Building a gaming PC

[Skirlasvoud]

After witnessing a disappointing CES 2020 that gave me nothing to look forward to in the next 5 months, I went ahead and sprang for a currently available GPU capable of running 1440 at good settings.

The GTX 970 that I’m running now has begun growing a beard (could also be dust), Cyberpunk 2077 releases in April and all of Nvidia’s and AMD’s new GPUs will only launch beyond that. I need something to run me this game! I’m also not liking the rumours of price hikes and shortages for components possibly making a return later this year, with the new consoles arriving and Samsung power outages and whatnot.

Since I don’t believe the exorbitant premium for capable Ray Tracing is worth it for an equivalent Nvidia card - and I also want to reward innovation and competition - I decided to pair my Ryzen 3700x with a fellow AMD product in the form of a Sapphire Nitro 5700 XT. It’ll be the first time in more than a decade that I haven’t paired my AMD CPU with a Nvidia GPU. Guess I’m vacating the rainbow coloured middle ground and going red!

Cost me a pretty penny, but it came highly recommended by just about every major hardware out there as top of its 5700 XT class, along with the Red Devil version. Since I have a silver tinted motherboard however, I couldn’t resist its looks. No ray tracing, but oh well. I’m not too bothered.

Funny. I bought the ol’ GTX 970 when it came bundled with Witcher 3. Seems like this upgrade coincides with yet another new CDPR title.

As long as this card lasts me another 4 years and helps me live through another console cycle, I’ll be well pleased. The PS5 shouldn’t be able to top the combination of 3700X and 5700XT, and even when it tries to, console games will be optimised for AMD anyways since that’s the hardware consoles will have.

New monster should be arriving during the weekend. Expect me to post pictures.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I thought of getting Nitro, but went with Pulse RX 5700 XT, even if it's a bit lower clocked. It's quite a nice card, and Linux support started getting quite good for it recently, especially with ACO adding more optimizations for Navi.

As for TW3, it runs it at 80-110 fps at 2560x1440 in Wine+dxvk with latest ACO code (max settings, hairworks disabled).

 

[Restlessdingo32]

Cost me a pretty penny, but it came highly recommended by just about every major hardware out there as top of its 5700 XT class, along with the Red Devil version. Since I have a silver tinted motherboard however, I couldn’t resist its looks. No ray tracing, but oh well. I’m not too bothered.

Out of curiosity, how have the drivers behaved? I've been on the fence about upgrading but skipped it this cycle. A lot of the sales I was seeing felt like walking into a furniture store to buy a couch or shopping for a bed. It's on sale, 20-30% off, get it while it's hot. A bit of time passes by and it's no longer on sale but at or close to the same price. Interesting....

Rants aside, I've been leaning toward team red (quite heavily, in fact). I can't handle another 9900k refresh. I've been apprehensive about the GPU side of the coin because I've heard horror stories about driver functioning, or lack thereof, over the years. I'm just curious if there is any real cause for concern there with the newer cards. And yes, unfortunately I am asking in the context of the data collecting, point and click OS.

 

[sinister.sinner]

I hade a build in mind for the last couple of months to upgrade my current rig but it seems stock of my favored CPU for the build is getting shorter and shorter and at the same time prices rise a little bit.
So I decided to upgrade now.

I keep my 1080Ti as GPU because Nvidias 30xx series comes in the summer und I don't see any benefit in getting a 2080Ti now.

So new components will be:
Intel Core i9-9900KS
Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro
Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB DDR4
Samsung SSD 970 PRO 512GB

Case and PSU will stay the same as they are still up for the job and do function.

 

[SigilFey]

I keep my 1080Ti as GPU because Nvidias 30xx series comes in the summer und I don't see any benefit in getting a 2080Ti now.

I'd say that's a great call. The 1080 ti is a wildly good card.

I'm still using my 980 ti and able to run everything I've gotten this year at ultra details @1920x1080. Some titles (~5+ years old), I can push into 2K / 4K with no performance hit. The 1080 ti is everything that the 980 is but better. It should do fine for a few more years.

For me, I think I may try to get a better monitor, but that'll be it. I built this system for TW3, and, by the truth of all chocolate, it's going to run CP2077, too.

 

[GHOSTMD]

Yeah, AMD not surprising us with BIG NAVI was really dissapointing.
Specially since NVidia has now no reason to react, with adjusting the prices.
Guess i ll stick with my GTX980 and play CP77 on medium
(FHD only with my monitor) perhaps even high. Guess we need the min
System Specs to see what ll be possible.

 

[metalmaniac21]

Yeah, AMD not surprising us with BIG NAVI was really dissapointing.
Specially since NVidia has now no reason to react, with adjusting the prices.
Guess i ll stick with my GTX980 and play CP77 on medium
(FHD only with my monitor) perhaps even high. Guess we need the min
System Specs to see what ll be possible.

I think you'll be fine maxing out every GPU-intensive setting except textures (which should fit into 3,5gb VRAM for stable frametime) being on high or medium.

 

[GHOSTMD]

I think you'll be fine maxing out every GPU-intensive setting except textures (which should fit into 3,5gb VRAM for stable frametime) being on high or medium.

Yes, i am not worried at all, even more so since the GTX 980 has its full 4GB aviable.
As long as i don t leave Full HD it should be fine. As mentioned everything OVER FHD
doesn't make sense with my monitor anyway. Screentearing is kinda thing i might have
to handle though.

 

[metalmaniac21]

Screentearing is kinda thing i might have
to handle though.

