MattGPT

In relation to the cable tech, I have a Thermal Grizzly Wireview Pro II, my 5090 sits really balanced across the pins now, but it did let me see that pressure on the cable sideways when the cable routing was not finished made a huge difference on the pin draw. From what I understand, the biggest issue with the 12VHP cables is being plugged and unplugged and bent a lot, so if you are switching out cards to benchmark I would really consider getting one, from what I have seen a really good indicator of when a cable is getting damaged and needs replacing.

@Darren1967 My understanding is that it is not just consoles, plenty of PC games have the same issues, Elden Ring and Capcom games being the obvious one I can think of off the top of my head.

A lot of internal developer tools are far less useful than the analysis DF conducts, they just measure raw FPS data and a lot of people do not seem to pick up on frame pacing issues, I am at the other end of that so I feel it straight away, I would rather have a rock solid 30 or 40fps game on console than an improperly paced 60, but equally I know people who do not pick up on huge frame time differences. With Rich saying that they are going to open source a bunch of their tools, hopefully more developers will look to get the DF approved levels of frame pacing.

From what I know improper frame pacing is often a CPU issue, so when games are pushing open world stuff, lots of NPCs or ray tracing where the CPU takes on the BVH calculation then the consoles are generally pushed harder than most PC CPUs. Consoles also seem to be more likely to use double or triple buffering.

I think in some games VRR can solve it, there have been games where VRR seems to fix it entirely, where as others VRR seems to make no difference, I don't know if that is due to a poor VRR implementation or something inherent to improper frame pacing vs frame time variance.

For me there would be a couple of key things, better RTGI and reflections on water would be great, but tied in with that and especially at night a proper HDR implementation would be ideal, KCD2 is great as it is apart from the HDR, which I find so poor, blacks are crushed, especially shadows, the tone mapping is really bad and there is no way to calibrate it either and a solid HDR implementation would be great for everyone regardless of platform or hardware spec.

The problem with Bethesda is there were some early patches that they claimed improved performance but did nothing and then there has been total silence from them for more than a year, the last patch was in July 2025 and did nothing to improve performance.

Much of the root cause of the traversal stutter is based on the legacy code and it's use of cells/zones that load in and out, but there is absolutely zero management of that process, if they pre-cached the adjacent cells then it would increase RAM usage but it would remove the traversal stutters. There are PSO compilation stutters because it does not have a compilation burn or use in game compilation properly There are bugs from the original game that were never fixed and performance wise it is a total mess.

Modders have tried but the fundamental issues require access to the pre-compiled game code, but Bethesda should be able to write a caching system for the cells and a PSO burn very easily, that combined with a bit more (any?) thread management should be able to improve things dramatically without needing a huge amount of developer time. I suspect the actual issue is they subbed it out, did not care at the time and now do not want to pay to have it fixed, as they do not have enough internal tech staff to spare because they made most of them redundant.

It seems insane to buy a controller that is half the price of the console. The only "Pro" controller I have ever bought is the Switch 2 Pro controller, it is really good and value for what it offers. I tried a Dualsense Edge and did not see the point, I got given one of the Razer Xbox style ones and it did not feel great either. I would like back buttons on the PS5 and PC, hopefully the latter via the Steam Controller if it is ever actually available, but I just cannot justify spending £200 to get them.

@StooMonster It counts cores and reports them as "CPUs".

I currently have eight cores, a 9800X3D, although I am looking forward to the 10800X3D almost certainly having twelve cores, it will be better for software encoding and about the only upgrade worth making in the next year or two.

@MemuAccount Do you ever actually watch the videos? Do you ever actually read the articles? Do you have any understanding of video games graphics?

Or, realistically, are you just a troll?

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
InFamous 1 +2
Killzone 2 + 3 (and 1 from PS2)
Resistance 1 + 2 + 3

I look at this and do not think it is a bad chip, but is it value for money? The 9800X3D can be had for around £30 more if shopping around, on that basis, why would anyone buy the 77/7800X3D?

@Someguyperson I did a quick PC Part Picker and came out around £1,720 with the case vs the 2TB Steam Machine at £1,149. The difference is a much more capable system.

The ambient temperature thing is not something I have ever really found makes that much if any difference on a full size desktop, but I guess it is a much bigger issue for SFF?

@SeanPeterson
It might be a slightly different area to hold the battery, it might be just a redesign, it might be cost saving. I guess once they release there will be teardowns and some definitive answers.

It just looks like they used tape instead of glue and did their own version of their an iFixit guide.

