Building a gaming PC

[Triffid77]

Thanks everyone. Yeah current performance doesn't look too impressive considering the ridiculous price tag. My current GTX 970 is still alive and kicking and in some games all I have to do is turn down a couple of things, but it has been 4 years I kind of want a new GPU.

What about getting a previous gen GTX 1080 Ti if/when the prices go down? I don't love the idea of getting an older card but oh well...

Also what a disappointment that they wasted Turing's name on a transitional/experimental device. Should have been left for the ground breaking stuff.

Don't worry about 2nd hand, just buy one from a seller with decent feedback.
1080ti is great for current games @ 1440p or high refresh rates @ 1080p. (note: as time goes by games get more demanding)
Consider even a 1080 for a bargain. A lot more performance than the 970. Also cooler & less power draw.
Maybe you should adopt a process of updating more frequently by buying 2nd hand GPUs (don't forget you recover decent % from resale).

Turing IS ground breaking. Raytracing is just demanding as all F. First iterations of new tech are always lacking.
The wright brothers only flew for 280m. Its not an SR71 Blackbird. Turing is the start. Like his machine that took forever to do a bit of math.

 

[BarefootWarrior]

My present system is five years old and by today's standards, very outdated. I build my own systems. That said, I don't think I'll have any real issues with this game other then it might require Win 10. My system is dual boot, I have both Win 7 and Win 10 on separate SSD's. Some of my design applications require Win 7.

I'm running an ASUS Crosshair V with an AMD FX 8350 CPU running at 4.2 GHZ. My present GPU is a Zotac GeForce GTX 980 Ti. So far, I can throw anything I want at this with ultra settings and get a stable 60 FPS, depending on how heavy I may have modded a game. TW3 which was modded still ran at a fairly constant 55 FPS with ultra settings. FO4 was also stable and was heavily modded.

I intend to upgrade to a Zotac 1080 Ti or possibly the new GeForce RTX series, but that will depend on prices, on a fixed income I have to save up and be careful with the budget. My weak point is my monitor and I really need to see about replacing it. I run dual monitors but my primary is now five years old and only has 60 Hhz refresh and lower resolution then I would like, especially for my photographic and graphics projects. I'm certain that if I choose the replace the monitor with a higher / faster refresh rate and resolution and keep the 980 Ti, then the old GPU will be working pretty hard and my FPS will probably half. But even at 30 FPS (if that's what would happen) I'd still be good with that.

Other wise, this old beast just keeps going and I don't see any major upgrades in the near future. All it takes is money, right?

 

[volsung]

OK I think I will wait for the non-Founder's Edition RTX's, compare prices and decide. I am somewhat comfortable spending up to $400 in a substantial upgrade, but $600 for an RTX 2070? I don't know... A sufficiently cheap 1080 Ti might work well enough.

I do understand the relevance and cool factor of ray tracing, I even remember doing a bit of that in HPC clusters for data visualization back in the day, but regardless of how good some tech demos or 5 particular games look, the truth is it might not be worth it for me right now if I personally 1) don't play those games or 2) don't use the card fully (eg. 4K or 144 Hz or whatever).

Slightly off-topic: Turing's work advanced the theory of computation and our understanding of intuitive computability (see Turing-Church thesis), the physical machines that came afterwards and even his work in cryptography are comparatively less relevant (but make more interesting movie material). I guess we'll see if Turing/RTX truly changes our understanding of video game graphics and makes everyone switch to ray tracing (i.e. the next generation of consoles).

 

[SigilFey]

I intend to upgrade to a Zotac 1080 Ti

I'd say this would be the most "optimized" jump. Going from a 980 ti to anything lower than a 1080 ti likely won't be a lot of return for the money. (The 980 ti is a real beast!) I'm sure the RTX line will be a killer, but it's too early in the lifespan for me to consider for now. Kind of like the Titans, and they were definitely not worth the price tag, imo.

I guess we'll see if Turing/RTX truly changes our understanding of
video game graphics and makes everyone switch to ray tracing (i.e. the next generation of consoles).

