New cards using less power was a trend at one point, but hasn't been true in about a decade.
GTX 780: 165W
GTX 980: 165W
GTX 1080: 180W
RTX 2080: 215W
RTX 3080: 320W
RTX 4080: 320W
GTX 780: 165W
GTX 980: 165W
GTX 1080: 180W
RTX 2080: 215W
RTX 3080: 320W
RTX 4080: 320W
bjon045
SasqWatch
It depends on how you look at it. If you are talking about a certain level of performance then generally they are using less power at the same level of performance. The 30x0 series was particulary bad from a power effiency point of view compared to the AMD equivelents.
As an example, a 6600XT performs slightly better than a 5700XT. It's a tier down but performs better and uses less power.
Take the GTX 780 on your list. The bottom of the line 3050 performs about 62% fast than a GTX 780 and uses less power!
Yeah, obviously efficiency has increased, but Pladio was talking about what wattage of power supply one might have to buy, so that certainly wasn't what he was referring to.
bjon045
SasqWatch
Agree but all he said was is "new ones are less power hungry than the old ones" which is often actually true in many scenarios i.e. 6600XT vs 5700XT and 4070 vs 3080. A 4070 uses less power than a 3080 and delivers better performance - and that is what Pladio is talking about buying.
The tier's of GPU's have also become quite arbitrary and more about marketing than any real attempt to classify cards. A 4070 has nothing in common with a 3070 other than it being marketing goobly gook from Nvidia. The so called 1080p tier now actually handles 1440p at highly respectable framerates beyond what most people can perceive (excluding RT of course).
I think if future cards used less power overall (regardless of performance) it would be a good thing for everyone. How much performance do we really need? I bet a lot of GPU's are heavily under utilised (like mine most of the time).
It sure is glorious to play games like Cyberpunk and RDR2 on ultra settings though
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True. NVIDIA-wise (I don't pay much attention to AMD's video cards), the way I see it is that the "80" model is the baseline for that generation, almost always the one that gets released first (4090 being an exception), and intended to be the mainstream performance model for that generation. Later on, they launch a pricey "90" model and usually some Ti models, and of course, a wide variety of scaled-down, cheaper cards. So other than the 80 model, it is all arbitrary and that's exactly why I used the 80 model for my list.
The devil is in the details.
The technology node (one of TSMC's 4 nm) is more power-efficient than the RTX 30 series (7 nm). I think that's what was announced for the new RTX 40 series. It means that, overall, it consumes less power per transistor at the same switching frequency, but there are a few nuances.
The technology node (one of TSMC's 4 nm) is more power-efficient than the RTX 30 series (7 nm). I think that's what was announced for the new RTX 40 series. It means that, overall, it consumes less power per transistor at the same switching frequency, but there are a few nuances.
- The number of transistors must have increased, though I didn't check (not even sure those are public numbers).
- Not all transistors are powered all the time. One optimization makes entire parts of the chip switch off when they're not necessary. For example, the logic that transfers data like textures from the PCI bus to the card memory are likely to shut down when they're not doing any work. I'm not sure to what extent the tensor cores and other parts of the rendering pipeline can easily be switched off though.
- One transistor consumes much more when it switches; they don't all switch all the time. The percentage depends a lot on the activity and the optimization of the circuit.
- In some circuits (like CPUs), the frequency can change depending on the load.
- There are a lot of different flavours in each technology node, each with their own consumption and speed characteristics. A mix of them is used in any particular design to reach the required frequency with a close-to-optimal power consumption. So it's not as straightforward as saying "this 4 nm transistor consumes X instead of Y for that 7 nm".
After looking at the 7900 XT a bit more, I think I have to backtrack on that statement. You can get a 7900 XT for as low as $779 now (at least here in the U.S.), and I think that makes it pretty attractive.
That's $50-$100 less than a RTX 4070 Ti which lags behind the 7900 XT in most benchmarks and has 8GB less VRAM.
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SirJames
SasqWatch
Nah, you were right the first time. He was looking at the 4070 which is $600 USD and the 6950XT was recently lowered to match that. 7900XT can now be found under the suggested price but its still more than he was looking to spend and the 6950XT performance is very similar to the 7900XT.
The 6950XT is very attractive at that price point but I've heard of it using up to 650W when massively overclocked. 4070 is just a little 192bit card and much more power efficient. Without DLSS3 supported games in the picture the 6950XT easily wins but if all the games you're interested in have DLSS3 4070 might be the winner.
