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53 minutes ago, QuantumSingularity said:

Well FSR works on every GPU from GTX 1000 series upwards. I use it on my GTX 1070 and despite it helping with much higher FPS, the GPU is still locked at 100% use all the time. How it will affect newer NV gpus though, i have no idea. And it actually defeats the point of getting an RTX 3000 GPU, if you are gonna use FSR. IT's basically NV's main selling feature (and RT performance for the higher tier models). But even w/o FSR or DLSS, all native rendering, AMD gpus just give this "smoother gameplay" feeling, while even with the RTX 4090 it at times feels choppy, despite the much higher average FPS. Idk if it's some issue with power delivery or drivers, but it is what it is.

Never heard of that before, did you check the frame times? That's the most important part if you want smooth gameplay.

1 hour ago, CommanderAlex said:

Just checking prices via PCpartpicker in Germany and the price difference vary greatly across different models. (XFX Speedster MERC 319 RX 6900XT is 1,200€ while a MSI RX 6900XT Gaming X TRIO is 799€). Not gonna really notice a difference in performance and mainly just features that manufacturers will tack on. Personally, that MSI will be good enough (going off previous experience with a MSI RTX 2080 Gaming X Trio). 

 

I don't think there is any you should avoid. Powercolor and sapphire only produce AMD cards.

Yeah I was just asking whether powercolor and sapphire were still the go-to for AMD cards. Are there any brands to avoid when it comes to 3080s? Back when amd vega cards were a thing, the Asus cards were subpar for example.

2 hours ago, QuantumSingularity said:

Since it says in your signature "SimRacer", If you plan on doing any VR sim racing, AMD and FSR is the way; 6900 XT or 6950XT. DLSS increases the latency too damn much, leading to some major motion sickness and very choppy gameplay on pretty much every VR headset; especially noticeable in ACC. In fact, that is the key difference between now previous gen GPUs - AMD have a bit lower average FPS, but provide smoother gameplay.

But if you can wait a bit more, you should be able to get an used GPU for A LOT less with the beginning of the new year, at least for the EU. They basically shot all miners with a shotgun in the face with the accepted €1000 transaction roof and the personal information requirements. Even more from June all platforms will be liable for clients/investors losses, so... the picture looks really REALLY bright for the again normal GPU market in 2023. Already there are hundreds if big mining rigs being sold in parts. 

Oh a fellow simracer! That's great info, thanks! Isn't FSR available on nvidia gpus too? Can't you just use FSR to get around the latency issues of DLSS then?

I thought this is as low as the prices would go honestly. Do the new regulations for mining apply starting from next year? I can't really see 3080s dropping lower than the 500€ point.

@_Omega_ @CommanderAlex @brentward thanks for the replies guys, much appreciated!

So all the cards seem to be fine for the job. What about the price difference between 6800xt and 6900xt? In the used market 6900xt's go for about 100€ higher. That comes with increased TDP and maybe 5% increase in performance, at least according to the latest GN 7900 review vid. 6800xt seems to be the better choice between the two value-wise, or am I missing something?

Btw are there any aftermarket brands to avoid with these cards? I'm guessing powercolor/sapphire are still the go-to for team red.

Hi guys! I was going to go with the new amd line up but they are all over 1100€ in germany lol so currently debating between these cards. What would you go for if you were in my place? I'm willing to go second hand. I'm kinda worried about the VRAM of 3080 cutting it a bit close with 10 gigs. This is strictly for gaming btw and RT is nice and all but it's not a deal breaker for me. Is there much difference between the power draw of these cards? I did look up the TDPs but that doesn't always match the real-world results with undervolting and all.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

31 minutes ago, Pirulax said:

I think the in-built stuff in Adrenaline is quite good, you could use that. (Open the "Fine tuning controls" dropdown to manually enter values instead of trying to adjust the horrible graph)

lol I just discovered that fine tuning option after months of tinkering with the software. Gonna give that a try, thanks.

Hey, is there a way to use afterburner just for controlling the fans, without it messing with voltages, clocks etc.? I tried setting up just a fan curve but it ends up reverting my voltages to default values on Adrenaline and undervolting goes out the window. I basically have to reapply my Radeon profile at every start-up.

Reason I want to use afterburner for the fan control is basically the AMD solution is buggy atm. It ramps up fans randomly to rpms way above what i set in the software. This is with a Vega 64 Nitro.

So I'm kinda getting overwhelmed with all the choices out there. Could you guys recommend a 4TB CMR drive that'd be suitable for mass game storage and is also quiet (important, I hate HDD noise), fairly reliable? I'll occasionally play games off of it but mostly use it to store games as I don't have the fastest internet to delete and redownload. Btw. does drive rpm still matter these days?

