Building a gaming PC

[ReeseNE]

I can't help but feel trepidation reading articles like this. The doors are still closed but it looks like we could be looking at quite a quantum leap in terms of performance.

NVIDIA's mid-range GeForce RTX 3060 could beat flagship RTX 2080 Ti

Ampere is going to be nuts, but a GeForce RTX 3060 that beats a $1200 card? Wow.

www.tweaktown.com

Competition is a beautiful thing. It's almost like a parallel to the Pascal launch, Nvidia pushed the 1080Ti out with its specs out of fear from Vega to ensure they kept the performance crown. Given the rumors about big Navi this time around, it looks like across the board we'll see a huge leap. Also there is the fact that Turing was the first iteration of RTX so expect large improvements moving forward. And of course last but not least is that Intel is trying to get into the ring too so a very interesting time indeed.

 

[metalmaniac21]

Interesting speculation. Especially about Raytracing performance.

TL;DW: RIP RTX 2xxx, paper launch somewhere in september.
I don't expect them to be available before console releases, thouhg.

 

[prime853]

Just waiting for AMD to give release date on Zen 3. Need to know if I’m going an i9 10900k or a Ryzen 9 4900x.

then there is word intel may push the release of rocket lake forward to end of this year only just after their current release to try compete with zen 3, big things to come. I just want to know what the best parts will be so I can start pulling the trigger on my build. I do hope the 4900x is far better gaming wise as I’d love to give AMD my money this time around

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Looking forward to upgrade to RDNA 2 card too but probably not the extreme high end one. RX 6700 XT or whatever AMD will call it. I.e. something sufficient for 2560x1440 / 144 Hz monitor.

 

[Sardukhar]

I do hope the 4900x is far better gaming wise as I’d love to give AMD my money this time around

I'm really liking my 3700x with 3600mhz RAM. Fast, quiet, 65W power use and very nice multithreading. Went to this from a 6600k. I've seen a difference in games ( AC Odyssey, mostly) but not that much on a 2080 TI. Handy outside of games for sure.

Depending on your resolution when you play games and your settings for same, once you get a current mid-high processor, I'd say you're talking a frame or two's difference in general. That's all I'm (generally) seeing over the 6600k.

I set the resolution down and get the frames up to 100, CPU starts to make a difference, but outside competitive settings, 50-60 is good and looks great.

If you want to go AMD, I really don't think the single-thread gaming difference is worth the money for the Intel stuff. AMD includes a fan, too, quite nice and their x570 mainboards run PCIe 4.0...for...future proofing I guess?.

Mostly I like the power savings and multithread use. I run a lot of browser windows, play the 2018 demo 16 hours a day, have Discord up and assorted pdfs and works stuff. My old 6600k laboured mightily under this load. I can run all the above and fire up a game over it for a break and the 3700x zips through it without issue.

So yeah, I think AMD is the better choice now and for a goodly while: performance, price and environment. I'm platform and producer-agnostic. Except for CDPR of course - I must obey my Masters.

 

[prime853]

I'm really liking my 3700x with 3600mhz RAM. Fast, quiet, 65W power use and very nice multithreading. Went to this from a 6600k. I've seen a difference in games ( AC Odyssey, mostly) but not that much on a 2080 TI. Handy outside of games for sure.

Depending on your resolution when you play games and your settings for same, once you get a current mid-high processor, I'd say you're talking a frame or two's difference in general. That's all I'm (generally) seeing over the 6600k.

I set the resolution down and get the frames up to 100, CPU starts to make a difference, but outside competitive settings, 50-60 is good and looks great.

If you want to go AMD, I really don't think the single-thread gaming difference is worth the money for the Intel stuff. AMD includes a fan, too, quite nice and their x570 mainboards run PCIe 4.0...for...future proofing I guess?.

Mostly I like the power savings and multithread use. I run a lot of browser windows, play the 2018 demo 16 hours a day, have Discord up and assorted pdfs and works stuff. My old 6600k laboured mightily under this load. I can run all the above and fire up a game over it for a break and the 3700x zips through it without issue.

So yeah, I think AMD is the better choice now and for a goodly while: performance, price and environment. I'm platform and producer-agnostic. Except for CDPR of course - I must obey my Masters.

