Hardware Thread - General.

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For games and most software the difference between a current gen SSD and NVME drive is negligible. way faster than a mechanical drive, but not than each other. it has other advantages like form factor allowing for very compact builds for instance.
It isn't the end all be all, and it depends a lot on the specific nvme drive, but it makes a difference. Toms Hardware frequently benchmarks traditional SSDs and NVMes using Final Fantasy XIV game load times as well as PC Mark 8 Storage Tests while using Office, World of Warcraft, & Battlefield 3, so these aren't just purely synthetic benchmarks and often the SSD has several seconds extra for load times and have a fraction of the throughput with real world applications. I know it sounds trivial but when you open a large excel file and it just opens instead of having that little moment of noticeable latency, it is a MUCH better experience. I used to have a 66 mhz 486 processor that predated Intel's Pentium line, so I get how it is borderline insane for me to say that going from a wait of 2 seconds to a fraction of a second is worth it, but I know I'd never go back.
 
The SSD is just a vanity thing. I think most people can wait a few more seconds for their application to load. Don't waste your money just to gain a few seconds of load time. I suggest that people upgrade their CPU or Video Card instead, in order to increase frames per second.
 
The SSD is just a vanity thing. I think most people can wait a few more seconds for their application to load. Don't waste your money just to gain a few seconds of load time. I suggest that people upgrade their CPU or Video Card instead, in order to increase frames per second.
SSDs are vastly superior to hard drives in every way, and not just speed. They're far more durable, as well.
 
SSDs are vastly superior to hard drives in every way, and not just speed. They're far more durable, as well.

I know that they're superior to HDD's, but my point was that it's not worth the investment, unless you can't wait a few more seconds for your application to load. If you're a gamer, then what does the SSD provide you with (other than faster load speed) that an HDD cannot do?
 
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I know that they're superior to HDD's, but my point was that it's not worth the investment, unless you can't wait a few more seconds for your application to load. If you're a gamer, then what does the SSD provide you with (other than faster load speed) that an HDD cannot do?

Well, I'd say you were right a couple years ago when SSDs were $300 for 1TB, but now a 500GB SSD can be snagged for around $60. I think it's worth the added expense.

I don't mind if you feel differently, though. For me, the biggest draw with SSDs is the durability and peace of mind that comes with them. Their failure rates are significantly lower than HDDs, mostly due to the lack of moving parts.
 
I know that they're superior to HDD's, but my point was that it's not worth the investment, unless you can't wait a few more seconds for your application to load. If you're a gamer, then what does the SSD provide you with (other than faster load speed) that an HDD cannot do?

The main reason with games is for on the fly asset loading. (assets loaded in game VS during level load screen)
You don't want textures and model loading being delayed and dynamic level loading is increasingly more common.

1tb ssd will not break the bank and Its not a waste of $. Its 2019, do not run any programs from HDDs. They are mass storage devices.
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Do you think I'll be able to run it with a GTX 970, i5 3570 and 8GB RAM? I'll probably be able to upgrade a little, but if this is enough I'm good!

Youre going to need more RAM at least. The gtx 970 was light on VRAM ,4gb, and GPUs light on VRAM utilize more system RAM.

Id look at getting a 2nd hand mobo & CPU and 16gb DDR4 (new or used - your system uses DDR3 right?).
Even a 6600, 6500 can be had for cheap but will give you much more perf.

Upgrade your GPU when you can.
 
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I know that they're superior to HDD's, but my point was that it's not worth the investment, unless you can't wait a few more seconds for your application to load. If you're a gamer, then what does the SSD provide you with (other than faster load speed) that an HDD cannot do?
None of the games we play are using the latest instruction set on the newest generation of CPU, so the main reason you upgrade that is to get what an incremental boost in speed, which you'll probably bottleneck on an HDD anyways.

I get it, the gamer centric advertisers don't go as hard on storage as they do CPU, GPUs, & RAM, but you only get much out of those if your IO can keep up.
 
None of the games we play are using the latest instruction set on the newest generation of CPU, so the main reason you upgrade that is to get what an incremental boost in speed, which you'll probably bottleneck on an HDD anyways.

I get it, the gamer centric advertisers don't go as hard on storage as they do CPU, GPUs, & RAM, but you only get much out of those if your IO can keep up.

yes but that is part of the point, that there is only a couple seconds between something that is maxing out at 550 MBps and something that caps at 3000 MBps it's not the IO that is slowing you down, because if you, for instance, created a ram disk and loaded from there you would see actual near instant loading.

HDDs are slow no doubt, but still only by 10 or so seconds, and it's how the programs are asking for stuff. is why SSDs/NVME are not the massive jumps they should be.
 
yes but that is part of the point, that there is only a couple seconds between something that is maxing out at 550 MBps and something that caps at 3000 MBps it's not the IO that is slowing you down, because if you, for instance, created a ram disk and loaded from there you would see actual near instant loading.
Your example with the RAM disk is proof that IO is the bottleneck and to that end most people don't have an extra 100+ GB of RAM in their MOBO, and even if they had the slots that would be WAY more expensive than getting an SSD or m.2 (which is just a little slower than a ram disk at a fraction of the cost with larger available capacities).

Going from 550 to 3000 is a performance increase of 545% while most CPU generations are lucky to see 20-30% improvement over the previous gen.

There is a reason that cloud computing services charge a premium for SSD based instances, IO is one of the most costly operations for any computing process. I know I'm not going to convince you, so this is the last I'll say on it, believe what you want.
 
Well, I'd say you were right a couple years ago when SSDs were $300 for 1TB, but now a 500GB SSD can be snagged for around $60. I think it's worth the added expense.

