The most frustrating thing about having a hobby is that you never really have time for one unless you're unemployed and lonely. For better or for worse, I'm neither. This was the case before I bought my new PC, and it's still the case now that I've gotten most of my games installed on it. There will always be weekends, and I have a few hours of downtime after work each weekday, but it becomes more clear every time a new game is released that I'm going to
die of old age before I get to finish every game that I deem worth playing. Such is
the price I pay for attempting to have a life on the side.
So far, I've actually spent more time fiddling with my PC than playing games on it. Lately, this fiddling has been the enjoyable kind; I've been installing all the software I need, rearranging my desktop icons like the truly obsessive-compulsive person I am, and more generally setting things up just how I like them. For the first few weekends of my PC's existence, however, I had nothing but trouble.
First, I didn't bother getting a wireless network adapter because a stationary computer should ideally be placed where an ethernet cable can reach it. Unfortunately, I needed the computer to be in another room temporarily. To remedy the situation, I tried using something I already had in my closet — a D-Link wireless USB adapter. It worked pretty well until my network started slowing down or crashing every time I tried to use a lot of bandwidth (i.e., by downloading a Steam game). I'm still not sure what the problem was; maybe there was some kind of incompatibility with the router, or maybe something more complicated was going on. Maybe it was my computer's fault, somehow. Fortunately, I don't really need to figure it out, since I'm using a wired internet connection now and I don't really have any need for Wi-Fi (let alone the D-Link adapter) in the near future.
Other problems included a couple of random blue screen errors (most likely caused by an AMD video card driver which I've updated) and various problems with various games. The original Assassin's Creed, for example, refused to start when I first installed it, and I'm not even sure how I fixed the problem. I'd tried a few things, given up, and turned off the computer, and when I tried launching the game again later, it worked just fine. (Actually, I had to turn on compatibility mode for Windows Vista because I was getting a black screen where the opening cut scene should have been, but that's hardly an issue. As often as compatibility mode fails, it should always be the default first move if an old game does something weird.)
Compatibility mode for Windows 98 / Windows ME was also the initial solution for the Steam version of the original Max Payne, which failed to launch even though the process was visible in the task manager. However, even after the game launched, some of the music was gone and the sound effects were severely messed up. Fortunately, some nice guy created his own patch to fix the problem. It sucks that the original developers of old games like Max Payne aren't willing to invest the time and money to solve these problems themselves (especially when they're still selling these old games alongside their sequels on digital services like Steam), and the amateurs who pick up the slack are true heroes.
I'm reminded of Command & Conquer: The First Decade, a box set of a dozen games from the series. A couple of official patches were released, but not all of the bugs were fixed, so fans started patching it up themselves. The unofficial 1.03 patch, a collection of bug fixes and other features, was absolutely essential for anyone who had this particular Command & Conquer box set. But it's not just the occasional issue with an outdated game that often necessitates a third-party fix.
Now that I have a good computer, my older games don't even come close to pushing the graphics card to its limits, which means most of these games will needlessly run at a frame rate much higher than my monitor's refresh rate. Usually, this just causes screen tearing. In extreme cases, I can even hear what sounds like coil whine, an irritating whistling noise coming from inside the computer (not the speakers). This happens on the main menu screens of F.E.A.R. and some other games, presumably because the computer is able to render thousands of frames per second when there isn't much to display.
Turning on a game's Vsync feature (preferably with triple buffering enabled as well) fixes these problems, but a few of my games don't have a working Vsync feature. Each of the games in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy, for example, has an option for Vsync in the settings, but in all three games it does nothing. It's straight-up broken. The optimal solution would be to force Vsync and triple buffering through the control panel software of ones graphics card, but AMD cards can't do this for certain games on Windows 7, and it's my understanding that both Microsoft and AMD are to blame for that. Even with Vsync set to "always on" in Catalyst Control Center, I was getting stupidly high frame rates in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.
Then I heard about D3DOverrider, a little tool included in an old freeware program called RivaTuner. It's made to enable Vsync and triple buffering in software that's missing one or both options, and it works like a charm. Despite S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s broken Vsync feature, and despite Catalyst Control Center's inability to fix the problem, D3DOverrider gets the job done. Now I'm getting a fairly consistent 60 frames per second, instead of hundreds of frames in-game and thousands of frames on the menu. No more vertical tearing and more no quiet-but-irritating coil whine.
That other first-person shooter set in a post-apocalyptic Eastern Europe, Metro 2033, has its own share of issues, namely that a lot of useful options don't show up in its menu and have to be toggled on or off by editing a few configuration files in Notepad, and it also appears to have a broken Vsync feature. In this case, not even D3DOverrider appears to be solving the problem. Fortunately, the game's poor optimization means that it doesn't always exceed 60 frames per second at the highest graphics settings anyway, making Vsync mostly unnecessary. People with more powerful systems might have to keep on looking for solutions.
All of this is pretty frustrating, but troubleshooting is to be expected when playing games on a PC, especially when the games are relatively old and the operating system is relatively new. I guess I should just be glad that most of the common problems can be solved.
"But if only you'd bought a console," some would say, "your games would just work." That's the favorite argument in favor of consoles. They just work. But now that the short-lived phenomenon of backwards compatibility has gone out the window with PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, I don't think it's a fair argument. Most of the problems with PC games arise when one is trying to have a nostalgic experience by playing an old game on a new system, and the other problems are usually the fault of careless developers.
I guess we should all be glad that PC games work at all, considering that our "gaming computers" are not standardized like all the millions of identical Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles. Since I'm not a game developer, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to ensure that a game is going to work consistently on so many hardware configurations. Maybe I shouldn't be so upset that games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. have a few broken features, or that games like Max Payne continue to be sold without being updated for the current version of Windows. On the other hand, it's harder to forgive professional developers for an imperfect product when presumably amateur developers are able to correct the imperfections without being paid.
