"Gaming Hardware Elitism" An open letter, err, video of sorts

First and foremost I want to say that this video I made was targetted at no individual. If you feel like this was about you, well, if the shoe fits wear it; but I didn't have any one person in mind when I wrote up this script. The gaming community isn't perfect and we can do some silly things sometimes. This commentary is a result of my own personal experiences and how I've come to appreciate things other people like to hate on. Take it with a grain of salt.

Really, Tek Syndicate is one of, if not THE, best PC communities I've come across so far. We're typically a lot better than most and I think people here will appreciate what I have to say on this issue more than most would, even if we aren't necessarily in agreement. And any worthwhile discussion that is to be had is likely to happen here, not on YouTube. A like, share, or sub would be super cool tho, yo.

Cheers.


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"So I see you've visited the LTT forum" :)

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I think this video itself is beating a dead horse

Brilliant commentary, well written and concise. I agree.

I am a retired (=poor) engineer. I love computers, but gaming is not my primary focus. I do a wide variety of tasks on my PC and gaming is the most demanding. I don't game often, but when I do, I just want it to work. Because I am a broke ex-engineer, efficiency and having a system that is just barely good enough (for a price) is something I tinker with a lot. Whenever I build a system for someone I try to consider what they will use it for. I propose to them 2 options: The entry-level "They probably will never notice it is a potato" option and the "If I were you" option.

I recently upgraded my 660 SLI setup because one title I really loved did not support SLI. Keep in mind that for 99% of what I do, 660's in SLI worked great. I had convinced myself I required a GTX 980. I asked @JokerProductions and he said a 970 was the better value. Tom's Hardware suggested the R9 390. I got over my fanboyism and tried AMD for a few days. In the end, I didn't like it and exchanged it for the (lesser performing) 970. At first I was a little disappointed, but after living with my efficient new GPU for a week, I'm happy as a clam.

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I think people just need to try instead of coming to PC thinking they need a server (COUGH COUGH LINUS COUGH).

I mean shit I have 60 FPS constant in skyrim (and most others) with a phenom and a 370. Its a 400 dollar box you can do anything with.

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What you need to play games: Something build after 2008. DONE! Price point: ~400€
Sure, close to high end stuff will be better but what does one want to pay for 5 FPS?
Bottlenecks is one of my all time hates. Imagine you have the monster CPU. 128 cores made from solid gold and platinum powered by the light of the stars.... and a VooDoo3. Still, you CPU is bottlenecking your GPU. Designing without bottlenecks does not aim for the last 5% most people are keen on. Eliminating bottlenecks is aiming for the single point of failure! Forget it! (This advice works for everything)
Some people go shoping and come back with something that says i7 for the reason of knowledge.
My way: What do I want? What do I have? Why is question one crap?

For Low-End hardware (especially video cards) I got my own story at least a dozen times. Slow elderly machine that just dies on its way to the desktop. If I got it to boot, most common issue were 100% RAM usage. Throw 40 bucks at a video card (if it didn´t have one) and you are golden. Why not more Ram or mainboard or CPU? There are two ram slots, each holds 1GB DDR2, the CPU is a single or duo core and to replace it, the new mobo/cpu combo would be to expensive. Just offload some stuff from the RAM...
Bad hardware is funny aswell. I had a board by Supermicro break. I had several Asus "workstation class" (whatever that wants to be) break. Now you tell me, is ASRock or Gigabyte a bad company because they have boards that can fail?

Console peasants out there. Do what you want because I do what I want. And if anyone wants to take a trip to the PC side: Sort by price increasing and scroll down and stop before the price tag makes you cry.

THIS. SO MUCH YES.

I love that bit about not noticing it being a potato. If I had to summarize my whole video, I'd use this quote.

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I once upgraded 5x86 120 to a 5x86 133. The benchmarks in the reviews made it look like a good idea, until one looked past the bars and at the actual numbers represented. Afterwards I felt like a moron.
I call it upgraditus.
On the Game development side gone are they days when Cernak can lock himself away and write Doom in C in a few months. Lead time for AAA titles is 4 years now. With the budgets involved few companies are willing to take risks. When Id would sell the Doom Engine for 50k (they called it a 50,000 dollar xcopy) companies developed games like Descent and Terminal Velocity.
It's also human nature. You will never see someone on the Food Network walk into a Walmart.....ever. I was in a drivers meeting where a 15 minute debate over which brand of ride-on-lawnmower was best, cub-cadet or john deer. I have a Walmart model so I kept out of it. It can become a form of idol worship. Wars have been fought over this.

Didn't watch, but yeah there's totally elitism in this stuff and most of it is ridiculous. Basically kids who have only used a couple different pieces of hardware spouting whatever YouTube talking head decided was the way to go.

"Oh you totally need a 5820k for video casual video editing because that's what everyone else says and I have no independent thought" lolololol

Education is what would help the world. It is not what the world wants, but what it needs!

I just thought of another name for it: The Ferrari Syndrome.

How many people buy Ferrari's because they have a pressing need to drive at 200 MPH?
Nobody.

People buy Ferrari's because they are cool and they make the owner look like they know how to drive at 200MPH.

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What about Gold Syndrome? What is so special about Element 79?
There is no reason! Not corroding can not be the only one...

