T w e n t y S i d e d

This week I talk about the whole NVIDIA vs. AMD pissing contest as it applies to the Witcher 3 “HairWorks” feature.

I actually wanted to do a rant on how both companies are staggering morons when it comes to how they name and market their products. But to illustrate how bad they are, you have to explain the naming systems of product lines, and I can never remember how those work because my brain refuses to store large quantities of unmitigated gibberish. I keep trying to educate myself about it, but my eyes glaze over and Istart drooling on myself. Hours later I’ll regain my senses and find myself scrolling through cat pictures on Facebook. It’s so dumb and confusing that I can’t follow it well enough to explain it for the purposes of describing why it’s so dumb and confusing.

This is also why my graphics card is as old as it is. I kind of feel like, if you asking me to put down that kind of money, at the bare minimum you need to make it as simple and as painless for me as possible. People shopping for a new iPhone don’t have to worry about choosing the correct GSM frequency bands. For crying out loud.

Having said all that, I’m delighted at how much things have improved. Back at the turn of the century, I used to need to worry about graphics hardware every two years. Now graphics hardware has a sort of console-like lifespan where you can go four years or so before you need to go through the ordeal of buying a new one. Even nicer is that it’s less painful to be on the low end of the tech curve. Oblivion was a nightmare. I’m running the Witcher 3 on the lowest settings, and it’s all good. The grass ends about ten meters from me, but other than that it looks like Shadow of Mordor from last year.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.