deadline to have it all ready by. (I found that out yesterday, btw. <sigh>)

I don't want to give up on PC gaming damn it, but it feels like I'm almost being forced to and I think I resents it. Just curious if anyone else had experiences with downgrades and dealing with it.
 
More like life has been, but yeah. Over the period of a few short months I went from a godlike rig (imho) to basically back to 2009 tech. It hurts, hurts bad. :(
 
Your daughter need the 5870 or just HDMI out? If it's just the HDMI you could get a cheap $30 GPU.
 
Yeah I'm in Intel HD 4200 and its fine.

Maybe force uninstall the gpu driver and install it again? Or loose power cable? Or out of date gpu bios?
 
Malo said:
Your daughter need the 5870 or just HDMI out? If it's just the HDMI you could get a cheap $30 GPU.
Click to expand...
Yes? Her system needed a card, I'd taken the 5870 I was using out of hers so I just gave it back.

I am NOT spending $30 on a POS GPU for an HDMI out when I have a bloody perfectly good Radeon Pro Duo on my shelf! I'm gonna get a mobo that works and put my card back in!

I can handle the downgrade a bit, and while yeah the card can run win 10 I really can notice a difference at how fast images and windows move/load/appear/etc, I've just never had it before with an OS. I'm just gonna keep Bubbles limping along until better days come, but I am going to whine about it a lot too. :p
 
You can still have fun with a phenom 965 + 9800gt config.
You won't be playing modern AAA games, but there are lots of great older and modern games that don't require great hardware.
Browse the usual gaming websites and search for the best mainstream and indie games from the past and present.
Look for lists of good games that don't require fast hardware.
Look for great obscure/forgotten/unknown games.
Install console or arcade emulators (or ScummVM) and play the best games from the 70s, 80s and 90s.
 
That's what I've been doing, just gotta go through and replay all the classics from that era to kill time....but it's very hard for me to go backwards gaming. I'm not as in to retro as most people mainly because "retro" doesn't mean the same to me, games people call "retro" are what I call my childhood. Played pong in the early 70s and knew I had just done something that was going to be a major influence on my life and the world around me. Haven't been disapointed since. :)
 
There's lots of modern games you can play that don't require large amounts of GPU power. One of my favorite games at the moment is Darkest Dungeon, which merely requires OpenGL 3.2 and Windows XP.
 
Maybe you're remembering your childhood because you're replaying games from your childhood?
Do you feel the same when you play older games for the very first time?
 
rcf said:
Maybe you're remembering your childhood because you're replaying games from your childhood?
Do you feel the same when you play older games for the very first time?
Click to expand...
That first bit is a damned good insight. There's been a few other factors bringing up my past, but I never thought of gaming as like a song. You play it and remember that period of time in your life or something significant that happened around when you were playing it, like you do when you hear a song that brings back an old memory.

Thanks dude, that really helped me with some shit. Heartfelt appreciation, my brain has been confusing me lately and you just helped me figure out a piece of the puzzle. :)

The second part I don't know, I can't think of any older games I played for the first time. I generally played 'em when they were new and skipped very few games I wanted to play, I've been insanely fortunate in that regard. :)

Also, I just have this stupid duality thing with my life. When my personal life is sucking my digitalwanderer one is usually rocking, and vice-versa. It's like a personal karma balancing act between the two that I have no control over, 'cept this time it's just sort of going a bit of terribly awful with both at once and I haven't had that happen in over 20 years and it's kind of weird and hard for me to deal with.

Nothing I can't deal with mind you, no panics here and please don't go feeling sorry for me! I got a nicer house than I have any right to with a wonderful wife and two great kids, along with 3 dogs and 3 cats that are also insanely wonderful who just make every day interesting and fun as hell. The only meals I miss are those I choose to and I live quite comfortably, it's just my wife has issues with me spending ANY money on PCs due to some stuff early in our marriage (my fault too, just saying) and so I have a pretty much zero PC budget unless my wife or one of my kid's PCs need fixing and I don't have the parts.

I have a lot of good friends in the industry who've been kind enough to give me kit over the years and it's pretty much how I built every PC in the house. My PC parts when I got new ones I'd use to build one for my wife, then kids, then friends or people I know who aren't as fortunate and can't afford one I love to build 'em for. You'd be amazed how much difference some old hardware can make to a young kid who only has a chromebook to do all their schoolwork on, a desktop PC can change their lives.

That kind of stuff makes me incredibly happy, and it's also my way of giving back to everyone who helped me throughout the years. I knew nothing of modern PCs when I got online in '93 with our Pentium 60hz, but years spent on forums asking questions and having kind people who had the time/patience to teach me changed my life. It's why I can never charge someone for fixing a PC, it's my way of trying to repay the kindness of all those people who helped me.

Sorry for the babble, weird life this week. :)
 
No worries.
But since you're suffering from "hardware withdrawal", it may be worthwhile to go all the way and stop the addiction (at least for a while) by doing some other activities and forgetting about the computer, especially since you seem to live in a beautiful place full of open spaces and nature, instead of the urban clutter of larger cities.
Now excuse me because today and tomorrow are holidays around here (carnival) and I'm going to party and/or get wasted. See ya.
 
Just to clarify (since I can't edit my posts):
What I meant is that if you don't want to play older games then you could focus on other stuff and resume gaming after your new motherboard arrives.
BTW, I also have an ancient Radeon 5450 just like Silent_Buddha and everything is smooth on Windows 10.

Now to carnival, hopefully I'll be back tomorrow night.
 
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