This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
I also have a 2014-ish desktop. Over the years added an SSD and replaced the graphics card around 5 years ago.
I can still run most games on medium settings, even some new ones if they are properly optimized, but nothing crazy, 1080p.
I just started to feel that my rig is getting slower and even AA games become more demanding.
I fully support using hardware as long as possible to minimise e-waste and see no reason to upgrade a PC every 2-3 years.
Edit: typo
I know someone like this, who also insisted that windows 7 was just better
He back tracked immediately after a system upgrade, updated to win 10 and started bragging about his specs
The computer I built in 2011 lasted until last summer. I smiled widely when I came to tell my wife and my friend, where my friend then asked why I was smiling when my computer no longer worked.
"Because now he can buy a new one" my wife quickly replied 😁
This makes me wonder how long my build from last year should last me.
Maybe it's just my CPU or something wrong with my setup, but i feel like new games (especially ones that run on Unreal Engine 5) really kick my computers ass at 1440p. Just got the 7900xtx last year and using a ryzen 9 3900xt i got from 2020 for reference. I remember getting new cards like 10 years ago and being able to crank the settings up to max with no worries, but nowadays I feel I gotta worry about lowering settings or having to resort to using upscaling or frame generation.
Games dont feel very optimized anymore, so I can see why people might be upgrading more frequently thinking it's just their pc being weak. I miss the days where we could just play games in native resolution.
Unrel engine is also a pig on resources. I don't bother games that use it on my Steam Deck because I know they won't run well
Yeah those Jones boys are a litist bunch
My only concern would be if anon maintains his PC. Sure, anon bought the PC in 2014 abd never upgraded... But dies anon at least open it up once in a while to clean it out or switch the thermal paste?
Same, same. Except I don't really play games, but use the computer for other hobbies. It's still plenty fast and does everything I need it to do. So why buy something that does exactly the same, just is newer and looks different?
When talking about hardware, if it works for you keep using it till it doesn't work. But when talking about desktop operating systems, you should be aware when it loses security updates support and try to upgrade to different one that works for you but has better security updates.
My current PC used for gaming is a self built one from 2014. I have upgraded a few things during the years, most notably GPU and memory, but it did an excellent job for over a decade. Recently it started to show its age with various weird glitches and also some performance issues in several newer games and so I've just ordered a new one. But I'm pretty proud of my sustainable computing achievement.
Whether you upgrade it or not, it's always a safe bet to clean your pc from dust once a year; and change thermal paste like 2-3 years.
For the thermal paste, only if it heats up. It's not impossible to break stuff doing it so better not do it to often. IMO.
Can confirm, pc bought in 2016, upgraded CPU and GFX card, can play VR games and games at 4k with decent framerates.
Specs? 2016 is pre-ryzen so I sincerely doubt what you're saying is true. Even if you have the then top of the line i7 6800k.
Really depends on the game. Even early Ryzen didn't perform well on games that were largely dependent on single core performance.
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
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.
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.
It's easy to go too far in either direction instead of just doing what fits your needs (which in fairness, can sometimes be difficult to precisely pin down). Blindly going "it's old, I need to upgrade" or "it still runs, it's not worth upgrading" will sometimes be right but it's not exactly tailored advice.
Someone I know was holding out for ages on a 4790K (2014), and upgraded a year or two ago to a then-current-gen system and said the difference it made to their workflow was huge - enough that they actually used that experience to tell their boss at work that the work systems (similar to what they had had themselves) should get upgraded.
At the end of 2022 I had had my current monitor(s) for about 10 years and had spent years of hearing everyone saying "wow upgrading my monitor was huge", saying that either 1440p was such an upgrade over 1080p and/or that high refresh rate (120+Hz) was such an upgrade over 60Hz. I am (or at least was in the past) a pretty competitive player in games so you'd think I'd be a prime candidate for it, but after swapping from a 60Hz 1200p screen to a 144Hz 1440p screen for my primary monitor I... honestly could barely notice the difference in games (yes, the higher refresh rate is definitely enabled, and ironically I can tell the difference easily outside of games lol).
I'm sensitive to input latency, so I can (or at least could, don't know if I still can) easily tell the difference between the responsiveness of ~90 FPS and ~150 FPS in games, so it's extra ironic that pumping the refresh rate of the screen itself didn't do much for me.
I usually wanted to upgrade my old PC (GTX970) 2 years ago, ended up buying a cheaper PS5 and a used MacBook for cheaper than the PC upgrade. PC still runs fine, is still in use. Also: the M1 MacBook Air is an emulation beast.
The hw might've been cheaper but a console will end up being more expensive than a pc in the long run. Not to mention that the only input method available is a controller. There are quite a few games I would only olay with a kb+mouse so, for some people, a console is not even an option.
If you don’t play online and have the patience to wait until you can get games used or deals, consoles can still be worth it.
I’m a PC gamer but the only games that I play online are in the realm of Minecraft, FallGuys, Raft or Stardew Valley which would run on almost any machine. I also don’t really play shooters or strategy games so there’s basically nothing I‘d need a mouse n keyboard for either.
I have even thought about just getting a PS or XBOX but I ended up upgrading my PC a little to near PS5 performance with a used cheap 5700xt for a little more than half the price of a new PS5. But if you can’t do that and would have to build sth from scratch, keeping your old PC and getting a console might be worth it. Even more so, now that you can get good deals on used current gen consoles.
My 2008 librebooted t440p thinkpad Says hold my beer. Browses the web like its a 2025 desktop Its amazing Except for the compile times (it runs gentoo :D)
Yea, for general computing a lot of older PCs are very manageable. I have an old 2008 unibody MacBook laying around that I had to use for a little while a few months ago and it was perfectly usable on mint. Even felt a lot better than a lot of newer machines since apple built them like tanks and their trackpads back then were so ahead of their time they easily beat out a lot of brand new machines.
If people are pushing you to buy stuff, they are not friends. Do not listen to them.
No, no see sir we are great friends!
Now let me tell you about this great $20,0000 Flatscreen that i get 30% commission on (welcome to bestbuy circa 2000)
(This is satire)