I think it is really a case of anyone who is budget constrained just sits tight for a few years. If I absolutely had to buy/build a new PC now it would be something very middling to get me through and reusing as many existing parts as possible.

@TheFellowFox I am fairly sure the PS4/5 versions are from the x86 PC codebase not the PS3 code because Cell emulation on the PS5 when the game uses the SPEs is not performant on the PS5. This is the PC code cut down and limited for the PS5.

@themightyant PS4/5 discs do not, one of the team said it a few Directs and that matches what is online as well. They could offer a trade in program, they did that with PSP UMDs when they released the digital only version of that.

@themightyant I am probably lucky in that respect, my PC at home is in an area with little natural light if I shut the blinds and in the office I removed the lights above my desk and so do not need the office that bright, the other end of the office is a huge window but that is far enough away to not cause issues.

I totally get the separation of work and pleasure, I sometimes find the same, but more even that I do not want to look at a screen at all sometimes after a lot of intense work, at those points I end up going back to reading books to relax as at that point my brain seems to associate lit screen with work, regardless of it being a monitor, TV or phone.

@TemsOrrough You could insert it into an existing PS5, 4, 3, 2, 1 etc. Releasing a new console does not stop the disc working on the old one. PS1 and PS2 are fully emulated, PS3 is pretty good for most games, excellent for some (able to add in higher resolutions, ultrawide, new textures, much better UI, higher FPS), but struggles on others. PS4 can be emulated very well on high end PCs (ShadPS4), the PS5 emulation is the only one significantly lacking at the moment.

@themightyant I am lucky enough to have 4K OLED monitors at home, in the office and on my laptop, I use Office a reasonable amount, at work Outlook is pretty much always open on my laptop (Asus ProArt P16) and it has zero burn in after more than a year. At home I have an MSI gaming OLED, and at work the monitor connected to my laptop is a 32" ProArt OLED. Even though the work ones are in use a lot with Illustrator open for probably 3-5 hours a day and I have never hidden the taskbar that has zero burn in either. I think overall current OLEDs seem to be much more resistant to burn in than the very early models.

Have you thought about dual booting your PC and using Bazzite, or just Big Picture mode? At home I have also streamed my PC to my TV, minor delay but with a controller it does not feel noticeable and I do not want to use a keyboard and mouse on the sofa anyway (although I have a wireless one for when something Windows based decides to be difficult), part of why I really want a Steam Controller, the others just never seem to get things quite right.

With regard to 1440p at monitor distance I really notice it, I have 32" and 34" and at that size I can see the pixels on a 1440p monitor, but not on a 4k so for me that was the reason I upgraded. I also have become a bit of an OLED diehard for everything now.

@themightyant How have you found the switch to ultrawide? I keep thinking about getting a 5k/2k monitor as there finally is an OLED version, but still not really sure how much it adds to gaming?

I am surprised that 4k sits below 5%, I did not expect it to be that low, although still not in double digit percentages. I wonder if that will change with the Machine and various similar SFF SteamOS PCs launching, which are are more likely to be connected to TVs and the majority of TVs sold now seem to be 4K.

3840 x 2160 4.95%

@paretje The 20% figure is over the generation to date, in 2021 it was 34/66, in Q4 2025 it was down to 15/85 and current estimates for 2026 are that it has dropped below 10%. Sony will not be expecting to lose that 10% when the discontinue in 2028, they will be expecting to loose 1-5% of potential sales, but that will be more than made up by much higher margins on digital sales vs physical sales. When physical sales made up 22% of overall sales they only accounted for 3% of revenue, that difference was because of DLC, microtransactions, skins, season passes, which admittedly some of those will be linked to games people are using a physical disc for.

The relevance of Xbox and PC (as well as other forms of media) is that they show that the overall resistance to digital vs physical is tiny. Businesses use wider available data to inform their decisions, estimate the impact of the changes they make on their current business model and project revenues based on that.

Gamers have chosen, either directly or by proxy. Choices do not get to be granular, that is not how the economics of these things work, nor market pressures. Nintendo are a somewhat different proposition, they approach the market in general very differently, but they have already started the move with the £10 differential between digital and physical and that will likely get wider over time.

You might not have, but many did, there has been speculation for around a year now that the PS6 will include an optional disc drive but only for back compatibility purposes, as well as Sony having some kind of physical to digital trade program (and that looks highly likely for Xbox as well).