Update: It seems that, since I originally wrote this post, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was actually updated with a frame rate cap of 60 fps. I'm shocked that such an old game was actually updated, to be honest, but apparently some people with expensive computers were burning out their video cards by leaving the game paused (thereby allowing the game to run at hundreds or thousands of frames per second for long periods of time). Terrifying.
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Midlife Crisis, Part 2
My new PC is up and running. All of the parts arrived about a week before Halloween, I put everything together on a Friday night, and I started installing drivers over the weekend. Since then, I've installed and tested a few somewhat-high-performance games, namely Crysis, Alan Wake, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, L.A. Noire, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. They all run rather well on the highest graphics settings. I've also played a bit of Metro 2033, which I got for practically nothing from the Humble THQ Bundle last November, and it performs well enough on maximum settings as well. There's some stuttering, but that's probably the result of poor optimization and there might be a fix somewhere.
For obvious reasons, I don't own any truly "next-generation" games at the moment, so I'm not sure what kind of performance I'll get out of those. In any case, however, I'm better off with this new rig than without it. My old PC worked surprisingly well with some games (running the Metro 2033 demo at a playable frame rate on low settings), but it totally failed to work with others (namely L.A. Noire which, for whatever reason, was getting about two frames per second). Games ported to Windows from the upcoming generation of consoles can certainly be expected to work my new PC much harder than anything I've played so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it performs. On the other hand, I can't really say I'm looking forward to seeing what my new favorite toy can't do. After all the time spent on this thing, from finding the parts to powering it on, I want to believe it's perfect.
I breathed a sigh of relief when the final parts arrived — with any luck, I wouldn't have to shop for computer parts again for a few years — but there was still plenty of stress ahead of me. The first hiccup was a return of my supposedly new Gigabyte motherboard to Amazon, since the retail box was not sealed and had some rips in the corners. In other words, it looked like it had already been opened, though the parts inside were still in plastic. Despite my complaints, however, the replacement's box was in roughly the same condition, perhaps slightly worse. Again, however, the inner parts were still in plastic.
I don't know if Amazon was trying to screw me by selling me returned hardware as new, or if Gigabyte was to blame, but I figured I could just get it replaced if it was indeed broken or damaged so I decided to use the motherboard anyway. This might prove to be a mistake, but I was getting impatient. Besides, if Amazon couldn't send me a box that looked shiny and new, I'd have to buy it from elsewhere, and I wasn't confident that other sellers would be more trustworthy than one of the biggest online retailers in existence.
So I started building the computer. Long story short, the motherboard was not dead on arrival, and I've been careful to keep all the paperwork I received for warranty purposes in case something happens later. All of the parts, in fact, seem to be working nicely, even the cheap optical drive. The process of actually assembling the computer was quite an experience, though, since I'd never done it before.
Now that I have done it, building another would probably take less than an hour, but this first build took several. Most of that time was spent reading instructions, looking up computer-building tips, and wondering how hard I need to push to get one part to slide into another. Getting the stock CPU cooler into the motherboard was particularly terrifying, because there's no way to accomplish this without pushing harder than I ever though delicate electronics should be pushed. The same was true of installing the processor itself. I was afraid I'd break it, but those fears were unfounded, since I was doing it correctly and there was no other way.
After getting all the parts into the case, I experienced another momentary freak-out when I thought the fans on the case were totally incompatible with the motherboard. (The motherboard had four-pin headers and the fans had three-pin connectors.) I was wrong — they can, in fact, be plugged in — but it doesn't really matter now anyway, because I opted to plug the case fans directly into the power supply instead. My only concern now is that I might have created air bubbles in the thermal paste when installing that troublesome CPU cooler, since I picked it up again after letting it make contact with the top of the processor. So far, however, the temperatures don't seem to be reaching dangerous levels.
Given all the minor difficulties I encountered — all of which could have been much worse with a little bit of bad luck — I completely understand why the path I chose is less traveled than others. Most people buy consoles or pre-built computers instead, and I don't blame them. Consoles, in particular, are super easy; they plug in and work. You don't have to worry about whether a game is compatible as long as it has the right logo on the box. Moreover, they're affordable, and while performance might only be "good enough" instead of great, it's hard to tell when you're sitting on a couch ten feet from the screen.
People who choose PCs over consoles are sometimes seen as elitists in the so-called "gaming" community, and it's probably because some PC users feel the need to participate in the embarrassingly pathetic "console wars" that break out between fans of competing systems. Xbox fans and Playstation fans like to argue amongst themselves about which console is best, letting their brand loyalty metamorphosize into some kind of vendetta against everyone who bought the other product as they collectively provide Microsoft and Sony with all the free advertising they could ever want. But the PC user, whose system is built from various parts by different manufacturers, doesn't necessarily have any brand loyalty unless he has an affinity for AMD over Intel, or vice versa. The stereotypically elitist "PC gamer" thinks he's above the petty squabbling of console owners, but he stoops to their level nonetheless when he proclaims that his PC is better than any console and says not-so-nice thinks about everybody who bought one. So I'm not going to do that.
It's true that a good computer can outperform any console, because a console is just a specialized computer and it's never made of the best hardware available. For the right price, a PC can surpass a brand new console on the day of release. Even a cheap PC can beat a console in mid-generation, since PC parts continue to improve while consoles stagnate for up to eight years. The PC user, in a way, is right about his system's superiority. That's why console fans who brag about graphics will usually turn around and claim that graphics don't matter once the PC guy joins the discussion. Either that, or they'll pretend it costs over $2000 to build a PC that plays console games at console-equivalent settings, or they'll insist that the only games worth playing are console exclusives.
But there's really no need to grasp at straws so desperately, because consoles do have their purpose. While a PC is good for the hardcore game enthusiast, a console is a much easier solution for casual play, most often for a lower price. A console is a hassle-free, plug-and-play, guaranteed-compatible alternative for the living room. Let's just leave it at that. I might have considered buying a console myself if I weren't in need of a new computer anyway. It was a choice between a console plus a cheap computer, or one good computer, and I chose the latter.