I’ll be upgrading from a 4790k so I’m sure the difference will be vast if I go to AMD. I’ll be running 3 monitors too so I’ll appreciate the benefits outside of gaming. Not to mention I’ll be using 3600mhz C16 RAM; gen4 PCIe is a big selling point for me to so I may well go AMD

EDIT: I’ll be running CP2077 at 3440x1440 100-120fps I Hope

 

[Sardukhar]

I’ll be upgrading from a 4790k so I’m sure the difference will be vast if I go to AMD. I’ll be running 3 monitors too so I’ll appreciate the benefits outside of gaming. Not to mention I’ll be using 3600mhz C16 RAM; gen4 PCIe is a big selling point for me to so I may well go AMD

EDIT: I’ll be running CP2077 at 3440x1440 100-120fps I Hope

At 100 fps at 3440x1440! Bold! Very bold! From W2 and 3, I hope to cruise around 50-60 at 4k. Hope to. They've had months to polish, so....yeah.

I dunno about 100 fps sustained though - maybe at High, but I can't see whatever Ultra ends up being. Which is fine, since mostly Ultra (other than textures) in games is kinda meh for the frame cost.

Do you really like 100 fps? I ran Division 2 at that for a bit aaaand...something else I can't recall offhand. Tarkov, maybe. It was nice for snap-shoot, but outside MP, really couldn't perceive it being worth it.

You are planning on a serious graphics card obviously. I do wonder if I'll have to upgrade when/if the 3000 series comes out. Really hope not. I like the 2080 TI capabilities and sound levels. Plus I only got the thing last year!

 

[prime853]

At 100 fps at 3440x1440! Bold! Very bold! From W2 and 3, I hope to cruise around 50-60 at 4k. Hope to. They've had months to polish, so....yeah.

I dunno about 100 fps sustained though - maybe at High, but I can't see whatever Ultra ends up being. Which is fine, since mostly Ultra (other than textures) in games is kinda meh for the frame cost.

Do you really like 100 fps? I ran Division 2 at that for a bit aaaand...something else I can't recall offhand. Tarkov, maybe. It was nice for snap-shoot, but outside MP, really couldn't perceive it being worth it.

You are planning on a serious graphics card obviously. I do wonder if I'll have to upgrade when/if the 3000 series comes out. Really hope not. I like the 2080 TI capabilities and sound levels. Plus I only got the thing last year!

Yeah I put $4k into my pc 6yrs ago. Putting about $5k into this new build to last me a few more years. Will pick up a 3080ti or whatever the equivalent is.

ive been playing Tarkov myself (over 1300hrs) and because it’s so unoptimised I only get 60-80 frames with a 4790k & 1080ti at 3440x1440, so if I can punch out CP2077 at a constant 90-100fps with my new build I’ll be happy, monitor only goes to 120 and I’m in the same boat as you that as long as I get 60fps constant then I’m happy when it comes to single player/story driven games

 

[Bloodartist]

Well the fear is that the Nvidia 30xx line will arrive to shops only around same time the nextgen consoles are released...so we could be looking at a christmas release. I dont think this is good enough for CP2077 and me U_U

And I dont know if my current GTX 980Ti will handle CP2077... AAArrrghh. Its old... one of the fans is gone already.

One thing is certain though as the previously linked video said, 20xx line was a guinea pig and it is not expected to age well. It would be best to not buy a 20xx card and instead wait for the 30xx cards if possible..

ps. to quote the guy from the previous video... we are looking at the most competitive fall in recent memory. Nvidia and AMD are going to duke it out like never before.

 

[prime853]

Well the fear is that the Nvidia 30xx line will arrive to shops only around same time the nextgen consoles are released...so we could be looking at a christmas release. I dont think this is good enough for CP2077 and me U_U

And I dont know if my current GTX 980Ti will handle CP2077... AAArrrghh. Its old... one of the fans is gone already.

One thing is certain though as the previously linked video said, 20xx line was a guinea pig and it is not expected to age well. It would be best to not buy a 20xx card and instead wait for the 30xx cards if possible..

ps. to quote the guy from the previous video... we are looking at the most competitive fall in recent memory. Nvidia and AMD are going to duke it out like never before.

Agreed, very excited. Let’s just hope they fall before sep 17

 

[Bloodartist]

Also worth noting: after this fall ray-tracing will be EVERYwhere. There won't be any new cards without ray-tracing sold. All the new nvidia cards will be RTX cards. Probably same for AMD but I dont know for sure.
20xx line was a prototype and it had barely functioning ray-tracing as people probably know. All will change this fall. Its a quantum leap as I wrote.

ps. Kinda incredible to look back to when I was young, ray-tracing was supposed to be also a big thing... took them a sweet time of what, 15+ years to get it in working order?

