A new gaming pc
 

or not… I have always been a pc gamer but those next-gen consoles are very tempting.

I have been wanting to upgrade for a year now, waiting until the new graphics cards were released. Zen 3 and big navi look cool, but they will require a complete new pc.

I'm mostly thinking about a xbox series x for 500 euro (but more exclusives on ps5 I hear), the pc equivalent will cost me more than 1000 euro (if not 1300 euro or so). I consider myself an occasional gamer so a console that can do 4k 60 fps might be the best choice.

I have only two (major) concerns:
- Price of games: I buy in sales <20 euro on pc. Although the microsoft game pass (which includes EA play now) is a very interesting deal
- I don't have access to the extensive catalog of steam, epic, gog, humble, etc. Will I miss anything?

At the moment I do play solely on the steam link with a controller, so those kind of games will probably be on consoles too. I will miss isometric games (shadowfall, PoE, …) but I can still keep my old pc around for that and for other non-demanding indie games (I love metroidvania, sometimes a rogue-lite).

Lots of other advantages to a xbox: 1 TB storage, pass-through hd audio, bluray drive, netflix, disney plus, amazon, youtube, and probably support for kodi so I can get rid of my android tv. And I can finally play those exclusive games for previous generation (if any).

Yeah, the consoles are looking like pretty good value. Good hardware for the price. I think with subscription services becoming the main focus, like Xbox Gamepass, EA pass, etc, it'll be pretty affordable to have access to a lot of games. I think some of these consoles don't even have an optical drive. I think backwards compatibility is high.

At the same time, it looks pretty easy to build a console beating PC and since the last generation of consoles were around for about 8 years it's likely this generation will last that long too.

You probably know the consoles are using all AMD hardware. If you had a 5800x and 6800 gpu you're already ahead. All of the announced "big navi" gpus appear to be better than the console offerings. The basic 6800 has 60 CU whereas the xbox has like 52 and the ps5 has 34, I think? So, already if you got a 6800xt with 72 that's about double a ps5. Also, on the CPU side, the console clocks are a lot lower than the PC. Lots more memory on PC, etc.

Where the consoles have been so quick is with how fast they can stream data around while PC takes a longer path with much more cpu overhead. But I think people are working on that kinda thing for PC. Direct Storage or… What was AMD talking about again. Some kinda direct memory access if you combine 5000 series cpu with 6000 series gpu? Also, the new AMD stuff seems to have a lot of cache that should help in these sort of tasks. Plus, i'd say there's a higher chance of these new techs being taken advantage of if developers are already working on similar AMD hardware for the console versions.

I guess it's up to you, really. You can't go wrong. Maybe get both. I'm thinking about a new build and I have thought about getting a new console too. I'm also leaning toward AMD, at the moment. I was thinking 3950x and 3080gtx but now I'm wondering if a 5950x and 6900XT might be better. Yeah, 16 core cpu is overkill. But 16 cores just sounds like a proper upgrade over 8. None of this 12 or even 10 cores. It goes 4, 8, 16! :)

Just some thoughts, anyway.

I can give my opinion, but know my bias is heavy towards being a pc gamer exclusively.

I would never buy a new console in place of a new computer. Various reasons I dislike consoles are:

I don't like the console controllers, to me, they are always inferior to mouse and keyboard, and feel awkward to use, and like a "toy" in the hand.

Consoles often have game concentrations I have no interest in. I don't like sports games or basically a ton of other types of games that seem popular on console, like multiplayer games, including multiplayer shooters.

I am firmly a single player gamer. Not a"party" type gamer where I only have fun if I'm gaming with a crowd of other gamer friends hooked up through headsets or something…honestly, thats more like a nightmare to me. (I'm a loner type)

PC has a huge backlog of brilliant older games to play, that don't run on consoles, and likely will never come to console gaming. (Kinda why I'm so damn picky when it comes to buying and playing games - I have way too many great games just waiting to be played in my backlog, like most pc gamers)

A corollary to that is I keep finding "new" old games to play on steam that I overlooked or never heard about at the time, and thus my backlog of older games to play grows ever larger.