The worst thing about choosing a personal computer over a console is all the second-guessing that comes naturally with an abundance of choice. Now that I have my PC, I won't be buying another for a few years unless something goes terribly wrong, so I won't get to try all the other hardware presently on the market. I guess that's why some people get paid to review this hardware, but there's nothing like first-hand experience, and I'll never be able to make my own comparisons unless I go and buy more parts than I can afford. Console users have fewer decisions to make when buying their hardware, but people are generally happier this way because they don't have to worry as much about making the wrong choice.
As for me, I'll just have to clear my mind of all those what-ifs, and be content with what I have. That is, unless it breaks.
For obvious reasons, I don't own any truly "next-generation" games at the moment, so I'm not sure what kind of performance I'll get out of those. In any case, however, I'm better off with this new rig than without it. My old PC worked surprisingly well with some games (running the Metro 2033 demo at a playable frame rate on low settings), but it totally failed to work with others (namely L.A. Noire which, for whatever reason, was getting about two frames per second). Games ported to Windows from the upcoming generation of consoles can certainly be expected to work my new PC much harder than anything I've played so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it performs. On the other hand, I can't really say I'm looking forward to seeing what my new favorite toy can't do. After all the time spent on this thing, from finding the parts to powering it on, I want to believe it's perfect.
I breathed a sigh of relief when the final parts arrived — with any luck, I wouldn't have to shop for computer parts again for a few years — but there was still plenty of stress ahead of me. The first hiccup was a return of my supposedly new Gigabyte motherboard to Amazon, since the retail box was not sealed and had some rips in the corners. In other words, it looked like it had already been opened, though the parts inside were still in plastic. Despite my complaints, however, the replacement's box was in roughly the same condition, perhaps slightly worse. Again, however, the inner parts were still in plastic.
I don't know if Amazon was trying to screw me by selling me returned hardware as new, or if Gigabyte was to blame, but I figured I could just get it replaced if it was indeed broken or damaged so I decided to use the motherboard anyway. This might prove to be a mistake, but I was getting impatient. Besides, if Amazon couldn't send me a box that looked shiny and new, I'd have to buy it from elsewhere, and I wasn't confident that other sellers would be more trustworthy than one of the biggest online retailers in existence.
So I started building the computer. Long story short, the motherboard was not dead on arrival, and I've been careful to keep all the paperwork I received for warranty purposes in case something happens later. All of the parts, in fact, seem to be working nicely, even the cheap optical drive. The process of actually assembling the computer was quite an experience, though, since I'd never done it before.
Now that I have done it, building another would probably take less than an hour, but this first build took several. Most of that time was spent reading instructions, looking up computer-building tips, and wondering how hard I need to push to get one part to slide into another. Getting the stock CPU cooler into the motherboard was particularly terrifying, because there's no way to accomplish this without pushing harder than I ever though delicate electronics should be pushed. The same was true of installing the processor itself. I was afraid I'd break it, but those fears were unfounded, since I was doing it correctly and there was no other way.
After getting all the parts into the case, I experienced another momentary freak-out when I thought the fans on the case were totally incompatible with the motherboard. (The motherboard had four-pin headers and the fans had three-pin connectors.) I was wrong — they can, in fact, be plugged in — but it doesn't really matter now anyway, because I opted to plug the case fans directly into the power supply instead. My only concern now is that I might have created air bubbles in the thermal paste when installing that troublesome CPU cooler, since I picked it up again after letting it make contact with the top of the processor. So far, however, the temperatures don't seem to be reaching dangerous levels.
Given all the minor difficulties I encountered — all of which could have been much worse with a little bit of bad luck — I completely understand why the path I chose is less traveled than others. Most people buy consoles or pre-built computers instead, and I don't blame them. Consoles, in particular, are super easy; they plug in and work. You don't have to worry about whether a game is compatible as long as it has the right logo on the box. Moreover, they're affordable, and while performance might only be "good enough" instead of great, it's hard to tell when you're sitting on a couch ten feet from the screen.
People who choose PCs over consoles are sometimes seen as elitists in the so-called "gaming" community, and it's probably because some PC users feel the need to participate in the embarrassingly pathetic "console wars" that break out between fans of competing systems. Xbox fans and Playstation fans like to argue amongst themselves about which console is best, letting their brand loyalty metamorphosize into some kind of vendetta against everyone who bought the other product as they collectively provide Microsoft and Sony with all the free advertising they could ever want. But the PC user, whose system is built from various parts by different manufacturers, doesn't necessarily have any brand loyalty unless he has an affinity for AMD over Intel, or vice versa. The stereotypically elitist "PC gamer" thinks he's above the petty squabbling of console owners, but he stoops to their level nonetheless when he proclaims that his PC is better than any console and says not-so-nice thinks about everybody who bought one. So I'm not going to do that.
It's true that a good computer can outperform any console, because a console is just a specialized computer and it's never made of the best hardware available. For the right price, a PC can surpass a brand new console on the day of release. Even a cheap PC can beat a console in mid-generation, since PC parts continue to improve while consoles stagnate for up to eight years. The PC user, in a way, is right about his system's superiority. That's why console fans who brag about graphics will usually turn around and claim that graphics don't matter once the PC guy joins the discussion. Either that, or they'll pretend it costs over $2000 to build a PC that plays console games at console-equivalent settings, or they'll insist that the only games worth playing are console exclusives.
But there's really no need to grasp at straws so desperately, because consoles do have their purpose. While a PC is good for the hardcore game enthusiast, a console is a much easier solution for casual play, most often for a lower price. A console is a hassle-free, plug-and-play, guaranteed-compatible alternative for the living room. Let's just leave it at that. I might have considered buying a console myself if I weren't in need of a new computer anyway. It was a choice between a console plus a cheap computer, or one good computer, and I chose the latter.