I'd bet the whole farm on "not during this generation of hardware". Probably 3-5 more years. Of course, we'll likely see a game here or there incorporate it almost immediately, but I imagine they'll be rare. It's usually the case. Looking backward, it was the same thing for deformable terrain, multiple mip-map layers, cloth and liquid physics, translucent textures, hardware T&L, even 3D acceleration as a whole. It's introduced, a few titles explore the potential, hardware support becomes more standardized, and then it becomes the norm.

 

[BarefootWarrior]

I'd say this would be the most "optimized" jump. Going from a 980 ti to anything lower than a 1080 ti likely won't be a lot of return for the money. (The 980 ti is a real beast!) I'm sure the RTX line will be a killer, but it's too early in the lifespan for me to consider for now. Kind of like the Titans, and they were definitely not worth the price tag, imo.

Quite right, the 980 far surpassed what I expected and if I do upgrade, it will still be in service in my back up system replacing the older GeForce 660 Ti.. I am leaning with the 1080 series simply because of the track record to date and reliability. While the new RTX family of GeForce sounds interesting, I will probably wait and see how that new tech works out before I jump into it, besides, on an older monitor I doubt that would benefit that much anyway. I do prefer Zotac over the other brands, they seem to be solid and trouble free, so far anyway.

I might add that at least once a year, I strip my systems down and do a thorough cleaning, everything comes out of the case. As a former tech, I know how to do this, even the power supply case is opened and cleaned, you would be surprised how many dust bunnies reside in hidden places. The power supply is one area you need to be careful, it can reach out and bite you if you don't know what you are doing. I Inspect and clean all of the fans, replace if needed and also wash out the radiator for the CPU cooling. Keeping your system clean can really make a difference.

 

[CyberBobber]

I would go for i5 and better 6gb Graphic Card. At least thats what I did, I bought new comp just couple month ago.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

So what are your thoughts on the upcoming RTX 2070/2080? I'm thinking about upgrading my aging GTX 970.

Also, hi @Gilrond-i-Virdan !

Welcome back to the forum @volsung! Since I play games on Linux, I'm sticking to AMD. Their open source support is great, and it avoids all the horrors of Nvidia's blob lack of integration, especially if you are planning to use Wayland.

I'm using Sapphire Pulse Vega 56 now, and it allows playing TW3 in Wine + dxvk with very good performance.

 

[volsung]

Welcome back to the forum @volsung! Since I play games on Linux, I'm sticking to AMD. Their open source support is great, and it avoids all the horrors of Nvidia's blob lack of integration, especially if you are planning to use Wayland.

I'm using Sapphire Pulse Vega 56 now, and it allow playing TW3 in Wine + dxvk with very good performance.

Hi! I'll probably only stick around for a short while as usual but it's nice to see some forum acquaintances like you and M4xw0lf.

I considered switching to AMD too and I might just do that depending on what happens. Performance wise a Vega 56 sits somewhere in between a 1070 and a 1080 (non Ti) right? Are there any plans for new AMD GPU's?

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I considered switching to AMD too and I might just do that depending on what happens. Performance wise a Vega 56 sits somewhere in between a 1070 and a 1080 (non Ti) right? Are there any plans for new AMD GPU's?

Yes, Vega 56 is roughly comparable to 1070. AMD weren't very clear on their timing, but they plan to make gaming 7 nm GPUs at some point. Some suggest 2019 for that, but that's just a speculation. So far they announced AI targeted 7 nm Vega GPUs, but no gamer oriented cards. AI market is arguably bigger than gaming one, so it makes sense for AMD to focus on it first, which is a bit annoying for us gamers

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12910/amd-demos-7nm-vega-radeon-instinct-shipping-2018

Post automatically merged: Sep 13, 2018

In other news, I'm very close to upgrading to a Pinnacle Ridge (Ryzen 2000) system now. Sandy Bridge can finally rest in peace.

Ryzen 7 2700X is outstanding. Compiling with so many cores is a breeze Sandy Bridge! Heh, that's a rather old CPU by now.

