Buying new PC ( for 2077)..any recommendations

Intel still is the best for gaming, I look forward to the day that’s not the case though.

sakichop said:

Intel still is the best for gaming, I look forward to the day that’s not the case though.

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Yeah. I mean it might not be the "best for gaming" if you have a fixed amount of money to spend. But in the end, I am also not ignoring old experiences just because some numbers are bigger or lower.

With AMD you can still see hickups now and then, like with the release of Dead Red Redemption 2 where AMD Board manufacturers advised to update the bios so that the game doesn't crash.
This might not be AMDs fault alone. But before I switch over to AMD there (again) I'd rather let them ripe a bit.

Same goes for graphics cards...had multiple bad experiences with AMD in the past. Never going to switch to AMD for GPU.
Had horrible experiences with Pixelview Monitors, will never buy a pixelview monitor again even if they might look good on paper.

Ofc that's all extremely subjective and hard to argue with.
All I am saying is that in case of hardware there is more than just benchmark values.

Define fail ?

crpgnut said:

AMD processors consistently fail our QA tests. They may work on the average commercial game, but fail hard when running business apps that are processor hungry. This doesn't mean you shouldn't buy them for a gaming rig, but if you're going to run multiple apps that want CPU cycles all at the same time, stick with IBM.

Note: I'm not on the testing team, but I'm a frequent consultant when purchasing desktops/laptops/VDI's/thin clients/tablets/etc. Of course, when we buy it's in the hundreds of machines typically, so the little vendors don't have a shot.

YMMV

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I don't know about the new chips; but in the old days of thunderbird et all amd didn't make the chipset and it took a long time for 3rd party vendors to get them right. Intel has always made their own chipsets and historically they have been rock solid compared to amd offerings.
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As for graphic cards i've had good and bad from both vendors. With the 1070 one of them had 'bad ram' - not bad as in parity error but didn't play nice with the 1070 chipset - eventually a bios update was released. I forget the exact details but i blame nvidia for this foul up Its been a while since i've had an amd card simply because they fell behind but the last one i had was rock solid.

Kordanor said:

Yeah. I mean it might not be the "best for gaming" if you have a fixed amount of money to spend. But in the end, I am also not ignoring old experiences just because some numbers are bigger or lower.

With AMD you can still see hickups now and then, like with the release of Dead Red Redemption 2 where AMD Board manufacturers advised to update the bios so that the game doesn't crash.
This might not be AMDs fault alone. But before I switch over to AMD there (again) I'd rather let them ripe a bit.

Same goes for graphics cards…had multiple bad experiences with AMD in the past. Never going to switch to AMD for GPU.
Had horrible experiences with Pixelview Monitors, will never buy a pixelview monitor again even if they might look good on paper.

Ofc that's all extremely subjective and hard to argue with.
All I am saying is that in case of hardware there is more than just benchmark values.

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sakichop said:

Intel still is the best for gaming, I look forward to the day that’s not the case though.

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From what I read, Intel is the clear best at 1080p by about 10% to 15%. However when you go up in resolution that drops down to 2% or 3% very quickly.

crpgnut said:

AMD processors consistently fail our QA tests. They may work on the average commercial game, but fail hard when running business apps that are processor hungry. This doesn't mean you shouldn't buy them for a gaming rig, but if you're going to run multiple apps that want CPU cycles all at the same time, stick with IBM.

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Why are you testing/using AMD gaming/Desktop CPU for running business apps?

AMD has different set of CPU for business application and no one sue them for gaming/desktop so the comparison isn't really valid.

lostforever said:

From what I read, Intel is the clear best at 1080p by about 10% to 15%.

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No. Intel is clearly better for unoptimized rubbish code. In such 2 games among 1000s of games per year where almost all are decently optimized, thanks to brute force Intel can provide the atrocious code passes whatever tests they make, and if.

Why reviewers never pan unoptimized horrors? Because just as hotel owners they play games on i9 and think everyone has i9 - while Steam statistics is clear.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
Physical cores:

2 cpus 24.75%
4 cpus 51.31%
6 cpus 17.55%
8 cpus 4.09%
12 cpus 0.12%

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Remember, the RDR2 stutterfest wasn't caused by Intel or AMD. It was caused by CPU threads mismanagement from Rockstar's code so bad it felt as if it's the same Ubisoft's AC4 trash.
Yeah, they did accuse nVidia and nVidia did screw Vulkan support in their drivers, but there was nothing wrong with dx12 from nVidia's side from the beginning.