The worst thing about choosing a personal computer over a console is all the second-guessing that comes naturally with an abundance of choice. Now that I have my PC, I won't be buying another for a few years unless something goes terribly wrong, so I won't get to try all the other hardware presently on the market. I guess that's why some people get paid to review this hardware, but there's nothing like first-hand experience, and I'll never be able to make my own comparisons unless I go and buy more parts than I can afford. Console users have fewer decisions to make when buying their hardware, but people are generally happier this way because they don't have to worry as much about making the wrong choice.
As for me, I'll just have to clear my mind of all those what-ifs, and be content with what I have. That is, unless it breaks.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Midlife Crisis, Part 1
I've been wanting a new PC for a while. In fact, I've wanted one ever since I first played F.E.A.R. back in 2005. The game was fantastic, but the computer I was using at the time was only decent, perhaps good, but not great. Those maximum graphics settings were pretty far out of reach; I think I had to settle for medium. (The horror!) Still, I was an optimist. I simply told myself that, someday, I'd have a computer that could easily run the game on the highest settings.
Of course, that wasn't exactly a promise to spend lots of money. I figured correctly that I wouldn't be getting a new computer for several years, and I knew that even a relatively inexpensive PC in the ambiguously distant future would be far more powerful than what I presently had. Then again, when investing in a new PC, one might as well invest enough to play contemporary games on the highest settings as well. So, whether I knew it or not, I was telling myself that someday I'd blow a bunch of money on an expensive toy.
It wasn't until about a year ago that I started to think more seriously about it. By this time, the personal computer had truly become my video game platform of choice, and the machine I had been using for years was starting to show its age, particularly with some of the more recent games. (I suppose I should be surprised that any of these modern games worked at all on such an old system, which had only been given a few small upgrades over the years). Although I'd only encountered a couple of games that simply refused to work at all, it was clear that it was time to move forward.
After some quick research, I decided that $800 would be a sufficient budget for a replacement. I just didn't know what to buy. My old PC had originally been a family computer not purchased by me, so I didn't know much about how to shop for a computer, let alone parts for a custom build. Of course, figuring this out doesn't really take a whole year. If I'd gotten my act together, I might have been done with the whole process by last Christmas, but I procrastinated. The holidays (and then spring and then summer) came and went before I got around to doing the research, setting aside the money, and making the purchase.
At this point, I could just buy one of the new consoles that are coming out later this year, but I've fallen out of love with consoles in general ever since I started playing shooters with a mouse, namely F.E.A.R. and its expansions. (I don't think I can ever go back to thumb sticks for anything requiring precision. Sure, consoles are still great for any genre that really does play better with a gamepad, but you can play those on a PC with a USB gamepad anyway.) Besides, very few of the games I've wanted to play over the past eight years have actually been console exclusives. Enough of them have been released for Windows that, throughout the lifetime of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, I've been content to keep playing on the computer I already owned instead of buying new hardware. Now that I have another opportunity to get on the console bandwagon, I don't think that's going to change.
I can certainly see the appeal in the idea of standardized hardware, though. I've been agonizing for weeks over how best to balance the money I'm spending with the performance I'll get, but console owners don't need to make these tough decisions. I can also see the appeal in the exclusive games if there are enough of them to make a difference. However, I don't want to be stuck on the same hardware for the next eight years with no possibility of upgrading, and I don't really want enough of those upcoming console-exclusive games to justify the purchase of any particular console.
So, a number of weeks ago, I started actively researching PC parts, reading reviews of mid-to-high-end graphics cards and asking for advice in various places. One of those places, for better or for worse, was 4chan. It's worth noting that, on the site's /v/ and /g/ boards, the standard response to any question about PC building is a link to a guide called Logical Increments. I was wary about taking too much advice from a single popular source without going any further down the rabbit hole, but it seems to be a competently written guide, and a good starting place for anyone in my position. As of now, I highly recommend it, but the nature of the site means it changes constantly. I don't know how good it will be any number of months or years from now, if it still exists.
After some further research (which mostly involved lots of careful comparison of benchmarks, reviews, and prices), I did ultimately take quite a bit of advice from Logical Increments, getting a processor and a motherboard presently listed on the site's "Superb" tier and a graphics card which was until recently listed on the "Excellent" tier. Then I added some memory, some storage, a power supply, and a case, as well as an inexpensive optical drive (because I still have plenty of old games on discs), and I was done. Here's the breakdown:
I made my purchases from three stores — Amazon, Newegg, and NCIX — and while NCIX didn't seem to add any tax to my subtotal, Amazon and Newegg both did. (I think the current rule for New Jersey, though I believe it's going to change soon, is that an online store must charge sales tax if it has a physical presence within the state, so I can only assume that NCIX does not.) After applying the 7% tax to everything but the CPU, RAM, and HDD, my $800 build was suddenly much closer to $850, which I can only bring down to around $830 if I do the mail-in rebate. I'm not sure if I will, though, because I've heard these rebates tend to require that you send in the proof of purchase that is also required to get a replacement under warranty, and I don't want to jump through too many hoops if I need a replacement part. So $850 it is, until further notice. If sales tax had been applied to everything, I'd be looking at $870 (or $850 after the potential rebate), so I guess I should be glad for that.
Did I really get a good deal? I'm sure someone will tell me I didn't. After deciding on my parts, I could have waited months to get the best possible deal on each individual component, but I felt it would be best to buy them all at once. (Keep in mind that I do want to test them all before any of them are too old to return.) I had already considered prices when choosing my components in the first place, and I'd have to do that work again if I waited long enough for prices to start fluctuating away from the low price/performance ratios I'd deliberately sought out, so I just bought the whole list as soon as I was ready. Sometimes prices go down if you wait, but sometimes they go up, and I can't see the future.