P.S. I'm all about mods and tweaking games to my liking (I forgot to include this one)
And consoles are obviously not good for mod crazy gamers like me.

There is no doubt you can build a more powerful pc if you are willing to spend the money. I would buy a 5600 non-x + a 300 euro graphics graphics card (my last card was 180 euro). Never been able to spend 800 euro on a graphics card as I still live in the past where you could get the top-of-the-line card for < 200.

I guess the time is just right for me to go for it. Pc is outdated and I need something to play disney plus. Btw I don't think there is much difference between the xbox gpu and a 6800 (52 vs 60 CU is practically the same).

All this is moot though as the new consoles are all sold out, maybe until early year even. I will already subscribe to game pass ultimate (it's like 90 euro for 3 years) and play it on pc (albeit in lower quality). Depending on prices I can still decide where I will go to.

Yes, this is what I'm afraid of + all those great indies that I might get locked out of. Apart from that consoles are practically pcs these days. Same hardware / architecture, you can also connect M&K (and play first-person games with those? not sure).

Finally, someone alike. I get asked a lot to game with a friend (remote or local). Or worse, play a singleplayer game and pass the controller to each on death. This is absolutely not what I consider having a good game. I'd rather go to the pub with friends, and play my story-based singleplayer games in my own time.

Edit: not too worried about mods and user content. More than enough higher quality commercial games are available which will keep me occupied.

Nah, keep saving. Maybe just get the console. Most AAA games will be targeting console specs and I believe they're going for 60fps. 6 cores will probably be fine for a few years but to last the full console generation I'd be more comfortable with 8.

Here's the new xbox specs:

Xbox Series X specs

CPU: 8x Cores @ 3.8 GHz (3.66 GHz w/ SMT) Custom Zen 2 CPU.
GPU: 12 TFLOPS, 52 CUs @ 1.825 GHz Custom RDNA 2 GPU.
Die Size: 360.45 mm.
Process: 7nm Enhanced.
Memory: 16 GB GDDR6 w/ 320mb bus.
Memory Bandwidth: 10GB @ 560 GB/s, 6GB @ 336 GB/s.
Internal Storage: 1 TB Custom NVME SSD.

8 cores, but they're clocked pretty slow, but also have the "19% improved instructions per cycle" like the 5000 series. Which they pretty much are. Even phones have 8 cores, these days. I'd get 8 or more.

16GB of ram, but I'd be going for 32.

Fast SSD, 1TB, easy. I'd get more.

52CU RDNA with similar speeds to the 6800 or 3070.

So, it's definitely cheaper to get the console, but also pretty affordable to get your PC sorted for the next 8 years. Works out pretty cheap price/8years.

What are you talking about; this is one of the most commonly repeated lines on the site. :P

I think about buying a new pc every year at this time, but my old pc still seems to run everything just fine and Cybersex 2077 doesn't really interest me much. I like humans to look like humans, not like an iphone/lovecraft hybrid.

You prefer standard fantasy? I'm currently having a sci-fi period (fallen order is great. Although twitchy which you don't like I think).

I definitely need something new to game for sure. Whether that's a pc or console remains to be seen. Although I already subscribed to game pass for 3 years. For 125 euro that was a steal.

Xbox is the main contender but it is hard to ignore the exclusives of the ps5 (mainly both horizons, and God of wars, eternal also looks ok).

On the other hand Microsoft has bethesda and obsidian now. It seems the better platform for rpgs.

Edit: and there is nothing wrong with cybersex! :)

Other things I've been considering are PCIE 4, DDR5 and Intel GPUs.

10700kf looks like a good deal, but it seems like the motherboards don't have pcie4. I don't really think that's much of a problem, but if 4 is out there it wouldn't hurt to have.