That's where FreeSync goes into action.

 

[GHOSTMD]

*kek* uhum if you have a monitor that supports this ^^ hehehe

 

[SigilFey]

Yes, i am not worried at all, even more so since the GTX 980 has its full 4GB aviable.
As long as i don t leave Full HD it should be fine. As mentioned everything OVER FHD
doesn't make sense with my monitor anyway. Screentearing is kinda thing i might have
to handle though.

Well, just remember that Borderless / Windowed modes don't produce screen tearing. I can sometimes get a noticeable performance increase if I disable Vsync, set up a frame cap in NVInspector or RTSS, and switch to borderless. (Depends on the game. Not sure how it will go with CP2077, as TW3 always performed much more smoothly for me in Fullscreen.)

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Well, just remember that Borderless / Windowed modes don't produce screen tearing.

I doubt you can avoid screen tearing, if your framerate is different from screen refresh rate. Workarounds for it (like multiple buffering) are not optimal in contrast with using proper adaptive sync.

 

[SigilFey]

I doubt you can avoid screen tearing, if your framerate is different from screen refresh rate. Workarounds for it (like multiple buffering) are not optimal in contrast with using proper adaptive sync.

Some games just seem to do better with snatching fully rendered frames from a window instead of directly outputting to the monitor. Bethesda games are my most notable example. I have been able to increase my performance by over 20 FPS on average since Oblivion using borderless vs. fullscreen. Elite Dangerous definitely gives me more steady performance if in borderless.

But the cool part is that partial frames cannot be drawn to windowed screen real-estate. Windows composes the final image with a very efficient form of Vsync. Technically, this can be disabled, but by default, Windows will prevent screen tearing in windowed mode even with Vsync disabled.

 

[GHOSTMD]

Indeed, at this point, it all will come down on what System Specs (min) Cp77 ll have.
As well as how good Cyberpunk 2077 ll scale on older Hardware.
Have no Screentearing in Witcher3 even when i have FPS drops in Toussaint.
Only in some places, not over all in BnW. Soo i really tend to think CP77 ll look gorgeous
as well, even more so since i switch to a Ryzen Platform soon.

 

[eskiMoe]

Advances yes, but not such crazy ones But as I said, one way to tweak numbers in one's favor that GPU makers utilize is cheating. And Nvidia are adept at doing it. It's likely one of the reasons they also resist opening their drivers on Linux. With the blob, it's harder to point to their cheating. When the code is open, it can be easily spotted.

Well to be fair, at least Nvidia's drivers actually work..

Driver issues were the reason why I switched to team Green back in the day and it seems nothing has changed. At least kudos to AMD for actually admitting the issues and not hiding behind PR talk tho. But it's still ridiculous.

 

[Restlessdingo32]

Driver issues were the reason why I switched to team Green back in the day and it seems nothing has changed. At least kudos to AMD for actually admitting the issues and not hiding behind PR talk tho. But it's still ridiculous.

This would be why I asked specifically about them. How the hardware itself performs can be a moot point if the software side is faulty.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Well to be fair, at least Nvidia's drivers actually work..

That's moot. On Linux they don't work in many use cases that AMD ones do (Wayland compositors for instance, GPU offloading and etc.). The difference between them when they do work is mostly in timing. Nvidia have more money, so they produce hardware support sooner. For AMD it can take around half a year to reach driver stability. At least that was my experience with Navi. But when it reaches it, it just works, across all use cases. Nvidia simply ignores many altogether, so I view their driver support as perpetually broken.

I.e. if you don't want to handle hardware issues and manually working around things and building the kernel, get new AMD cards (I mean with new architecture) around half a year after release. I won't recommend getting Nvidia cards at all.

 

[eskiMoe]

Nobody cares about Linux apart from a few power users. It's a niche platform. For the vast majority of PC gamers, having working drivers from day one is a far more important factor. And tbh, the fact that people have been having driver issues with the latest AMD cards for nearly 6 months already and those issues aren't even on their to-do list doesn't really bode well for AMD.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Nobody cares about Linux apart from a few power users. It's a niche platform.

Which should change. There is no reason today to continue using Windows for gaming. If you are stuck with something that's Windows only and simply can't be used otherwise - a different story. But for gaming, Windows is not a necessity anymore.

And tbh, the fact that people have been having driver issues with the latest AMD cards for nearly 6 months already and those issues aren't even on their to-do list doesn't really bode well for AMD.

I'd take that over Nvidia's junk form of support any day. Sure, would be better to get it in timely manner, not in 6 months, but for that AMD should beef up their drivers teams. Given they are doing better financially now, they will likely do just that, at least I expect them to.

 

[eskiMoe]

Which should change. There is no reason today to continue using Windows for gaming. If you are stuck with something that's Windows only and simply can't be used otherwise - a different story. But for gaming, Windows is not a necessity anymore.

I've been hearing Linux taking over as long as I've gamed on PC, so roughly 15 years and I've yet to see it happen, or even gain traction during these years. Still under 1% with negative change in Steam hardware survey (and since Steam is the most popular platform on PC it's a good measuring point.)

I'd take that over Nvidia's junk form of support any day. Sure, would be better to get it in timely manner, not in 6 months, but for that AMD should beef up their drivers teams. Given they are doing better financially now, they will likely do just that, at least I expect them to.

Yes you would, but most people won't, hence why Nvidia keeps crushing AMD in sales.

But at least we agree that they should beef up their driver teams big time. I'd be down for nvidia having actual competition to keep GPU prices competitive too.