Yet, even if I did get a good deal on these parts, I can't help but wonder if it was simply a bad time to buy a PC, given next month's launch of Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The next-generation (and soon-to-be current-generation) consoles are as close as they'll ever be to state-of-the-art. Although this PC will easily crush the outgoing generation in terms of performance, it won't have such a strong lead for very long. It's also worth noting that many games released for Windows are actually ports that were optimized for consoles, so the performance on a PC might be worse even if the console has weaker hardware. Now that consoles are suddenly getting more powerful, I can only hope my PC will be ready for whatever I throw at it.
We also might see further price drops in the AMD graphics card I bought, since a new round of AMD cards have just been released. Everything I bought might be cheaper when Black Friday comes around, as well. Waiting for the holidays might be the best time-for-money trade-off I could have made. However, my experience with Black Friday sales is that the deals aren't as good as people think and everything sells out fast, so I can't even be sure that waiting for late November would have helped.
In any case, there's no sense in worrying about it now. I don't spend money on myself very often, so if the computer works and I enjoy using it, I'll call it a win. I'll admit that $800 plus tax is a pretty hefty price tag, though, especially when I haven't included the peripherals. (For the immediate future, I'll be using the monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse from the old PC.) I haven't even included a copy of Windows (since I'm still trying to decide between 7 and 8).
To put things in perspective: My brother just got a new laptop for around $1000 (and my computer will play Crysis a lot better than his), but the cost of that laptop probably includes an extended warranty. The cost of mine doesn't. I'm putting my faith — perhaps too much faith — in manufacturer's warranties, which might screw me over if one of my parts dies two years down the line. Buying additional protection plans separately for each important component likely would have pushed my budget over the edge. But at least I'll be able to replace a single part without replacing the whole rig. I'm not sure if my brother, or any console owner, can say the same.
All that really concerns me right now is the Sapphire GPU, since I've heard that Sapphire's customer service is somewhat lackluster. On the other hand, I've heard some good things about the quality of their cards. I guess I'll just have to hope mine isn't defective; if it is, I'll just have to hope I can arrange for a new one without too much trouble. If worst comes to worst, and my new PC explodes after a month, I'll just hope I'm selected for beta testing one of the prototype Steam Machines, preferably the one with a GTX Titan. (Please?)
In times like these, the most comforting thought is that what's done is done; my PC is ordered and will be arriving in many parts shortly. At least, that's what I hope. Thanks to the free shipping from Amazon, I might not get to put this beast together until the weekend before Halloween. In the meantime, I'll keep on playing old games and some indie stuff from Humble Bundle. The Binding of Isaac, by the way, is a fantastic game. I regret that I didn't get around to it sooner.
Of course, that wasn't exactly a promise to spend lots of money. I figured correctly that I wouldn't be getting a new computer for several years, and I knew that even a relatively inexpensive PC in the ambiguously distant future would be far more powerful than what I presently had. Then again, when investing in a new PC, one might as well invest enough to play contemporary games on the highest settings as well. So, whether I knew it or not, I was telling myself that someday I'd blow a bunch of money on an expensive toy.
It wasn't until about a year ago that I started to think more seriously about it. By this time, the personal computer had truly become my video game platform of choice, and the machine I had been using for years was starting to show its age, particularly with some of the more recent games. (I suppose I should be surprised that any of these modern games worked at all on such an old system, which had only been given a few small upgrades over the years). Although I'd only encountered a couple of games that simply refused to work at all, it was clear that it was time to move forward.
After some quick research, I decided that $800 would be a sufficient budget for a replacement. I just didn't know what to buy. My old PC had originally been a family computer not purchased by me, so I didn't know much about how to shop for a computer, let alone parts for a custom build. Of course, figuring this out doesn't really take a whole year. If I'd gotten my act together, I might have been done with the whole process by last Christmas, but I procrastinated. The holidays (and then spring and then summer) came and went before I got around to doing the research, setting aside the money, and making the purchase.
At this point, I could just buy one of the new consoles that are coming out later this year, but I've fallen out of love with consoles in general ever since I started playing shooters with a mouse, namely F.E.A.R. and its expansions. (I don't think I can ever go back to thumb sticks for anything requiring precision. Sure, consoles are still great for any genre that really does play better with a gamepad, but you can play those on a PC with a USB gamepad anyway.) Besides, very few of the games I've wanted to play over the past eight years have actually been console exclusives. Enough of them have been released for Windows that, throughout the lifetime of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, I've been content to keep playing on the computer I already owned instead of buying new hardware. Now that I have another opportunity to get on the console bandwagon, I don't think that's going to change.
I can certainly see the appeal in the idea of standardized hardware, though. I've been agonizing for weeks over how best to balance the money I'm spending with the performance I'll get, but console owners don't need to make these tough decisions. I can also see the appeal in the exclusive games if there are enough of them to make a difference. However, I don't want to be stuck on the same hardware for the next eight years with no possibility of upgrading, and I don't really want enough of those upcoming console-exclusive games to justify the purchase of any particular console.
So, a number of weeks ago, I started actively researching PC parts, reading reviews of mid-to-high-end graphics cards and asking for advice in various places. One of those places, for better or for worse, was 4chan. It's worth noting that, on the site's /v/ and /g/ boards, the standard response to any question about PC building is a link to a guide called Logical Increments. I was wary about taking too much advice from a single popular source without going any further down the rabbit hole, but it seems to be a competently written guide, and a good starting place for anyone in my position. As of now, I highly recommend it, but the nature of the site means it changes constantly. I don't know how good it will be any number of months or years from now, if it still exists.