This is such a worthless vague comment it doesn't deserve respect. Why not provide specific narrow benchmarks so your apple to orange comparison can be spat upon.
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First one has to qualify if they are referring to the cpu or system and if system what chipsets. If it is the cpu which instruction sets (or combination of instructions) perform better on intel and why (for example vaguely I think intel cache management is better so if a thread moves to a different cpu on context switch it might perform better - but this has nothing to do with code optimization and I'm not even sure if these details are accurate - as this is just a vague memory of an article with no details. I have no clue if the intel chipset out perform the amd chipset with regards to memory access (disk - if there is a difference is not relevant).
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as for r2d2 was intel vs amd relevant because an intel chip had more threads or because of cache managment or just some vague comment from some player who didn't understand what was happening under the hood.
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anyway the rubbish here is joxer's post.

joxer said:

No. Intel is clearly better for unoptimized rubbish code. In such 2 games among 1000s of games per year where almost all are decently optimized, thanks to brute force Intel can provide the atrocious code passes whatever tests they make, and if.

Why reviewers never pan unoptimized horrors? Because just as hotel owners they play games on i9 and think everyone has i9 - while Steam statistics is clear.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
Physical cores:


Remember, the RDR2 stutterfest wasn't caused by Intel or AMD. It was caused by CPU threads mismanagement from Rockstar's code so bad it felt as if it's the same Ubisoft's AC4 trash.
Yeah, they did accuse nVidia and nVidia did screw Vulkan support in their drivers, but there was nothing wrong with dx12 from nVidia's side from the beginning.

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lostforever said:

From what I read, Intel is the clear best at 1080p by about 10% to 15%. However when you go up in resolution that drops down to 2% or 3% very quickly.

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Yep, when you increase resolution your gpu becomes a limiting factor. However if you keep that cpu for a couple video card generations you’ll gain that difference back and probably more depending how fast future generations of video cards are.

That’s why since I’m only interested in pure FPS. I look at 720p benches. At that resolution the 9900k can beat the 3900x by 30-40% in games.

As Kordandor pointed out though, I should probably have said fast rather than best because Intel leads in gaming only. If your looking for a more well rounded cpu for more than just gaming then AMD would be a better option.

sakichop said:

That’s why since I’m only interested in pure FPS. I look at 720p benches. At that resolution the 9900k can beat the 3900x by 30-40% in games.

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It really depends on what you are looking for though. Generally I'd say that future"proofing" makes almost no sense for CPUs at that cost.

Even with middle range CPU (e.g. i5 of almost any sort) you will likely not have any need to upgrade for quite a while. You probably have 2 different graphics cards at that time.
So rather than paying twice the money to get a rather small performance boost, you might want to save the money instead and put it either in the graphics card or into a replacement of the CPU along the road.

You can rather replace your i5 after a few years with a brand new system than trying to cope with an i9 for two "cycles". Replacing the whole system once is probably even cheaper and more performant for the second cycle.

Kordanor said:

It really depends on what you are looking for though. Generally I'd say that future"proofing" makes almost no sense for CPUs at that cost.

Even with middle range CPU (e.g. i5 of almost any sort) you will likely not have any need to upgrade for quite a while. You probably have 2 different graphics cards at that time.
So rather than paying twice the money to get a rather small performance boost, you might want to save the money instead and put it either in the graphics card or into a replacement of the CPU along the road.

You can rather replace your i5 after a few years with a brand new system than trying to cope with an i9 for two "cycles". Replacing the whole system once is probably even cheaper and more performant for the second cycle.

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Absolutely, there are many different ways you could go depending on needs and budget.

While this might be true in some cases - at the extreme case you are illustrating here I think your reasoning is quite flawed.

sakichop said:

However if you keep that cpu for a couple video card generations you’ll gain that difference back and probably more depending how fast future generations of video cards are.

.

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I never understood the upgrade advantage of pc. I just buy a well-balanced pc (now that would be ryzen 2600 + gtx 1660). By the time it can't keep up anymore there are new sockets, memory speeds, etc. which basically requires building from scratch.

you said:

While this might be true in some cases - at the extreme case you are illustrating here I think your reasoning is quite flawed.

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I think this is rather the "normal" case.

Let's say you had to buy a CPU in 2013 and you either buy the i5-4670K for 243$ or the Core i7-4770k for 350$ then these days it slowly getting time to upgrade again.
Yes the i7 has 100 Mhz more boost clock and 4 more logical cores due to hyperthreading. But it will not make a significant difference in your consideration on whether to update now or not. You can actually check some recent benchmarks in this video: (skip to the end): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5qwTsdMMg8

So was this really worth the 100$? Probably not.

Of course you can go even further on both ends, go to socket 2011 on the one end and go down to i3 with even better price/performance on the other end.

In addition the gap between what is useful and what is the max you can get is even wider today. The i9-9900KS for 513$ vs let's say a i5 9500 for about 200$ or even i5 9600k for 262$

ilm said:

I never understood the upgrade advantage of pc. I just buy a well-balanced pc (now that would be ryzen 2600 + gtx 1660). By the time it can't keep up anymore there are new sockets, memory speeds, etc. which basically requires building from scratch.

