Must have Softwares Thread

[Patrik]

For me, anyone that's using his PC as a main gaming rig, should have atleast these installed on it :

MSI Afterburner : Helps you know the usage of your CPU/GPU/Rams and their temperature on gaming or when sitting on Idle.

Speccy : Gives you more details about your PC's components.

GPU-z : Gives you more details about your GPU, how it performs like, BIOS informations, Ranking etc...

CPU-z: same as GPU-z but for CPU's.

Cinebench R15/R20: Gives you benchmarking scores, so you can compare them with other CPU's/GPU's scores to know what your current parts are performing like.

AIDA64: Helps you stress test your components to test Overclocking settings (mostly for GPU) (can be used to diagnose some issues as well) .

Know more ? post them below

[Crazycrab]

6 hours ago, Patrik said:

MSI Afterburner : Helps you know the usage of your CPU/GPU/Rams and their temperature on gaming or when sitting on Idle.

 

Well that one is only really relevent if you have an MSI branded GPU.  All manufacturers have their own software that is bespoke to their products  Of course you should be using the one attached to your particular setup.

 

When it comes to must have software, you've listed mostly benchmarking and monitoring software and that's good, but I think there are some other utility software that I feel everyone should be using.

 

Game Clients:  It might seem a bit obvious but it's easy to overlook some of these, especially if your new to PC gaming.  Steam, GoG Galaxy, UPlay, Epic Store, EA Origin... You need these in order to purchase and play your games.

CCleaner:  Despite the companies unsavoury but well earned reputation for pushing it's products through intrusive adds, this is still a very useful tool for getting rid of redundant or unwanted files.

7Zip:  As far as I'm concerned this is the only application worth getting for opening archive files.

VLC:  The reigning heavyweight champion for media players if you use any type of locally stored video or music files.

Vortex:  The replacement software for the old Nexus Mod Manager for user created mods on that platform.  It's a must have for any PC player who want to play mods which as far I'm concerned should be all of them.

Edited May 30, 2021 by Crazycrab

[Patrik]

30 minutes ago, Crazycrab said:

Well that one is only really relevent if you have an MSI branded GPU.  All manufacturers have their own software that is bespoke to their products  Of course you should be using the one attached to your particular setup.

Nope actually, forget about the name, it works on all GPU's no matter what the brand is

[Crazycrab]

1 minute ago, Patrik said:

Nope actually, forget about the name, it works on all GPU's no matter what the brand is

 

Some GPU's have bespoke features like RGB lighting controls, internal and/or external fan speed controls and overclocking profiles that are specific to brands and even specific products.

 

I'm not trying to be mean or call you out, but people need accurate information and you are wrong.  They use the same GPU's provided from NVidea or AMD but they use their own designs for cooling, sensors, lighting, motherboards, fan controllers and power and in no circumstance should you using overclocking software that's not intended for it.  If you have an ASUS ROG GPU then you should be using the ROG software provided, NOT MSI Afterburner.

 

[Patrik]

1 hour ago, Crazycrab said:

Some GPU's have bespoke features like RGB lighting controls, internal and/or external fan speed controls and overclocking profiles that are specific to brands and even specific products.

 

8 hours ago, Patrik said:

MSI Afterburner : Helps you know the usage of your CPU/GPU/Rams and their temperature on gaming or when sitting on Idle.

read this once again, i never mentioned anything related to RGB or something like that, i quoted you to say that no matter what GPU you have, it will work with, don't need to be a MSI model, here's an example in my case :

https://imgur.com/undefined

[Patrik]

1 hour ago, Crazycrab said:

If you have an ASUS ROG GPU then you should be using the ROG software provided, NOT MSI Afterburner.

Forgot to mention that you are the one who's actually wrong here, i'm politely asking you to redo your researches.

[Crazycrab]

1 hour ago, Patrik said:

MSI Afterburner : Helps you know the usage of your CPU/GPU/Rams and their temperature on gaming or when sitting on Idle.

 

 

Your really not getting it are you.  ASUS GPU Tweek, Gigabyte AORUS and so on, ALL have those those same features because they are industry standard.

On my ASUS ROG card GPU Tweek could adjust clock speeds, power settings, measure RAM, temperature, clock speed and power usage, the lot.  It's REALLY nothing special.

The difference being they are all bespoke to their designs including lighting and other external features.  So their is absolutely no reason to use MSI Afterburner if it's not MSI card.

Yes, you can make adjustments using MSI Afterburner if it's not an MSI card but what's the point?  If it's a Gigabyte card then AORUS will do the same thing and more that's actually relevent to that product.  Now please stop encouraging to use the wrong software for their expensive GPU's.

Edited May 30, 2021 by Crazycrab

[skyfire]

Apart from game clients, asus aurora and few other tweak tools which come pre loaded. I have mostly streaming tools like streamlabs, camtasia 2020, adobe premier etc. 