DDR5 has been looming forever and I guess it goes without saying that its closer than ever. Some 64GB ddr5-4800 modules from SK Hynix were spotted last month. DDR5 apparently brings the main voltage down from 1.2 V to 1.1 V, increases the maximum silicon die density by a factor 4, doubles the maximum data rate, doubles the burst length, and doubles the number of bank groups. Could go a lot faster than 4800. Of course, there was no mention of DDR5 for this generation on AMDs 5000 series announcement so the next generation in late 2022 might be the first we see them used. That's a bit of a long wait, though, and I'm not sure how much they'll effect performance. Still, as with 16 cores, it would be cool to say you have 64GB DDR5!

Intel Xe GPUs are also something to consider. They have plans to release a solution for everyone from super high-end data centers all the way to super low-end integrated. They look like they could have some pretty good performance but it's too soon to speculate. I'd just assume that they might try and break into the market with a bang and set their prices low enough for people to take a chance at using their unknown new drivers instead of going with a known brand. Maybe they'll do some sort of improved performance if you match a new intel cpu and gpu together, like AMD did.

So, yeah, there's some more reasons to wait another 2 or 3 years but there's always something new around the corner. It would be nice to not worry about things like this and just get the console, knowing it will be targeted by devs and well supported.

I wouldn't consider the Xe GPUs for a gaming PC. They're not even being marketed for gaming. From what I've read about them, I think you'd be limited to 1080p, and even then you'd still probably have to turn down certain graphics options.

Chaps, I'm looking at getting a new gaming PC for around £500-600.

Any pre-built ones which you can recommend which would give me some decent umph please?

Doesn't have to be spectacular, I'm wanting to play games like Tyranny without any probs, but be nice to have a decent bit of power under the hood too for more demanding games.

Prob able to run stuff comfortably up until around 2017 say?

This might help for builds around $750 US.

Link -https://techbuyersguru.com/750-budget-gamer-pc-archive

Nothing impressive though.

I was under the impression Intel was making a legit play at entering the GPU market? I don't know much about it. I read something a while back about how they'll have a pretty respectable core count. I'm sure they can display a higher res image than 1080p but you mean the performance will be too poor to use them for higher res, right?

Nvidia bought ARM CPUs, so they can now make CPUS AND GPUS. AMD makes CPUS and GPUS. Intel makes CPUS and wants to get serious about GPUS. Then they can all compete with eachother with CPU+GPU combo deals. This is what I was picturing.

Well, 1600AF is probably king of the crap. Pair it with a 1660 variant and you'll have a nice rig for 1080p gaming. :)

Yes, Intel did have plans to enter the dedicated GPU market with Xe. Then, in addition to their ongoing 10nm issues, they suffered another major setback of their 7nm manufacturing process.


There are rumors that Intel might also contract TSMC to produce Xe dedicated GPUs but it will take a lot of effort and time to transfer their in-house designs to a design that can be manufactured by TSMC.


I would not expect a serious contender from Intel in the dedicated GPU market any time soon. There will maybe be some entry level stuff and Xe will likely become a fairly impressive iGPU, but as far as dedicated GPUs are concerned, Intel will not really compete with AMD or nVidia in the mid to high end range anywhere in the foreseeable future.



nVidia has not bought ARM yet and they likely never will because China is going to veto the deal. If nVidia, by some miracle, manage to convince China to waive their veto then I'm quite curious about the (painful) concessions they will have to make.


Regarding ARM, I do not think that nVidia want to get serious about consumer CPUs. nVidia's CEO Huang has recently stated that they are not a video gaming company but a computing company.



The datacenter revenue has surpassed nVidia's gaming segment revenue for the first time last quarter. nVidia are using all of their capacity at TSMC to produce the professional GA-100 GPUs for the datacenter while they have outsourced the gaming stuff to Samsung on a technologically much inferior node.
Gaming/consumer business is now second fiddle at nVidia. It is all about datacenter for them.



Datacenter is showing exponential growth while gaming has been rather stagnant. nVidia's main goal is to establish themselves as a global player in the datacenter segment. It will be quite interesting to see what will happen to ARM outside of nVidia's datacenter ambitions IF the ARM deal actually happens. nVidia will probably continue the licensing model but I doubt that they will have any ambitions of their own in the consumer space.

The way to go is pairing a solid CPU with the fastest graphics card you can afford. Most games nowadays scale with the graphics card. Of course there are exceptions, like Anno and Crusader Kings.