 

[Triffid77]

Just waiting for AMD to give release date on Zen 3. Need to know if I’m going an i9 10900k or a Ryzen 9 4900x.

It depends on what work you do.
If your primary focus is gaming then go for Intel. If you do workstation stuff then go for Zen.
Game, browse, watch videos, standard office software and maybe the odd handbrake encode? You wont take advantage of Zen's strengths.

Regarding the 10900K, Its likely you'll be able to clock the 10700k higher due to heat of the extra cores. And those extra cores i bet wont make much diff in games. Also, all that extra heat & power draw...
I wouldn't hold my breath for rocket lake. If i was on 4790k like you i'd act before 2077 comes out, with a 10700k. Price no object.
Zen does nothing for me because i don't use blender, et al.
I'm contemplating upgrading from 8700k, although i dont need to. Upgrading is like a drug and i do the CPU+mobo around 2.5 years. Alder Lake is what i'm really waiting for, i think that'll be 2022. That's pushing me towards upgrading now, VS making the 8700k last nearly 5 years.

Also, i still see too often problems with AMD. There's usually some issue with drivers, motherboards or whatnot.
I believe they've improved quality from before zen but it'll take a while for the stink to go from what i saw when i use to work at a large retailer. I saw more dead AMD cpu's in a month vs a lifetime of intel. Intel & Nvidia based gear vastly outsold AMD stuff yet the RMA's were almost on par.

I'm sure there are many, many people who've never had a problem with Thermaltake PSUs, but I wouldn't touch one.
Saying that, If i was building a server farm id use AMD for sure. Any prob with a machine, just swap it out.

 

[prime853]

It depends on what work you do.
If your primary focus is gaming then go for Intel. If you do workstation stuff then go for Zen.
Game, browse, watch videos, standard office software and maybe the odd handbrake encode? You wont take advantage of Zen's strengths.

Regarding the 10900K, Its likely you'll be able to clock the 10700k higher due to heat of the extra cores. And those extra cores i bet wont make much diff in games. Also, all that extra heat & power draw...
I wouldn't hold my breath for rocket lake. If i was on 4790k like you i'd act before 2077 comes out, with a 10700k. Price no object.
Zen does nothing for me because i don't use blender, et al.
I'm contemplating upgrading from 8700k, although i dont need to. Upgrading is like a drug and i do the CPU+mobo around 2.5 years. Alder Lake is what i'm really waiting for, i think that'll be 2022. That's pushing me towards upgrading now, VS making the 8700k last nearly 5 years.

Also, i still see too often problems with AMD. There's usually some issue with drivers, motherboards or whatnot.
I believe they've improved quality from before zen but it'll take a while for the stink to go from what i saw when i use to work at a large retailer. I saw more dead AMD cpu's in a month vs a lifetime of intel. Intel & Nvidia based gear vastly outsold AMD stuff yet the RMA's were almost on par.

I'm sure there are many, many people who've never had a problem with Thermaltake PSUs, but I wouldn't touch one.
Saying that, If i was building a server farm id use AMD for sure. Any prob with a machine, just swap it out.

I'm hoping AMD would have improved their IPC count and single core performance for the 4000 series to hopefully give Intel a run for their money in the gaming department. but yeah right now even though intel is rehashing the same damn nodes again and again it seems they still hold the crown for gaming.

 

[Triffid77]

I'm hoping AMD would have improved their IPC count and single core performance for the 4000 series to hopefully give Intel a run for their money in the gaming department. but yeah right now even though intel is rehashing the same damn nodes again and again it seems they still hold the crown for gaming.

Release dates range from "after August or September" to October. Given everything is delayed, and then the usual availability problems, i think its safe to say it wont be out on time. It'll be interesting though to see what performance 4000 brings.

I'm hoping 3080ti comes out before 2077 but i strongly doubt it. I mean actually have one in hand (even if release date is stated to be prior).

Maybe we should start filming ourselves babbling about computers and upload it to youtube so we can get early samples. I know, have one of those kardashian implant asses & duck lips on a hawaiin beach. Talk about RGB lighting on your USB stick and theyll like & subscribe like theres no tomorrow.