[Empire]

• WIndows 10 🙂 otherwise nothing or linux
• MSI Afterburner, stock since when I did OC it pooped in same games and did not like it
• Iclue software, For RGB on everything that I have and sldo control the fans speeds and look at temps
• Chrome or edge, why not 😛 always hets used more then anything.
• VLC for media player
• OBS for streaming/recording.
• Steam and Epic
• VMWare for Linux.
• TightVNC for Remote desktop.
• MalwareBytes, Solid anti-virus/malware program. If you have another you prefer, obviously just go with that. More than not, just have something in case you need to do a sweep.
• I'd recommend 7zip over winrar, it's free, open source, doesn't bother you to buy anything ever and most importantly, works on all the same file formats.

[Patrik]

8 hours ago, Crazycrab said:

Yes, you can make adjustments using MSI Afterburner if it's not an MSI card but what's the point?

i mentioned MSI Afterburner because it's the most popular and supports all cards....

8 hours ago, Crazycrab said:

Now please stop encouraging to use the wrong software for their expensive GPU's.

LMAO, i bet you are lacking experience, i'm once telling you again that it works no matter what the GPU is, even with older brands like Inno3D  etc... i'm not gonna reply to your "lack of knowledge" once again because it makes no sense.

[Patrik]

1 hour ago, Empire said:

• MSI Afterburner, stock since when I did OC it pooped in same games and did not like it

thanks for including it ! the guy above thought i'm misleading people lol

1 hour ago, Empire said:

• OBS for streaming/recording.

this is optional, because if you are planning to stream, you'd surely have some modern GPU that supports either Nvidia Shadowplay or AMD Relive, which both have streaming/recording options ready

1 hour ago, Empire said:

Epic

for free games 

1 hour ago, Empire said:

• I'd recommend 7zip over winrar, it's free, open source, doesn't bother you to buy anything ever and most importantly, works on all the same file formats.

i would recommend 7zip more than winrar to be honest, Winrar sometimes tells you that a file is damaged when it's just a compatibility issue

 

[Shagger]

26 minutes ago, Patrik said:

thanks for including it ! the guy above thought i'm misleading people lol

 

29 minutes ago, Patrik said:

LMAO, i bet you are lacking experience, i'm once telling you again that it works no matter what the GPU is, even with older brands like Inno3D  etc... i'm not gonna reply to your "lack of knowledge" once again because it makes no sense.

 

That's enough. Not only has @Crazycrab been consistently been one of the most technically adept members of this community, he's also 100% correct on this.

 

MSI Afterburner is compatible with other brands of GPU, but is completely pointless when that brand of GPU will have it's own, indigenous software to perform the same functions. If you have an ASUS GPU for example, you shouldn't use Afterburner when you could GPU Tweak III instead. It will be more compatible and allow access to features exclusive to that ASUS card.

 

Berating someone like you have over correcting a point you made is bad enough if you're right, that's bad manners, but when you were wrong the whole time just adds and embarrassment factor to it all. For you own sake as much as anyone else's, stop it.

Edited May 30, 2021 by Shagger

[Patrik]

1 hour ago, Shagger said:

Berating someone like you have over correcting a point you made is bad enough if you're right, that's bad manners, but when you were wrong the whole time just adds and embarrassment factor to it all. For you own sake as much as anyone else's, stop it.

 

20 hours ago, Patrik said:

Helps you know the usage of your CPU/GPU/Rams and their temperature on gaming or when sitting on Idle.

i mentioned MSI Afterburner being a software for "benchmarking and checking" and pretty much nothing else (drivers, RGB customization etc..), in general

 

[Shagger]

1 minute ago, Patrik said:

 

i mentioned MSI Afterburner being a software for "benchmarking and checking" and pretty much nothing else (drivers, RGB customization etc..), in general

 

 

And software like ASUS Tweak is for exactly that, the only difference is Tweak is optimised for ASUS cards just like how Afterburner is optimised for MSI cards. It's a similar story for every company that sells their own brands of GPU. All @Crazycrab was tying to point out is that, while there is nothing wrong with Afterburner, if you have "X" brand of graphics card, you're probably better off using that same brand's software to benchmark, optimise and overclock with it, and he's right. It's now taken two of us to explain that to you.

 

This is a good topic, a very good topic, may even be worth pinning, but not while you argue with and berate people for sharing their own recommendations and input. If you keep this up, I'll have to lock the topic as it will be clear you aren't interested in other people having an input, only yourself. As that, the topic is all but pointless. Don't force my hand and for God's sake let this go.

[Patrik]

Just now, Shagger said:

 berate people for sharing their own recommendations and input

well, i'm not (i guess) eh?

the reason why i mentioned MSI Afterburner instead is that it's more popular and people had less issues to encounter with it compared to Asus tweak (you can even read that everywhere when it comes to comparisons)... but remember that i was talking about it being a benchmarking tool and nothing else (i literally never mentioned anything about it being used as an overclocking tool or anything like that), moderating your GPU is a whole other story and has nothing to do with benchmarks that i'm talking about here...