After some further research (which mostly involved lots of careful comparison of benchmarks, reviews, and prices), I did ultimately take quite a bit of advice from Logical Increments, getting a processor and a motherboard presently listed on the site's "Superb" tier and a graphics card which was until recently listed on the "Excellent" tier. Then I added some memory, some storage, a power supply, and a case, as well as an inexpensive optical drive (because I still have plenty of old games on discs), and I was done. Here's the breakdown:
CPU — $194.99Disregarding sales tax and applying the rebate, this puts my subtotal at $793.39. Most of the components were cheaper than they'd been in previous months, according to their respective price histories, so it looks like I got a decent price overall. Unfortunately, the effect of sales tax (usually a negligible annoyance) was a real bummer.
MOBO — $129.99
RAM — $68.46
HDD — $59.99
GPU — $209.99 (before $20.00 rebate)
PSU — $74.99
CD/DVD — $14.99
Case — $59.99
I made my purchases from three stores — Amazon, Newegg, and NCIX — and while NCIX didn't seem to add any tax to my subtotal, Amazon and Newegg both did. (I think the current rule for New Jersey, though I believe it's going to change soon, is that an online store must charge sales tax if it has a physical presence within the state, so I can only assume that NCIX does not.) After applying the 7% tax to everything but the CPU, RAM, and HDD, my $800 build was suddenly much closer to $850, which I can only bring down to around $830 if I do the mail-in rebate. I'm not sure if I will, though, because I've heard these rebates tend to require that you send in the proof of purchase that is also required to get a replacement under warranty, and I don't want to jump through too many hoops if I need a replacement part. So $850 it is, until further notice. If sales tax had been applied to everything, I'd be looking at $870 (or $850 after the potential rebate), so I guess I should be glad for that.
Did I really get a good deal? I'm sure someone will tell me I didn't. After deciding on my parts, I could have waited months to get the best possible deal on each individual component, but I felt it would be best to buy them all at once. (Keep in mind that I do want to test them all before any of them are too old to return.) I had already considered prices when choosing my components in the first place, and I'd have to do that work again if I waited long enough for prices to start fluctuating away from the low price/performance ratios I'd deliberately sought out, so I just bought the whole list as soon as I was ready. Sometimes prices go down if you wait, but sometimes they go up, and I can't see the future.
Yet, even if I did get a good deal on these parts, I can't help but wonder if it was simply a bad time to buy a PC, given next month's launch of Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The next-generation (and soon-to-be current-generation) consoles are as close as they'll ever be to state-of-the-art. Although this PC will easily crush the outgoing generation in terms of performance, it won't have such a strong lead for very long. It's also worth noting that many games released for Windows are actually ports that were optimized for consoles, so the performance on a PC might be worse even if the console has weaker hardware. Now that consoles are suddenly getting more powerful, I can only hope my PC will be ready for whatever I throw at it.
We also might see further price drops in the AMD graphics card I bought, since a new round of AMD cards have just been released. Everything I bought might be cheaper when Black Friday comes around, as well. Waiting for the holidays might be the best time-for-money trade-off I could have made. However, my experience with Black Friday sales is that the deals aren't as good as people think and everything sells out fast, so I can't even be sure that waiting for late November would have helped.
In any case, there's no sense in worrying about it now. I don't spend money on myself very often, so if the computer works and I enjoy using it, I'll call it a win. I'll admit that $800 plus tax is a pretty hefty price tag, though, especially when I haven't included the peripherals. (For the immediate future, I'll be using the monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse from the old PC.) I haven't even included a copy of Windows (since I'm still trying to decide between 7 and 8).
To put things in perspective: My brother just got a new laptop for around $1000 (and my computer will play Crysis a lot better than his), but the cost of that laptop probably includes an extended warranty. The cost of mine doesn't. I'm putting my faith — perhaps too much faith — in manufacturer's warranties, which might screw me over if one of my parts dies two years down the line. Buying additional protection plans separately for each important component likely would have pushed my budget over the edge. But at least I'll be able to replace a single part without replacing the whole rig. I'm not sure if my brother, or any console owner, can say the same.
All that really concerns me right now is the Sapphire GPU, since I've heard that Sapphire's customer service is somewhat lackluster. On the other hand, I've heard some good things about the quality of their cards. I guess I'll just have to hope mine isn't defective; if it is, I'll just have to hope I can arrange for a new one without too much trouble. If worst comes to worst, and my new PC explodes after a month, I'll just hope I'm selected for beta testing one of the prototype Steam Machines, preferably the one with a GTX Titan. (Please?)
In times like these, the most comforting thought is that what's done is done; my PC is ordered and will be arriving in many parts shortly. At least, that's what I hope. Thanks to the free shipping from Amazon, I might not get to put this beast together until the weekend before Halloween. In the meantime, I'll keep on playing old games and some indie stuff from Humble Bundle. The Binding of Isaac, by the way, is a fantastic game. I regret that I didn't get around to it sooner.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Family Sharing on Steam
Recently, Valve announced yet another new addition to Steam, called Family Sharing, which is to be launched in limited beta next week.
The new feature will allow you to authorize a "shared computer" on which others can download and play the games on your account. The official announcement doesn't specify whether these other players will need to be on your Steam friends list, but it's safe to assume they'll need to make their own separate Steam accounts if they haven't done so already. In return, they'll get separately logged achievements and saved progress for the games they "borrow" from your library. According to the FAQ shown here, up to ten devices can be authorized for sharing at once, but only one person is allowed to play the games from a single library at any given time.
The idea of sharing games on Steam sounds like a pretty big deal — a game changer, if you'll allow the terrible pun — but is it all it's cracked up to be? While you and some of your friends could, in theory, share the same pool of Steam games, time management would be an issue. Since a friend can only borrow your library when you're not playing, the Family Sharing feature amounts to little more than a safer alternative to the unofficial method of sharing Steam games — that is, letting your friend have your password.
