A new gaming PC

[Arhu]

For me it was the other way around. All the nVidia cards I owned eventually died prematurely after a few years, probably due to overheating. My AMD from 2016 is still going strong. I think that coincided with a new proper case that has dust filters, but who can say. I was into video encoding for a while though and the good hardware-accelerated filters were only made for nVidia drivers, which was a bummer. I'm open for both, but only if my monitor's FreeSync is supported.

 

[Redglyph]

There are a few downsides, true.

NVIDIA drivers on Linux has always been problematic, that's something else to consider.

I'm not entirely convinced by all the extra hardware on RTX cards just for the sake of ray tracing and so-called upscaling improvement. Personally I find it's overkill and I regret the previous series. It also seems those new RTX GPUs tend to be overstressed with many Unity games for some reason.

So it's all fuzzy for me now, I'd be extra-careful before selecting a graphics card.

 

[bjon045]

I've never had problems with either. Last 4 were: GTX960, GTX1070, 5600XT and 6700XT. 2 from each vendor and I enjoyed all of them equally. I always aim for a good mid range card and I've never bought the best except for when I bought a Voodoo2 like 20+ years ago!!

 

[Redglyph]

I've never had problems with either. Last 4 were: GTX960, GTX1070, 5600XT and 6700XT. 2 from each vendor and I enjoyed all of them equally. I always aim for a good mid range card and I've never bought the best except for when I bought a Voodoo2 like 20+ years ago!!

I wanted a Voodoo2 so badly but they were not available here, the few that came were immediately sold. A dishonest merchant sold me a Banshee instead, which allowed to mix graphics with the normal screen, but which was much slower. I returned it and exchanged with a better CPU as a compromise.

I never got that Voodoo card.

 

[Pladio]

I've never had problems with either. Last 4 were: GTX960, GTX1070, 5600XT and 6700XT. 2 from each vendor and I enjoyed all of them equally. I always aim for a good mid range card and I've never bought the best except for when I bought a Voodoo2 like 20+ years ago!!

Is there a reason you buy one each generation/year?

I have kept mine for almost 4 years and I can still play most games on high settings.

 

[Gorath]

A few short remarks without quoting specific posts.

DDR 5 is coming, DDR 4 is on the way out. So if you're buying next year, we're probably talking DDR 5.
On my PC 16 GB is already kind of short due to heavy multitasking. Generally speaking 16 GB should be enough. If money isn't a pressing issue I would go for 32 GB and be done with it, though. I have been told but not confirmed that prices for DDR 5 are sinking quickly.
A new ATX standard is coming too, and graphics cards will demand much more power in the future. So recycling your old power supply is only a viable option if you choose your graphics card carefully. I don't think CPUs will be much of a problem.

The point in waiting a year or so is to let all the new standards enter the market and give them some time to mature. Then buy or build a new PC and kill many birds with one stone. Then you're ahead of the curve, and all you have to do for 4k gaming is buy a fast-enough graphics and connect it to your 4k TV (or monitor).

As for the budget: If you're buying complete you should be able to find something for 1500-1700 EUR, including a Windows license. If you're building, I would put aside 2000 EUR and then do research to bring it down.
I planned to do that, but I got a PS5 (and a 4k TV). So now I have got time because that thing rocks the house! If you can get one I 100% recommend it. The difference between a PS4 Pro and a PS5 is massive.

 

[JDR13]

I'm another one who don't know AMD (ex-ATI) GPUs too well. I had too many bad experiences with that brand so it may take a long time before I'm buying one again. Part of it was messy drivers, a tiny part probably due to NVIDIA collaborating with game makers to make sure it was running well on their hardware. Maybe they've finally produced something good, I don't know. If I absolutely had to buy one, I'd first read a lot on it to make sure it's stable.

We should see Intel's new GPU soon, that could be an interesting turn of events.

I haven't owned an AMD GPU in more than a decade, but I also found them subpar (compared to Nvidia) back when they were ATI. They seem to have improved over the years, but it would take something really special to make me switch from Nvidia at this point.

I'm also curious about Intel's upcoming GPU. It would be great if they can actually produce something that will give Nvidia and AMD some competition, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[bjon045]

Is there a reason you buy one each generation/year?

I have kept mine for almost 4 years and I can still play most games on high settings.

Not really. I would normally keep one for 3-4 years. The last 3 years have been a bit crazy though.

The 960GTX was struggling with Risen 3 so I thought it was time to upgrade. I had it for about 2-3 years after buying it for about 90 dollars I think.

I got the 1070 off someone who had never used for a really good price. Sold it for a profit of about 100 dollars about 6 months later.

Bought a 5600XT with a really good deal where I got a steam voucher and a free pair of nice headphones. I sold the 5600XT about a year later and made a profit which eliminated a lot of the cost for upgrading to a 6700XT.

