No? Nvidia and AMD have been the main competitors for a while in the high end space, and Intel recently entered that market after dominating the integrated GPU space.
Lose one? I’m not sure what you’re talking about, to be fair. Are you thinking about EVGA no longer making GPUs? They’re just making the boards, not the chips, many competitors exist.
We have 3 major players providing GPUs in the PC market: Nvidia with a significant lead, AMD, and the newcomer Intel.
If you count integrated GPUs (which still absolutely dominate the non-specialist PC and laptop market), Intel are hardly a newcomer. Their foray into discrete GPUs is new, but the distinction is fairly arbitrary from a technical perspective.
The Intel HD Graphics block inside a Core i5 is very architecturally different from an Intel Arc GPU.
Both Intel Arc and the integrated SOC GPUs use Intel’s Xe architecture. There are obviously big differences between integrated and discrete GPUs, but they’re largely implementation rather than base architecture. Implementing something on-die is a different task than implementing something on its own wafer, but that’s not where the serious design legwork goes.
EVGA, that’s who I was thinking of. So we still lose them really from the forefront. Also like Intel and AMD isn’t pushing for further control. Exactly what I meant.
Evga is an AIB(and a single one in a goant pool), not a GPU designer like Nvidia/Intel/AMD are. The equivalent in console terms would be like madcatz dropping out of the accesory creation game. The only difference is that the accessory makers also have a hand in the hardwares design, but not the actual compute core itself.
I appreciate you clarifying that, they were one of the largest would you not agree? Anyway point still stands, not enough competition in the gpu designer market would you agree?
one of the largest yes, but the latter part of your statement is completely off.
just talking about nvidia AIBS alone off the top of my head, theres: MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, Zotac, Galax, Colorful, Inno3d, PNY, Gainward, Palit.
and this is just nvidias optioins. There’s a lot of competition. EVGA was a favorite to those living in the U.S due to having reletively better customer service, but it was far from not having competition.
I assume he meant EVGA. They’re a hardware company that used to manufacture graphics cards designed by Nvidia but exited the GPU market because of unfavorable contract conditions eating into their profit margins.
Plenty of other third-party manufacturers exist like Sapphire, XFX, PowerColor, Zotac, ASRock, Inno3D, Colorful, MSI and ASUS.
As for the main companies that design (and also manufacture) GPU’s: AMD, Nvidia and more recently Intel.
I think the moment that happens, it’ll truly become the year of the Linux desktop.
Over the course of fifteen years, we went from WINE being able to run nothing but World of Warcraft in a playable state, to thousands of games now being playable through Proton with equivalent or even sometimes better performance than Windows.
Valve were wise to put their eggs in the Linux basket, because they’ve evolved Linux as a gaming platform by leaps and bounds. Steam Machines may have flopped but the Steam Deck has sold millions and given developers legitimate reason to support Linux (or at least SteamOS.)
There’s been talk about Microsoft plastering ads all over Windows 11 or making Windows 12 a subscription-only OS. Linux is free, open source and ad-free.
because having a stable, unchanging platform is a lot easier to code on and extract performance from than the 100,000,000,000 billion possible combinations of PC hardware.
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You can get angry over it all you want, it doesnt change the fact that its the truth.
In fact, the state of games in general is shit because a lot of you fucking goblins with more money than sense keep running out and pre-ordering/day1ing games and fawning over them no matter how much of a broken piece of shit they are, and white knight against any and all criticism. Maybe if YOU stopped creating a market for shitty, broken, badly performing games, They’d stop fucking releasing shitty, broken, badly performing games.
But no, you don’t want to be responsible for your actions, So you want to take it out on everyone else… because god forbid it ever be mommies special little angel thats at fault.
So remember that next time you want to scree about consoles or whatever else. Cause they are not the problem. People like you are.
I don’t have a lot of time for gaming, and my desktop computer I built 12 years ago still works for what I need it for (and the occasional Rocket League rounds), so the PS5 is just easier. Plug and play when I want to.
Been playing games I got through the PS+ Extra for two years, and haven’t purcy for a single game since, as I’m a patient gamer, and the selection of games is right up my alley!
Oh, and if I’d have the money (and time), I’d get aPC instead. Maybe when the PS6 is released.
Your graphics card might be cheaper than a whole console, but you still spent more money on a computer initially, so you would have to compare the cost of two consoles to one new computer and an upgrade.
And it likely is better performance now on PC versus console now for only a bit more money, but PC’s haven’t caught up on price for equivalent performance and likely never will.
