Aug 172024
 

Unless you’ve been living under a graphically heavy rock, you would’ve heard of Black Myth Wukong by now. Built using the latest unreal engine 5, it is destined to be a graphics card killer given it’s gameplay footage. Fast paced action forms the core of the game, which almost always beckons high fps.

High fps would then need strong hardware, specially with ray tracing capabilities to truly enjoy the game’s beauty. While we wait for the game to release tomorrow, let us try and understand what it can ask from a laptop, specially a 30 series one like the HP Victus 3060.

My Victus is the 7 5800 H with a 3060 and 16gigs of RAM. When I bought this three years ago, cyberpunk 2077 was already out for almost an year. I did want to play cyberpunk and went for this laptop. Never have I felt the need for more out of the laptop. As I mentioned in an older post, games like days gone, metro exodus rtx edition run great at 1440p. Cyberpunk too runs great (enough).

However, one thing which didn’t bother me originally but is starting to take over is the fan noise. I think it is the age of the fan blades, or the cpu paste or something else like bad chips. I won’t go much further here explaining the state of the laptop but that’s the summary of the laptops state.

I installed the benchmark tool published officially for Black Myth Wukong and there are many options available there. You could play around with the resolution (depends on the monitor), rtx setting, frame gen and get the max, avg and min fps.

The tool just crashed at the cinematic graphics setting with rtx at the highest and frame generation off. I know this is too much to expect of the laptop, but hey. Learning by experience. What impressed me about the laptop was that it managed to complete the test at just one setting lower than cinematic. Mind you, it eek’d out only 18fps max but the tool completed.

Where the benchmark felt much gamer friendly was with the frame gen on. There were frame drops in three places, but in the end we got 81 fps with at rtx disabled, frame gen on, 1080p and high graphics preset.

This test is just to understand what can happen to the laptop when you do dive into the game and buy it. What may be a disappointment is that the fast action may not be that smooth as we will start seeing on streamers’ rigs.

Thank you publisher for giving us this tool to plan what to do next.

Nov 132020
 

Very frequently in the game special event cars are up for grabs. They come as either story mode races or as proving grounds. In this post I will be talking about how you can beat the story mode race. PR matters most in this type of a special event.

The story mode races usually last 7 days. You need to complete atleast 4 days of racing to keep some blueprints. You may later get blueprints from the crates to unlock the car. Completing day 6 will let you keep more, but only when you complete all 7 days will you be able to unlock the car. Some cars also unlock car series which is a bonus. Almost all races in the story mode are easy. There a couple on day 6 and 7 which may need additional plays.

Your experience may vary based on the fuel capacity you have. The number you have on the top right corner. This capacity starts from 5 and goes up based on your VIP level. It recharges once every 50 mins. How you increase VIP level is part of a different post I am working on. I am on VIP level 4 with fuel capacity 6, just saying.

The first 3 days are the most important of the entire endeavour. As you win a race you cannot play it again unless its a replayable one (Replayables start from day 3). So…

Continue reading »
Feb 212020
 

The Shield K1 tab was quite a masterpiece of its time. An excellent 8 inch display with a 1900X1200 resolution IPS panel with dual front facing speakers, an okayish front and rear cam combo (both 5 MP with HDR), a mini HDMI out(upto 4K output), an OTG compatible micro USB port, a micro SD card slot and a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

The ports

The exterior is nothing to complain about. The speaker grills are covered with rubber and the back is plastic with a rubber finish too, for a great grip. All this external interface is built around an NVidia Tegra K1 processor with 192 kepler cores for graphics with an ARM Cortex 2.2 GHz CPU, attached to a 2 GB memory. Storage is 16 GB which was not bad for a 2015 device. The 128 GB supported micro SD card slot allows one to use a memory card as internal storage which can be quite handy.

Continue reading »
Dec 142019
 

When you think about anything gaming, you get a little bling in mind. Come on, yes you do. Well, I do. The design language is sure to include some good red and shininess, some sharp highlights and some more.

Oh that grill

The Acer predator in its 8 inch 1920X1200 (16:10) goodness flaunts an IPS LCD screen, a memory card slot, a volume rocker, a power button topped up by 2 Gigs of RAM, 32 gigs of storage and an Intel Atom processor (X7-Z8700).

These aside I want to particularly mention the 4 speakers on the 4 corners of the device. Sharp to touch and hear they pack a good punch in the audio department. Watching movies and YouTube, listening to music on device or online, are a treat. Whats more, the tab has a vibration motor, not seen in many, if any tab(which doesn’t have call functionality).

Continue reading »
Sep 072019
 

First things first, I bought this mouse about an year ago and have been testing(a.k.a using) it quite a bit. I have used it for gaming, the witcher 3, they are billions being the main use cases. In fact, i have been using it for work too.

Of these uses, I felt that it is very versatile and can be used for gaming and work. Looks, feel and performance are what I will be talking about in this review entry and I hope to have gained enough know how on what to do with it.

Looks first:

The mouse is a big one. It has 6 buttons, including the wheel. It has good lighting options which can be modified with software available on their site. It uses a healthy dose of plastic, rubberized on the top grip and translucent for the lighting areas. Additionally, it has an aluminium exoskeleton kind of a structure which makes sure that the mouse has its shiny chromy exterior. It is a good crowd gatherer, if that’s a thing.

The feel:

Using the mouse gave me mixed feelings about it. It being slightly heavy made sure it doesn’t slip away. Feels quite good for the weight. However, extended gaming sessions can have a gym effect on your arm unless you are ergonomically qualified. The main left and right buttons are a bit mushy for my liking but they advertise it as being silent so I think that is fine. Oh yeah, it is really silent. Not like my G402 fury which beckons attention in clicks. This silence is exactly why I could used it at work.

Continue reading »