 

[Ripper]

I've had a pretty even mix of Nvidia and AMD/ATI over the years. Not really had much to choose between them in terms of issues. I've gone AMD in recent years, for the proper Linux drivers. I've read that Nvidia is expected to follow suit, and I wonder if that's because of Intel entering the market (also with solid support for Linux for years now.)

In terms of RAM, I'd say if it's a gaming box, 16GB is just fine. If you use your PC for a bit more, I think 32GB is comfortable, now.

 

[Redglyph]

My PC, like the previous one, has 16 GB and I'm using it both for gaming and development, including IDE, Android emulator and VirtualBox for Linux tests (both using a fair share of RAM), sometimes running a few servers on the VM. Games are usually not really demanding (normal games) but it can be a flight sim, those are the most demanding in every aspect.

Every now and then I have to use the IDE, the emulator and the VM at the same time, but I've never had any issue. Perhaps some of the RAM is occasionally moved to the swap but I never noticed. Of course it's a question of basic hygiene, when I don't need a hungry program anymore, I'm usually closing it. I've also removed as much of the pre-installed bloatware as I could, and the unnecessary services.

So I think that if I had to buy a new PC right now, I'd buy two 8-GB and keep 2 free slots for later, I'd set a fixed-sized swap of 12 or 16 GB, and save the 200 Euros for something I really need. On pre-built PCs, the difference may not be that much, so if you don't want to bother with that, 32 GB isn't a bad idea.

 

[bjon045]

I got this for my pc nearly 2 years ago for $95 but I see it is currently $125:

https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-32gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820232907

32gb CL16 3600mhz.

It is good mid range spec ram with a low price. It was on special during black friday and I created another new account to get a 10% discount coupon for 95 and shipped it to my country for 4 dollars. The equivelent in my country was more than double the price.

 

[Redglyph]

Look at this! :lol:

The discussion on Asobo and MSFS2020 reminded me of early streams with Asobo and MS about the development of that flight sim. In ultra details mode, it was eating up 27 GB of RAM memory… I didn't buy it but I hope they've optimized that a little bit. And as you can see, it fully occupies all the CPU cores.

https://youtu.be/3j6M-S6Dp9I?t=158

That's what I call extreme gaming (or training), flight sims are usually the most expensive PC hobby.

PS: there's a chance the sim adapts to the available physical memory

 

[Ripper]

Yeah, some games will use whatever memory is available. But it's not fully claiming it - it's often pages that have been marked as free, but the Windows virtual memory system will leave them cached in RAM for quick retrieval, releasing them immediately when another process actually needs the memory. It can be hard to discover how much memory a game is actually demanding.

 

[Redglyph]

Yeah, they should have selected the process itself, it's usually more informative.

I'm not sure what the default task manager shows, I'm using Process Explorer. Though it labels that "committed memory" which suggests it's currently used by processes, but who knows.

It doesn't say it's only used by MSFS2020 either, a few GB would typically be taken by Windows, its bloatware and some applications. But since it's not really in their favour, I believe they were somewhat cautious about it and it's not too far from the actual value.

 

[Ripper]

Yeah, they should have selected the process itself, it's usually more informative.

I'm not sure what the default task manager shows, I'm using Process Explorer. Though it labels that "committed memory" which suggests it's currently used by processes, but who knows.

If I remember correctly (and it's been a long time since I looked at this stuff) none of those metrics you can look at in Windows gives an accurate picture of what a process is actually demanding. I think the only way to get a useful view of that is when the game has a debug console and reports its own memory usage.

 

[Gorath]

For a cheap upgrade:
Get a Windows 7 or Windows 10 key on ebay.

I would like to take back this recommendation and instead issue a warning. Don't do this if you live in Germany! Thousands of people got into quite serious legal trouble for buying a Windows license for cheap from an unauthorized source.

 

[bjon045]

I believe City Skylines with all the DLC and a few mods chews through 20GB+ ram. If you want to enable some of the more demanding mods you need 32gb+.

I second Goraths advice. Buy a proper retail key once and then you are set for many many years. M$ is pretty good at letting keys upgrade to the latest version for free.

The other options is it you work for a large organisation you should ask your IT department if you can get a copy for home use. I know my company gets 3 licenses for each employee and they happily gave me a couple of VLK keys to use.

 

[Robollix]

I may be accused of schadenfreude - but let's face it, the non-stop list of excuses from Nvidai/AMD et al , as to why you could not get a decent GPU at a decent price for the last 2 years or whatever has been pretty galling... so please excuse me for a moment, whilst I pop out to get my violin... (hope the link works OK -I'm a bit new to this).

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/nvidias-40-series-gpus-could-be-delayed-again-heres-why/

 

[JDR13]

Well, December isn't that far away. What was the original launch date for the 40xx series?

 

[Redglyph]

Yeah, component shortages are never fun. It seems to get better for GPUs but it's far from over. I was looking at other components and many are out of stock until the end of the year. It's surely as painful for NVIDIA; those are not excuses, it's the sad reality.

On the bright side, card makers will have a little more time to make their tests with engineering samples. I'm always cautious with new chips, even more with new series.