Day 1 DLC is good enough reason to just never buy the game. I liked Skyrim where they developed more content after the initial game, and made it DLC. But to separate some of your Day 1 content into DLC is just rediculous. Hell at that rate just make each skin/hunter a microtransaction instead of bullshit DLC bundle-only packs.
Well if this kind of DLC is what companies need to make solid games, that is fine with me. Let the sheep buy those pretty colors.
But when the vanilla game already goes at full retail price, introduces this as day 1 DLC ánd is rather shallow from the onset in terms of content, one wonders whether this is an ordinary cashgrab more than anything else.
Meh, only somewhat recent game i bought at full price was Titanfall, and I got burned. The Evolve beta was great, but not something I'm going to spend $60, or even $30 on. Anyway, my current main runs an AMD Radeon 6970, Core i7 2600k, 16 GB RAM, and an 840 evo 500 GB SSD, though my next graphics card is definitely going to be NVIDIA. I have a Geforce 750 ti in an HTPC and my mind is blown. Had a LAN party with about 10 people and they didn't even realize the 750 ti was a budget card...much less the fact it didn't require extra power outside the PCIE bus. Hopefully upgrading to the latest Intel Core i7 desktop CPU, fastest NVidia GPU, 32 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD this year, but we'll see what the options are. Good gaming everyone! Oh and the HTPC? Keeping it around, though it's HTPC functionality is going to be delegated to the new Raspberry Pi quad core!
32GB will be absolutely useless for games, FYI. Even 16GB is overkill. Highest RAM usage I've seen in a game so far (total usage, including system) was around 5GB with most between 2 and 4. This might change, but I doubt it - you really don't need massive amounts of RAM these days with a move to texture streaming engines, cards with huge VRAM and SSDs.
My system idles from boot at 4gb. I can easily hit 8gb screwing around on the Internet. While working, I average around 12gb and I'm sure it would go higher, but windows starts clearing things out alone they're.
I wish i would have bought the 32gb 2 years ago because now its expensive. And before that, my last rig was on ddr2 and it was more expensive to upgrade to 16gb than it was to get an i7, motherboard, and new ram.
there are people who use their computer only for gaming and office work. This is actually most of the people. Most people don't run virtual machines regularly, don't do video editing, and don't run instrument synthetizers. Right now I'm sitting at 1.78GB used and I have firefox open too which is using 400 MB.
16 GB provides enough memory for years to come for the typical user.
> My system idles from boot at 4gb. I can easily hit 8gb screwing around on the Internet. While working, I average around 12gb and I'm sure it would go higher, but windows starts clearing things out alone they're.
Right. That's because modern OSes cache as much as possible in the hopes they might be able to use that information at some point in the future but it certainly doesn't mean that the memory is put to *good* use.
I've control over many systems (including 3x 2S ones with 128GB RAM each) and I can tell you with confidence that having more than 8GB of RAM in a single user machine is a complete waste of money and potentially even performance.
I'm a heavy user (developer) with hundreds of running processes running right now on this machine right now and I still have over 1GB unused memory out of 8GB.
Some compilers require 1-2GB per compiler instance. If say you have an 8-core hyperthreaded CPU, and want to run 16 processes in parallel to maximize core usage, that's up to 32gb right there.
It's true that most games aren't going to use that much, and that's because games follow the consoles. A PC game's memory usage is going to typically be just a bit higher than the available RAM on a console, because that's the memory target the developer had to aim for if it's a cross-platform game.
True such compilers and code exists. However that's far from the norm, for a my typical projects clang 3.5.1 will stay under 50 MB per process for C code spiking up to 120MB for a few special ones (with the most expensive optimisation flags and activated static code analysis), C++ is easily double of that but I've never seen *any* code that would require more than 300MB per process. YMMV of course.
> It's true that most games aren't going to use that much, and that's because games follow the consoles. A PC game's memory usage is going to typically be just a bit higher than the available RAM on a console, because that's the memory target the developer had to aim for if it's a cross-platform game.