I'll post 2 very useful German links. You don't really need to read the text. Just have a look at the tables.

1) Do it yourself PC guide - Gamestar
Scroll down to their recommendation for 700 EUR.
They recommend to combine a Ryzen5-3600 (*) with a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Super OC 6 GByte (**). They promise nearly flawless 1080p / FullHD gaming, usually very high graphics settings and high frame rates. Even 1440p is worth a try. We are talking about 2020 games here. In 2017 games you just put all quality sliders to the far right and take it from there.

(*) = The headline says R5-2600, but they do recommend to spend the 50 bucks more for the R5-3600.
(**) = This is a last generation card. The new gen is coming right about now - and it's a massive improvement. It seems NVidia and AMD are really duking it out this time. You should wait, if you can. It's entirely possible you'll get 50% more bang for the same money around Easter.

2) FullHD & UltraHD Performance Index - 3D Center
This index gives you quite precise relative performance values of all graphics chips released in the last 5 years. You can use GTX 1660S as a fixed point to compare other cards against.
Pre-built PCs more often than not have crappy graphics cars. Find out which GPU the card uses, then look at the index.

Why is this? Is TSMC not set up to make 10nm, anymore? Too much effort on TSMC part to be worth it?

How important do you think 7nm is, anyway? Even on 10nm, Intels current lineup are still roughly equivalent to AMDs 7nm chips. As far as gaming goes, anyway. They take the lead in CPU intensive "work" apps but I'd say that's mostly due to greater core count. But, still, Intel does well with 10 cores and if you could take that performance and imagine its 16, 32, etc, they'd be ahead.

Maybe Intel will just skip 7nm and go straight to 5nm, which I believe is what AMD is planning for their next generation? Clearly I'm no CPU architect, but maybe it would be simpler to just take their 10nm design and divide it by 2 to get 5nm than use 7nm! :P

So, not even in the next 2 or 3 years? Still feels like something to keep an eye on. At least for the people looking at AMD APUs.

What do you mean by this? What sort of concessions?

Yeah, I feel like you can see that in their pricing since crypto mining became a thing. Every now and than I see something about them selling a deep learning setup to someone. Their prices are just absolutely insane. 3090 costs $3000 in Australia.

Samsung is making the gaming cards now? Didn't know that. What do you mean by inferior?
Yeah, it's hard to say. I would just assume they want to actually use ARM CPUs for something. Like, I think they used ARM in their Nvidia Shield handheld thingo and mobile gaming is making most of the money in the gaming industry. Maybe they'll make a Nvidia Gaming Phone with help from Samsung and ARM.

They've been using similar architectures for years, so they've had a long time to optimize it. With AMD, the optimizations will get exponentially better over time. And they now have the time for R&D because they're no longer playing the catch up game. That and Intel needs to respond with some much more aggressive pricing if they truly want to be "equivalent". And going to 5nm isn't so simple. Once you get this low, you start getting cross-talk at the molecular level.

Not anymore, AMD's ahead in per-core speed with the new Zen 3. Intel's 10-core is probably roughly half the total processing power of AMD's 16-core. Plus, Intel still doesn't have PCIe 4.0 yet either, so you're stuck with a slower SSD, and maybe less video performance too. Intel desktop CPUs are an all-around shitshow right now, but they're competitive, or better, for laptop CPUs. Zero reason to buy Intel for gaming right now, but maybe it'll change early next year when they put out their new stuff. I'm sure you can find the occasional gaming benchmark where Intel is equal or ahead just because a particular game was better-optimized for Intel, but I'm not sure I'd want to buy based on that.

TSMC's current high powered node is 7nm. They got 5nm mass production for mobile chips up and running (Apple mobile chips are 5nm already).


What I meant with regard to Intel is this: Intel were going to produce Xe GPUs on their own 7nm process. Intel's 7nm plans have recently suffered a major setback of approximately 12 months (maybe even more) because of their manufacturing issues.