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Also guys, remember, a lot of tech press 1. Aren't journalists and don't adhere to journalism standards and 2. Have a vested interest in your viewership.

They have a vested interest in making content that get them views. This means things can be presented in a way that isn't necessarily representative of the real world. Every video card review recently has midrange cards getting 16 or 25 fps in their reviews, which has led people to thinking the only cards worthwhile are high end $300+ cards.

They have an interest in making what they think is content that sells, and have the metrics to back it up. YouTube kids, which everyone seems to be chasing, don't care that an amd 8370 is perfectly adequate at basically every need a user could want, they wank themselves over what's the "best" in make believe land because the tech media tells them Intel chips get the highest number in some benchmark for video editing. When in reality, being a better video editor has very little to do with actually rendering videos.

Audiences don't seem to care about content that says "x tech is pretty alright for $150, if you have $150 buy it" so our tech non journalists push a narrative upon us that is oriented around delineating the high end market. GPU reviews don't have settings with which you get reasonable frame rates, they tweak settings to either the max, or to where it shows clear differences between high end cards, while leaving competent middling cards in weirdland where they get odd results, like every middling card getting 17 fps at 4k.

TL;DR there's a lot of elitism in tech because that's what our non journalist journalists push on us.

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This problem is universal these days in journalism.

Panama Papers! How is it, that no US-politicians got hit by it?
Edit: DERAIL, sorry.

Gaming Hardware Elitism is good for the economy because it keeps the world go round by having money change hands constantly. And its helps out the poorer folks because their is a ton of used hardware on ebay that when new sell for about 20% then what it is currently listed at since now it is used.

I haven't had the chance to watch the video yet but I will throw in my two cents on the general theme and some of the comments. @anon85933304 I think there's somewhere in between those two that I prefer, but it needs some explaining. There's a few different camps of people in reference to how things are bought, but I'll just name the ones directly related. There's the "pissing contest" buy the most expensive but not actually even understand what they got in return for all that cash, there's those who don't really care much about said purchase, but need the item so just kind of get whatever, but there's some gradients in between that. I don't ever like to be on either side of that. So for example, while I most likely wouldn't buy the Walmart ride on lawn mower, I also wouldn't be that fool buying the Ferrari of lawnmowers, as often times your price to performance isn't even looked at within that spending tier due to having more money than sense. It might be easier to explain within our own shared tech niche. I think most of us would NOT buy much prebuilt stuff as we can find better value in doing it ourselves. And that holds true regardless of the price tier. So we wouldn't buy the Walmart version, but we also would not buy the iBuyPower or Asus prebuilt typically. We would rather do it from scratch or get used components and make our frankenbuild, which is going to outperform that "ferrari" of a PC while spending less! Maybe that's what you were already trying to explain, but I felt it was an important distinction from your post

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I totally get your point. I built so many systems to so many people, the first thing they always ask me is do I really have to pay 1500$ to play my games?
My answer is most of the time the same: what do you want to play and how do you want to play it?

Who would have guessed a g3258 and a HD 6950 2gb would be able to max out most of the games at 60fps... Well I guessed it because I read stuff and I know hardware. I made this guy very happy.

I recently got a 4K PB287Q monitor from asus. I was skeptical at first because every goddamn benchmark video tells me that an R9 290X would not run my games at 4k. I had this card for a while and I knew it's potential and I told myself: It is written 4k ready on the damn box, it must surely be able to achieve something at 4k! So I bought the monitor, tested some games, tweaked them a little bit (modded Fallout4 is a pain) and guess what.....60 fps in all my games except fallout 4. I Know I can't play Metro LL or Crysis 3 on high settings at 4k, but even at medium it looks WAY BETTER than ultra at 1080p. So fuck those reviews and benchmark that tells us that ''this card and this card won't run your games at 4k''

People really should just educate themselves on what they actually need before they start wasting money on things that will make no difference to them. This is why I don't own an expensive phone for example. I just need it for regular phone use, some internet to check e-mails and stuff and 90% of my actual phone use is music. So I own a lousy HTC Desire 320. I've never even used the camera. I just don't see the appeal.

If you don't mind playing below 60fps then more power to you. Personally I don't need 60fps at all times but I need AT LEAST 40 fps. Anything below is choppy and unplayable for me. And the games that I play require fast single core performance, so I needed to get an Intel CPU. And since I don't upgrade CPU/mobo often and I don't know when I'm gonna upgrade I decided to get a newer generation i5. And since I know that overclocking doesn't really matter anymore because it's not 2008 I got an i5-4590 for $160 which was a really great price. I also always plan ahead so having an iGPU is useful for someone like me because I need to be able to use the PC if my dedicated GPU dies and I can't get a new one in time.

It's so easy to fall into the elitism trap and to feel like you're worth less if you don't have the best shiny new thing. Especially if you listen to all those "famous" people online who always talk about all the cool new things that they have and how amazing they are because they preform 15% better than the 200% less expensive part. People are impressionable like that. Easy to manipulate. It's basically why Apple is so popular. Of course PC gaming and gamers aren't the exception.

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I concur with this statement. A lot of people don't know where to begin looking in the research realm. So they come here to places where they know people already have experience, then they get information.

It is my belief that we should be more inclined to direct people on what to look for, and what it all means. Teach them the craft. So they may go forth and make those decisions.

Though, some people also just want to plug something in, and have it work. That's ok too.

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