By the end of the year, or even next couple of months, we'll see the mid-range cards start rolling out and I think the 7700XT could be pretty attractive at around the $600 price point.
Regarding graphics card memory, hardware unboxed did some comparison between RX 6800 which has 16GB and RTX 3070 which has 8GB. In some games it makes a huge difference with more memory.
View: https://youtu.be/Rh7kFgHe21k
Idk, I guess it depends on how he likes to run his games. If he likes all the bells and whistles, I think the 7900 XT is the better option. More games are starting to have ray tracing as a feature, and AMD improved the performance there in the 7900 series.
Also, if you're going to spend $600 on a video card to begin with, what's another $180 in the long run? The 7900 XT uses 100 less Watts than the 6950, so that sort of evens things out over time.
I am mostly looking at the total cost of the PC, so my budget is around £2k excl. monitor (which I'll need to save up some more).
My current build is looking something like this, which comes out at £1,900 excl. monitor:
PCPartPicker Part List: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/yvCXKp
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 4.7 GHz 6-Core Processor (£243.33 @ NeoComputers)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12A 60.09 CFM CPU Cooler (£109.95 @ Amazon UK)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5 g Thermal Paste (£8.25 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI MAG B650 TOMAHAWK WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard (£209.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Memory (£128.38 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (£149.49 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Sapphire 21323-01-20G Radeon RX 7900 XT 20 GB Video Card (£749.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P600S ATX Mid Tower Case (£149.99 @ AWD-IT)
Power Supply: Corsair RM850e (2023) 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£181.31 @ Newegg UK)
Custom: Gigabyte 27" G27Q 144Hz Freesync Premium IPS Gaming Monitor (£270.00)
Total: £2200.68
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
I also need to buy Win11, but I bought an OEM version last time, and it has served me well. So I'll probably do the same again this time and hope for the best as they're £30 instead of £120.
Thank you everyone yet again as I do read every post and think about the feedback...
My current build is looking something like this, which comes out at £1,900 excl. monitor:
PCPartPicker Part List: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/yvCXKp
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 4.7 GHz 6-Core Processor (£243.33 @ NeoComputers)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12A 60.09 CFM CPU Cooler (£109.95 @ Amazon UK)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5 g Thermal Paste (£8.25 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI MAG B650 TOMAHAWK WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard (£209.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Memory (£128.38 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (£149.49 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Sapphire 21323-01-20G Radeon RX 7900 XT 20 GB Video Card (£749.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P600S ATX Mid Tower Case (£149.99 @ AWD-IT)
Power Supply: Corsair RM850e (2023) 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£181.31 @ Newegg UK)
Custom: Gigabyte 27" G27Q 144Hz Freesync Premium IPS Gaming Monitor (£270.00)
Total: £2200.68
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
I also need to buy Win11, but I bought an OEM version last time, and it has served me well. So I'll probably do the same again this time and hope for the best as they're £30 instead of £120.
Thank you everyone yet again as I do read every post and think about the feedback...
SirJames
SasqWatch
lol but if we're going up to 7900XT and looking at RT surely we should throw 4070ti into the mix?
I already mentioned the 4070 Ti. Like I said, the 7900 XT beats it in most benchmarks and has 8GB more RAM while being slightly cheaper.lol but if we're going up to 7900XT and looking at RT surely we should throw 4070ti into the mix?
I'm a fan of Nvidia personally, but tbh, their mid-range 40xx cards are somewhat disappointing and definitely overpriced.
Can you still get the M27Q-P over there? If so, get that instead of the G27Q.
Why do you need to buy it again? You can't use the same key?
I'll have a look at the monitors.
Regarding the key, I'm keeping my old computer as a spare at least temporarily. It still works great for anything that isn't games, so probably not throwing it away.
OEM keys (which he said is what he has) are supposed to only work once, for one piece of hardware. Once used, they're tied to that hardware forever. That's why OEM keys sell for less than retail keys.
If you want re-use of keys, moving your license between computers over the years as you upgrade, you're supposed to buy a retail key.
That said, if you're buying Windows keys for 30 pound, that's some sort of grey market / pirated key. In USD, Windows 11 Home Retail keys cost around $140, and OEM costs around $120.
Wouldn't that be a better idea to buy a Pro version of Windows instead? The price of a Pro key shouldn't be much more expensive on the grey market, and it would include features like Bitlocker or Hyper-V, give you more control over privacy settings, allow you to set up Windows without an online account, ...
My post was for @Pladio, it wasn't a reply to yours.
From the price he mentioned, he likely had the Home version in mind. Not that it's terribly important.