One important aspect that is often forgotten is that consoles typically have a shared memory architecture, so the specified memory includes the display memory. So if your console has 8GB or RAM it's very likely that 4 GB are used for rendering and the rest of the system will only have 4GB available. On the other hand a stupid PC implementation will keep duplicates of some resources in regular RAM but still a direct console port should be able to live with far less than 8GB of main RAM.
There are really only very few applications which can really benefit from tons of memory like virtualization, databases, ETL, etc. Even for number crunching using lots of memory typically means a huge performance degradation so the goal there is to use as little memory as possible and optimize for the more efficient cache usage.
In most cases it's an absolute safe bet to say: If you need tons of memory, you're doing it wrong.
NB: The mentioned 128GB servers are virtualisation hosts and currently have an average memory utilisation of only about 30% with dozens running machines each. The reason why they have so much memory is that can map out bad chips and we don't have to do on-site maintenance for addition or removal of memory in the foreseeable future and that if a machine fails we still have headroom for the distribution onto other hosts.
Updated from 347.25 to 347.52. Ran benchmarks for Metro Last Light and Tomb Raider. No change in frame rates - nothing, zip, nada... Always good to stay up to date, but I'm not seeing the promised FPS improvements...
Usually they're very specific about promising improvements. If any of your settings differ, you might get different results. Although I obviously don't know if this was the case in your tests.
Assuming you have a 900 series card? Metro Last Light is listed once for the 980 at 2560x1440, and Tomb Raider isn't listed anywhere in the release notes.
The Steam folder is the same 26.4GB as the download -- unless it creates a bunch of temp files while running? I think the extra 23.6GB is for all the DLC. /sarcasm
After what 2K did to SEGA with that "Colonial Marines" travesty, and what they did to their own top IP with the "Pre-Sequel", nothing is really unexpected of them. Short-changing their customers is their expertise.
Why are you blaming Aliens: Colonial Marines on 2K Games? Aliens: Colonial Marines was developed (allegedly partially) by Gearbox and published by SEGA. 2K didn't have any direct effect on the development hell that the game went through. The only influence that 2K had was that they served as Borderlands' publisher, which was being developed at the same time. Although, the allegations state that Gearbox was lying to both SEGA and 2K.
Is that pesky DSR bug fixed? Don't even know how such a big problem could have not been noticed by QA in the last couple of releases, unless they're complete morons. I'm seriously considering going back to the November release...
Well no, of course they haven't fixed it. They don't even mention it as known problem in the release notes. Time to grab some popcorn and enjoy the Nvidia forum...
Wait, what DSR problem? I use DSR on my GTX 980, and it seems to work pretty well. I just did some Googling, but I'm not seeing what the DSR bug is. Granted, I'm still running driver 347.25, but I'm not seeing any obvious issues...
If you run your HDMI output through a receiver then DSR might not work. From the forums this seems to affect quite a few different receiver brands but Onkyo seems one of the most prominent ones.
Day 1 DLC as others have said is complete BS - an excuse for selling people half the game and holding the other half at ransom. Disgusting. This stuff used to be free unlocks in the past. This kind of DLC should be freely obtainable if you work for it. The other thing I hate, absolutely hate, is integration of DLC into the menus of the "base" game, with a "Get it now" or something link. This is disgusting. DLC should be entirely optional, with ZERO reference to it existing (in the actual game) unless you buy it and add it to the game. This is something I hated especially with NFS MW - driving around and seeing a barred off section telling me to buy access to it - WTF???
A succinct, funny video on the subject on YouTube is something like "If Quake were made today". Really sums up the greedy business model of (most, not all) games retailers these days.
Those ones are just skins though.. At least for now. Personally, I don't have any problems with it. They are taking the League of legends rout: Selling skins and new "champions". I just hope they change their minds and let us unlock those new monsters without the need to pay for then. Even if with a lot of work.
