Buying new PC end of year - looking for some advice/guidance

Yep. I've already had the case a few times that the store sent me back to the manufacturer. Usually they're fine with a copy of the purchase order, but it's quicker and much easier when you have registered your product with them.

Sometimes I also had much better support by going directly to the manufacturer. Amazon should be OK though.
 
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Never even heard of dealing with the store for something like a problem with a GPU. Weird. Must be a European thing. In the US, if it's defective or dies, you can return it to the store for a refund or exchange within (usually) 30 days, but beyond that period the store would have zero involvement (unless you bought some kind of extended warranty / insurance policy from them, which I can't say I ever have). For warranty stuff, you always go straight to the manufacturer.
 
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I tried my 4090 on the RDR2 and the results were about as I expected. At 3840x1600, capped to 85fps (I heard that if you let it go uncapped it can easily stay at 100+ at 4k) with everything on max, even the little raytracing it has, it stays at that cap while running at 55-60 C and the gpu at 250W with the fans at 1000rpm (30% fan speed, the lowest I can set it). Doesn't even break a sweat.

On my 3080ti I had 85% of the settings on max, with a few disabled (raytracing) and one or two dialed a bit down, and it averaged 55-60fps at 70-75C and its fans at 1500-1700rpm.
Plain speaking, a beast. It kind of ruins the illusion that RDR2 is some resource hog. CP2077, and now Alan Wake 2, are the biggest hogs.

But while the card is a beast, the only way I’m ever going to consider another flagship card like this is if this one keeps up for 5-6 years. Otherwise it’s really not worth it, for 1-2 games that really take that kind of a toll on it.
 
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Unless I missed something, RDR2 doesn't have Ray Tracing.

Also, I don't think something like Alan Wake 2, which was just released, is a good comparison. Isn't RDR2 around 5-6 years old at this point?
 
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JDR13 said:
Unless I missed something, RDR2 doesn't have Ray Tracing.

Also, I don't think something like Alan Wake 2, which was just released, is a good comparison. Isn't RDR2 around 5-6 years old at this point?
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Technically RDR2 has a flavor/cousing of ray casting called volumetric raymarching. I'm very light on the details, but what I've understood is that ray casting (with raytracing being a particular type of ray casting algorithm) deals with the reflection of light across other surfaces. And raymarching deals with the scattering of light within surfaces (through clouds, smoke or even solid objects, if they have the ability to absorb light within them).

So, technically it's not raytracing, but maybe close enough. It's a feature that a lot of people recommend turning off since it's apparently a big resource hog.

About RDR2 being 5-6 years old, it's still a beast for most systems. As I said, my 3080ti could not run it maxed out at my resolution and at a solid 60fps. Plus, iirc, the 12gig VRAM limit of the 3080ti was also exceeded.

Anyway, my whole point being that my 3080ti was struggling to run it maxed out at a 60+ fps while still running decently hot.
And the 4090 doesn't even break a sweat, and could easily take it to 100+ fps. On a 5-6 year old game.
 
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Well, you said it ruined the illusion of RDR2 being a resource hog, but I don't think it does. RDR2 is still very much a resource hog for the vast majority of systems. For example, CP2077 only becomes more intensive if you crank the RT settings to maximum.

But on a RTX 4090, of course it's going to run well. I should certainly hope so considering the cost of that card. It would be a travesty if it didn't.
 
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JDR13 said:
Well, you said it ruined the illusion of RDR2 being a resource hog, but I don't think it does. RDR2 is still very much a resource hog for the vast majority of systems. For example, CP2077 only becomes more intensive if you crank the RT settings to maximum.
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CP2077 was a massive hog on my 3080 Ti even with raytracing turned completely off. Massive heat, loud fans, everything. (This is 4K HDR 144Hz)

4090 runs it without even breaking a sweat, and you can turn on raytracing too.
 
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JDR13 said:
Well, you said it ruined the illusion of RDR2 being a resource hog, but I don't think it does. RDR2 is still very much a resource hog for the vast majority of systems. For example, CP2077 only becomes more intensive if you crank the RT settings to maximum.

