The State of PC Gaming in 2019

[Julio Franco]

In 2019, more games flowed between PC and other platforms than ever before and we saw the titanic clash between Valve and Epic. PC gaming retains its unique identity through mods, hardware configurations, and its inextricable ties to Twitch and YouTube. Increasingly, though, the lines between these platforms are dissolving, and everybody's winding up back where so many series and genres started: on PC.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1957-the-state-of-pc-gaming/

 

[Uncle Al]

Personally, I will stick with the PC for the simple reason that I am in control to modify, update, etc. the equipment as I want. Something that is nearly impossible for gaming systems as well as there are few, if any modifications that can be done on game systems. Give them access to the guts, ability to add RAM, chance out CPU's, etc. and I think the gaming systems could / would give the PC market some real headache's. In essence, turning game machines into just single board PC's ....

 

[loading88]

While Steam and Epic are flinging crap at each other like caged monkeys, the Xbox Game Pass was the real winner this year.

My GTX 980 is started to feel a bit dated (thanks RDR2) so I'm holding out to see what AMD/NVIDIA have planned next year. I may just get a PS5 instead of a $500 card if it looks like another slow year.

 

[Puiu]

Hardware wise it wasn't a bad year and we even got a few surprises in the software side. All in all, if I ignore Epic's anti-consumer practices, I would say that it was a good year. Hopefully 3rd party exclusivity deals will die off some, at least in the PC market.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Since Winter 2017 and the collapse of cryptocurrency:

#1 RAM got cheaper.

#2 SSD got cheaper.

#3 CPU - even the new releases - got cheaper - and more powerful.

#4 GPU got cheaper and more powerful.

I built a computer last month with a Hero Motherboard, i9, Crucial 2TB SSD, EVGA AIO, 32GB DDR4 and it was all less than $1500.

For less than $500 there's a bunch of GPU available.

Thing is: most games aren't demanding that much power and I could have saved more than $800 with a Core i7, 16GB DDR4 and a less expensive motherboard.

Most games right now are built to work fine with a Core i5, 16GB DDR4 and a 1060, 1070 or 1080 - but the 1660Ti is at the top of the charts for low-priced current-gen gaming.

 

[amstech]

Looks like the new consoles are 8/16's so those will be the best gaming CPU's for the foreseeable future, anything more then that will be overkill for many years to come.
Hoping Intel releases a 8/16 Comet Lake that can hit 5.4-5-5GHz 24/7, that might be enough to force my hand to upgrade from my ancient 4/8 Bloomfield.

Also, lots of buzz with Half Life Alyx...will this be the game that gets more folks in to VR? Editor was spot on with this assumption and I am right there with him.

 

[Proposition Joe]

There is another store platform that I came across on another site(linked from another news article) that also opened up this year called "robot cache" It looks similar to Epics and steam, haven't tried it myself tho

 

[Unusual Kmc]

Ray Tracing is cool, but only for reflections. You don't need RTX for things like godrays.

 

[rrwards]

Looks like the new consoles are 8/16's so those will be the best gaming CPU's for the foreseeable future, anything more then that will be overkill for many years to come.
Hoping Intel releases a 8/16 Comet Lake that can hit 5.4-5-5GHz 24/7, that might be enough to force my hand to upgrade from my ancient 4/8 Bloomfield.

Also, lots of buzz with Half Life Alyx...will this be the game that gets more folks in to VR? Editor was spot on with this assumption and I am right there with him.

Man get yourself one of those Westmere-EP Xeons (X5650 through X5690) for the Bloomfield board if possible. They're usually less than $10 on ebay. Estimated performance is 50% higher clock for clock than bloomfield. Additionally, you're getting 6 cores and 12 threads on a die that uses 95W (compared to the 130W on Bloomfield) so you can overclock really well while still staying below recommended voltages. My X5650 OC-ed from 2.67ghz stock to 4.0 ghz on air cooling. Benchmark performance put it on par with a Ryzen 5 1600. Sure, that's not the Comet Lake sized upgrade you're looking for, but a $10 upgrade will help ease the waiting period, especially as games start using more cores.

 

[IAMTHESTIG]

I love VR and I love Half-Life, but I don't think this new game is going to change the scene that much. I'll bet it will be good, and will bring some new comers into the VR fold, but ultimately it isn't going to flip the big switch. VR is niche because it is hardcore, and hardcore gamers are a niche in themselves. So before you even consider the cost of VR you have that big limiting factor.

Things are slowly getting better and better for VR, but I don't think it will ever go truly mainstream. Until you can get high quality complete VR system for less than a couple hundred $$$, it just isn't going to get much bigger than it is now. My dream is 8K per eye 180 degree FOV wireless VR.... for less than $200. THEN, with some quality games, it will really start to take off - but remember it is still as the author of this article said, a niche within a niche. So it will never be mainstream.

 

[Rayneofpayne]

Ray Tracing is cool, but only for reflections. You don't need RTX for things like godrays.

Huh?
Ray Tracing is a rendering method similar to rasterization, RTX right now does reflections, and lighting, in its hybrid form.

Realistic shadows used with a stealth game is probably the best use case scenario atm for RT.