If Intel want to avoid delaying Xe, thus risking the design and architecture to become outdated in the meantime, they would need to outsource the manufacturing. According to rumors they are in fact in talks with TSMC to let TSMC produce the Xe chips.
Here is an interesting article on Intel's ongoing dilemma.


Just to clarify: Intel's current Comet Lake CPUs are not 10nm parts. They are still built on a 14nm node (14nm++…). While it is fairly amazing how much life Intel has squeezed out of their 14nm process, it is really showing its age now. The i9-10900K draws massive amounts of power and produces quite a lot of heat. It can boost up to 5.3GHz only for about a minute which is borderline cheating to get good benchmark results.


Zen 3 is technologically way superior at this point. More cores that stay much cooler while drawing reasonable amounts of power.
Intel's next generation of desktop CPUs is Rocket Lake which is expected to arrive at the end of the 1st quarter in 2021. Those CPUs will still be 14nm. They will have a maximum of eight "real" cores (down from ten). They will also feature eight small cores (called a big.LITTLE design because of the eight "real" cores and eight small helper cores).


Rocket Lake is a backport of a CPU that Intel originally intended to manufacture on their 10nm node but since 10nm desktop CPUs are still delayed (since 2016 according to old roadmaps!) it will be a 14nm part. It will be interesting to see a big.LITTLE CPU in the desktop space as that design is usually only found in mobile devices. Whether it will be enough to take back the crown from Zen 3 in gaming remains to be seen. In applications it certainly won't because AMD's 16/12 core CPUs are way ahead.


Intel's first 10nm desktop CPU is codenamed Alder Lake and it is finally supposed to come out in late 2021. I find it hard to believe that Intel will be able to pull off a launch in late Q1 (Rocket Lake) and another one in the same year in Q4 but we shall see. I would not rule out further delays. And 7nm is far future for Intel at this point. I would not even be surprised if that slips into 2024.



AMD's Zen 2 (last year) and this year's Zen 3 are built on a 7nm TSMC node. AMD will make the switch to 5nm (Zen 4) towards the end of next year or early 2022.
I very much doubt that Intel is going to skip anything. The 10nm process has a five year long history of delays at this point and 7nm which was supposed to become their savior node in 2022 has been delayed by at least 12 months.
TSMC on the other hand is on a roll. They have successfully executed every single node step in the last few years. The last known major problems occurred on the 20nm node back in 2015.
So, short of the PLA invading Taiwan or a major earthquake, I don't see anything stopping TSMC in their tracks while Intel has major execution problems.


Honestly, I'm not an Intel hater or anything but I really don't see how they are supposed to catch up with TSMC again anytime soon. Your suggestion to maybe take some shortcuts is a recipe for disaster in something as complex as leading edge node development.
Intel may be forced to abandon leading edge node development altogether just as Global Foundries has done leaving the market to TSMC and (to a lesser extent) Samsung. If Intel want to stay relevant they might very well have to become a TSMC customer, too, like the rest of the chip-making world.



That is an excellent question especially when considering the political and economical climate between the US and China at the moment. China have the power to veto the nVidia/ARM deal. Convincing China to waive their veto is not going to be easy. If ARM becomes a company under US jurisdiction then Huawei could no longer license ARM chips because of US trade restrictions. This is why Huawei has asked Chinese regulators to veto the nVidia/ARM deal. It has become fairly quiet since nVidia and ARM have made their agreement public. The deal might go through in the end but at what cost?


The RTX 3080, RTX 3090 and RTX 3070 are manufactured on a custom 8nm process at Samsung which is a derivative of their 10nm process (kind of like the TSMC 12nm node of the RTX 20xx series was really just an advanced 16nm node).
The node is inferior in so far as the power draw is off the charts. The RTX 3080/3090 can reach nearly 400W of power draw. It also seems that yields aren't too great as the RTX 3080/3090 sold out almost instantly on launch day (mid/end September) and more supply has only been trickling into the market since then.

@Moriendor
Good read, thanks!

I saw some benchmarks today and the 5600x was OC to 5GHz on all cores. Beat everything. Maybe 6 cores is enough, on PC? Sure, the consoles have 8 but 8x3.5 is less than 6x5.0. Plus, less cores is less heat, right?