If there was a sudden surge in physical sales, if they got back to 50% over the next two years, then I expect Sony would reconsider, they might even choose to push the timeline out a year or two for PS5 games if they see enough demand.

Don't get me wrong, I can see why some people do not like this decision, but I really cannot see why people did not see it as inevitable, or why they view it as a personal attack, not just a business responding to changes in consumer habits.

@NetshadeX I am also in the same fortunate position, built a new gaming PC at the start of last year, bought a PS5 Pro when it was released, I am almost certainly in a position to sit out the next few years without needing to upgrade anything. I think realistically anyone on a PS5, RDNA4 or RTX 40XX GPU is on a similar position though, the PS5 install base is so large and cross gen will likely be even longer next gen that many people do not need to worry about upgrading.

@Simplex_ You seem to be missing the point that it makes sense for Sony, the same as it made sense for PC publishers, not because of some desire to be anti-consumer, but because the vast majority of gamers had already made their choice by moving to digital. Sure it would be better for a small minority if physical continued to exist, but in reality most outside of a very vocal group do not care because they had already long abandoned it for digital only.

I understand why some people might not like this, but it has been made inevitable because of consumer choices, not because of some conspiracy by evil overlords.

You seem to dislike the idea that someone can hold an objective, rational view of something. Or you could just accuse people of being "ignorant" because they present a viewpoint you disagree with..Do I think there are some benefits to physical media? Yes. Do I think there is a business case for it? No. Will the vast majority of consumers care when it goes? No, they will not even notice.

I get that some people do not like this and they are likely to be more of them on here, but it also makes total sense from a Sony perspective. PS5 has been 80% digital over the whole generation and they is from a lower starting point at the beginning of the generation. Series S never had an optical drive and for Series S/X, digital over the generation is 90%. PC has been digital only for around fifteen years.

Some people make a lot of noise about wanting physical, but it makes up very small and ever diminishing percentage of total console game sales, let alone total game sales. If things were reversed and the majority, or even a significant minority of console sales were still physical I could see this being an issue for Sony, but in reality gamers have made the choice for them with their own purchasing decisions.

@Jimbojones You are correct, I was out of date. Initially it was thought to be a dock issue, but now it is an issue with the Nvidia translation layer from DP through to HDMI and a problem with they could in theory solve it in software (or firmware), so there is hope. I am guessing it is technically feasable that is why it was originally stated by Nintendo as working in docked mode. Tech analysis seems to indicate that it should be totally solvable, but then it also took Sony two years to get VRR working on the PS5 and they are usually a lot more technically proactive than Nintendo.

@Tobility loads will on potato settings, which is why 4k/60 is not a useful metric and needs all the usual detail DF go into when they review performance.

Both Death Stranding games are games that I hugely enjoyed. The first I bounced off when it was released, but during lockdown I went back to it and it just gelled, I think it is really a game that needed time to be played rather than jumped in and out of. I walked every hill, completed every delivery, built all the roads, built a full network of zip lines, it was a game that I felt far more than I had felt any game in a long time. I replayed it when the Director's Cut was released and again before DS 2 released and it is still a beautiful game. I also played DS2 on release, again when the Pro version came out and then the PC version, all are beautiful, the story hit me in a similar way the first did, something about it just hooked me.

DS and DS2 and the Horizon games, but especially the first, are stories that really made me feel, in worlds that felt real and alive in a way most fail to. There is something about the presentation style within Decima that must lead to an element of that because those series are both very different in gameplay, visuals and their design philosophy, yet they both work exceptionally well, with amazing attention to detail.

@Darren1967 I suspect it will not crash, it will just mean that games do not progress as much graphically for a few years, there is no reason why the majority could not sit on PS5 level graphics for a few more years, or that PC gamers really need an RTX 6000 series card etc. I suspect it will just delay the upgrade cycle, devs will get better at optimising and people might even spend more on games rather than spending that money on a new console or PC part upgrades.

@Pesky_wabbit Storage is nuts, I paid £259 each for 3 x Samsung 990 EVP Plus 4TB drives in March last year, those same drives are now £499 and £179 for 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 6000Mhz CL30, that same RAM kit is now £999.99 if one can find it in stock anywhere. It makes the GPU rises seem tame.

I have never before built a PC and seen the entire thing increase in value over the following year, it is now worth £3k more than when I built it in March 2025, which is insane.