>Anyway, 2K’s DLC practices don’t affect the NVIDIA side of the story, >which is that they have new drivers that are optimized for the game. >If you’ve been looking forward to Evolve and have an NVIDIA GPU, >there’s no reason we can see to hold off on updating drivers.
Hang on a minute... So from a hardware perspective the TL;DR is:
//NVidia released updated driver with SLI settings for new game.//
I'm hoping its just because its a slow news day, and the Purch bean counters aren't just trying to drive clicks...
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Freakie - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
Day 1 DLC is good enough reason to just never buy the game. I liked Skyrim where they developed more content after the initial game, and made it DLC. But to separate some of your Day 1 content into DLC is just rediculous. Hell at that rate just make each skin/hunter a microtransaction instead of bullshit DLC bundle-only packs.JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
What's silly to me is all the day one DLC seems to consist of skin packs. $5 or whatever to make my gun or monster look different? No thanks!crimson117 - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Especially since you haven't had any time to grow bored of the standard skins.FlushedBubblyJock - Sunday, February 15, 2015 - link
you have to fire it up, then be all juvee and pretend you're in a gang, then "the colors" seem to matter a lotVayra - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Well if this kind of DLC is what companies need to make solid games, that is fine with me. Let the sheep buy those pretty colors.But when the vanilla game already goes at full retail price, introduces this as day 1 DLC ánd is rather shallow from the onset in terms of content, one wonders whether this is an ordinary cashgrab more than anything else.
I'm avoiding Evolve.
quaz0r - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
s/rediculous/ridiculous/it should become more self evident to you when you consider that the word comes from "ridicule." do you redicule someone or do you ridicule them?
AnnonymousCoward - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
You're waisting valuable comment space.phdchristmas - Sunday, February 15, 2015 - link
hardly hes trying to inform someone so they dont make the same mistake in the future.eek2121 - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Meh, only somewhat recent game i bought at full price was Titanfall, and I got burned. The Evolve beta was great, but not something I'm going to spend $60, or even $30 on. Anyway, my current main runs an AMD Radeon 6970, Core i7 2600k, 16 GB RAM, and an 840 evo 500 GB SSD, though my next graphics card is definitely going to be NVIDIA. I have a Geforce 750 ti in an HTPC and my mind is blown. Had a LAN party with about 10 people and they didn't even realize the 750 ti was a budget card...much less the fact it didn't require extra power outside the PCIE bus. Hopefully upgrading to the latest Intel Core i7 desktop CPU, fastest NVidia GPU, 32 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD this year, but we'll see what the options are. Good gaming everyone! Oh and the HTPC? Keeping it around, though it's HTPC functionality is going to be delegated to the new Raspberry Pi quad core!Morawka - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
i know what your up to eek2121. only buy Titanfall here recently? maybe cuz it's multiplayer only HAH Trixy trixydragonsqrrl - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
The amazing thing is your 750Ti probably performs just about on par with your 6970, but at 60W TDP.JeffroGymnast - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
The 6970 is *significantly* faster than the 750ti...KenpoJuJitsu3 - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Not really.http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1061?vs=113...
hammer256 - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
The 1080p results are surprisingly close.... Although I imagine at 1440 and above the 6970 is much faster. Still, interesting.dragonsqrrl - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
You probably wouldn't want to run modern games beyond 1080p on these cards anyway.darkfalz - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
32GB will be absolutely useless for games, FYI. Even 16GB is overkill. Highest RAM usage I've seen in a game so far (total usage, including system) was around 5GB with most between 2 and 4. This might change, but I doubt it - you really don't need massive amounts of RAM these days with a move to texture streaming engines, cards with huge VRAM and SSDs.DerekZ06 - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
My system idles from boot at 4gb. I can easily hit 8gb screwing around on the Internet. While working, I average around 12gb and I'm sure it would go higher, but windows starts clearing things out alone they're.I wish i would have bought the 32gb 2 years ago because now its expensive. And before that, my last rig was on ddr2 and it was more expensive to upgrade to 16gb than it was to get an i7, motherboard, and new ram.
