Steam+ Deals Mega Thread (All PC Gaming Deals)

Neuro5i5

Neuro5i5

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This thread will attempt to provide a place to discuss past/present/future PC gaming deals. While mainly focusing on Steam games, any standout sales may also be presented. I will not be updating every Daily/Weekly/etc. sale. The tools to help individuals become a smarter shopper will be provided below.

See this POST for links to store sale pages, threads of interest and other tools to help you become a more informed PC game shopper.
 
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agentghost said:
and this is only the upper 40% of that GPU hierachy list. the list continues with 50 more entries below the screenshot.

I dont think the GTX 970 is mid range

fd5830a5055068ca5f2c9e9b7040431d.jpeg
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why are amd cards not on the list, but only nvidia?

 
I don't know why people are saying that Arkham Knight is a straight from console port. Ambient Occlusion and rain textures are missing from the PC version. It doesn't matter if you have a budget 650 , to a 290X or a Titan or whatever. No AO makes the game look flat. No amount of horsepower will add in effects that aren't there.

The PS4 looks better. Its a shit port unless you like the fake look with the brightness cranked that you see on in-store TV displays. That being said, I guess I'll wait for the patch before installing and hope the discount was worth it.

 
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agentghost said:
and this is only the upper 40% of that GPU hierachy list. the list continues with 50 more entries below the screenshot.

I dont think the GTX 970 is mid range
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You're looking at many generations of hardware on a long-ass list. Not really the current market. For instance, I can buy a card around the middle of your list for about a hundred bucks -- pretty budget, right?

I bought a 970 GTX for about $300 and that's near the middle of the pack in terms of price.

 
Re: Arkham Knight

I didn't like the fact the minimum/recommended specs were modified a few days before release. This most likely indicates Rocksteady knew there were going to be some issues with the PC release, but they found out too late? Whatever the case, this pushed my PC from the recommended into the minimum range which made me cringe a little bit. Since I already pre-ordered from Nuuvem (at the ~56% discount) I decided to use the key anyway and see where my system stands for future reference and because I wanted to play this game dammit.

I installed the latest Catalyst 15.6 beta drivers that were recommended and started the game without tweaking any game files. I changed all in-game graphic settings at 1080p to normal (texture, shadow, & details) w/ AA & vsync on and then ran the in-game video performance test along side of fraps. I ended up averaging 52 fps and when I changed shadows & details to high it only brought it down to 50 fps on average (the lowest brief dip was to 39 fps in the city). With vsync on or off it didn't make any dramatic changes to fps, but the max fps did increase to 71. Not great but tolerable given the circumstances.

Playing the game without tweaking I'm locked in at 30 fps (naturally), but the game runs and looks alright at the moment. The textures are good for an open world game, the game runs pretty smooth when in combat (albeit at 30 fps) and I'm even using "an inferior AMD card". Beyond missing the more enhanced graphic options and the fps locking I'm not sure where all the complaints are stemming from (EDIT: I sure do now). I expected the worst and I haven't run into any issues yet, or maybe I'm just lucky or I'm less finicky (EDIT: I'd still to get minimum 60 fps). The mass hysteria is overblown.

(EDIT: After seeing the array of issues that some people are having first hand I retract my overblown statement. There is merit to the complaints. I'm sad Arkham Knight was released under these conditions.)

My PC Specs: i5-3570K, AMD (Sapphire) HD 7950 (3GB), and 16GB RAM.

 
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Here's how I come up with what's mid range.  Discount titans at a thousand bucks and $650 buck cards because those are for insane people.  Now, find the middle of the rest of the cards. :)

A 970 still costs like 350 and that's nowhere near a budget price by most people's standards.    960s at a couple hundred bucks would be mid range (budget) cards in my book.

 
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hal said:
You're looking at many generations of hardware on a long-ass list. Not really the current market. For instance, I can buy a card around the middle of your list for about a hundred bucks -- pretty budget, right?

I bought a 970 GTX for about $300 and that's near the middle of the pack in terms of price.
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Just because a Lamborghini Aventador exists, doesn't make the Cadillac Escalade a budget car.

Camthur said:
Here's how I come up with what's mid range. Discount titans at a thousand bucks and $650 buck cards because those are for insane people. Now, find the middle of the rest of the cards. :)

A 970 still costs like 350 and that's nowhere near a budget price by most people's standards. 960s at a couple hundred bucks would be mid range (budget) cards in my book.
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Pretty much this.

 
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Camthur said:
Here's how I come up with what's mid range. Discount titans at a thousand bucks and $650 buck cards because those are for insane people. Now, find the middle of the rest of the cards. :)

A 970 still costs like 350 and that's nowhere near a budget price by most people's standards. 960s at a couple hundred bucks would be mid range (budget) cards in my book.
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elessar123 said:
Just because a Lamborghini Aventador exists, doesn't make the Cadillac Escalade a budget car.

