there is no way in hell a 2014 computer is able to run modern games on medium settings at all, let alone running well. my four year old computer (Ryzen 5 4000, GTX 1650, 16 GB RAM) can barely get 30-40 fps on most modern games at 1080p even on the absolute lowest settings. don’t get me wrong, it should still work fine. however, almost no modern games are optimized at all and the “low” settings are all super fucking high now, so anon is lying out of his ass.
It says the story took place in 2020. And that it played “Most games” on medium settings. 30-40 fps is playable to a lot of people. I’m inclined to believe them.
If you don’t upgrade to Windows 11, you can’t use Recall, which is a great reason not to upgrade to Windows 11.
If you want to stay with Windows for whatever reason, even 11, I can recommend Revision Playbook. It locks your installation and scrapes out the crap like unwanted updates and features like AI bullshit, Edge, Telemetry and whatnot. You can even manually install Apps from the Store without the Store if you like to. Security patches and selective updates come only via manual download from MS catalogue in my case, but you can automate this too with some tools.
I upgraded to Linux. It worked out well for me since I mostly pay retro games and games from yesteryear.
I upgraded a Chromebook to Linux recently. That was a huge bump in performance that I wasn’t expecting, not even just for gaming.
What OS was it running before? ChroomeOS is Linux right?
Technically yes, and so is Android. But neither work the way you’d expect a typical Linux distro to work.
People want shiny new things. I’ve had relatives say stuff like “I bought this computer 2 years ago and it’s getting slower, it’s awful how you have to buy a new one so quickly.” I suggest things to improve it, most of which are free or very cheap and I’d happily do for them. But they just go out and buy a brand new one because that’s secretly what they wanted to do in the first place, they just don’t want to admit they’re that materialistic.
People live in times of historic standstill. Society barely develops in a meaningful and hopeful way. Social relationships stagnate or decline. So they look for a feeling of progress and agency in participation in the market and consuming.
They don’t realize this because they aren’t materialistic enough, in a sense that they don’t analyse their condition as a result of political and cultural configuration of their lives so that real agency seems unavailable
Maybe your relatives don’t like you. It’s a petty but valid reason to ignore perfectly good advice.
Can I have some tips too?
Appreciate the meme but yea that is one way to probably improve performance. Or upgrade the RAM, clean the fans, reapply thermal compound, clear out temporary files, disable unused services or reinstall Windows if they really need it just to run Chrome and Zoom which is all they do.
Even just blowing out all the dust from a passive cooler (under the CPU fan) can make your system run a good 10°C cooler.
hardware isn’t as impactful to performance as software imo, just getting rid of bloat services can improve the perceived performance for every day tasks a ton.
btw I don’t really get why increasing the amount of ram is thought of as the first step by most normie consumers, if you have enough it’s enough and even my 2gb machine runs everything fine
You’d be amazed at the startup and program opening time gains on older computers’ when you change in the HDD that is stuck at read/write speeds of 5MB/s for a SSD
Free:
- clean fans and heatsink - others mentioned, and the reason is better cooling so it doesn’t throttle
- kill unnecessary services - that’s why reinstalling works
- install Linux - not reasonable for everyone, but Linux uses far fewer resources
- delete old files - as disks get full, it takes longer to find somewhere for files to go; try to leave 10-20% free
- try a small overclock - many older CPUs can give a little more without upgrading cooling; only do it if temps look good
Relatively cheap (<$200 each):
- upgrade drive to NVMe - huge difference if running an HDD, still noticeable of running a SATA SSD
- add more RAM (only if you’re constantly running out)
- upgrade CPU - esp if AMD since they release lots of CPUs for the same socket
It really depends on what’s making it slow though.
NVMe
This part was huge you for me. Almost same as from HDD to SSD.
i didnt notice as much difference
Clean the fans.
Reinstall the os clean. That’s usually why a new computer feels snappy: it’s just fresh.
Also dont forget to reapply thermal paste. Might help with overheating.
No chance I’m advising normies to mess with thermal paste on their own.
I have heard that Windows underclocks your CPU over time, to make you buy a new computer, and so Microsoft can get money from the new PC’s preinstalled Windows license.
I am not really sure if that’s true though.
I have heard that Windows underclocks your CPU over time
I would say this is half true. Microsoft is known for pushing lots of software updates with unwanted features, so it’s probably that a computer will feel slower over time.
However that’s not an underclock it’s just that the CPU can’t keep up with that much bloatware.
They’re invested in PC gaming as social capital where the performance of your rig contributes to your social value. They’re mad because you’re not invested in the same way. People often get defensive when others don’t care about the hobbies they care about because there’s a false perception that the not caring implies what they care about is somehow less than, which feels insulting.
Don’t yuck others’ yum, but also don’t expect everyone to yum the same thing.
Very well put! I’d also add that most people aren’t even really conscious that that’s the reason that they’re mad. There’s ways to express your negative opinion without stating it as a fact or downplaying the other person’s taste.