@DrUnK_PuNk I have a similar issue, OLED TV, monitor laptop etc. I find other displays not great even just for normal work now. I have a PS5 Pro which I am happy with as well, and a decent Gaming PC so I do like high FPS, but the one thing I find is far more important is consistency in both FPS and frame times, on console when sat at sofa-to-tv distance I am happy enough with a rock solid, well timed 30 or 40fps, I would take that over a 55-60fps when the game does not have VRR, though VRR mostly solves that issue for me.

Weirdly I also find I have issues with fast moving images via YouTube, when John was reviewing Doom: The Dark Ages I found the fast paced gameplay via YouTube really uncomfortable in a way I cannot really describe, but playing it myself on PC was totally fine, as was watching the download of the video from the Patreon.

To me it seems that Nintendo had a couple of misses both in handheld and docked with the Switch 2, for me as I almost only play docked the omission of VRR in docked is that, but I doubt they will fix that as it means completely changing the chip they chose to stick in the dock, which they seem to have done because it was $8 cheaper than then one that could handle VRR.

@DrUnK_PuNk I bought a Switch 2 at release for two reasons, I rarely if ever play handheld so the screen was not a dealbreaker and I only expect hardware costs to increase (and my niece and nephew wanted my Switch 1), but it had mostly sat with little use. MKW was interesting, but feels quite empty to me and less easy to pick up and play with kids than MK8D. MP4 started off great, it looks beautiful (they have tailored the art to the tech very well), it plays well, the gameplay is solid, but the story starts off average, the latter third of the game below par and the ending almost made me wish I had not bothered playing the game.

When I have played it I would estimate that 80% of that time has been replaying Switch 1 games or games I never got round to on the Switch 1, it irons out nearly all framerate issues (though not always frame pacing), the DRS windows stay at the top of their range which makes a noticeable difference and some of the upgrades have been great as well. It feels a little PS5 esque in that respect, there were a few great games at the start of the PS5, but especially with the lockdown I finished those very quickly and then spent a lot of time playing PS4 games which the PS5 fixed almost entirely.

All that being said I did pre-order Starfox which is something I very rarely do and from the look of John's review it will certainly give a few hours of very solid enjoyment.

@Comiga I suspect a fairly big chunk of DF supporters will be in the "Not until PC release" camp more than anything, that seems to be the general sentiment amongst a lot of people, even those with PS5/Pro, if they have a high end gaming rig as well.

I was expecting £89/99, though I will not be preordering.

@Eruanno European/UK prices also include VAT (19-25%), where as US prices do not, so that has a fairly big impact.

@Titntin If a £4k PC is making that much noise, have you tried changing the fan profiles, fan setup (more inflow), changing fans (120mm > 140mm seems to make a difference to me) and/or undervolting? My 9800X3D/5090 makes no more noise than my PS5 Pro in normal gaming, it only really gets louder if I run a stress test and it sits under the desk anyway so I do not hear it. I have 3x 140mm/30mm deep fans drawing in and then 3x 120mm/30mm fans through the AIO and one of the same on the back. If I used standard 120mm 25mm fans on the front I would have to run around 600-1,000 RPM faster for the same airflow, which is noticeably louder.

I agree that Valve has been hit by this mess, but so has everyone, though to different levels as Valve have much smaller buying power than Sony, or major PC builders. From watching Rich's video it does seem that they slightly under specified this, a slight increase in performance would have made the value proposition better and likely not have increased the price hugely. I like the Machine from an engineering viewpoint, I really like Steam OS, I think that Valve are doing great things in allowing gaming to move away from Windows, I just wonder if the Machine misses mark somewhat.

A 2x16GB kit (because one wants paired modules) is likely to be £250-350, plus maybe selling a single 16GB stick would get £100 back, so a £150-250 cost just does not make sense, no one rational would make that upgrade, they would just buy a pre-built with better specs for that money.

@matmartin Rich does a comparison in the video, it does have a minor impact, but it appears minimal in many real world scenarios.

I think the form factor is interesting from an engineering side, especially as from the video where Rich dismantles it, it looks like half to two thirds of the volume is the heat pipe, heat sink and fan.

I admire the effort some people put into SFF PCs, especially those who go with full water cooling as well, but for me it always makes things fiddly. I like a full case, plenty of space, good airflow. At some point if I have the time and money I would love to build a full custom water cooled system to keep things really quiet, but it is a lot of work and expense for something that does not have any real impact on performance (1-5% max if it prevents thermal throttling).

One thing that could be an interesting (if entirely pointless) would be FPL, Frames Per Litre, my 9800X3D/5090 build is in a full size tower, runs quite quietly as it has an AIO and plenty of fans running slower to keep the noise levels down. If both were run at the same resolution and settings, how many frames would each generate per litre of volume.

