LadyCrimson

We were looking at my mobo specs and RAM this evening and it looked like it'd be around $80 for each 4GB stick (that was the cheaper ones, some were $140), I have 6 slots so if I filled all of them for 24GB. Ram has become a little pricey I guess. (edit - note I'm talking about replacing the entire Ram, not just adding more - the six slots are currently full with six 2Gb sticks and I don't like mixing) I have an OEM version of Win7 that would likely not appreciate being installed into an entirely new rig and I have yet to find a new packaged Win7 that seems reputable - although in that case it's partly because I'm not very trusting. A lot of the ones I see being sold have lots of comments from buyers saying the keys were used and that kind of stuff. The SSD yes, about $300-$400 depending on brand and all of that. The one hubby likes was $500 tho. He's had bad experiences with some SSD's and he's become rather picky because of that I guess.

Note: by upgrading I don't mean I expect a ton of improvement, only that I want to maybe delay building entirely new for a couple years So, I'm constantly surprised by how well my old i7-920 still does, at least when paired with a decent GPU like the 980ti. I can often still get 50-60fps in games with High settings and 1440 if I want, although I may have to turn off special effects like Gameworks. Often seems to work better than some people with far newer (but lower grade) CPU's. Anyway, main block for new rig - Windows 10. And of course right now prices are inflated. So if I was to "ugprade" this old rig, it'd be like this: --better CPU cooler in case I want to OC it to 3.2 --16 or 24 RAM instead of 12, where it would still be D3 but maybe a little "faster." More importantly, just more since games are becoming more RAM hogs. --1 TB SSD This would add up to around $900-$1000. If I built an entire new rig it might be $2500+ not including a GPU or monitor if I wanted to buy those. I want to avoid Win10 as long as possible. I don't play tons of "new, intensive," online or shooter games but would like to have the possibility of running them at least ok-ish @ 1080 if I did want to play one. Main question mark would be whether $1000 would really work for the next couple years or if I should just grin and bear it with Win10. What do you think is the better course of action for me at the moment? P.S. - it's amazing to think I built this entire rig 8-9 years ago for around $1100 (initially - gpu upgrades over time, of course). Now that just barely upgrades it. Sheesh.

All antsy lately, waiting for PC release FFXV. Not interested in "playing" the demo since I know the game inside and out already and the demo save doesn't carry over, so...it's the waiting game. Which means I pester hubby even more than usual (he says I'm like a cat peeking around a corner...), bake brownies, scrub the floors, pick lint off the bedroom carpet, try but usually don't succeed at watching TV, organize stuff, dance to silly music, and so on. Maybe I should take up habitual drinking.

I expected to see a lively discussion about all the cool new OLED screens or something. I was disappointed. I don't think I mentioned this one yet: Have been slowly watching the "Electric Dreams" anthology series on Amazon - they're based on Philip K ****'s stuff. The great thing about anthology series is you can skip around to any episode since there's no continuity issues. So I've only watched the ones with the well known actors in them, so far - Steve Buscemi, Bryan Cranston, Greg Kinnear. They range from ok to pretty good, but most of the appeal was from the actor vs. material. Supposedly the best episodes are ones I haven't watched yet but overall I'd say it's watchable, or at least some episodes are. It's nowhere near as good as Black Mirror, but it passes the time well enough if you have nothing else to watch and don't want story-commitment. I hope more anthology series are made now and then, vs. being almost totally forgotten. No one will ever beat original Twilight Zone but they can keep on trying.

You can use Ansel mid-combat. And clip everywhere. I am so happy. it's a bit rough on the HDD tho, when you're triggering it every few combat frames to check things out/clip around for 10 minutes, repeat.

OK ... this Ansel snapshot mode is the bees knees. Forget "playing" the game, I'm going to be running around like Prompto trying to figure out what will make awesome screenshots.

Not playing but testing out the FFXV demo. I shoved it over to the 4K TV and played it at 1440 everything High and max quality texture assets (4k textures I guess), to start with, out of curiosity. It was largely like in the benchmark (even with Hairworks off) where 50-60ish fps but sometimes tanks down to 35ish. And the 6GB of GPU ram on the 980ti basically ran always maxed out with the 4k textures. Heh. if I drop it down to some Average, some High settings and turned all the Gameworks off, 50-70fps became more the norm, with no drops. One notch lower in texture quality = 70% of gpu ram eaten. So I think a lot of people could run it ok at 1080 with some mixture of settings, since this was on my ancient i7-920. My CPU temp didn't go up that high either, I was surprised by that. At higher resolutions it looks pretty sweet graphically and lighting-wise but at 1080 with a wide mix of average or low it looks worse than the PS4-Pro, imo. Especially if you turn the AA off.

If you mean cause you have a smaller SSD ... just install it on a cheap huge HDD then. The load times on my 7200 HDD are improved vs. the Pro by about an average of 20-40 seconds. So main loading screens are 40-50 seconds instead of 70-90 seconds, so far. That's not that bad, imo. The PS4 has slow HDDs. Fast Travel isn't very long loading anymore either, at least in the demo. It could get a little longer in the larger open-world section or FT from one to the other.

