PC Pc Gaming/building thread

[dwwaino]

Me!

Before Windows 10 support ends.

Current PC

i7-6700K, 16GB RAM, GTX 980 Ti (processor doesn't support Windows 11, motherboard doesn't support processors that do, etc etc etc)

Was an ABSOLUTE BEAST ... 9 years ago (ordered it on the 01/09/15, so less than two weeks away from it's 9th birthday!)

All I've done since then is add a second 2TB HDD, and a 500GB NVMe SSD to go with the 120GB SSD (for Windows) and 2TB HDD (for everything else) it came with. Current situation is OG 120GB SSD for Windows 10 and other non-gaming programs like Office. 500GB NVMe SSD was originally for Cyberpunk 2077, but since I finished it I only have the three Warhammer Total War games on there, one 2TB HDD is for Steam, and the other is for all other games (old school disc-based games that don't use Steam, and games I have on Origin, GOG, Ubisoft Connect etc).

Probably saved about half of what I intend to spend, and I intend to go all out again like I did 9 years ago. Have yet to start serious research, but hoping to buy a new system either EOFY sales next year, or around current PC's 10th birthday for the symmetry (but I am wary of the cost of components skyrocketing the closer we get to the end of Windows 10).

Currently contemplating one big arse 4k monitor, or three 1080p monitors for the immersion

Current monitor is a single 24 inch 1080p. Even the (dual) monitors I have at work shit all over it now. Hell, even my WORK PC shits all over my so-called gaming PC. They have ****ing 3080s inside them for some reason

Man I used to have a 980. I bet you run into all sorts of vram issues with a lot of newer games now?

Another thing I thought of, and I have no idea if it's even possible, but to have one 4k monitor and 2 1080p monitors on each side. Ideally identical monitors, just different resolutions. Then if I want the immersion, I can run all three in 1080p resolution, or if the game doesn't support triple monitors, or the immersion isn't as important, or I just want pretty graphics, I can just run the single 4k monitor

Like I said I have yet to start serious research.

That can work smoothly because 4K is exactly twice the resolution where as 1440p doesn't scale down to 1080p as well. However if you wanted to still use 1080 monitors then you wouldn't want to go bigger than 27" (well I wouldn't, you might want to check it out first) because 1080 starts to look bad from 27. Then for 4K anything under 32" you might want to use Windows scaling because text at native 4K is tiny.

If I were to make a suggestion I'd look at a good 32" 4K or 34" ultra wide (3440*1440) for immersion then if you wanted another monitor for whatever it doesn't have to match.

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

Man I used to have a 980. I bet you run into all sorts of vram issues with a lot of newer games now?



That can work smoothly because 4K is exactly twice the resolution where as 1440p doesn't scale down to 1080p as well. However if you wanted to still use 1080 monitors then you wouldn't want to go bigger than 27" (well I wouldn't, you might want to check it out first) because 1080 starts to look bad from 27. Then for 4K anything under 32" you might want to use Windows scaling because text at native 4K is tiny.

If I were to make a suggestion I'd look at a good 32" 4K or 34" ultra wide (3440*1440) for immersion then if you wanted another monitor for whatever it doesn't have to match.

Solid advice.

My solitary 22 incher or whatever it is just isn't big enough to make WFH a viable experience, although I do do it on occasion (I have two in the office, and both are much MUCH bigger).

I'm not a big fan of two mismatched monitors from an aesthetics perspective though

I do look forward to sitting down and researching properly. Enjoyed it last time.

Edit: I don't play a lot of modern games as you can probably imagine! Cyberpunk and Far Cry 6 probably the newest? Currently playing the new Doom 1+2 update, Selaco (GZ Doom engine) and Age of Empires 2. While drooling over recent and upcoming games Did this when I got my current PC too, had DA: Inquisition sitting there untouched until I bought it, and now I'll probably do the same with Veilguard!