You can never have too much ram.
Murloc - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
there are people who use their computer only for gaming and office work.This is actually most of the people. Most people don't run virtual machines regularly, don't do video editing, and don't run instrument synthetizers.
Right now I'm sitting at 1.78GB used and I have firefox open too which is using 400 MB.
16 GB provides enough memory for years to come for the typical user.
Daniel Egger - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
> My system idles from boot at 4gb. I can easily hit 8gb screwing around on the Internet. While working, I average around 12gb and I'm sure it would go higher, but windows starts clearing things out alone they're.Right. That's because modern OSes cache as much as possible in the hopes they might be able to use that information at some point in the future but it certainly doesn't mean that the memory is put to *good* use.
I've control over many systems (including 3x 2S ones with 128GB RAM each) and I can tell you with confidence that having more than 8GB of RAM in a single user machine is a complete waste of money and potentially even performance.
I'm a heavy user (developer) with hundreds of running processes running right now on this machine right now and I still have over 1GB unused memory out of 8GB.
twtech - Saturday, February 14, 2015 - link
Some compilers require 1-2GB per compiler instance. If say you have an 8-core hyperthreaded CPU, and want to run 16 processes in parallel to maximize core usage, that's up to 32gb right there.It's true that most games aren't going to use that much, and that's because games follow the consoles. A PC game's memory usage is going to typically be just a bit higher than the available RAM on a console, because that's the memory target the developer had to aim for if it's a cross-platform game.
Daniel Egger - Saturday, February 14, 2015 - link
True such compilers and code exists. However that's far from the norm, for a my typical projects clang 3.5.1 will stay under 50 MB per process for C code spiking up to 120MB for a few special ones (with the most expensive optimisation flags and activated static code analysis), C++ is easily double of that but I've never seen *any* code that would require more than 300MB per process. YMMV of course.> It's true that most games aren't going to use that much, and that's because games follow the consoles. A PC game's memory usage is going to typically be just a bit higher than the available RAM on a console, because that's the memory target the developer had to aim for if it's a cross-platform game.
One important aspect that is often forgotten is that consoles typically have a shared memory architecture, so the specified memory includes the display memory. So if your console has 8GB or RAM it's very likely that 4 GB are used for rendering and the rest of the system will only have 4GB available. On the other hand a stupid PC implementation will keep duplicates of some resources in regular RAM but still a direct console port should be able to live with far less than 8GB of main RAM.
There are really only very few applications which can really benefit from tons of memory like virtualization, databases, ETL, etc. Even for number crunching using lots of memory typically means a huge performance degradation so the goal there is to use as little memory as possible and optimize for the more efficient cache usage.
In most cases it's an absolute safe bet to say: If you need tons of memory, you're doing it wrong.
NB: The mentioned 128GB servers are virtualisation hosts and currently have an average memory utilisation of only about 30% with dozens running machines each. The reason why they have so much memory is that can map out bad chips and we don't have to do on-site maintenance for addition or removal of memory in the foreseeable future and that if a machine fails we still have headroom for the distribution onto other hosts.
