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Swan-of-War wrote:

How many players can you get on your computer?

32-64 depending on the game.

 LordofHats wrote:
I see the strawman has come to play.

That won't work, I'm afraid, when the evidence is posted here for all to see.

 Manchu wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I see the strawman has come to play.

That won't work, I'm afraid, when the evidence is posted here for all to see.

"PC gaming isn't elitist and anyone who disagrees is dense, lazy, irresponsible, and should stick to consoles."

And I suppose it is easier to make stuff up than read what's actually said.

Some people enjoy messing around with hardware. It's really the only reason Nvidia and ATI continue to release a new card series every year even though there's not much of a market need for it. other people just want to play a game. Consoles work great for that. It's a major reason for their success over PC's in the early 2000's. That's not accusing people of being lazy it's realizing that they have different priorities. PC gaming involves a little more effort than console gaming, i.e. work. Not everyone wants to spend their free time working if it's not something they can enjoy or deal with.

Never said that was irresponsible or that they should just stick to consoles. But complaining that the naming scheme used by Nvidia or Radeon is hard to understand is being dense. It doesn't take that long to decipher their system as unintuitive as they make it. There are entire websites that break these things down. Those tables Mel says are vague and tell her nothing are honestly the most laymen's terms graphics cards can be laid out in. And it's laid out that way because it's all the average consumer needs to know. The 550 in GTX 550 Ti is all that matters for her purposes. The GTX is meaningless and the Ti is meaningless unless she wants to go screwing around in the BIOS. We can talk about shaders, clock speed, processing clusters, and multistreaming ability, but none of that really matters. I don't need to know how a plane works to ride in one and likewise I don't need to know exactly how a GPU works to use one. Those numbers are labeled onto the cards so that non-tech genius' can find a card to meet their purposes. Nvidia in particular does a bad job at it because they slap all that crap next to the number but the number is still sitting there in plain sight.

EDIT: The thing you'll likely see most overlooked on the internet when it comes to GPU's isn't even the GPU's really but power supplies. high end gaming GPU's use 12 volt rails, and some low end commerical PC's use power supplies that have no 12 volt rails (I'm shaking my fist angrily at Dell).

 LordofHats wrote:
In all honest someone is either exceedingly dense, or just unwilling to put in any effort if they can't answer the question "will my graphics card run this game". Graphic cards are a simple higher number = higher performance deal. Nvidia muddled that back in 2009 when they launched the 100 series (cause I guess they didn't want to make an GeForce 10000) but it's not that hard to figure out. Just go to wikipedia and type in GeForce. They have a list of every series in order of release and a break down of Nvidia's naming system. If someone can read that and not figure out how it can be applied, I don't think Nvidia's naming scheme is the problem.

So, by the chart you posted earlier, and what you said here, the Geforce GT 620 should be significantly better then the Geforce GT 520? Both of which will offer better performance, then, say a 480 GTX?

 Ouze wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
In all honest someone is either exceedingly dense, or just unwilling to put in any effort if they can't answer the question "will my graphics card run this game". Graphic cards are a simple higher number = higher performance deal. Nvidia muddled that back in 2009 when they launched the 100 series (cause I guess they didn't want to make an GeForce 10000) but it's not that hard to figure out. Just go to wikipedia and type in GeForce. They have a list of every series in order of release and a break down of Nvidia's naming system. If someone can read that and not figure out how it can be applied, I don't think Nvidia's naming scheme is the problem.

So, by the chart you posted earlier, and what you said here, the Geforce GT 620 should be significantly better then the Geforce GT 520? Both of which will offer better performance, then, say a 480 GTX?

 LordofHats wrote:
The biggest complaint that I think can be legitimately leveled against their naming conventions is that they advertise their cards for gaming purposes even when the card isn't designed for gaming i.e. a GeForce 620 or a Radeon 7350 and they don't always make this clear in their marketing.

Cause people only read so much before they have to comment. I guess I just expect people to be able to use their brains too much. it's not like a card ending in 20 is clearly labeled by the table as HTPC, and a card ending in 80 is labeled something else, suggesting that those numbers are being applied to cards with different capabilities or anything. That would just be too confusing.

You spent 3 posts explaining how simple it was, and how dense you'd have to be to not get it. You laid it out in black and white: you don't need the numbers before and after; the higher number is better. It's simply not complicated!

Geforce GT 620 is better then Geforce GT 520, and both are better then 480 GTX, yes?

Forget the 480, then. Which is better - Geforce GT 620 or Geforce GT 520?

I suspect we both know the cards are virtually identical. Congratulations. We both know that Nvidia sometimes releases GPU's that perform at the same level or worse than previous cards at the same product level. Lets totally focus on that instead of the general trend.

 Palindrome wrote:

Swan-of-War wrote:

How many players can you get on your computer?

32-64 depending on the game.

Sorry, should have clarified - how many players in the same room?

 LordofHats wrote:
I suspect we both know the cards are virtually identical.

No, we don't. Answer the fething question.

Jegus this is just sad. You really ARE an elitist.