 

[Sild]

I'm hoping 3080ti comes out before 2077 but i strongly doubt it. I mean actually have one in hand (even if release date is stated to be prior).

I hope it does. But even if it does.. there aren't a lot of CPU's (probably a handfull?)that won't bottleneck that monster, if rumored performance is true.. which is why i also want to upgrade my CPU (and motherboard) to the latest Intel gen. All together it's a sizeable investment..

 

[Triffid77]

I hope it does. But even if it does.. there aren't a lot of CPU's (probably a handfull?)that won't bottleneck that monster, if rumored performance is true.. which is why i also want to upgrade my CPU (and motherboard) to the latest Intel gen. All together it's a sizeable investment..

Do it if you can.
Potential savings with what mobo you go with. If you wont use the features of the mobo then dont waste $. They adding so much fluff these days.

For Asus boards, the Prime-A is good bang for buck. It doesn't have the high amount of power phases of the much higher priced models but you can still do decent clocks. I'm at 5gz with the 8700k on it (z370 version). Its the only part of my system where i didnt go overboard. Many of the mid range 'ROG' branded stuff is just paying for the label and RGB lighting jazz.
Gigabyte have improved things a bit on their mobos over past 5 years. (still a lot of complaints of coil whine on their GPUs though)

Also, flog your old gear ASAP on ebay / gumtree / facebook market etc.

Heck, just remembered that 3rd party non-reference GPU cards take awhile longer to come out. (If youre not liquid cooling and care about noise). Oh, even if liquid cooling, how long til water blocks are released??

Maybe there's something to be had with holding off playing the game for a month or three after release. Sort out game bugs and by then for sure the new GPUs will be available.
Have the new system already running so the 3080ti just slots right in and you're back in the action.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

though intel is rehashing the same damn nodes again and again it seems they still hold the crown for gaming.

Intel is behind in gaming, due to AMD being ahead in number of cores and price per core especially. Modern games all are using all cores, not high frequency per core. This idea that high frequency per core is most important for gaming has been obsolete for a while, but obsolete ideas persist in people's minds even when in reality they had been irrelevant for a long time already.

 

[SigilFey]

Intel is behind in gaming, due to AMD being ahead in number of cores and price per core especially. Modern games all are using all cores, not high frequency per core. This idea that high frequency per core is most important for gaming has been obsolete for a while, but obsolete ideas persist in people's minds even when in reality they had been irrelevant for a long time already.

There is a lot of truth to this. Continuing that discussion:

Throughout the focus on PC gaming from the early '90s to this day, Intel has provided the "top shelf" solution. And that is, truly, how most of the market seems to look at it.

However, AMD has consistently and reliably given Intel a run for their money. The truth is AMD processors have very often lagged behind in benchmarking software...but still exceeded Intel performance in real-world applications. (Hence, their 3Dmark score might be noticeably lower than an Intel equivalent...but in-game, AMD gets 10-15 higher average FPS with settings maxed.) And this has held largely true for both CPU and GPU options. They are also normally a fraction of the cost of Intel solutions.

The downside? Not many, really. There is an "ease of use" that comes with Intel hardware, as many programs are specifically written to be native on Intel. AMD can and will hit odd issues with programs that are not always easy to work around. Truth be told, however, for the 4 systems I've built using AMD hardware, I've never had any more trouble with them than I've had with any Intel machines I've built. There aren't "more" issues, they're just different. And once a person learns their machine, there's almost nothing that cannot be sorted.

I'd still argue that the one caveat to all of this is building a system with a multi-core CPU for gaming. I'd keep it between 8 and 12 cores max, whether AMD or Intel. The Ryzen line, especially, seems to be having more issues than usual with gaming, so something to consider for the time being. Not that Ryzen is "bad" for gaming -- the performance is excellent -- but it's more likely that users will have to roll up their sleeves and spend time getting it working that well.

 

[irrrregular]

Wondering when they will release the requirements to run cyberpunk 2077.
Hope mid range cards can reach 40-50 fps on ultra.

 

[SigilFey]

Wondering when they will release the requirements to run cyberpunk 2077.
Hope mid range cards can reach 40-50 fps on ultra.

Likely not until the game is almost gold. The plan, however, is for the game to run on the existing console generation. That means that even older PCs should have hope of getting it running well and looking pretty good.