Get a 5600x and spend the rest on GPU? What do u reckon?

What do you chaps think to this?

https://microdream.co.uk/gaming-pc-h…saAh7hEALw_wcB

Seems like a bargain to me?

For 1080p60fps gaming of AAA titles older than a year it is. And for smaller AA and indie games it will be good enough for about 5 years.

Ehhhhh, that's rubbish. :P

1650 is worse than gtx780. i5 4570 only has 6mb cache. You could get 8mb 11 years ago! No SSD in 2020?!

It's way behind the times. Not ready for the new console generation. It could probably run games from 2013 on medium alright.

Jup. They put all the junk they can no longer sell into this PC. The CPU is slow (*), the graphics card even slower. And an SSD is a must.

(*) 4th gen i5. We're in the 10th gen now. That thing is a fossile.

Well, the official 6800XT reviews are out today, along with the local pricing.

I'm sure everyone can find a million reviews and benchmarks, but for those who just want the short version:

6800XT looks great with performance that rivals and often beats 3080. However, Nvidia is well ahead in raytracing. HOWEVER, looking at the benchmarks I'd still prefer to run the few RT enabled titles with RT off for far superior performance.

If you're in USA its only a +$70 from 6800xt to 3080, but in Australia its at least $350 cheaper to get AMD.

The Smart Access Memory doesn't seem very impressive and in a few benchmarks the 6800 actually did better with an "old" 9900k CPU and SAM off over a 5900, which is odd.

I think for me AMD might be the winner as I care far more about traditional game performance and don't need Tensor cores for AI and stuff like that.

There is also Nvidias DLSS which is pretty neat in the games that support it, but AMD is working on something similar.

Also, if you consider that the new console generation is all AMD hardware with worse GPU than 6800 yet all claim to support RT I think we don't need to worry about RT becoming super important anytime soon. Since all AAA games will be targeting console hardware then poor RT performance is all they'll target for the next generation.

edit: Also, power use and thermals are all looking very good and more reports of excellent overclocking potential up to 2.5GHz (on the 6800xt)

6800XT has a good bit more memory, too, which could be handy in future games. (Assuming you're planning on keeping the card for 3+ years.)

Some companies making games are going to want to keep parity between the PC version and the console but I don't think all of them will. Better ray tracing may well be an important factor down the line.

(And, as near as I can tell, there's 0 support for 3D Vision in the 3000 series. Not even the driver hacks will do it. Whichever card I go for, the only way I can see my 3D screenshots will be in a VR application.)

Any in-one bundle which you could recommend instead for under £500 please?

Seems everything is hard to get: 3000 series, amds lineups, etc.

I managed to score me a xbox series x at launch. Sheer luck which normally doesn't happen for me. I checked the Microsoft store one day in advance of the launch and was able to order (because of a cancellation I guess). One day later it arrived.

I have been enjoying it with game pass. If you don't have a gaming pc it is perfect. There are some issues but I have good hopes these will be resolved.

- I'm really liking quick resume which seems to be working most of the time for me. If used a lot it makes me the box a little unstable (game freezes after the 20th QR). Nothing some updates can't solve.
- crisp pseudo 4k graphics (upscaled from 1440p!)
- whisper quiet. You only hear the air moving when 5 cm away. No mechanical or coil whine noise at all
- Disney plus and all other streaming apps are in there. Kodi is still buggy.
- large 1tb storage for my needs.
- bethesda, obsidian, inxile are all owned by Microsoft and are on game pass
- having some problems with a white flicker due to HDCP, but only with disney plus.

I'm really looking forward to playing the outer worlds and wasteland 3 but I'm staying clear for now. I started with games from publishers that have a limited life on game pass

Tell me about it. A 30xx card is damn near impossible to get right now unless you're willing to overpay for it.

TSMC reckons 3nm in 2022. Could be 2.5 to 3 times as many transistors in the same area over 7nm. Of course, zen4 was gonna be 5nm so we probably wont see 3nm appear right away. But its something to think about. :)