Pretty much this.
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Look -- PC gaming is not now, nor has it ever been, cheap. You can arbitrarily throw out high end cards all you want, but good gaming cards are not budget grandma cards. Including $100 cards and expecting them to hang with high-end games is silly.

$200-$300 is a reasonable price for a graphics card and you can buy a 970 GTX right now for $309 -- maybe cheaper if you hunt around -- that's hardly a high end price, and if you think so then you must be new to PC gaming. I paid about $200 bucks for my 3Dfx Voodoo 2 back in 1998.

I don't contend that a 970 is a budget card, but it's not a high-end card either.

 
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hal said:
$200-$300 is a reasonable price for a graphics card and you can buy a 970 GTX right now for $309 -- maybe cheaper if you hunt around -- that's hardly a high end price, and if you think so then you must be new to PC gaming. I paid about $200 bucks for my 3Dfx Voodoo 2 back in 1998.
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Too bad GPUs can't be delivered digitally. I just ordered 970 for 360€ (thats $410-ish). :(

Around 400€ or $450 if you want free Arkham Knight with it.

 
I decided to see how people who cover video cards all the time split them up.

Here's how tomshardware splits them: 

Entry level:  cards that are like 65 bucks, up to 100 top end 

Mid-Range GPUS:  Under $200 

Enthusiast GPUS:  $200 to $300

High-End GPUS:  Over $300

I'll grant that you can't just toss out high priced cards because you don't like it.  650 dollar cards do have their place.    Titans are just off their own fantasy land of rich people though.

970s seem right on the border there.  A person could legitimately argue one way or another as to what group they belong in and not really be wrong I suppose.

For the record, tomshardware doesn't consider them high end either even though they price them at $330 bucks in their report.

 
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hal said:
Look -- PC gaming is not now, nor has it ever been, cheap. You can arbitrarily throw out high end cards all you want, but good gaming cards are not budget grandma cards. Including $100 cards and expecting them to hang with high-end games is silly.

$200-$300 is a reasonable price for a graphics card and you can buy a 970 GTX right now for $309 -- maybe cheaper if you hunt around -- that's hardly a high end price, and if you think so then you must be new to PC gaming. I paid about $200 bucks for my 3Dfx Voodoo 2 back in 1998.

I don't contend that a 970 is a budget card, but it's not a high-end card either.
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And prices went down across the board. I had a Voodoo 3 (forgot what I paid, but I got it months before release and paid much less than MSRP). I paid $40 for 4 MB of RAM for DooM 2 bare minimums. I paid $600 for a mid-range Pentium III CPU. Those are no longer the prices for mid-range parts.

A 970, by TODAY's standard, is a high end card. Despite Titans existing. Even Nvidia themselves admitted they didn't expect the Titans to sell anywhere near as well as it has. Because Titans are a fluke. They're not the norm. The norm is the 980/970 being high end cards. Something like a 760 is a mid-range card.

 
Camthur said:
Here's how I come up with what's mid range. Discount titans at a thousand bucks and $650 buck cards because those are for insane people. Now, find the middle of the rest of the cards. :)

A 970 still costs like 350 and that's nowhere near a budget price by most people's standards. 960s at a couple hundred bucks would be mid range (budget) cards in my book.
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Pretty much this. The far end of the pricing curve escalates with a swiftness for diminishing returns but I think a better guide is how much more technologically advanced they are. As pointed out before, the 970 is on the top end of performance chart. To get a notable boost in performance, you need to spend 3-5x as much.

 
elessar123 said:
A 970, by TODAY's standard, is a high end card. Despite Titans existing. Even Nvidia themselves admitted they didn't expect the Titans to sell anywhere near as well as it has. Because Titans are a fluke. They're not the norm. The norm is the 980/970 being high end cards. Something like a 760 is a mid-range card.
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Quibbling over what category the fall into is silly, though I will note that you are now in disagreement with the Tom's Hardware categories that Camthur just posted.

My point is that, for gaming purposes, you can't just throw all video cards that exist into a pile and start labeling them LOW, MID, and HIGH. The vast majority of cards in the $100 or less range are going to people who just don't know any better, or who have very specific low-end needs. If you're a PC gamer and you're buying new video cards in the range of $100 bucks, then you can't very well expect to run top games.