 

[dwwaino]

I guess this is why many b650e and x670 boards are being listed as sold out or end of life. Though even the b650 (non-e) pickings seem slimmer than when I looked 12 months ago.

(And lmao @ b840. That's still an a620)

AMD's Mainstream B850 & B840 Motherboards To Launch In Early 2025, Partner Showcase at CES

AMD's mainstream B850 & B840 chipset offerings for budget motherboards will take a slight pushback to early 2025.

wccftech.com

 

[StFly]

I guess this is why many b650e and x670 boards are being listed as sold out or end of life. Though even the b650 (non-e) pickings seem slimmer than when I looked 12 months ago.

(And lmao @ b840. That's still an a620)

AMD's Mainstream B850 & B840 Motherboards To Launch In Early 2025, Partner Showcase at CES

AMD's mainstream B850 & B840 chipset offerings for budget motherboards will take a slight pushback to early 2025.

wccftech.com

Yep, I was budgeting for a build as I have house things to consider and tear my hair out with, but yeah if it wasn't the "what's an intel set up look like with oh, failing cpus and shit support, great" comparison with AMD offer and pipeline stuff, I still haven't settled on anything build wise as might as well just wait and console it in interim.

Very underwhelming on a few offers with both and things around the market, and hell, I'm say upping from a GTX 760 and well, a decade old i5-4670 set up at present as I retro it on PC as don't mind playing generations behind when things are cheaper, games are to be enjoyed after all.

 

[dwwaino]

Intel is still ok as long you stay away from the 13900k/14900k, their mid range is safe (lol) but at this moment there isn't any reason to get anything other than AMD. Intel's only selling point was their high end but they're off limits currently.

 

[dwwaino]

Zen 3 through to Zen 5 will be getting a performance bump with an upcoming Windows 11 update (24H2). Some tidy results on the insiders preview build

 

[dwwaino]

I did a thing. So now we know how underwhelming Ryzen 9000 is and I've seen on a lot of communities that those on Zen 3/equivalent or older who were waiting for Zen 5 have decided to either just grab a 5800/5700x3d or build into 7800x3d. I've listened to American Home Shopping man (PC Builder Channel on YouTube) that the current 7800x3d price is the best it's going to be for quite a while and will probably be in high demand. Even more so as the 9000x3d CPUs will likely launch at a higher price because it's easier to reduce a price later on.

I figured if 7800x3d will be popular then so will 2x16gb 6000mhz cl30 memory. An EXPO ready Trident Z5 kit was on sale at Scorptec as well as the 7800x3d (actually regular price everywhere else) so I grabbed both and they can sit in my draw for 6 months.

(inb4 they're ~$550 early next year)

 

[dav3]

RIP Anandtech, who are closing down after over 27 years. It's a pity that Youtube muppets are replacing guys like these because the general population has the attention span of a goldfish, not to mention all the "news sites" pumping out AI generated garbage.

 

[dwwaino]

Anandtech had some of the best written tech level deep dives of stuff and taught me how heaps of things worked. I didn't realise the founder went to Apple a while ago though.

 

[dav3]

Anandtech had some of the best written tech level deep dives of stuff and taught me how heaps of things worked. I didn't realise the founder went to Apple a while ago though.

They were generally the first place I went if I was checking reviews for an upcoming purchase, and there aren't a whole lot of places left that get close to it.

 

[Art Vandelay_]

So I have an X570 board powering a Ryzen 7 5700x and a Radeon 6700xt.

Given I can achieve 100+ frames on games like BF2042, CoD, Cyberpunk etc running between med-high settings whilst sitting my GPU on the 2nd x16 slot going to the chipset @ x4 allows my M.2 hyperdrive to fully maximise the full x16 pci 4.0 going to the cpu is that a trade off that's not costing too much gaming performance or would it be worthwhile removing 2 of 4 nvme drives and using the full x16 lanes available for GPU performance?