I’m very certain Anon isn’t just saying “nah, my rig works” to them when asked.
Maybe closer to “LMAO normies wasting money. fuckin coomsumers, upgrading for AAAA slop! LMFAO” into conversations they weren’t invited to.
I’m still pushing a ten year old PC with an FX-8350 and a 1060. Works fine.
I tend to flip my RAM out every 3-5 years and notice a significant improvement in performance. Other than that, though…
i mean, if you’re running slow ram, upgrading to faster ram would definitely help, especially if you’re on a modern platform.
You should really just download more ram though…
download more ram
I’d sooner download a car
you could also download a car, and then sell that car to pay for more ram, that’s another valid option.
My 2009 i5 750 (oc at 3.6) can still play any game I throw at it.
any game I throw at it
easy to say when you never throw demanding AAA titles at it
I use a gaming laptop from 2018. Rog Zephyrus.
fan started making grating noise even after thorough cleaning, found a replacement on Ebay and boom back in business playing Hitman and Stardew.
Will I get 120 fps or dominate multiplayer? nah. But yeah works fine. Might even be a hand me down later on.
Absolutely it totally depends on what you got originally. If you only got an okay ish PC in 2018 then it definitely still won’t be fit for purpose in 2025, but if you got a good gaming PC in 2018 it probably will still work in another 5 years, although at that point you’ll probably be on minimum settings for most new releases.
I would say 5 to 10 years is probably the lifespan of a gaming PC without an upgrade.
However my crappy work laptop needs replacing after just 3 years because it was rubbish to start with.
I built an overkill PC in February 2016, it was rocking a GTX 980ti a little before the 1080 came out, and it was probably the best GPU out there, factory overclocked and water cooled by EVGA. My CPU was an i5-4690k, which was solidly mid range then, but I overclocked it myself from 3.5GHz to 5.3Ghz with no issue, and only stopped there because I was so suspicious of how well it was handling that massive increase. I had 2TB of SSD spaceand like 8TB of regular hard drives and 16GB of ram.
Because I have never needed to think about space, and so many of my parts were really overpowered for their generation, I have always been hesitant to upgrade. I don’t play the newest games either, I still get max settings on Doom Eternal and Read Dead 2 which I forget are half a decade old. The only game where it’s struggled in low settings is Baldurs Gate 3 unfortunately, which is made me realise it’s ready to upgrade.
i just upgraded this year, to an r9 5900x, from my old r5 2600, still running a 1070 though.
I do video editing and more generally CPU intensive stuff on the side, as well as a lot of multitasking, so it’s worth the money, in the long run at least.
I also mostly play minecraft, and factorio, so.
ryzen 5000 is a great upgrade path for those who don’t want to buy into am5 yet. Very affordable. 7000 is not worth the money, unless you get a good deal, same for 9000, though you could justify it with a new motherboard and ram.
I’m rocking a 5800X and see no reason to go to 7000 or no 9000 anytime soon. It’s been great since I built the PC.
i would’ve bought a 5800x, but the prices for the 5800x were crazy, so i just bit the bullet and spent more money on the 5900x as it was a better value, and admittedly, probably more useful to me, especially moving into the future.
5000 series was a flagship line up for ryzen i think, just before AMD started really killing intel in performance, and also before they started chasing performance so hard. It has great power efficiency, and even better performance. It truly is the chip of the era. Especially with the x3d series for people who want more cache.
i imagine whatever comes after 9000 series might be a more worthwhile upgrade for you, unless like me you like to wait for things to become more cost effective as it falls a few generations behind. That’s another great strategy as well. I also tend to find that anything less than 3 generations between CPU upgrades and you’re close to the “this isn’t really worth it” line. 2 gens might be, it might not be also though.
I thought anon was the normie? The average person doesnt upgrade their PC every two years. The average person buys a PC and replaced it when nothing works anymore. Anon is the normie, they are the enthusiasts. Anon is not hanging with a group of people with matching ideologies.
Let’s just drop the word “normie” altogether.
The word is incredibly vague and fails to reflect the diversity of viewpoints and opinions. Everyone has their own perception of what is most common, so the definition varies wildly.
The word is incredibly vague
isnt that, the point?
It’s supposed to refer to “normal” people. an incredibly broad and vague selection of people, who are, rather indistinct.
Kind of, but in doing so it loses any significant meaning. Everyone interprets it as they see fit
yeah but i feel like that’s the perfect encapsulation of the meaning though, extrapolating it to anything else would ruin it’s meaning… Wait now this is just the opposite argument.
I always keep my PCs for about 8 years. Usually it is necessary to update the HDD/SSD and the GPU during that time, that is all. Mine will be 4 years old by the end of this year. I am now actively checking out 4TB SSDs in order to replace my current 1TB SSD.
This strategy may stop to work unfortunately. With the advent of ARM in desktop PCs, the PCs seem to become more monolithic. RAM and GPU not swappable, I think MACs don’t even allow you to plop in more RAM. I don’t like this development.