A GTX 760 can be purchased for as low as $159. In my opinion, that doesn't qualify as mid-range when you're talking about gaming hardware. That's a bottom-line price, and possibly a card I'd buy for the family PC in the living room.

 
jshackles said:
I'm working on a companion app for Idle Master that will read your badge page, find games that are eligible for card drops and have less than 2 hours of play time. The program will then idle those games all at once until the 2 hour requirement is met for each, then you'll be able to run Idle Master normally.
The issue I'm running into is that Steam will only count the playtime towards 100 games simultaneously opened. So the program will have to run for two hours for every 100 games you need this done for.
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source
 
hal said:
Quibbling over what category the fall into is silly, though I will note that you are now in disagreement with the Tom's Hardware categories that Camthur just posted.

My point is that, for gaming purposes, you can't just throw all video cards that exist into a pile and start labeling them LOW, MID, and HIGH. The vast majority of cards in the $100 or less range are going to people who just don't know any better, or who have very specific low-end needs. If you're a PC gamer and you're buying new video cards in the range of $100 bucks, then you can't very well expect to run top games.

A GTX 760 can be purchased for as low as $159. In my opinion, that doesn't qualify as mid-range when you're talking about gaming hardware. That's a bottom-line price, and possibly a card I'd buy for the family PC in the living room.
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Yes, but even Camthur's post admitted that Tom's Hardware disagrees with their own categories, listing a $330 card in the $200-300 range. Meaning by their own benchmark, the 970 is a high-end card.

And using the same post, a mid-range GPU is $100-200, which *gasp* a $159 GTX 760 falls in.

Basing it on price, frankly, isn't a good way to categorize it in the first place. Basing it on something like median performance would make a lot more sense.

 
I think, in the end, it's pointless to argue about it since the goal post is constantly being moved.  New generations are always coming along and pushing the old stuff further down and cheaper.  

This whole subject has been driving me nuts recently.  My 2gb GTX 560 ti is getting long in the tooth and I've been looking for a replacement.

I would like to say, I do love the fact that this is the sort of place where people can completely disagree and still  have a civilized conversation about it.  No yelling, no mud slinging, no rage induced ranting.   It's great.  :)

 
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elessar123 said:
Yes, but even Camthur's post admitted that Tom's Hardware disagrees with their own categories, listing a $330 card in the $200-300 range. Meaning by their own benchmark, the 970 is a high-end card.

And using the same post, a mid-range GPU is $100-200, which *gasp* a $159 GTX 760 falls in.

Basing it on price, frankly, isn't a good way to categorize it in the first place. Basing it on something like median performance would make a lot more sense.
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I just told you that you can buy a GTX 970 for $309 right this very moment -- maybe cheaper if you're a CAG ninja.. If you want to debate whether or not $9 turns a card into a different category of card, then whatever. I'm not the guy for that debate.

This conversation is going to be highly subjective anyhow as everyone has an individual budget and specific needs. What card is high/low/mid is always going to be open to debate. More important is the cost/performance ratio that each person must determine for themselves.

All I'm saying is that if you include every card under the sun, then your list is going to be skewed. You can't have a "Performance curve" if the bottom end struggles to run anything but pixel games.

In my mind, there are three tiers of viable mainstream gaming cards:

- low end (runs most games at low settings)

- mid-range (runs many games at high settings)

- high end (runs all games at Ultra settings)

If you're a gamer and you're not at least targeting high settings for most current stuff then you're going to quickly find your hardware outdated.

 
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In unrelated news:  I saw Jurassic World last night (T-Storms blew out the power here for 6+ hours... so impromptu dinner & a movie night!) 

It was.. alright?  :shrugs:  Didn't really care much about anything/anybody.  It wasn't bad... but it wasn't great either.

The whole idea of seeing the movie was to go somewhere with air-conditioning. Unfortunately, the theater's manager decided it wasn't necessary in a room with over 200 people :/ so that sucked (apparently others had the same idea we did).  

Also.. what the hell is with you younger people wearing mustard-gas as perfume?  Is this a new thing? We actually changed seats twice because of this.

On the bright side - our power came back on within 3 minutes of us returning home and my dinner was fine.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion about what video card is high or mid-range.

 
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elessar123 said:
Yes, but even Camthur's post admitted that Tom's Hardware disagrees with their own categories, listing a $330 card in the $200-300 range. Meaning by their own benchmark, the 970 is a high-end card.

And using the same post, a mid-range GPU is $100-200, which *gasp* a $159 GTX 760 falls in.

Basing it on price, frankly, isn't a good way to categorize it in the first place. Basing it on something like median performance would make a lot more sense.
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This is what I was going to say. But by that measure, one doesnt really expect 4K performance from a 970, nor would they be content with low settings @ 1080p/high settings @720p. You'd expect high/ultra settings @ 1080p and mid settings @1440p. That may not be high end, but is is a hell of a lot higher that budget/midrange!

 
- Glenn - said:
In unrelated news: I saw Jurassic World last night (T-Storms blew out the power here for 6+ hours... so impromptu dinner & a movie night!)....