 

[M4xw0lf]

AMD will probably launch a GPU in 7nm for the professional market this year (Vega20, if you want to dig for more rumors).
7nm consumer/gamer GPUs will certainly not be out this year, and probably not in the first half of 2019.

Post automatically merged: Sep 13, 2018

Ryzen 7 2700X is outstanding. Compiling with so many cores is a breeze Sandy Bridge! Heh, that's a rather old CPU by now.

I'll probably never do any work on it though
Intel would still be the rational choice for gaming only, but I just love that you can buy AMD processors again and get competitive performance, so AMD it is.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Intel has no competitive offer with 8 cores and 16 threads in such price range. So AMD is not just competitive, it's ahead in this case.

 

[Hoplite_22]

Intel has no competitive offer with 8 cores and 16 threads in such price range. So AMD is not just competitive, it's ahead in this case.

unless you just do a lot of gaming on it, then Intel wins since games largely rely on single thread performance.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

unless you just do a lot of gaming on it, then Intel wins since games largely rely on single thread performance.

Not well designed / recent games, but some older and badly designed ones, yes. However Ryzen performance is good for single core too. If some game needs overclocking of high end CPUs, it's already a pretty bad case of CPU bottleneck.

 

[eurEKA_24]

GTX 980ti is a great card so if i was you PrincessCiri i would spend a little bit more and buy a 980ti insted of the 980.

 

[Ipsofactor]

I just checked. Sapphire Pulse Vega 56 - $480 on Newegg. Comparable to some GTX 1070 models. It was at crazy $750 a few months ago. It can probably go down a bit more still.

Oh it will, nvidia wants to liquidate their stock and their board partners have offloaded the surplus they ordered during the cryptoboom. The first to go will be the 1080ti then 1080 then 1070 I presume. But if your gpu does what you want theres no need to upgrade rly. amd will realease a 7nm card as well (turing is 14nm++) before cyberpunk releases. It may be a better inverstment then.

GTX 980ti is a great card so if i was you PrincessCiri i would spend a little bit more and buy a 980ti insted of the 980.

1070ti is cheaper and more powerful. As well it will save you some bucks on your electrical bill @PrincessCiri

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Sapphire Pulse 56 has dropped to $400 already.

 

[SigilFey]

GTX 980ti is a great card so if i was you PrincessCiri i would spend a little bit more and buy a 980ti insted of the 980.

Definitely this. I put an eVGA GTX 980 ti into my present rig when I built it 3 years ago. It runs every title I have to this day at Max / Ultra graphics with no performance issues. (Most recently, SCUM running on full Epic settings at 1080p. Some areas stutter a bit during loading, but overall gameplay is 60 FPS, solid.) Definitely worth saving for just a bit longer.

 

[volsung]

Hey I'm late to the SSD party and just now I've been thinking about getting a relatively large, 1 TB SSD for OS and games. Samsung is a popular choice but are the PRO's really worth it over the EVO's? They're like twice as expensive.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I don't think PRO is worth it, except for extended wear time. I got Samsung Evo 970 NVMe (1 TB) for my main drive. It's already quite expensive and it's crazy fast (I benchmarked it with fio). So I don't think the benefit of PRO would be even apparent. Note, that it has some rather quirky erase block size, so in my tests, 3 MB partition alignment worked better than 1 MB one (but not by a huge margin).

NVMe vs SATA SDD though is important, NVMe is way faster.

I don't use it for games though. Just for main system, /home and various VMs I run there for building things. I store games on 4 TB HDD, since I already have a ton of them, including backups of installers like from GOG and etc. That would fill even 1 TB SSD completely.

I like very fast boot and start times and system updates on the SDD Plus KDE works like a champ without lagging. It seriously doesn't like HDD I/O wise.

 

[SigilFey]

I'd have to agree that the PROs don't seem to add enough to warrant the heftier price tag. I'm using a Samsung EVO, and it's blazingly fast. If I were to spend extra money, I'd go for additional space. Even 512 GB fills up pretty quickly nowadays.