Reverted my VCS (to factory default)

[Rick Dangerous]

I pulled the Ripjaws 16GB 3200 speed RAM from my VCS as well as my 1TB M2.  They were needed for heavier lifting and duty over in my Alienware M15 R6 (and no regrets there from the benchmark improvements.)

 

It was fun to upgrade the machine but these investments were overkill.   Everything i own from the store fits on the stock memory, and if i ever need more i'll probably just use a USB 3.0 short profile or a cheap 256GB M2.   The RAM...well as far as i know you still can't get into the BIOS to adjust the speed, and maybe i'll use the 16GB stock I pulled from my Alienware if i really feel the need to.   For what i'm playing, and the kind of games on the VCS (indie), i think the decent quality stock 8GB Kingston RAM will do just fine.  

 

I'm not by any means giving up on the VCS, but i'm just going to enjoy the platform for what it is, and not try and treat it like a small form factor PC.

 

Anyone else "downgrade" their VCS yet?   Actually was fun to take it apart and makes me want to play it some more soon. 

Edited December 4, 2021 by justclaws
clarified the title

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

I’ve actually just bought some upgrades for mine this evening lol 32gb DDR4 Corsair Vengeance 2400 MHz and a 2tb M.2 SSD!. I went with 2400 MHz ram as I can’t really be bothered messing with the bios to much to change the speed etc, the upgrades should be ideal for me though as I love to do some light gaming and stuff on PC mode with Windows 10 but if I where to just be using the Atari OS I definitely wouldn’t have bothered upgrading the ram to be honest. 

[leech]

4 hours ago, Atari_JaguarVCS said:

I’ve actually just bought some upgrades for mine this evening lol 32gb DDR4 Corsair Vengeance 2400 MHz and a 2tb M.2 SSD!. I went with 2400 MHz ram as I can’t really be bothered messing with the bios to much to change the speed etc, the upgrades should be ideal for me though as I love to do some light gaming and stuff on PC mode with Windows 10 but if I where to just be using the Atari OS I definitely wouldn’t have bothered upgrading the ram to be honest. 

For sure.  I was tinkering with Linux on it, but haven't booted into that in a while.  But now with dosbox / mame / 7800 emulation, I should give it a shot.

[Rick Dangerous]

The PC mode implementation is so clumsy.  I set up a external boot SSD but it was a pain to plug/unplug and it doesn't have the horsepower for much windows gaming anyway.  It's best doing what it does right out of the box, a fun little indie/stream machine.   Most of the games are tiny, you will never fill a 2TB M2 SSD, but of course it's always fun to max out stuff for the sake of doing it. 

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

It’s got enough horse power for the types of games I’m playing on Windows 10 tbh. I’d definitely never choose it over a gaming PC it’s not designed with that in mind but it’s surprising the PC games it can actually run very well at decent frame rates obviously with a lower resolution and graphic settings, I’ve been impressed with it’s PC mode so far but again i’am mainly playing some older AAA games and a few smaller releases such as the Toki remake and Battle Axe and then the even smaller indies etc and I’m doing work related tasks from it. I guess there’s always the streaming services for those much larger games that it wouldn’t run to well on a hardware level. I’ve probably went over kill with the SSD lol but I don’t know maybe lots of bigger games will hit the Atari OS store and I’ll manage to fill it I think next year will be a good year for the console, it’s definitely reassuring to have the space available! I probably should have got 16gb DDR4 aswell but it’s definitely fun having it maxed out. 

[.nIk0.]

It's ok for bios access. Search the forum

[AlecRob]

I probably wont downgrade my VCS as i currently don’t own any other modern PC’s… lol

[tripled79]

I went cheap and put a 128 GB M.2 and I'm only using 18% internal and 17% on the m.2. Plenty of room for now. Probably won't need to upgrade that anytime soon unless we get some relatively bigger games on the VCS besides these indie or retro games.

RAM I upgraded to 16GB 2400 Mhz. I don't see myself upgrading or downgrading from that...

[eightbit]

I didn't downgrade....but I didn't upgrade either

 

The only item I added was a 64GB USB 3.0 drive I had laying around just to see how games are moved to the drive and what it feels like to load the store games directly from a USB flash drive. I personally cannot detect a single difference in loading speed in comparison with the internal memory and the USB. That may change with larger games, but even the largest game currently (Guntech) loads at what appears to be the exact same speed. 

 

That is great that the storage space is so easily upgraded. Until there is a real need to upgrade the ram and add an m.2 I am just not going to bother to be honest.

[justclaws]

On 12/1/2021 at 2:43 AM, eightbit said:

That is great that the storage space is so easily upgraded. Until there is a real need to upgrade the ram and add an m.2 I am just not going to bother to be honest.

Indeed, for AtariOS mode, storage is easily added.
There is no need, and no benefit to upgrading, if you're just using the VCS as a console. Just add storage, eventually. ?
Games released for AtariOS must always be targetted at the standard 8GB RAM system.

Some critics made a huge fuss that the VCS only has 32GB internal storage, but as you say, it's simple to add via USB.

[zzip]

I only installed an m.2.   I didn't see a need to upgrade the memory for a device like this for my purposes anyway.  

[leech]

16 minutes ago, zzip said:

I only installed an m.2.   I didn't see a need to upgrade the memory for a device like this for my purposes anyway.  

Ha, mine was more about 'I already have it open, I may as well...'

[_The Doctor__]

upgrading it allows it to server more purposes, like serving my 8 bits... I can still use it as a console and let it be a slave for all my other crap. speeding it up helps on those games we're not supposed to be playing on it.... like you see all over youtube.

Edited December 2, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[leech]

1 hour ago, justclaws said:

Indeed, for AtariOS mode, storage is easily added.
There is no need, and no benefit to upgrading, if you're just using the VCS as a console. Just add storage, eventually. ?
Games released for AtariOS must always be targetted at the standard 8GB RAM system.

Some critics made a huge fuss that the VCS only has 32GB internal storage, but as you say, it's simple to add via USB.

Same thing with the lower end Steam Decks.  Just add in some MicroSD cards.