And I say this as someone whose last console that was bought for its performance was a PS3.
Consoles are initially sold at a loss or no profit to incentivise people to buy games on their platform, where the real profit is made. However, at this point in time, yes, you can buy pre-built gaming PCs for around $500 that will run circles around an XBOX Series X or PlayStation 5. You can even buy a $300 office computer then pop an A580 or something in it and make it a fully-equipped gaming PC. Even more so if you use your own hardware and build it yourself.
If you’re just looking for something that works out of the box when you buy it, there are tonnes of people on Facebook Marketplace selling custom-built gaming PCs for around that price range that will still outperform lastest-generation consoles.
Don’t forget, when comparing performance, consoles generally use a mixture of medium/high settings to guarantee a steady 60 FPS whereas PC testing is traditionally done on Ultra/High presets.
I will say that PCs do require a bit more technical knowledge and maybe some tinkering to get the best performance though. If all you do is game and you know nothing about how to do anything else on the computer, I would recommend the console ten out of ten times.
PCs have other benefits too, such as free online access that would require a subscription on consoles. Unrelated to gaming, a PC can be used for other things too. The only non-gaming use for a console is as a home media player. A PC can do that and much more. A gaming PC also makes an excellent productivity machine, whereas you can’t exactly edit spreadsheets and presentations on most consoles (except the Steam Deck).
I gamed on PC for many years and basically only moved to a console when I had kids a few a years back.
Both have benefits. For me, I like the not being distracted by other stuff on the console. Like if I sit down to game, on PC I’d often just end up on YouTube, twitch, check reddit, emails, whatever. I like that my console I just use for gaming.
I still play on my PC from time to time and there’s obviously games that are only on PC, but my preference is console for the current phase of life and that’s fine for me.
As a consumer, having certified static hardware configuration means you know exactly how it’s going to run off reviews on the same hardware. You know that you are going to get support the manufacturer and aren’t going to have to worry about the manufacturer of the motherboard pointing fingers at the manufacturer of the GPU or RAM or CPU if you have a problem. Updates and driver support is all handled by the OS.
But probably the biggest reason is that consoles already have the best name recognition, higher user adoption, and hardware is sold at a discount compared to comparable PCs.
While there some advantages to that static more gate kept setup that we all could argue about for years on end, the answer to your question boils down to money and control like pretty much everything else.
Console developers sell at a loss specifically to tie you to their ecosystem and get as much money from you as possible. Which is why it’s so complicated to get a PC equivalent in specs to, say, a PS5 at the price of an actual PS5 - unless you go to the used parts route and learn how to assemble parts by yourself.
Like, say you build a gaming PC that’s comparable to a PS5. I think it would be extremely hard to come up with a combination of PSU, ram, mobo, GPU, CPU, wifi, storage, case, keyboard, mouse, and game controller that costs less than a PS5 and has comparable performance. Even if you picked entry-level components. And you still have to pay the Windows tax probably. And all of that was much more difficult than just buying a PS5 – not everybody has the time.
Then again, rebuying all your games and paying way too much for them is something to take into account. But admittedly, the PS5’s thing where you can play some PS4 games is pretty neat.
Theres actually a single one on the PS5, it essentially has a chip to hardware accelerate storage to ram loading speeds that PC speeds cant fully tap into yet.
Playstation devs are just badly leveraging the sole advantage it has.
You’re absolutely correct about this chip - but it’s actually possible to replicate on PC with modern GPUs and CPUs, as they have really fast decompression blocks for specific algorithms that would work for game assets.
The issue is that for compatibility reasons developers don’t rely on them.
it has some of the speed, but it’s not quite the same. direct storage is something the Xbox would have access to, but xbox is not directly hardware accelerated in the same way the PS5 is. Think similar to FSR VS DLSS. one utilizes special hardware in order to achieve its result.
Back in the day, Nintendo got big on quality control. That’s less of a selling point now that almost every big publisher is pushing for yearly releases and devs need to rush out unfinished games to meet corporate expectations. A console was also just miles ahead in user friendliness that a computer up until around the PS4/Xbone.
The way forward for consoles these days is to have more interesting hardware, but Microsoft is resistant to just having gyro in the xbox controller so don’t hold your breath for the next xbox being anything worth looking at.
They’ve already nuked driver support for certain “unauthorized” 3rd party Xbox accessories out of windows 10 and higher, so this isn’t necessarily a solution for the average user either
It may, but it would still require the driver for the device to be allowed to install on windows.