Murloc - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
32 GB? If you're just gaming, you're overdoing it considering the frequency with which you seem to buy a new computer.mgilbert - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Updated from 347.25 to 347.52. Ran benchmarks for Metro Last Light and Tomb Raider. No change in frame rates - nothing, zip, nada... Always good to stay up to date, but I'm not seeing the promised FPS improvements...MrSpadge - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Usually they're very specific about promising improvements. If any of your settings differ, you might get different results. Although I obviously don't know if this was the case in your tests.D. Lister - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
The improvements are based on recommended settings.dragonsqrrl - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Assuming you have a 900 series card? Metro Last Light is listed once for the 980 at 2560x1440, and Tomb Raider isn't listed anywhere in the release notes.Klimax - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Those 50GB required are after installation, download can be much smaller. (Seen even 50% difference thanks to compression/post-install generation)JarredWalton - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
The Steam folder is the same 26.4GB as the download -- unless it creates a bunch of temp files while running? I think the extra 23.6GB is for all the DLC. /sarcasmD. Lister - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
After what 2K did to SEGA with that "Colonial Marines" travesty, and what they did to their own top IP with the "Pre-Sequel", nothing is really unexpected of them. Short-changing their customers is their expertise.Aikouka - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Why are you blaming Aliens: Colonial Marines on 2K Games? Aliens: Colonial Marines was developed (allegedly partially) by Gearbox and published by SEGA. 2K didn't have any direct effect on the development hell that the game went through. The only influence that 2K had was that they served as Borderlands' publisher, which was being developed at the same time. Although, the allegations state that Gearbox was lying to both SEGA and 2K.D. Lister - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Ah yes, Gearbox was the developer, 2K was the publisher. Thanks for the correction.Harry Lloyd - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Steam lists 50 GiB, which means 24 GiB of DLC incoming. After all, those are some big monsters.Daniel Egger - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Is that pesky DSR bug fixed? Don't even know how such a big problem could have not been noticed by QA in the last couple of releases, unless they're complete morons. I'm seriously considering going back to the November release...Daniel Egger - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Well no, of course they haven't fixed it. They don't even mention it as known problem in the release notes. Time to grab some popcorn and enjoy the Nvidia forum...zyxtomatic - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Wait, what DSR problem? I use DSR on my GTX 980, and it seems to work pretty well. I just did some Googling, but I'm not seeing what the DSR bug is. Granted, I'm still running driver 347.25, but I'm not seeing any obvious issues...Daniel Egger - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
If you run your HDMI output through a receiver then DSR might not work. From the forums this seems to affect quite a few different receiver brands but Onkyo seems one of the most prominent ones.https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/801591/in...
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/805564/ge...
Vayra - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Priorities, maybe? It is not like you can't find a workaround for HDMI output for audio if you have a receiver.Or like you *need* DSR to use your card at all...
darkfalz - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Day 1 DLC as others have said is complete BS - an excuse for selling people half the game and holding the other half at ransom. Disgusting. This stuff used to be free unlocks in the past. This kind of DLC should be freely obtainable if you work for it. The other thing I hate, absolutely hate, is integration of DLC into the menus of the "base" game, with a "Get it now" or something link. This is disgusting. DLC should be entirely optional, with ZERO reference to it existing (in the actual game) unless you buy it and add it to the game. This is something I hated especially with NFS MW - driving around and seeing a barred off section telling me to buy access to it - WTF???Murloc - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
you don't have to buy their games and there's no monopoly either.darkfalz - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
A succinct, funny video on the subject on YouTube is something like "If Quake were made today". Really sums up the greedy business model of (most, not all) games retailers these days.Vayra - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
If the vast majority of game publishers start wanting it, there is a monopoly on choice.Frihed - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Those ones are just skins though.. At least for now. Personally, I don't have any problems with it. They are taking the League of legends rout: Selling skins and new "champions". I just hope they change their minds and let us unlock those new monsters without the need to pay for then. Even if with a lot of work.Jon Tseng - Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - link
>Anyway, 2K’s DLC practices don’t affect the NVIDIA side of the story,>which is that they have new drivers that are optimized for the game.
>If you’ve been looking forward to Evolve and have an NVIDIA GPU,
>there’s no reason we can see to hold off on updating drivers.
Hang on a minute... So from a hardware perspective the TL;DR is:
//NVidia released updated driver with SLI settings for new game.//
I'm hoping its just because its a slow news day, and the Purch bean counters aren't just trying to drive clicks...