When the PS5 is down to £479 with a controller (obviously), in this week's Prime sale, the Machine seems like a truly awful deal at twice the price.

Edit to add: the price differential between the 512GB model and the 2TB model is £270, the retail price difference between a 512GB NVME and a 2TB NVME is around £160. I know Valve are trying to make a profit, but it does seem to be a bit much to mark up that much when the device is already overpriced.

I have the Cherry KC200 MX with the MX2A Silent switches as my work keyboard and it is lovely to use (I do not game on it) and the metal back means no flex at all.
One thing I do not really understand is the trend for keyboards without numpads as it makes real work much harder and with non-dtandard layouts of other keys beyond they Qwerty basics as it means I cannot type from muscle memory. Any ideas why do many of them do this on "gaming" keyboards?

@themightyant From the basics it does seem like it should be much more performant, the workloads should scale across more cores much better, data will not need to be shuffled around within parts of the engine as much because it is all integrated rather than lots of bits bolted together, but that is just from the blog and some very high level bits published, they are putting a GitHub up in the next few weeks which should contain a lot more detail, although that will be way over my head!

@MemuAccount it will be scalable, so demanding at the top end. Turn it up to max and it will likely strain a 5090.

@Someguyperson I have said a few times a DF hardware survey could give some interesting results. Not just GPU, but CPU, Resolution, VRR, HDR etc. for consoles as well as PC. I would suspect there is a much higher usage of PS5 Pro, VRR/HDR/OLED/HRR displays, higher end CPUs and GPUs than in general, likely miles ahead of the Steam survey.

@Ed64 a lot of Steam users are on laptops, they will be using a standard home desktops, 5.6% or users are on Intel integrated graphics, that is more than all the RTX xx80 and xx90 (plus their Ti/super variants) combined, who will likely be on higher end CPUs. AMD CPUs are great for gaming, but for general usage Intel and AMD are roughly on par and for high end compute consumer Intel CPUs generally have more cores and are a better option, even if Threadripper is amazing for workstations.

FSR4 is going to be important, but the real fight will come next generation, what does RDNA5/UDNA bring in terms of performance gains, price and how much of an overhead does FSR4 carry on those cards. FSR4 is good, but it is frustrating that it is not as universally included by developers as DLSS is. That will likely change when the PS6 (and to a far lesser extent Helix) roll out and devs will be using it by default on the consoles.

@GSX6502 Moving to a newer process would have considerably increased costs. Ampere can go down to Samsung 5n from 8n, that would likely cut power consumption by 30-40% but the chips would likely cost 50% more than current chips. The big issue with the Switch 2 battery life is not the process, it is the battery size, the Deck OLED has a 50Wh battery vs the S2's 19.5Wh, if Nintendo made the battery bigger (and in line with most other modern handhelds) they could more than double the battery life of the console. A die shrink could save a bit of power, accounting for everything else in the system a die shrink could cut total system power usage in portable by 15-20%, who whilst not insignificant it is also not that significant compared to the option of adding a decent size battery.

Is "the choices we have made" a reflection of the hardware in Helix? Helix is rumoured to have 48GB of GDDR7 and 2TB of storage, PS5 is 30-40GB and 1TB (although expandable with M.2 drives), so their choice has been to lock themselves into 50-80% more RAM cost and double the storage cost for next gen, that means that they are going to be significantly more expensive than their direct competitor, the extra baseline cost is going to add £250-300 to the Helix just on a materials cost.

@SodaPop8456 The Xenoblade games are great and playing on Switch 2 should hopefully tidy up the muddy low resolution and give better framerates, they are really goof games. My only issue is I have already played them all three times.

Nintendo's presentation was pretty flat for me and not a lot that I really wanted. I will probably end up buying Ocarina but I would much rather they release the HD versions of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. I really like the Xenoblade games but I have played through them all three times so the playing again is not a high priority, I will absolutely buy the new one though.

What I cannot understand is why there is no announcement of a new 3D Mario game, no new Smash Bros, no new Zelda (just a remake), something like a new Starfox Adventures would be great, a new Earthbound, no Pikmin 5, no new Luigi's Mansion, it just feels like most of Nintendo's first party franchise seem to be dormant.

Nintendo designed and finalised the Switch 2 in 2022 then sat on it for three years, they should have spent that time creating games for it and setting out a proper release path of major first party releases, instead it looks like they did pretty much nothing and still have almost no plan.