First example that comes to mind is a bit older but the unauthorized replicas of the Xbox 360 wireless adapters can no longer be used with Windows 10+ without the following steps
unpacking the driver
modifying the signature and device version it reports
This is true, but my comment was for the average user. I run Linux on a couple systems (not including my servers), but if I put my partner infront of it, I’d be providing support every day for a year. It’s far better than it used to be but outside of steamos, I don’t think it’s “average user” ready yet
There’s still no official word or reports yet on whether XIM or Cronus controller-spoofing mouse and keyboard adapters will be banned as a result of these policy changes, but manufacturers like Brook Gaming who build unlicensed, but fair adapters for fighting game sticks seem to be caught in the dragnet. We’ll be sure to update you on further changes.
I think XIM and Cronus are the reason they’re doing this, especially since the main games on Xbox are shooters.
Cronus allows you to run scripts which give you an unfair competitive advantage, from using exploits and humanly impossible controller inputs to fire weapons ultra fast, to removing weapon recoil, to going auto-prone when you fire your weapon, to quickscoping, to other things.
XIM on the other hand lets you plug in a mouse and keyboard. While this allows you to play games on console that otherwise don’t support M&K controls, it also gives you serious unfair competitive advantages by making the console think you’re a gamepad player whilst giving you superior M&K controls and aim assist at the same time. With a XIM device you can go seal clubbing in console-only lobbies.
My other hypothesis is that they want to safeguard their console from firmware exploits that could bust the security of their console wide-open and allow for software piracy.
Ah yes the infamous and completely utterly useless 0x8 hex Microsoft errors.
If I had a nickel for every time I encountered one, I’d have paid Microsoft to properly document what they actually mean, instead of spending 2 years finding some ye olde ass archived help request where some ancient wizard sys admin gives the answer after the default and also equally useless MSFT Associate reply of “Did you try DISM or try to reinstall windows?”
Wait this doesn’t work either? Then download our utterly useless software that will only run chkdsk while showing you ads and has a paywall after you click “apply” because it’s a fake “free” app that does nothing targeted to your grandma and step uncle
By the way the poor ms employee probably doesn’t know what any of them mean they were just generated by ms devs in the other MS building 63 floors below ground where they use infrared light to grow new developers in the bill gates sacred soil
There is also a GUI version, errlookup, it’s included as apart of Visual Studio (C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio2022CommunityCommon7Toolserrlookup.exe) – I’m sure there are other was of getting it too.
So goodbye custom-built accessibility controllers? Little Timmy, who was born with no arms and loves video games but has to play with his feet on a custom controller, is going to be told “Git good stumpy”?
Microsoft does make a special controller for people with disabilities. Still sucks for people with custom setups. The cheating in fps games is out of control though
They could and probably do (might even be the same anti-hacking system which bans from xbox live from the Xbox 360 days) they aren’t doing this to combat cheating though, they’re doing it because it’ll make them more money. They might claim it’s anti-cheat because the gaming community will drink up that response and respect their decision without questioning it.
Many people who do stand up against descisions like these are usually laughed at or accused of being cheaters, I bet people might even do it to me because I posted this.
I will say that this will likely be all but a setback for cheat devices who can spoof or pass-through an official controller, they will adapt, this change will only truly be successful at killing third party controller support.
Legacy official controllers don’t have a TPM so even if new ones do, current ones don’t and same goes for ones that spoof current official controllers.
At least assuming they’re going to keep compatibility with current official Xbox controllers.
The adaptive controller is designed to be custom-modded for different disabilities.
It’s actually a really cool system they designed in partnership with AbleGamers. They even have a mod for quadriplegic gamers. And it’s super affordable versus previous accessible interfaces.
Accessibility is one of the few places where Microsoft has been wholly good in recent years. Play any first-party Xbox game from the last few years, and you’ll see that the first menu that opens up first time you play is accessibility settings.
In my opinion absolutely not but the gaming community tends to give a lot of leeway towards companies rolling out so called “anti-cheat” solutions, even if they are downright scary i.e. asking users to install always on rootkits, or in this case, anti-consumer by forcing people to buy first or second party controllers.
I’ve even heard people in other situations suggest that anti-cheat systems should have surveillance systems like the ones done on remote exams, which would be downright dystopian and would be a privacy and security nightmare, all for a fucking video game WTF?
On PC you can do whatever the hell you want with your hardware and people aren’t asking to ban it to prevent cheating. This is such a dumb excuse. Build some good anti-cheat or stop complaining. This isn’t the solution.