Yeah, I'm not so sure about this 1st person mode thing ... Although, it does work. But it's weird, at least in this demo and my starter weapon + you're not used to it yet. Most of the time can't see weapon itself, it just pops in and out at times. Which is good for screenshots but looks weird at times. Some linkstrikes shove you out of 1st person, some don't. Too bad you can't ride chocobo's in Chapt. 1, I hear 1st person is good with them at least. (will be fuzzy in 480, ok in 720)

Was cleaning out/organizing my drives in prep. for the PC version and these are some of the wee moments, glitches and misc. things I found amusing, from the past year. No fancy editing/slapstick, just fave moments semi-randomly put together. If you're bored (and you know the game/chrs, ofc) it might provide a couple chuckles. There are no story spoilers, it's about 7 minutes long, and your humor mileage may vary. Most importantly, my drives are all organized now. I'm ready for that Windows Edition!

Spending the past few days clearing out HDD space for all the game videos I'm anticipating myself making soon. Tempted to buy another internal HDD so I don't have to do this so often but ... nah. External drives will make do. But that next rig (that I keep claiming I'll build one day) I'm going to have a 2TB SSD and three 4TB internal HDD + a couple external backups. That might be enough. Maybe.

Congratulations! I'm afraid I don't have any advice either. Hubby and I always just went for simple silver or silver-toned type bands and for quite some time now neither of us even wear them most of the time. You keep taking them on and off when you do heavy task work then forget to put them back on and ... but I occasionally wear one when I want to display my marital status for some reason. I've considered getting us some new titanium bands but haven't done so yet. LOL ... Abyss?

it's now seeming like the demo of Chapt. 1 will have side quests disabled - likely meaning the Hunter quest chain would be unavailable. Still, that isn't a huge time aspect in Chapt. 1, so if one wanted to just fart around in the available areas you could waste a lot of time if you felt like, leveling and experimenting with Techniques and combat on the wildlife, etc. Still a decent demo.

No one knows the actual download size. He's using the stated install size/requirement as a the reference. 100GB - non-4k install, 155GB - 4k install. Although I'd suspect the download itself will still be over 70-80GB. And no, they're not good with optimizing this game in general. The way they load the world is the dumbest thing ever, but nevermind. The console version so far is around 90 GB installed. (all updates, all DLC) The demo is actually very generous - you can finish Chapt. 1 in 30-45 minutes if you really want but you can also goof off around in it for multiple hours if you really feel like it.

"With (FFXV's new) first person mode, this will be the closest thing we get to Half Life 3." --- a post on another forum

So, I heard about a FFXV PC/Steam demo and went to check the game announcements. There's a demo all right, or will be on the 26th (tutorial and Chapt 1). Which will likely be a better "can I run it" barometer then the benchmark tool was. But...ROFL, also, this: omg, hahaha - the crossover madness continues. The Half-Life Festival won't be long behind, right? Although, whacking things in the game with the crowbar may be fun.

When you're down...you've got a friend... My favorite LinkStrike - it's amazing how many there are, but most will never see very many because of the gear requirements for them to proc. This one, Noct. must use a polearm+Ignis a polearm in his 2nd slot+random chance of occurring. (7 seconds) One of my fave in-store "new recipah" moments I've had. Not being close by is no deterrent, Ignis must have his say. (14 seconds)

Remember "Evolution of Dance?" It's rather like that. Except he's doing them out in public instead of on a stage. A bit uneven and a bit too long but I lol'd several times.

I envy you (and anyone else). Not that mine hurt all the time but they don't feel "normal" either. "Pinching/grip" strength is nearly gone, some days super hard to pull off things like yogurt foil tops or hold dishes w/out dropping them. Although most games don't require a lot from those two fingers, thankfully. Thumb just sits on the spacebar for example. But damnit, I'm going to keep gaming thru it until the fingers fall off.

I get it. I had a cheap boom box and later a car tape player that liked to "eat" tapes on a regular basis.

I apologize - just one more. This has now become my exercise video. Although it's a bit hard to aerobics-dance while laughing at the same time. (I also downloaded the "MMD" animation program - maybe I'll have the energy to do something with it one day)

Tried to watch the 1st episode of "Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict" - didn't make it past the 30 minute mark. I'm not sure if was cheese, the dated nature of the effects, the acting ... none of it was the worst but combined it left me yawning. I guess there's a couple of these Roddenberry post-passing series I never saw...

Interview re: modding tool possibilities for FFXV https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/02/20/final-fantasy-15-mod-support-essential/ ...all world npc's as cactuars is funny and all, but I need that dance mod. ...sadly initially it'll probably be mostly the usual reskins and other stuff I rarely care about. Just hope those tools will actually eventually let you do more than minor changes and level editing.

You can just click on "OK" for any of the survey parts. It won't complain if you don't enter any data. Just hit the buttons until the testing starts. Oh, ok. My first thought was some kind of mild profiling by zip code and 2nd thought was my own over-protective anal-retentive privacy concerns. :D

I got as far as "insert your zip code" and went "nah."