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Yes and no. Luckily the Graphics Card is pretty separate AND it's the biggest boost. So you can just replace your graphics cards after 3-5 years and you have a top notch PC again without upgrading the rest. After another 3-5 years you will need to replace everything though.

you said:

While this might be true in some cases - at the extreme case you are illustrating here I think your reasoning is quite flawed.

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Not sure why it’s extreme.

I bought a 5930k 4 years ago. Easy overclock to 4.6 on air, 5 on water. I just moved it to my wife’s computer because she needed an upgrade. With graphics card updates there is nothing it won’t run game wise. 6c/12 thread, I had it for 4 years it will last another 2-3 for sure.

6-7 years with just graphics card upgrades.

Since I gave my wife the 5930 k I grabbed a 9900k for $469. Water cooled I have all cores running at 5.1, will push more when I have time. This will last me a good 3-4 years with just buying the latest and greatest graphics cards that comes out.

I should qualify that I don’t care about cost. I’m not looking for price/performance or stretching my dollar.

I’m looking for the best performance at the time. So I can buy whatever game I want crank all settings to max and play not worrying if somethings running in the background or how many launcher I have running.

I stand behind looking at 720p benchmarks ( but not only 720p benches) to take graphics card bottlenecks out of the equation for gaming benchmarks. It just gives you a better idea of how much room you cpu has to grow with future graphics card releases. I think a cpu conservatively will last 3 graphic card generations.

There’s nothing flawed about my thinking. It’s just everyone will have their own personal situation they’re in, to determine the right path for them.

Fundamentally I agree it is not cost-effective but i wanted to cover the narrow case where a cpu is not adequate and you spend a little more to get a boost in speed today. However most of the time going (for example) an i9 over i7 or i5 is not going to help much today or a few years from now now when the gpu is faster (relatively speeking).
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However, he sort of crossed wires because in his last post he said he wanted the absolutely fastest - well if you want hte fastest (even if it is only .15 fps faster than 3 steps lower) then yes go ahead and buy that i9.
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I personally was happy with an i5 for 7ish years and went to an i7 because it was super cheap (weirdness with american pricing on holidays); and will not upgrade for a few more years (my last game computer upgrade was 4 years ago).
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I'm a very much if it ain't broke don't fix it sort of person and am perfectly fine with lower fp/s occasionally (lower is 30 or even high 20's - drop to crawl and i'll get that upgrade tomorrow).
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And yes between sandybridge and haswell refresh there was minor changes (the biggest i think in pcie bus). Since haswell refresh and today there has been even bigger changes in interfaces and memory and support stuff (usb, pcie, ...). And 2 years from now even bigger changes are planned. So in all probability my next upgrade to my game computer will likely be a new build - my guess is that it will happen in 2 or 3 years - every 7 years seem like a decent timeline between upgrades.

Kordanor said:

I think this is rather the "normal" case.

Let's say you had to buy a CPU in 2013 and you either buy the i5-4670K for 243$ or the Core i7-4770k for 350$ then these days it slowly getting time to upgrade again.
Yes the i7 has 100 Mhz more boost clock and 4 more logical cores due to hyperthreading. But it will not make a significant difference in your consideration on whether to update now or not. You can actually check some recent benchmarks in this video: (skip to the end): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5qwTsdMMg8

So was this really worth the 100$? Probably not.

Of course you can go even further on both ends, go to socket 2011 on the one end and go down to i3 with even better price/performance on the other end.

In addition the gap between what is useful and what is the max you can get is even wider today. The i9-9900KS for 513$ vs let's say a i5 9500 for about 200$ or even i5 9600k for 262$



Yes and no. Luckily the Graphics Card is pretty separate AND it's the biggest boost. So you can just replace your graphics cards after 3-5 years and you have a top notch PC again without upgrading the rest. After another 3-5 years you will need to replace everything though.

Click to expand...

Kordanor said:

I think this is rather the "normal" case.
Yes and no. Luckily the Graphics Card is pretty separate AND it's the biggest boost. So you can just replace your graphics cards after 3-5 years and you have a top notch PC again without upgrading the rest. After another 3-5 years you will need to replace everything though.

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Agree, though I started to doubt my i5 4460 when playing assasins creed origins which was the first game my pc struggled with (played it mostly on medium, other games I can play on high). Upgrading this old i5 to a same generation i7 costs a lot of money for such an old architecture. The alternative is a new motherboard and probably memory too.

Please don't invest into CPU because of one unoptimized game. Because whatever you upgrade, the next Warner's Batman will still struggle on it.

joxer said:

Please don't invest into CPU because of one unoptimized game. Because whatever you upgrade, the next Warner's Batman will still struggle on it.

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Burn as the latest Batman game still struggles on a lot of older hardware. Anyway I've said it before we need more engines like the one used in The Phantom Pain called Fox.

It adjusts to every type of hardware.