I get it, but whatever is being done in the PC ecosystem isn’t really solving the problem either. The last bastion of cheating in the console space is 3rd party controllers. Banning them is going to be way more effective than any anti cheat software.
If I was using an unapproved controller I’d probably be pissed, but how big is that market outside of people cheating? Aren’t most 3rd party controllers approved devices anyways?
The optimist in me says “maybe this is just to prevent cheaters from using XIM and Cronus and it’ll be cheap and easy for other manufacturers to get authorized”
The pessimist in me says “so Microsoft is going to charge a shitton for authorization… great”
I disagree with your premise there. Using a controller that requires absolute input (a mouse) while your opponents use a controller that requires relative input (a joystick) gives you a leg up but it doesn’t remove skill altogether. Using a mouse still requires skill, but it’s easier to learn to use well.
Qualcomm caused quite a stir last week with its long-awaited announcement of its Snapdragon X Elite platform based on its new Oryon CPU, creating what some are calling the “Apple Mac Moment” for Windows.
During Qualcomm’s keynote, the company went on stage with some fancy graphs and a few handpicked benchmarks, putting it up against Intel’s best 13th-generation Core laptop CPUs and Apple’s M2 (and even M2 Max in one scenario).
More importantly, when we turned around, there were well over 20 Oryon-powered laptops with Geekbench 6, Cinebench 24, PCMark 10, Procyon AI, and 3Dmark WildLife Extreme and Aztec Ruins (pre-commercial builds).
But, similar to Apple, that platform can range from low TDP (thermal design power; basically, how much wattage the chip draws) to very high, with or without fans.
Each time you run a benchmark, the score fluctuates depending on external and internal thermal conditions or any Windows background processes that may temporarily be active.
It is worth noting that by the time Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite hits store shelves, Apple’s M3 line of CPUs (which are expected to be announced this week) and Intel’s next-gen Meteor Lake laptops processors with its beefy NPU and GPU, will be the new competition.
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Also important, will it be available and affordable. I don’t much care about arm laptops if they cost an arm (heh) and a leg to buy and then a couple fingers to import into the mythical and exotic land of not-US.
I doubt it. Many windows applications still are 32 bit only today. Visual studio only got 64 bit support in 2022. Windows has a long history of backwards compatibility and I would expect to be depending on software compatibility layers for a decade or more, even for some Microsoft products.
Being able to run benchmarks doesn’t make it is a great experience to use unfortunately. 3/4 of applications don’t run or have bugs that the devs don’t want to fix.
Was it just because it was arm, or because it was a raspberry pi and had too little of everything else windows likes to hog up? There’s several major laptop manufacturers that are planning to sell laptops with these. I doubt that would be the case if they were all functionally broken to the consumer.
Yet Chromebooks have been a major element for the past 5 years, with more units sold than Apple. I know it’s not technically GNU/Linux. But there’s still a Linux core underneath required to run Chrome OS.
ChromeOS is popular because it’s included in cheap laptops and the operating system is practically idiot proof (at the cost of being able to do practically nothing)
I’d imagine most open source software will just be perfectly fine on ARM on Linux… but I do wonder a little bit about the occasional x86 binary blob we run. They’re generally pretty rare in Linux land… but Steam games are probably not going to have a great time. I’ve used binfmt_misc to run ARM binaries on x86 transparently before using qemu, and it works perfectly fine… but it’s dog slow.
It is worth noting that by the time Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite hits store shelves, Apple’s M3 line of CPUs (which are expected to be announced this week) and Intel’s next-gen Meteor Lake laptops processors with its beefy NPU and GPU, will be the new competition.
That really depends on the TDP of the Intel and AMD chips. Both have been progressively pumping more and more juice into their silicon lately in an attempt to be the “fastest”.
If Qualcomm is within spitting distance at a much lower TDP then this might actually be the beginning of the end for x86.
on PCMark’s webpage the fastest mobile cpu is R9 7945HX with 14k marks. How did they manage to score only 9k in the article?
Passmark already has the latest threadrippers scored, topping the charts at 156k points. As a comparison the 7950X is at 63k points, 7945HX at 56k points, apple m2 ultra 24 core 49k points. So as long as you have the watts to spare x86 will be more powerful?
Nah, if Intel gets their shit together and moves to 2-3nm finally everyone else will start crying. Yes, Intel lags behind everyone today, but they lag just a bit, all while using an extremely outdated tech process.
By what apple revealed on the m3, it looks like it’s still going to lose out on cpu, ai, and tdp. Might come close on graphics performance but overall it won’t be good enough.
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