Item — HN Reader

Since I stopped gaming, I stopped following the high-end market. However, it is nice to see that AMD is trying to get in there again, some competition is good for the market in general.

If AMD can deliver, then Intel might have to respond with lowering prices on their products, which I believe might be a bit overpriced now due to there no being a real vialbe alternative.

Whatever happens, some competition is bound to be a good thing imo.

4 comments

They actually already have: http://wccftech.com/intel-amd-price-war-ryzen-processors/ and that was before the reviews even went live. It should only get better since impressions seem favorable.

Oh thanks for pointing that out, I missed that :-)

The high-end market is actually not for gaming — both Ryzen and Intel's "enthusiast platform" (X99) are worse for gaming than Intel's mainstream (quad core) CPUs.

Ryzen is great for tasks like, uh, recompiling your operating system :D Or editing photos or reencoding your movie archive into whatever is the next awesome codec (Daala anyone?).

Care to actually back up that statement with any sort of citation or fact? According to the leaked 3dmark benchmarks, the top 3 Ryzens are on par with some of the top i7 quads... so honestly I'm not sure where you are getting this idea from. It also completely ignores the price disparity which makes the AMD slightly slower but much cheaper CPU's a doable upgrade for many. (And VR capable)

http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AMD-Ryzen...

3DMark's Physics section is a pure CPU parallel benchmark (also known as "buy 6950X to win"), not a game-like benchmark.

Here's results from actual games:

http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2822-amd-ryzen-r7-1800x...

Even the older 4790K is sometimes faster. And the i7 quads are cheaper. So games prefer higher clocks to more cores, that's still true.

I am looking forward more to their Naples cpus for servers.

You should come back, even just for a few games a year. There are some incredible experiences available these days.

It is something I sometimes want to do, but find hard to justify. First of all, when I played, it was competitively and I found it hard to get fun out of just playing casually. In fact, I have quite addictive behaviour so I usually ended up addicted to games I played competitively. (CS:S, L4D(2) and COD2/4).

I know myself well enough to know that I can not play "in moderation" and would tend towards the competitive aspect. (Single player games never really entertained me that much)

Overwatch would be right up your alley :)

Hehe, I have heard that before, but I have actually not seen any gameplay of that :-)

I'm curious if you could elaborate on this.

For the population I represent (never, ever, want a first person visual rendering, under any circumstance) but love high quality game mechanics, I have a hard time finding what I consider good games. Everybody wants to polish their fundamentally undesirable three dimensional scene.

Hmm, these last years were one of the best years in:

- strategy gaming (from Deserts of Kharak, Civilization, Paradox interactive grand strategy games, Eugen Systems games, Total War series, XCOM and more and more)

- RPG gaming (2D isometric RPGs are making a huge comeback with good writing and gameplay, things like Pillars of Eternity, new Torment, Divinty and more. 3rd person Witcher 3 collected record amount of awards and with good reason.)

- platformers (Ori, Shovel Knight), roguelikes (Darkest Dungeon, Don't starve, Spelunky, and more)

- experimental narrative games (Papers Please, This War of Mine, This is The Police)

- modern adventure games (Until Dawn, Telltales Wolf Among Us / Walking Dead / Game of Thrones and many more)

And those are only on PC and none of them are first person. Just like movies go beyond just Marvel and Transformers, gaming goes way beyond just Call of Duty and Battlefield. The AA market of smaller but still established companies (Paradox Interactive, Relic Entertainment, Telltale and many more) build great experiences and I don't think gaming market was ever so live and broad as it is these years.

I'd recommend Kentucky Route Zero, too, which is finally almost all out (boo episodic release models). It's what you get when people with vision, talent, some real book learnin', a good understanding of video games in general, and artistic taste set out to tell a story in video game form. Brain bleach for the various trying-too-hard, one-note "art" games out there.

While there is a lot of 3D experiences out there, a lot of the recent great games that show off interesting mechanics can be found in the 2D realm. While not an exhaustive list by any means, and not knowing your preferences, here's a handful: - terraria - stardew valley - undertale - rimworld - prison architect - nuclear throne

If you're a fan of Baldur's Gate and the like. Isometric CRPG's are back in full swing now. Pillars of Eternity, Pillars of Eternity Deadfire(just completed a fig.co funding), Tyranny, Torment. They are huge, deep games. Tons of under the hood mechanics going on. Definitely not point, click, kill. Requires lots of setup, strategy, on how you address each situation. Great stories.

In addition to mysterydip: Many RPGs and strategy games use 3D engines, but only for more "isometric" or "top down" views (downside is that they require more GPU performance than you'd think sometimes)

Also would like to mention Factorio explicitly.

Why the aversion to first person? I feel that something like Deus Ex would be a lot less immersive in third person.

“Sadly, playing games where we live imaginary, exciting lives having basically destroyed our own is insane.”

http://www.scarygoround.com/bobbins/index.php?date=20140120