We do, actually. The point I was making is that Nvidia's naming scheme is inherently confusing, and this

 LordofHats wrote:
If someone can read that and not figure out how it can be applied, I don't think Nvidia's naming scheme is the problem.

is not true. Nvidia's own statements are contrary to this. They simply don't follow that chart when it suits them, period.

I didn't know that, thus "we" didn't know it

You know what bugs me. We don't have a big PC open world game. I can see a open world game really benefiting from the extra ram and hard drive on the PC.

nomotog wrote:
You know what bugs me. We don't have a big PC open world game. I can see a open world game really benefiting from the extra ram and hard drive on the PC.

Minecraft, GTA, Saint's Row, Skyrim...

...either you're trolling or have been living under a rock Oo

 Ouze wrote:
We do, actually. The point I was making is that Nvidia's naming scheme is inherently confusing, and this

 LordofHats wrote:
If someone can read that and not figure out how it can be applied, I don't think Nvidia's naming scheme is the problem.

is not true. Nvidia's own statements are contrary to this. They simply don't follow that chart when it suits them, period.

Nvidia's done it several times in the past (one of the most notable being the GeForce 5000 series, which had a few cards that performed worse than the 2 year old 3000's) but unless we're now going to accept that the presence of 1 rich black man means African American's are not generally poorer than whites in the US, you're conflating a single case of the scheme being untrue to it being untrue in all cases (not that Nvidia doesn't do this about once or twice every three-four years). But I guess if that works for you. Lets use the silly cards that aren't even capable of running high end 3d graphics to prove that we can never use their naming scheme for anything... except when they can generally be relied upon to be representative of performance but why let reality effect our little delusions of the world. It's not like the 690 has 1000 more transitors, 50% larger bus, and twice the fill rate of a 590 or anything. Those numbers are obviously meaningless just because Nvidia's been gouging people blind with their low end HTPC cards since the late 90's.

No, we don't. Answer the fething question.

Jegus this is just sad. You really ARE an elitist.

So, Ouze asks a question, I answer the question, and you then claim I'm not answering the question? That's kind of the definition of dense.

Still not seeing how that's elitist though. It's pretty normal for some people to know things other people don't know (I don't really know anything about chemistry, but I think you do). I guess we're all elitists, on the inside.

 LordofHats wrote:
Nvidia's done it several times in the past (one of the most notable being the GeForce 5000 series, which had a few cards that performed worse than the 2 year old 3000's) but unless we're now going to accept that the presence of 1 rich black man means African American's are not generally poorer than whites in the US, you're conflating a single case of the scheme being untrue to it being untrue in all cases (not that Nvidia doesn't do this about once or twice every three-four years). But I guess if that works for you. Lets use the silly cards that aren't even capable of running high end 3d graphics to prove that we can never use their naming scheme for anything...

I didn't say that. You are making a strawman of my argument and then pretending that is what I said. What I said was that GPU naming schemes are somewhat inconsistent, and that I could understand why it's difficult for people to understand them. I'm not the one insisting in speaking in total black and white statements, such as "Graphic cards are a simple higher number = higher performance deal. " - you are, and are doing so even why admitting things like they have rebranded their cards several times in the past. It's not one example, the last one was a batch of like 6 different cards. Which you know, but are discarding it anyway because... whatever.

In any event, this is a stupid thread now where people are trying to show off, for whatever reason, how big of a jerk they can be with needlessly abrasive language and invective because... well, I'm not sure about that either.

 Ouze wrote:
because... well, I'm not sure about that either.

Because they're definitely not elitists! Don't be dense!

 Ouze wrote:
What I said was that GPU naming schemes are somewhat inconsistent,

Then why are we arguing? Recognizing that they are at times inconsistent isn't the same thing as them not being generally reliable which has been my entire point. My hope was that people might catch on to what is a fairly simple naming scheme but rather than just accept that the scheme itself is simple we're muddling everything down with specific cards and market scams, something that the average consumer doesn't need to worry about. The only people who'd need to worry about it are hardware enthusiasts cause they're the only ones buying a new grapics card every year which I doubt most people want to do if they just want to play games. Getting a 550 now, and running with it until minimum requirements shift and then getting a 850 or w/e the new hardware happens to be, is a very simple purchasing decision and a reliable hardware upgrade.

It's not difficult and it's not hard. They don't make it easy but it's not calculus.

It's not one example, the last one was a batch of like 6 different cards. Which you know, but are discarding it anyway because... whatever.

And we're discarding that this practice is almost exclusive to their lower end lines for whatever reason? No one should be buying a 610, or one of the multitude of 630's they're current selling to play the latest Bioshock game (not that I don't think Nvidia doesn't hope people make that mistake).

 Sigvatr wrote:

nomotog wrote:
You know what bugs me. We don't have a big PC open world game. I can see a open world game really benefiting from the extra ram and hard drive on the PC.

Minecraft, GTA, Saint's Row, Skyrim...

...either you're trolling or have been living under a rock Oo

Multiple platform games don't count because they can't really take advantage of the PC.

Sorry, but I've got to side with LordofHats. And if the best rebuttal you've got is "You're an elitist!" then you need to find a better rebuttal (you should know better Mr. Mod Manchu).