Tighter restrictions might also be implemented later on — it's easy to imagine some kind of time limit on "borrowed" games, for example, or a drastic decrease in the number of shared computers allowed, or a drastic decrease in the number of games available for sharing — so we can only wait and see if the finer details of Family Sharing prove too good to be true after the beta is over. In the meantime, it might help to read those details carefully. There already are some games which can't be shared, according to the Family Sharing FAQ, namely those requiring "an additional third-party key, account, or subscription." While this limitation is technical, it makes me wonder if some developers will make sure their games are exempt from sharing by implementing any of these already-quite-irritating requirements.
So let's say Family Sharing doesn't live up to our expectations. Does this mean Steam's version of sharing is a bad thing? Not really. Any amount of sharing is extremely valuable for those who like to try before they buy (especially when playable demos are such a rarity these days). A lot of players supposedly engage in piracy for this purpose alone, and Family Sharing might present an alternative to some. It all depends on whether getting a friend to share on your computer (and then finding time to play when he or she is offline) is more of a hassle than finding a good torrent. As always, Steam has to treat piracy as a competitor. The problem will never go away, so the only real solution for digital distributors is to make their services so convenient that we don't mind giving them our money.
For many, however, no combination of convenience and competitive pricing can change their view that digital goods mean a loss of consumer rights. Being allowed to resell a thing that you've purchased is often considered a right, but it can't be done with Steam games. There's no thriving second-hand market for downloaded content because customers are rarely allowed to transfer "ownership" of what they've purchased. Even sharing without breaking the law can be difficult. While Steam can certainly try to remedy this situation, it might not be feasible for a digital distributor to emulate the way in which physical media can be shared legitimately among friends and family. Digital rights management always gets in the way somehow, often ruining the experience, while the total absence of digital rights management leads people to stop sharing and start giving away free copies. Neither scenario is ideal. (There are some DRM-free digital distributors, like Humble Bundle and GOG.com, but they're basically operating on the honor system, and they can only pull it off because their customers like them enough to support them voluntarily.)
Although any publisher of any intellectual property, retail or digital, might prefer that your friends buy their own copies of whatever you have, borrowing physical media is so commonplace that nobody really complains. But is it only allowed because it can't be avoided? Nintendo didn't try to stop me from lending my copy of Metroid Prime to a friend back in 7th grade because lending GameCube discs is legally and socially acceptable, but what's more important is that, unlike a digital distributor, they had no way of stopping me. The same can be said of music CDs, paperback books, and anything else you can physically hand off to your good pal. It always felt a little unfair that digitally distributed games like those on Steam — or, in fact, any game protected by any form of DRM, even if it comes on a disc — cannot be shared in the same way as your favorite book... but hey, maybe we're just spoiled by centuries of unauthorized sharing gone unpunished.
In any case, Steam's new Family Sharing feature will not erase all the perceived injustices of DRM, and Valve had its own arguably evil part to play in the rise of online DRM with the introduction of Steam back in 2003, but it seems to be a step back in the right direction. (At the very least, it certainly isn't a step in the wrong direction, since they're giving us some new options and taking none away.) The new feature on Steam certainly isn't a perfect imitation of "real" sharing, but it's a decent compromise.
The known limitations, while forgivable, are numerous. For example, your Steam library is shared not with a person but with a single computer, which means the so-called borrower cannot simply play your shared library anywhere he or she wants. Furthermore, you cannot lend a dozen of your games to a dozen different friends, since your library can only be shared on ten computers. Finally, since only one account can access a lender's library at a time, a single borrower essentially reserves the entire library instead of grabbing a single game. You can't let your friend play one game while you play another, so it's kind of like lending your copy of The Kite Runner to a friend when all the books on your shelf are glued together.
This kind of sharing does have some perks, though. After I lent that copy of Metroid Prime to that friend, I never got it back. If you're sharing your Steam games, you don't have to worry about this, and you can even boot your friend out of your library while he or she is playing if you've decided it's your turn to play. (According to the FAQ linked above, the other person will be given a few minutes to finish up or to buy their own copy of the game. How kind.) Better yet, since it's all digital, there's no "sorry, I scratched the disc" or "oh man, my mom sold it at the yard sale." The fact that your entire library is shared at once can also be a good thing, unless your friend is a young kid who needs to stay away from your bloody murder simulators.
It's entirely possible that Family Sharing will make Steam more attractive to those who usually avoid buying digital copies. Many of them, however, will probably continue to avoid Steam on principle, regardless of how Steam's features and restrictions might affect them personally. Even those of us who are always online, and always signed in, can be annoyed when going online and signing in is a requirement for installing a game. Even those of us who don't think Valve is likely to go suddenly bankrupt can be angry about what would happen if our accounts were to vanish into thin air. Even those of us who only care to share our Steam libraries with a single friend might be critical of the fact that we can't allow more than some arbitrary number of shared computers. Unfortunately for consumers of PC games, however, DRM is a fact of life. It has been for years. At least Steam makes it relatively painless most of the time.
I won't say they're adding this Family Sharing feature out of the goodness of their hearts — that's not how businesses operate. The most altruistic motivation they can have is the hope of bringing in new customers by improving their image. In this case, they might also be responding to the problem of accounts being shared off the record. You can share your Steam account without the help of Family Sharing simply by giving your password to a trusted friend, and Valve obviously knows some people are doing this. Instead of alienating customers by enforcing tighter restrictions, they're embracing the idea of sharing, but with sane limits. They can't stop us from sharing our accounts, but they can try to keep sharing under control if they can convince us to do it their way.
The new feature will allow you to authorize a "shared computer" on which others can download and play the games on your account. The official announcement doesn't specify whether these other players will need to be on your Steam friends list, but it's safe to assume they'll need to make their own separate Steam accounts if they haven't done so already. In return, they'll get separately logged achievements and saved progress for the games they "borrow" from your library. According to the FAQ shown here, up to ten devices can be authorized for sharing at once, but only one person is allowed to play the games from a single library at any given time.