FWIW the combined 8Tb of storage the hyperdrive uses has around 5.2 Gb used up so they aren't sitting idle.

 

[dwwaino]

So I have an X570 board powering a Ryzen 7 5700x and a Radeon 6700xt.

Given I can achieve 100+ frames on games like BF2042, CoD, Cyberpunk etc running between med-high settings whilst sitting my GPU on the 2nd x16 slot going to the chipset @ x4 allows my M.2 hyperdrive to fully maximise the full x16 pci 4.0 going to the cpu is that a trade off that's not costing too much gaming performance or would it be worthwhile removing 2 of 4 nvme drives and using the full x16 lanes available for GPU performance?

FWIW the combined 8Tb of storage the hyperdrive uses has around 5.2 Gb used up so they aren't sitting idle.

I wouldn't be running a graphics card at 4x. No graphics card is currently saturating pcie 4 8x so you're losing nothing by keeping it in the first slot and stealing 4 lanes for a drive. The drive will still be maxed out on those 4 lanes as it doesn't use any more than that.

 

[Art Vandelay_]

I wouldn't be running a graphics card at 4x. No graphics card is currently saturating pcie 4 8x so you're losing nothing by keeping it in the first slot and stealing 4 lanes for a drive. The drive will still be maxed out on those 4 lanes as it doesn't use any more than that.

Problem is with the hyperdrive the bios needs to bifurcate the lanes 4x4x4x4 which can't on the chipset x16 slot.

So GPU in slot 1 means 2 of 4 m.2 drives won't be usable.

 

[dwwaino]

Problem is with the hyperdrive the bios needs to bifurcate the lanes 4x4x4x4 which can't on the chipset x16 slot.

So GPU in slot 1 means 2 of 4 m.2 drives won't be usable.

Oh right, bifurcation! I know this became a lot more straight forward on the x670e with the extra lanes but for x570 it might just have to be as you said and you have to make that choice and if it works for you then it's all good. sataris is a RAID man so might have 2cents to offer.

What motherboard is it out of curiosity? I want to have a look at the manual and see the configurations.

 

[sataris]

Oh right, bifurcation! I know this became a lot more straight forward on the x670e with the extra lanes but for x570 it might just have to be as you said and you have to make that choice and if it works for you then it's all good. sataris is a RAID man so might have 2cents to offer.

What motherboard is it out of curiosity? I want to have a look at the manual and see the configurations.

Raid is not a backup.

 

[sataris]

Problem is with the hyperdrive the bios needs to bifurcate the lanes 4x4x4x4 which can't on the chipset x16 slot.

So GPU in slot 1 means 2 of 4 m.2 drives won't be usable.

This is a longstanding issue with m.2 and consumer land boards.

I've encountered this as well, and the only real solution is to

a) Read the MB manuals and figure out your ideal pcie lane split.

b) Buy a threadripper.

 

[dwwaino]

Raid is not a backup.

What do you call your pr0n RAID sever then?

 

[blackshadow]

What do you call your pr0n RAID sever then?

Computer Name: Spank Bank

 

[dwwaino]

Speaking of motherboards and chipsets, AM5 is looking convoluted. B850 won't be until next year but x870 is a cut down x670e in both features and quality. Looks like x870 is going to be fairly budget and most appear to be 6 layer PCB compared to previous 8 layer. Unfortunately most of the good x670e and x670, x670e and b650e boards are discontinued making room for 800 so with the rumours that AM5 will likely support a third generation I think I'll just cough up for an x870e. At least it will have better memory support and won't have any gremlins like earlier AM4 boards did for Zen 3.

 

[dav3]

Looks like it's confirmed that AMD are giving up on high end GPUs for now, to concentrate on increasing the market share for mainstream cards.