But on a RTX 4090, of course it's going to run well. I should certainly hope so considering the cost of that card. It would be a travesty if it didn't.
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Yeah, I'll be curios to see how the card runs in 5-6 years with whatever resource hog we'll have at that point.
Though unfortunately it's not really guaranteed that if you buy this kind of flagship card it'll last you very long.
If there's a considerable technological jump or a revolutionary change in tech, you're gonna be forced to upgrade if the gains are considerable.
So it's only if the increases are slight and linear that it's maybe worth getting this kind of card.

But once in a blue moon, it's fun to splurge if you've got some money burning a hole.
For me it was very much just a spur of the moment. Not the wisest or most pragmatic purchase.
 
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Stingray said:
CP2077 was a massive hog on my 3080 Ti even with raytracing turned completely off. Massive heat, loud fans, everything. (This is 4K HDR 144Hz)

4090 runs it without even breaking a sweat, and you can turn on raytracing too.
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Have you tried RDR2? It's way more intensive than CP2077 without RT.

I was able to play CP2077 on high settings even on my old rig with a GTX 1080 and got decent framerates. Of course that was only @1080p, but still...
 
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Nope, RDR2 isn't really my kind of game, never tried it.
 
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It's probably the announcement for the rumored "Super" lineup of 4000 series cards. From what I've heard, the 4070, 4070Ti, and 4080 are the cards getting the bump.

If the recent leaked specs are true though, it's not a big deal. They're only a minor upgrade from the regular versions of those cards and a disappointment compared to the original rumors.
 
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Yep, the most exciting thing about it is the $200 price cut (though it remains to be seen if it's actually that much at stores). Spec-wise, it's disappointing. Same amount of VRAM and bus width. Just a few more CUDA cores and a tiny boost to memory speed.

The 4070Ti Super got more of a boost. That one actually did get 4GB more memory compared to the original and went from a 192-bit bus to 256.
 
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This is a short question and I don't want to start a new thread, especially since it pertains to my new card, for which I already piggy-backed on this thread.

Anyway, ever since the new 4090 card I've been needing to more diligently micromanage the card fans, for games that are not demanding, like Disco Elysium and the older rpgs.
My previous cards I've simply had to set the fans to start at around 50C, and then scale up according to a custom curve and almost all games seemed to work fine, with 30% fan speed (aprox 1000 rpm) for most games and 40% for heavy ones like CP2077. But the idea was that the games were demanding enought to never allow the card to go back down outside the range I set it to start cooling itself.

I tried the same with the 4090 but on less demanding games the cooling is just too good and it keeps forcing the fans to start and stop. I'm using msi afterburner and fiddle with the hysteresis, but no good since that's more to do with the curve. While in my case the curve never goes over 30 or 40%. I did find a good solution to the issue with setting the fan update interval to the max of 1 min, so when the card slowly builds to 55C the fans start at 30%, and quickly cools the card (under the 1min update interval) back to around 40C (the desktop idle temp) and then the fans stop again until it slowly builds back up to 55C.

This worked fine and I thought I fixed my issue, until I noticed that every now and then the fans no longer stop after the 1 min interval (even though the card has gone under 40C) and it kept cooling it without stopping, until I closed the game. On subsequent starts of the game msi afterburner seemed to work properly. But the first time after a boot it seems to constantly have this issue. I suspect the issue might be that the fan control software of afterburner is conflicting with the fan firmware on the card ... even though I told msi afterburner to always override.

Anyway, it's nothin too serious since its only for less demanding games, but it is annoying to have to keep an eye out for it.
Does nvidia not have some native custom fan controlling software for their cards. I seem to remember, last I searched, that they didn't?
 
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That sounds like a lot of unnecessary work to me. Personally, I think you're too worried about the fans. I don't even pay attention to mine. Instead, I limit the framerate for older or less demanding games, which in turn automatically makes the card run cooler and quieter.
 
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danutz_plusplus said:
Does nvidia not have some native custom fan controlling software for their cards. I seem to remember, last I searched, that they didn't?
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I'm wondering the same. Lenovo is unable to tell me what card they've put in the computer; there's no brand and it doesn't look like any other 3070 card I've seen. I've tried a few software but none was able to control the fans (not the stupid light effects). So I believe it's not a spec enforced by NVIDIA for any of their GPUs, but I may be wrong.

Have you tried the MSI support? I know it's usually a lost cause, but it doesn't cost much to ask.
 
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