Subj : PC gaming hardware
To   : All
From : Nightfox
Date : Mon Mar 21 2022 14:00:51

Generally, I feel like PC upgrades aren't quite as exciting as they used to be. In the 80s and 90s, upgrading a computer processor, storage, RAM, etc. was significant because upgrades were usually a fairly big leap in what you gained with the upgrade.  When running software, it was very easy to tell that you had upgraded something because things would run noticeably faster in general, or there was some other significant benefit (such as goign from a monochrome display to a color display).  These days though, it's more difficult to notice the difference with an upgrade unless you're doing something that's fairly intensive (such as video processing, high-resolution gaming, etc.).

I had wanted to buy a Nvidia RTX 30 series graphics card since they were announced in late 2020.  However, that has been fairly difficult with the supply chain problems and scalpers buying what they can and selling them at higher prices.

Months ago, I had put my name on EVGA's wait list for a couple of their RTX 30 series cards.  My name came up a few weeks ago, and I decided to go ahead and buy one, since it was direct from EVGA and thus wasn't a scalper price.  I bought one of their RTX 3080 Ti cards; and even compared to the RTX 2070 Super that I previously had, I'm impressed with the performance increase.  One game I had tried a copule years ago was the then-newly released Quake 2 RTX demo.  I had tried it with RTX enabled and at 4K resolution, though it was a bit slow with the RTX 2070 Super.  A lower resolution helped.  But with the RTX 2080 Ti, at 4K and with RTX turned on, the frame rate more than doubled for me.  It was like playing Quake 2 all over again and feeling excited about the new graphics capabilities.  The RTX lighting does look fairly cool.

Another recent PC game I've enjoyed is Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.  I just find it relaxing to fly around with it, and the visuals are quite detailed (it dynamically creates 3D scenery using data from Bing Maps).  The 3080 Ti card helps with frame rate and an overall smooth experience with Flight Simulator 2020 too.

Nightfox
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