Valve joins the Linux Foundation

Re:Valve joins the Linux Foundation by PhasmaFelis on Wednesday December 04, 2013 @02:42PM (#6849564)

> Are you joking? Because even $2000 iMacs come with mobile GPUs. Not to mention CPUs that cannot be overclocked etc. That's comparable to a high-end gaming laptop, not a PC.

And what's wrong with high-end gaming laptops? My $1000 MacBook Pro has played everything I've thrown at it acceptably well, and it's not even particularly high-end. It's no longer the mid-90s, when you needed a new $2000 rig every year to keep up with current releases. For the typical gamer, overclocking your CPU hasn't been worth the effort in years.

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Re:Valve joins the Linux Foundation by adamors on Wednesday December 04, 2013 @03:29PM (#6849930)

There's nothing wrong with gaming laptops, it's just that both their performance and the experience they provide pales in comparison to a PC. (A PC that costs less, mind you.)

I mean, you cannot realistically say that you can have an immersive experience on a 15 inch, 1600x900 monitor when it comes to graphically intensive games.

Also, with CPU bound games like Arma overclocking can result in a difference of 15-20 fps.

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Re:Valve joins the Linux Foundation by archagon on Wednesday December 04, 2013 @04:40PM (#6850449)

This is a rather shortsighted view. Integrated graphics are rapidly catching up to desktop cards. The built-in Iris is enough to play games like TF2 with high settings, while the 15" Macbook Pro's 750M is half as powerful as my desktop AMD 6850! Furthermore, desktop PCs are getting ousted by laptops, to the point where I barely know anyone with a desktop anymore. In my view, PC gaming will have to adapt to this new environment, or it will become an increasingly niche market. (The enthusiasts who suggest spending $500 every year just to catch up with all the poorly optimized ports aren't helping.)

And yes, I very much can have an immersive experience on my 15" display, as can many other people. According to the Valve hardware survey, only 32.61% are running at 1080p; most of the rest have to do with less. Giant monitors aren't as ubiquitous as you might think.

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Re:Valve joins the Linux Foundation by Goronmon on Wednesday December 04, 2013 @08:42PM (#6852087)

>This is a rather shortsighted view. Integrated graphics are rapidly catching up to desktop cards.

I don't see how it's short-sighted, mainly factual. Integrated graphics are cards are rapidly catching up to only the lowest end discrete cards available.

How many people sticking solely to laptops were ever doing much gaming on their desktop back when they had one? I don't think it's useful to conflate all the people replacing their crappy old Dell desktops with a new laptop to people replacing gaming desktops with gaming laptops.

>And yes, I very much can have an immersive experience on my 15" display, as can many other people.

I'm sure plenty of people would have an immersive movie watching experience crowded around a 15" laptop as well, but I'll stick to my large screen TV in the living room personally.

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Re:Valve joins the Linux Foundation by adamors on Wednesday December 04, 2013 @05:35PM (#6850927)

> The enthusiasts who suggest spending $500 every year just to catch up with all the poorly optimized ports aren't helping.

You are clearly out of the loop when it comes to PC gaming, I suggest we stop this discussion before you start saying even more embarrassing things.

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Re:Valve joins the Linux Foundation by archagon on Wednesday December 04, 2013 @05:46PM (#6851020)

Up to you.

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Re:Valve joins the Linux Foundation by ekianjo on Wednesday December 04, 2013 @07:24PM (#6851684)

Integrated graphics catching up with desktop cards? You mean the cards that need 300W by themselves in your PC tower? You must be joking. Its not because integated graphic cards are not as piss poor as they were that the gap is narrowing. The high end moves fast too.

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Re:Valve joins the Linux Foundation by gizzlon on Thursday December 05, 2013 @03:56AM (#6853313)

The built-in Iris is enough to play games like TF2 with high settings,

TF2 is 5 years old, and the engine is even older..

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Re:Valve joins the Linux Foundation by nemothekid on Wednesday December 04, 2013 @04:49PM (#6850519)

I can't seem to load up the steam hw surveys for the various different video cards, but it would be interesting to see how many users are running at or below the latest MBP specs.

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Re:Valve joins the Linux Foundation by archagon on Wednesday December 04, 2013 @06:26PM (#6851310)

I can't get it either, but look here:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1748747

The top video card is Intel HD Graphics 3000 and Intel GPUs make up 12% of the list.

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Re:Valve joins the Linux Foundation by amagumori on Wednesday December 04, 2013 @03:51PM (#6850072)

well one problem is that you have always had to buy the most expensive macbook / mac to get any sort of dedicated GPU. they've never had a GPU in anything but the absolute most expensive mac. besides that, apple has always had poor opengl software and driver support. they just released opengl 4 support with mavericks and touted it as a big deal, but it's opengl 4.1, which was released in 2010.

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