....It was.. alright? :shrugs: Didn't really care much about anything/anybody. It wasn't bad... but it wasn't great either.

Is this a new thing? We actually changed seats twice because of this.
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Saw Inside/Out with the kids -- good movie.

I kind of want to see Jurassic World, but it looks a lot like Jurassic Park III... and The Lost World... and Jurassic Park.

 
- Glenn - said:
In unrelated news: I saw Jurassic World last night (T-Storms blew out the power here for 6+ hours... so impromptu dinner & a movie night!)

It was.. alright? :shrugs: Didn't really care much about anything/anybody. It wasn't bad... but it wasn't great either.

The whole idea of seeing the movie was to go somewhere with air-conditioning. Unfortunately, the theater's manager decided it wasn't necessary in a room with over 200 people :/ so that sucked (apparently others had the same idea we did).

Also.. what the hell is with you younger people wearing mustard-gas as perfume? Is this a new thing? We actually changed seats twice because of this.

On the bright side - our power came back on within 3 minutes of us returning home and my dinner was fine.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion about what video card is high or mid-range.
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crazy, i would of ask for a refund

 
madjoki said:
Too bad GPUs can't be delivered digitally. I just ordered 970 for 360€ (thats $410-ish). :(

Around 400€ or $450 if you want free Arkham Knight with it.
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Whoever you bought from is doing it wrong. The "free" Arkham Knight is anything but. Perhaps you can send Proof of purchase to the manufacturer and they will provide you an actual free copy...

 
Blade said:
Are you getting mid-cuts or high-tops? I hear there's a debatable difference between the two.
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It's according to what you consider high. To me, high by boot standards is over the ankle up to mid-calf. So, by that definition I typically go with mids, usually cut right at the ankle.

 
Neuro5i5 said:
It's according to what you consider high. To me, high by boot standards is over the ankle up to mid-calf. So, by that definition I typically go with mids, usually cut right at the ankle.
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But the real question is... how hard can they kick your machine after your video card can't run Arkham Knight?

 
hal said:
In my mind, there are three tiers of viable mainstream gaming cards:

- low end (runs most games at low settings)

- mid-range (runs many games at high settings)

- high end (runs all games at Ultra settings)

If you're a gamer and you're not at least targeting high settings for most current stuff then you're going to quickly find your hardware outdated.
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I'd say low end for the bulk of new/modern games at low settings, medium for medium settings and high - unsurprisingly - for high settings. Ultra or maxxed out is what SLI/Crossfire builds are for.

Anything that can't even handle low settings just isn't a gaming card.

 
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I just remembered. Didn't Doom used to have a single button you press to set high/low quality? If your computer lagged at some points, turn it to low.

We don't really have something like that any more.

 
Yea, I was gunna upgrade to a 970.. but my 780 TI so high on the list I figured I could burn some extra coal (because the only real difference is power consumption).

 
I'm working on a companion app for Idle Master that will read your badge page, find games that are eligible for card drops and have less than 2 hours of play time. The program will then idle those games all at once until the 2 hour requirement is met for each, then you'll be able to run Idle Master normally.
The issue I'm running into is that Steam will only count the playtime towards 100 games simultaneously opened. So the program will have to run for two hours for every 100 games you need this done for.
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Neuro5i5 said:
source
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Gonna go ahead and give myself credit for thinking of this before I saw anyone else post about it, thereby saving Steam trading cards for all time.

 
Quick question: I have Steam on my SSD, but the majority of my games stored on my HDD.  Since "they say" B:AK runs better off the SSD, I'd like to install it to my SSD.  Is there a way I can move the files from my hdd to the ssd and have Steam recognized (or re-install) from there, or do I have to D/L directly to the SSD.  Note: when setting up Steam, I allocated two spaces for game installs, one on the ssd, one on the hdd.  Is it a simple drag and drop from one to the other or are there more steps? Thanks in advance.

 
hostyl1 said:
Quick question: I have Steam on my SSD, but the majority of my games stored on my HDD. Since "they say" B:AK runs better off the SSD, I'd like to install it to my SSD. Is there a way I can move the files from my hdd to the ssd and have Steam recognized (or re-install) from there, or do I have to D/L directly to the SSD. Note: when setting up Steam, I allocated two spaces for game installs, one on the ssd, one on the hdd. Is it a simple drag and drop from one to the other or are there more steps? Thanks in advance.
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When going through the game installation window there is a drop-down for choosing your installation location. Backing it up and then restoring will also work, but I recommend re-installation unless you're with a bad bandwidth cap.

 
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Camthur said:
I would like to say, I do love the fact that this is the sort of place where people can completely disagree and still have a civilized conversation about it. No yelling, no mud slinging, no rage induced ranting. It's great. :)
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Your opinions are stupid.

Dumbass.
 
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