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Monitor and steam question

MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,787
edited March 2017 in Hardware
I have been looking around at my local big box stores and only one of them carries a 1440p monitors and they only have two ultra wides, nothing else.

How important is g sync?  Does anyone have 2 monitors one with and one without? 

I know I am going to upgrade my monitors, I am just trying to decide to what level. I was thinking about going with one higher end monitor and one lower end one.  The higher end one would be 144hz and the lower would be 60 hz.  Both would be 1440p.  The higher would probably have g sync.  Is anyone running with this setup or has anyone tried it?  What are your thoughts.

Also for people who have upgraded PC recently, is there a good way to get your steam saved data from one PC to another?  I don't particularly want to download all of the games again.  Nor do I want to lose all of the saved data.  I would think by now steam should have a tool for migrating the data easily, but  I could not find one online. 

Any help would be much appreciated.

“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

--John Ruskin







Comments

  • CleffyCleffy Member RarePosts: 6,414
    It can be important in preventing micro-stutter. It will pretty much equates to 1 frame being skipped every once in a while. Having a high enough refresh rate makes this indistinguishable. If you have a 30 or 60 hz monitor, it can help, but even here they recommend a higher refresh rate to use g-sync.

    As for your steam data. Each individual game will make it's own saves, you will need to pull those saves. I recommend re-installing games and software on a new build. During the installation process, the installer reads your computer's hardware and makes necessary adjustments. You may run into anomalies if you copy over the data.
  • avsco10avsco10 Member UncommonPosts: 13
    If you have the graphics horsepower to get framerates of 75+, a 144hz g-sync monitor is amazing. Everything feels smoother and more responsive. You won't regret getting one.

    Also, I'm not up on how steam cloud saves work, haven't bothered looking in to it, but you can definitely copy your installs on to an external hard drive (in the steam folder->steamapps->common is where you'll find all of them), and copy them to the same folder on your other computer. The install will still run for all of them, but rather then re-downloading everything, it recognizes the files already in place. Saves a lot of time and bandwidth.
  • DarLorkarDarLorkar Member UncommonPosts: 1,082
    Best to do a google search for savegame location of each steam game you want to save.  Some are saved on cloud some on your hard drive in different places. Once you have the directory that has the save though..just copy to a disk/backup HD and replace in same location after re-install of game and your save will work.

    On the saving of the games...you can copy game files(find the game same as you did on saves usually in steam folder)  and replace in same locations where they are located now, then go to your library after your new setup is done and right click on game then properties, then go to local files and on bottom click verify integrity of game files. That MAY work...but i agree with Cleffy though...better to just do a new install with new hardware. 
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,519
    You should be aware that G-sync is the Nvidia-proprietary version of the industry standard adaptive sync.  G-sync adds about $150 to the cost of a monitor, while adaptive sync doesn't.  At the moment, Nvidia only supports G-sync and not adaptive sync, but I expect them to change that, as it would be suicidal not to.  AMD supports adaptive sync now (they call it FreeSync) and Intel says they will in the future, and Nvidia doesn't have a history of offering GPU driver support inferior to Intel.  G-sync is proprietary to Nvidia so no other vendors could support it even if they wanted to.

    How much it matters depends on your frame rates.  If you're getting 100 frames per second, there isn't nearly as much room for improvement as if you're only getting 45 frames per second.
  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,787
    What I would really like to find is a 100hz+ monitor with IPS that is 1440p.  And at 300 dollar tag.  I would even take a 24". 

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • centkincentkin Member RarePosts: 1,527
    If you are into being competitive in games like CS:GO then you go for the 144hz monitor.  If you are into doing other things with your computer then 60hz is fine.  Really though, unless you have 1070+ you aren't going to be able to run a 1440p monitor significantly over 60hz anyway.  Oh, and you generally make sacrifices to have the extra frames.
  • OzmodanOzmodan Member EpicPosts: 9,726
    Cleffy said:
    It can be important in preventing micro-stutter. It will pretty much equates to 1 frame being skipped every once in a while. Having a high enough refresh rate makes this indistinguishable. If you have a 30 or 60 hz monitor, it can help, but even here they recommend a higher refresh rate to use g-sync.

    As for your steam data. Each individual game will make it's own saves, you will need to pull those saves. I recommend re-installing games and software on a new build. During the installation process, the installer reads your computer's hardware and makes necessary adjustments. You may run into anomalies if you copy over the data.
    I don't agree with your steam suggestion.  Especially considering how long it would take to redownload the data for any moderate user.  I have upgraded lots of people's hard drives and have copied the steam directory over to the new drive, point the icon to the new drive and let steam do it's thing.   Usually, if I am replacing the drive with a larger one, I just back up and restore.  But copying also works if the drive is being added.
  • CleffyCleffy Member RarePosts: 6,414
    For me, reinstalling games does not take long with my system and internet connection. A week ago I would have suggested the same in moving your steam directory, but recently I have seen stories that platform changes causes issues with some programs that were copied between systems.
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,519
    I would do a new install of Steam on a new system, as Steam itself is fast to download and install.  Try copying games over without doing a new install, and if some particular games don't work, you can reinstall those particular games without having to reinstall all of them.
  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383
    edited March 2017
    I've always had luck copying the Steam folder (including the SteamApps folder, which contains all your games). Then, install a fresh copy of Steam over top the existing installation. That gets all the registry keys and such updated, and preserves all the games you had installed. I've not run across a game that was completely installed before that needed to be redownloaded from scratch (although they usually do need to run their "First Time Services", like VC++Redist/etc).

    That doesn't include all save game files though - those are set per game and can be a pain to dig through on games that don't support Steam Cloud.

    Steam does have it's own Backup tool - if you right click on a game in your library, you can choose Backup Game Files. I don't know what all that does, I've never had to use it, but worth a shot.
  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,787
    The steam transfer of data from one drive to another worked like a champ.

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • AethaerynAethaeryn Member RarePosts: 3,150
    MMOman101 said:
    The steam transfer of data from one drive to another worked like a champ.
    Was going to say. . I did that once. . it worked great..  one time I forgot. . . . ouch.

    Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!

  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,787
    Aethaeryn said:
    MMOman101 said:
    The steam transfer of data from one drive to another worked like a champ.
    Was going to say. . I did that once. . it worked great..  one time I forgot. . . . ouch.
    I am not reformatting my old drives until I am sure everything is just the way I like it; in case of a need to roll back. 

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







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