Video Games Thread

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I finally got around to updating the BIOS of my motherboard, it now POSTs with a full screen when using the iGPU in my Skylake rather squishing everything into the top half of the screen. Means I've had a quick play around with overclocking and at the moment it's looking like I've got it from the stock 4.0GHz to 4.5GHz. The voltage is a little too high for my liking so I might bring the voltage down and reduce the clockspeed down to 4.4GHz.

Will have another fiddle around tomorrow I reckon.

[Late]

Looking forward to more news on Phoenix Point - a new game by Julian Gollop (the original creator of some of my favourite games, including xcom):

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/06/14/phoenix-point-new-xcom-julian-gollop/

Sounds very promising

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Got my voltage down to 1.385V and am still at 4.5GHz stable

Once I get my 1080 my VR machine is going to be A BEAST

Mind you, the stock situation for these things is ridiculous as well as the inflated price of the bloody things. Hopefully the prices will come down when the quid starts to recover. I might hold off buying one until later than I have originally planned I think. I might even end up getting my 1080 and Rift in November together assuming that the pound is stronger then.

It's looking like Oculus have FINALLY managed to sort out their pre-order backlog now. If you order one now you'll get it in a few days.

I reckon they must have shifted over 250,000 units by now, I think that the amount of pre-orders they've had to deal with have been 50,000 per month. And if you add that to the 150,000 (HTC announced 120,000 sales a while back) or so Vive's that HTC have probably sold by now we should be looking at over 400,000 VR headsets in homes worldwide already.

When you consider the high-end PC requirement and the price of the headsets themselves that's pretty impressive (even though they are purely numbers I've pulled from my bum lol)

Should be well over 1m VR headsets in homes before the end of the year I reckon.

[Late]

I estimate that there are about three million PCs powerful enough for an HMD like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive...
Within 12 months from launch, I'm estimating 300,000 to 500,000 units sold including all PC HMD brands. Consumer purchases would be in the 300,000 range, and everything above that would be units purchased or given away for content creation and marketing.

Should be well over 1m VR headsets in homes before the end of the year I reckon.

Two very different predictions from the experts, there...


Meanwhile...

I bought two xbox One games this week. Despite the fact I've not actually played on the xb1 in months. I think the last game I played on there was Fallout. Was enjoying it immensely, but didn't get very far before being distracted and forgetting about it.

I got "Unravel" on Tuesday, as it's had some good reviews and was reduced in a MS sale that day. (It was announced on Wednesday that it'll be added to the EA vault next week, which is a bit of a kick in the teeth, but c'est la vie...) Haven't had a look at it yet.
And I bought "Inside" yesterday. It's effectively a follow-up to Limbo, and I played it today.
Fantastic little game. They've nailed it again. If you loved Limbo you'll love Inside. If you weren't a fan of Limbo, don't bother getting this.
As with it's predecessor, it's a relatively short game (I completed it today), but length isn't everything. Despite what the missus says.

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If I remember correctly that guy gave those estimates a while back, before AMD and NVidia revealed their 480 and 1060 GPUs which have greatly reduced the cost of building or buying a VR Ready PC.

And there must be over 400,000 HMDs in homes right now, so even if he said this yesterday he's only expecting 100,000 to be sold between now and New Year's Eve. You'll probably see at least the same amount of HMDs sold again that have been sold between the day that pre-orders opened and today before the end of year considering that the time period includes the Christmas shopping season.

We'll have to wait and see, but my 1m guesstimate is going to be closer than his. Only 100,000 sold between now and the end of the year..? Good luck with that lol

Edit: Yup, that guy made these predictions on 6th March, before either HMD had launched. The sales of both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift have surprised everyone so far, including HTC and Oculus themselves.

We don't know how many Rifts have been sold so far but now that I've done a quick search on Google, going by SteamSpy figures you'll be looking at around 100,000 Vives sold so far (can't remember where I got 120,000 from now).

Even if Oculus have only sold 250,000 and HTC have sold 100,000 that's still 350,000, more than the lowest estimate he gave for 6th March 2016 - 6th March 2017. Even his highest guesstimate for the year would mean that both HTC and Oculus would only sell, what..? 150,000 units, between them, between now and 6th March 2017.

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Have just started having another go at overclocking my 6700K. I reckon I'll be able to get it higher than 4.5.

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I'm now at 4.6, remains to be seen if it's stable or not though.

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Nice. Played an hour and 40 minutes of Elite Dangerous without any problems, no BSODs and maximum temperature was just 73 degrees. Pretty good considering that my CPU is also doing all of the graphics work. Going to fire up Project Cars tomorrow and see if everything is still stable.

[stupac]

Limbo was a great little game. Enjoyed that a lot. Although I only got it as it was a PS Plus free game. I think I would have been disappointed if I had paid for it, considering how short it was.

Never Alone was another brilliant game that I got for free. I'd recommend that one if you like platform games.

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Sod it. I have now pre-ordered a Zotac Amp Extreme from Amazon. The prices of 1080s are REALLY taking the piss so I've pre-ordered it before the price goes up AGAIN. Hopefully they're not going to have it in stock before I can afford to pay for it! They were £579.99 I think a few days back and have gone up to £633.99. Ebuyer and Overclockers have them at £672.99 and £695.99 respectively

You're looking at £660-670 for a decent AIB card at the moment.

I was planning on limiting my spending for this card to £599.99 but the pound dropping like a stone has messed that plan up. I keep on telling myself that it's going to be worth it in 5 years when electronic goods over here will be as cheap as chips due to the unrestricted commercial dealings that the UK will be able to do with the likes of India, China, Japan and the States when we've left the EU. Might even be sooner than that with a bit of luck.

Means that my second Amp Extreme will be A LOT cheaper in a few years

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Just given Project CARS a quick go and had a maximum temperature of 82 degrees which is pretty good considering the work that the CPU is doing all on its lonesome. When I get my GPU I'd be surprised if my temperatures go much above 70 degrees under full load.

I still have 2 more case fans to add too, just as soon as I figure out how to get the top of the bloomin case off lol

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Bollocks. My Wii U died some time yesterday

Hopefully it's just the power supply, have ordered another one and will be getting it tomorrow. If it's not the PSU then that will be the very first console that's died on me. I never would have guessed that the first one would be a Nintendo one.

[jman]

If your CPU is getting up past 80 degrees then you've got serious overheating problems - past 80 and that's dangerous territory IMO.  I installed a big fuck off artic fan a good few months back and mine didn't even reach 65 when I was doing some CPU intensive video editing the other month.

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80 degrees under full load is fine. I'd be happier with 70-79 but I'll be getting that with my GPU doing the graphics work easily.

[Late]

So is this something I should be worried about?





I've always wondered at the little flame symbol, which I assume means it's too hot, but it's been like that since day one (so nearly a year and a half) - and nothing's overclocked (as far as I'm aware - I don't know about such things).