The idea of sharing games on Steam sounds like a pretty big deal — a game changer, if you'll allow the terrible pun — but is it all it's cracked up to be? While you and some of your friends could, in theory, share the same pool of Steam games, time management would be an issue. Since a friend can only borrow your library when you're not playing, the Family Sharing feature amounts to little more than a safer alternative to the unofficial method of sharing Steam games — that is, letting your friend have your password.
Tighter restrictions might also be implemented later on — it's easy to imagine some kind of time limit on "borrowed" games, for example, or a drastic decrease in the number of shared computers allowed, or a drastic decrease in the number of games available for sharing — so we can only wait and see if the finer details of Family Sharing prove too good to be true after the beta is over. In the meantime, it might help to read those details carefully. There already are some games which can't be shared, according to the Family Sharing FAQ, namely those requiring "an additional third-party key, account, or subscription." While this limitation is technical, it makes me wonder if some developers will make sure their games are exempt from sharing by implementing any of these already-quite-irritating requirements.
So let's say Family Sharing doesn't live up to our expectations. Does this mean Steam's version of sharing is a bad thing? Not really. Any amount of sharing is extremely valuable for those who like to try before they buy (especially when playable demos are such a rarity these days). A lot of players supposedly engage in piracy for this purpose alone, and Family Sharing might present an alternative to some. It all depends on whether getting a friend to share on your computer (and then finding time to play when he or she is offline) is more of a hassle than finding a good torrent. As always, Steam has to treat piracy as a competitor. The problem will never go away, so the only real solution for digital distributors is to make their services so convenient that we don't mind giving them our money.
For many, however, no combination of convenience and competitive pricing can change their view that digital goods mean a loss of consumer rights. Being allowed to resell a thing that you've purchased is often considered a right, but it can't be done with Steam games. There's no thriving second-hand market for downloaded content because customers are rarely allowed to transfer "ownership" of what they've purchased. Even sharing without breaking the law can be difficult. While Steam can certainly try to remedy this situation, it might not be feasible for a digital distributor to emulate the way in which physical media can be shared legitimately among friends and family. Digital rights management always gets in the way somehow, often ruining the experience, while the total absence of digital rights management leads people to stop sharing and start giving away free copies. Neither scenario is ideal. (There are some DRM-free digital distributors, like Humble Bundle and GOG.com, but they're basically operating on the honor system, and they can only pull it off because their customers like them enough to support them voluntarily.)
Although any publisher of any intellectual property, retail or digital, might prefer that your friends buy their own copies of whatever you have, borrowing physical media is so commonplace that nobody really complains. But is it only allowed because it can't be avoided? Nintendo didn't try to stop me from lending my copy of Metroid Prime to a friend back in 7th grade because lending GameCube discs is legally and socially acceptable, but what's more important is that, unlike a digital distributor, they had no way of stopping me. The same can be said of music CDs, paperback books, and anything else you can physically hand off to your good pal. It always felt a little unfair that digitally distributed games like those on Steam — or, in fact, any game protected by any form of DRM, even if it comes on a disc — cannot be shared in the same way as your favorite book... but hey, maybe we're just spoiled by centuries of unauthorized sharing gone unpunished.
In any case, Steam's new Family Sharing feature will not erase all the perceived injustices of DRM, and Valve had its own arguably evil part to play in the rise of online DRM with the introduction of Steam back in 2003, but it seems to be a step back in the right direction. (At the very least, it certainly isn't a step in the wrong direction, since they're giving us some new options and taking none away.) The new feature on Steam certainly isn't a perfect imitation of "real" sharing, but it's a decent compromise.
The known limitations, while forgivable, are numerous. For example, your Steam library is shared not with a person but with a single computer, which means the so-called borrower cannot simply play your shared library anywhere he or she wants. Furthermore, you cannot lend a dozen of your games to a dozen different friends, since your library can only be shared on ten computers. Finally, since only one account can access a lender's library at a time, a single borrower essentially reserves the entire library instead of grabbing a single game. You can't let your friend play one game while you play another, so it's kind of like lending your copy of The Kite Runner to a friend when all the books on your shelf are glued together.
This kind of sharing does have some perks, though. After I lent that copy of Metroid Prime to that friend, I never got it back. If you're sharing your Steam games, you don't have to worry about this, and you can even boot your friend out of your library while he or she is playing if you've decided it's your turn to play. (According to the FAQ linked above, the other person will be given a few minutes to finish up or to buy their own copy of the game. How kind.) Better yet, since it's all digital, there's no "sorry, I scratched the disc" or "oh man, my mom sold it at the yard sale." The fact that your entire library is shared at once can also be a good thing, unless your friend is a young kid who needs to stay away from your bloody murder simulators.
It's entirely possible that Family Sharing will make Steam more attractive to those who usually avoid buying digital copies. Many of them, however, will probably continue to avoid Steam on principle, regardless of how Steam's features and restrictions might affect them personally. Even those of us who are always online, and always signed in, can be annoyed when going online and signing in is a requirement for installing a game. Even those of us who don't think Valve is likely to go suddenly bankrupt can be angry about what would happen if our accounts were to vanish into thin air. Even those of us who only care to share our Steam libraries with a single friend might be critical of the fact that we can't allow more than some arbitrary number of shared computers. Unfortunately for consumers of PC games, however, DRM is a fact of life. It has been for years. At least Steam makes it relatively painless most of the time.
I won't say they're adding this Family Sharing feature out of the goodness of their hearts — that's not how businesses operate. The most altruistic motivation they can have is the hope of bringing in new customers by improving their image. In this case, they might also be responding to the problem of accounts being shared off the record. You can share your Steam account without the help of Family Sharing simply by giving your password to a trusted friend, and Valve obviously knows some people are doing this. Instead of alienating customers by enforcing tighter restrictions, they're embracing the idea of sharing, but with sane limits. They can't stop us from sharing our accounts, but they can try to keep sharing under control if they can convince us to do it their way.
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