It’s official, AMD is abandoning high-end Radeon gaming GPUs for now

AMD VP says company is looking to grow its share of the graphics card market by focusing its RNDA 4 graphics cards away from enthusiasts.

www.pcgamesn.com

 

[blackshadow]

Looks like it's confirmed that AMD are giving up on high end GPUs for now, to concentrate on increasing the market share for mainstream cards.

It’s official, AMD is abandoning high-end Radeon gaming GPUs for now

AMD VP says company is looking to grow its share of the graphics card market by focusing its RNDA 4 graphics cards away from enthusiasts.

www.pcgamesn.com

Disappointing for competition.

No incentive for nVidia to be price competitive.

 

[dwwaino]

I was watching Daniel Owen (gee whiz how much has his channel blown up) break down the interview with Tom's Hardware and I do find AMD's strategy dangerous. They want quantity and value at the mid range and when Daniel broke down Steam's latest hardware survey (he admitted not the best data but just used it as a guide) it's true that's where the battleground is as the market for flagships (or King of the Hill as AMD referred to it as) is so small. The problem for AMD is you can't just rely on value and assume it will increase your market share. NVIDIA have the mind share and despite AMD making inroads in the mid range the Steam survey showed NVIDIA are still dominating that. While those shopping at the mid range and value picks aren't factoring in things like ray tracing, DLSS is so good that it's worth the price of admission on its own, and while FSR is getting better you're not missing out on it by choosing NVIDIA.

Those shopping at the high end enthusiast range don't care about value, NVIDIA can charge what they want and will still sell. If AMD want to compete at the mid range there is nothing stopping NVIDIA from bettering their value there as well. Ryzen is successful because not only did it prove to be a better value product to Intel but is also a great and innovative product itself. The discreet desktop market is probably so small that it doesn't matter to them much in the grand scheme of things but I get the impression AMD just want to grow in the console and laptop market.

 

[dav3]

I was watching Daniel Owen (gee whiz how much has his channel blown up) break down the interview with Tom's Hardware and I do find AMD's strategy dangerous. They want quantity and value at the mid range and when Daniel broke down Steam's latest hardware survey (he admitted not the best data but just used it as a guide) it's true that's where the battleground is as the market for flagships (or King of the Hill as AMD referred to it as) is so small. The problem for AMD is you can't just rely on value and assume it will increase your market share. NVIDIA have the mind share and despite AMD making inroads in the mid range the Steam survey showed NVIDIA are still dominating that. While those shopping at the mid range and value picks aren't factoring in things like ray tracing, DLSS is so good that it's worth the price of admission on its own, and while FSR is getting better you're not missing out on it by choosing NVIDIA.

Those shopping at the high end enthusiast range don't care about value, NVIDIA can charge what they want and will still sell. If AMD want to compete at the mid range there is nothing stopping NVIDIA from bettering their value there as well. Ryzen is successful because not only did it prove to be a better value product to Intel but is also a great and innovative product itself. The discreet desktop market is probably so small that it doesn't matter to them much in the grand scheme of things but I get the impression AMD just want to grow in the console and laptop market.

I'm not sure it's overly dangerous, their high-end kit never really made a dent so dropping it isn't a massive deal. Until they can pull ahead of Nvidia it's probably a bit of a waste to keep fighting that losing battle.

Building their brand around the low to mid market where the vast majority of users exist can help them push into the OEM space that's still largely dominated by Nvidia, and lets them put more development into a range chips that will likely also get used in consoles and portable devices. The market is ultimately going to move more towards mobility and streaming, and more of a console-type approach, and they're closer to pulling ahead there than the high-end where Nvidia's dominance is probably only going to expand due to their work in the data-centre space.

An element of danger for AMD if they go down this path is the Intel ARC range and where that heads, because that showed some promise and Intel's links to major OEMs puts them in the box seat to bundle their GPUs with other Intel products.

 

[blackshadow]

I do love my 6900XT.

 

[gaskin]

You would have to think they have that data to backup their decision. It is not something they would have done on a whim.