Building a new PC

[crayzkirk]

Originally Posted by Fish

Missed this. Ray tracing has actually been around in computer graphics since the 80s. Not really primitive. It's just until recently that GPU hardware has actually been capable of taking advantage of it. It's certainly not necessary. But it sure looks cool when your system is capable. Not trying to argue that quality makes up for a shitty movie. Sparkly shit is still shit. But gaming with ray tracing is a really unique experience. Hearing people say it's unnecessary and people should turn it off for performance reasons just makes me sad.

"Cheap system" is highly debatable. The range at which people justify spending on computer gaming equipment varies to a huge degree. But right now, you can build a really nice system capable of high end 1080p gaming, or mid to upper end 1440p gaming, for ~$750-1000. There are many corners your can shave depending on priorities. $1.5K would make a really strong system at the moment.

Yeah, I wrote some programs back then in college showing the concepts of ray tracing; a single scene took many hours to render. I remember getting my first 3dfx card; it was stunning compared to everything else at the time.

My only point is that, for myself, the novelty all of the fancy visuals and eye candy wears off. And that software always lags behind the hardware; like writing code for multi-processor systems, it takes a different mindset to ensure the cores can work independently. For a graphics card with 1000s of processors, that task is larger.

It will continue to get better and within the next few years, I believe that a home computer will be able to make professional level video with 100% computer graphics instead of using actors.

I remember something said about computers a long time ago:

$2500 will buy you a top of the line system.

This was true for 8086, 80286, 80386, 80486, etc. And will continue to be true as systems continue to advance.