I've been out of the game for years and am slowly easing myself back into the concept of PC gaming with a new PC I hope to get in the next couple of months. It doesn't take much to figure out what graphics cards to get. You can even do the most basic thing in the world and go "Sort by price - high to low" and generally that'll show you what's at the top and what's not.

I'm not rebutting anything. The position is its own rebuttal.

 Manchu wrote:
I'm not rebutting anything. The position is its own rebuttal.

It is easier to make up a position than to bother reading someone's actual position.

 Manchu wrote:
I'm not rebutting anything. The position is its own rebuttal.

Holy dismissive posting, batman! As someone who knows very little about the current ins and outs of PC gaming, Google and talking to people who know about such matters allowed me to understand the whole "what video card to buy mystery" quite easily.

Anyway, to adress the OP, I was very big into PC gaming back in the day. I recall the day that I had saved enough money to put 16 megs of RAM into my PC so that I could run Doom 2! I was exclusively console for over a decade, mainly after I joined the Marines and moving around so much made consoles less of a hassle, but recently I've been picking up more and more games for the PC (Starcraft was a major influence here). The point being: I don't think any type of gaming is better or worse, it all boils down to personal preference.

How convenient any given information is to come by is irrelevant. The act of disparaging those who do not possess whatever knowledge that you do is elitist all the same. Indeed, constant appeal to the alleged simplicity of obtaining said information just emphasizes the elitism by further disparaging those who don't possess it. As we have seen ITT, the argument that the information is easy to find and learn has been used to characterize those who don't possess it as dense, lazy, and irresponsible.

It really could not be any clearer why PC gamers, who often engage in this very behavior, have a reputation for being elitist.

There is a reason for the reputation. Not everyone who plays PC games is a dismissive snob, but they are very noticeable when they show up.

I guess i dont get it..

Everytime on this forum that a thread like this comes up..

I see more Console gamers calling PC gamers elitists than any PC gamer saying much.

And to add to the issue of people not having a clue if their PC can run a game or not...

There are many ways to do this.. And they are extremly easy.. Don't try to make it to complicated.

For Example

This website
http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri

 Spyder68 wrote:
I see more Console gamers calling PC gamers elitists than any PC gamer saying much.

You will find ITT many posts -- even including your own -- describing why the knowledge associated with PC gaming is accessible ... despite whatever people who do not possess that knowledge may claim. Whether the information is or is not accessible is immaterial to the act of criticizing people for not possessing it. There is a difference between saying "go to X site for that information" or "I can explain that to you and answer your questions" on the one hand and saying "that is so easy to find that only someone who is lazy, dense, and/or irresponsible would claim not to know it." The first category of example is not at issue; no one is claiming all PC gamers are elitists all the time. The second category is at issue because it has come up ITT, paradoxically, as an argument for why PC gamers are not elitists.

 Spyder68 wrote:
I guess i dont get it..

Everytime on this forum that a thread like this comes up..

I see more Console gamers calling PC gamers elitists than any PC gamer saying much.

There is literally not an outright example of this in all 4 pages. Manchu made a jokey aside but that is the closest . Your point is invalid. EDIT

Yep. This only came up because of the simple and true distinction between console gaming and PC gaming being that PC gaming can be about performance, and therefore technical knowledge, while console gaming simply can't (at this time).

 Manchu wrote:
seen ITT, the argument that the information is easy to find and learn has been used to characterize those who don't possess it as dense, lazy, and irresponsible.

That's your crazy made up position not mine. If someone doesn't know how to read the system requirements box, that's not dense, lazy, or irresponsible. I don't disparage anyone for simply thinking "wtf is all this. Screw it where's the PS3 section." But they are being dense if they than ask how to tell one graphics card from another and upon having it explained (however shoddily) continue to say it's too hard is being dense because it isn't that hard. If someone doesn't have technical knowledge of PC hardware they're going to have to operate using rules of thumb or take the time to obtain technical knowledge. But there's only so much time in one's day and some people don't want to spend their time learning all the parts of graphics card and why they matter, which isn't lazy (not in a bad way anyhow).

The rule of thumb for a graphics card is that a higher number is better (more expensive is better kinda works too). It's a very simple rule and yet people in this thread call me an elitist for even suggesting something so straight forward and calling it simple. Ask the internet is an even simpler and more universal rule but apparently that's hard too? So when people show a inability to apply such a simple rule, I call it dense and somehow I'm also calling them lazy and irresponsible. If that's all it takes to be an elitist than I guess I'll just go find a t-shirt or something.

No, it's your words.

See here:

 LordofHats wrote:
someone is either exceedingly dense, or just unwilling to put in any effort if they can't answer the question "will my graphics card run this game"

You are an elitist, and frankly, it's entirely uncalled for.

I built my own fething computer seven years ago-- went through metric [Mod Edit - careful with the language please! -Thanks! Alpharius] of research to make sure it'd last a long, long time. And it did. But that's the thing-- even today, when I ask questions like "will this work", I usually get at leats three different answers.

You've given me four pseudo-answers in this thread yourself. No straight answer.

And yet you have the gall to call ME lazy.