I don't mind if you feel differently, though. For me, the biggest draw with SSDs is the durability and peace of mind that comes with them. Their failure rates are significantly lower than HDDs, mostly due to the lack of moving parts.

I guess that makes sense. You pay a little more money for increased durability and reliability.

Maybe I'll pick one up on Black Friday later this year.
 
Your example with the RAM disk is proof that IO is the bottleneck and to that end most people don't have an extra 100+ GB of RAM in their MOBO, and even if they had the slots that would be WAY more expensive than getting an SSD or m.2 (which is just a little slower than a ram disk at a fraction of the cost with larger available capacities).

Going from 550 to 3000 is a performance increase of 545% while most CPU generations are lucky to see 20-30% improvement over the previous gen.

There is a reason that cloud computing services charge a premium for SSD based instances, IO is one of the most costly operations for any computing process. I know I'm not going to convince you, so this is the last I'll say on it, believe what you want.

yes and no, the sony test on an unspecified NVME SSD show that it is possible for games to load way faster than they modest improvements shown in PC games on SSD. something else is happening in the way the data is asked for from the storage. Yes a ram disk has vastly more bandwidth and very low access times (and it frankly yes, not really feasible out side of benchmarking) but also how the data is asked for from memory seems way different. like am mechanical HDD will take (in this hypothetical) 50 seconds to load something, but an NVME despite being 10 times faster, doesn't drop that to 5 seconds it drops to 30 seconds, a massive improvement, but nothing like what the improvement in IO bandwidth suggests it should get.
 

So... Probably NAVI 20 for the new consoles. Rumor has it that the PS5 will have something that can beat the GTX 1080.

Welp! Probably a good thing I'm holding off on buying a new GPU. Next one I buy, I want to be able to beat next-gen consoles.
 
you guys think its worth waiting to play it on new consoles? i have choice from new cpu , mobo, ram , cooler worth about 900 dollars or new consoles
i wouldnt like to play it on curent gen because it will look ugly
i will buy ps5 no matter what for exclusives so im wondering if the pc upgrade will be worth it
 
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you guys think its worth waiting to play it on new consoles? i have choice from new cpu , mobo, ram , cooler worth about 900 dollars or new consoles
i wouldnt like to play it on curent gen because it will look ugly
i will buy ps5 no matter what for exclusives so im wondering if the pc upgrade will be worth it

What hardware do you already have?
 
you guys think its worth waiting to play it on new consoles? i have choice to choose from new cpu , mobo, ram , cooler worth about 900 dollars or new consoles
i wouldnt like to play it on curent gen because it will look ugly
What hardware do you already have?
gtx 1080 ti , fx 8350 , 8gb ram
im thinking if the ps5 will have an ryzen 2 cpu and 1080 gpu i shouldnt upgrade pc , am i right?
unless cdpr decides to not suport next gen consoles
 
gtx 1080 ti , fx 8350 , 8gb ram
im thinking if the ps5 will have an ryzen 2 cpu and 1080 gpu i shouldnt upgrade pc , am i right?
unless cdpr decides to not suport next gen consoles

Hang on to that GTX 1080. The new Nvidia RTX (Super) and presumably the new AMD RX and RT cards are not a great enough improvement to make any new GPU purchase worth it. GPU's are also overpriced right now, so just wait until they drop prices or NAVI 20's release in 2020, will force the market to do so. That 1080 is probably already enough to run CP77 comfortably so wait until the Graphic Card manufacturers do anything interesting before launch.

For your FX-8350, I'd highly recommend buying a B450 or X470 motherboard with a nice Ryzen 3600/X/3700X. These offer a superb increase in value-performance and will release in just 5 days. A Ryzen 3600 is just $200 dollars and a good B450 MOBO some $100, excluding taxes, and you'll have a CPU that rivals or beats even Intel's finest CPUs. They also have the Zen2 architecture, same as what you'll find in the consoles and I'm pretty sure the consoles will be similar to a 3600, and not top the 3700X.

Otherwise, wait and save up. The remaining $600 can still go towards your purchase of a PS5 and you're prepared to wait the period of time between CP77's release in April 2020 and the PS5's release later that year, if the GPU manufacturers are still playing hardball. You can make any other decision later and you'll have a rig that can sorta-handle CP77, minus maybe the GPU that you can upgrade later.


EDIT: Forgot, you'll also have to spend some $120 on new DDR4 3200-ish mhz memory, so keep that in mind.
 
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gtx 1080 ti , fx 8350 , 8gb ram
im thinking if the ps5 will have an ryzen 2 cpu and 1080 gpu i shouldnt upgrade pc , am i right?
unless cdpr decides to not suport next gen consoles
the ps5 isnt going to have a 1080, but either way, you shouldnt upgrade yet. a 1080 ti is still excellent, and people need to see actual specs before they go crazy upgrading.
 
Hey fellas,

Just wanted to let you know that I finally got my new rig kinda following the advices you guys gave me.

There was a huge sale and luckily I was able to get the i7 9700k (for the price of a i7 8700) and a Zotac 2080 Ti for a good price.

So here's my new specs:

Aorus Z390 Elite
I7 9700k
16gb 3200mhz
ZOTAC RTX 2080 Ti 11GB
240t Liquid Cooler
SSD Corsair Nvme 480GB
SSD Samsung 1TB
HDD Samsung 1TB

Hoping to play CP2077 without any trouble 😄
 
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in honestly wondering why you even bothered getting mechanical disk when you have two SSDs and you only got 1 TB for the mechanical disk.
 
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