2 hours ago, Archer42 said:

Problem with SMR - data can be written/erased only in very large blocks. Most SMR hdd-s have relatively large write cache and as long as you stay within this cache you are fine. After that you get single-digit write speeds and severe delays (and be severe i mean worst case hdd can stop communicating with the host for 10-s of seconds or even minutes to the point when some software might assume it's dead). In ideal world it should only happen with random writes, on practice it happens with any writes for device-managed SMR. Different manufacturers have different implementations so experience might be different too.

 

Honestly in my opinion the only thing where SMR is fine is backup storage or media storage, potentially with some caching solution on top. For everything else you are bound to run into performance issues sooner or later. If at all possible it is better to avoid SMR, it is vastly inferior product sold for nearly the same price.

Nicely explained, thanks for the info!

5 minutes ago, Applefreak said:

True, the SMR drives are slower on large writes but overall, once the data is there, there is little difference while you may save a bit of money. I'd get the Ironwolf over the Blue if that's the choice you have. That being said, for reliability I would get a WD Gold drive instead, might be a bit more expensive though. You can run NAS drives in non-NAS environments without problems. The data recovery thing is fairly useless in my book. There are additional costs that are not included with the warranty. Also sending your data off to some data recovery center that has a standing contract with Seagate would have me worried in terms of safety. The current WD Blue drives used to be WD Green drives, I have several still in use daily after 5 years, not a lot of writes though, just large storage. Make sure to run a drive integrity test before copying your data. I usually let Seatools run on the new drive to verify it. If it throws errors you can get it replaced before risking your precious files. 

So the data recovery thing is useless, thanks for clarifying that - one less thing to consider. What drive would you recommend disregarding the ones I listed  on the OP considering my use case?

4 minutes ago, Applefreak said:

I don't like the Toshiba drives. Not because of reliability but because of their acoustic footprint inside the case.

I'm really sensitive to noise when it comes to PC-Hardware so that's good to know.

1 minute ago, GDRRiley said:

Toshiba X300 is my pick

Hmm that's a 7200rpm drive isn't it? I see you have one on your sig. How's the noise/vibration? Thanks for the recommendation, appreciate it!

Hi! My current Seagate HDD is throwing some errors on S.M.A.R.T. so I'm gonna get a new one. The primary purpose of the drive is mass game storage. I got a WD Black and my OS SSD for my fav games.

So I'm currently trying to decide between these two:

WD Blue 4TB (CMR) - 88€

Seagate Ironwolf 4TB (also CMR) - 102€.

The reason I'm not simply going with the blue is the Ironwolf has a 3 year warranty as opposed to Blue's 2 and it also comes with a 3 year free data recovery service.

Would there be any downsides to using a NAS drive like the Ironwolf in a normal desktop PC environment? Which one would you guys go for considering my use case?

FYI, I decided on a CMR drive cause I'll be moving a big chunk of data from my dying drive to the new one and the SMR drives apparently are really slow for that purpose. Feel free to correct me if that's not the case though. I could go for a 6TB SMR drive as well if that's the case.

Thanks in advance!

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yea a SMR drive would work fine for that. Normally sequential writes are fine, and only random writes really suffer in terms of performance.

Thanks for replying! So an SMR drive is basically ok for mass game storage, which is going to be my use case, right? Just making sure before I pull the trigger  I move frequently played games to my WD Black 1TB and the most favorite one to my OS SSD.

@Electronics Wizardy, @Archer42 Another question if you guys don't mind: Would an SMR drive be ok if I'm going to move all the data from the dying drive to the new one or would it take too long compared to a CMR drive? I did some digging and apparently games do mostly reading from the drive and SMR is ok for that. And I can get a 6TB SMR drive for the price of a 4TB CMR drive so that's also something to consider. Also please excuse my ignorance on the matter as I'm not really well versed in terms of HDD tech.

2 minutes ago, Archer42 said:

IMO anything from basic desktop models from any manufacturer which is not SMR. You can look up specific models you have available locally on manufacturer's sites and should be able to see if it is SMR or not.

Be careful to look at specific part numbers, because there can be both SMR and CMR drives of the same model and same size.

For example for toshiba p300 is looks like this:

 

Thank you, will do some research and grab one that's not SMR. 

8 minutes ago, Archer42 said:

Since those are just pending sectors this "errors" can mean actual bad sectors, or they can mean just software data corruption and hdd can be totally fine.

First thing would be making a backup, then the simplest way would be performing full format. This "errors" then will just disappear or the sectors will get reallocated and you will know if this were hardware issues or just corrupted data.

And if you have no backups and nowhere to put them buying one more hdd makes sense anyway...

Right, thanks. Gonna pick up a new drive ASAP. Any recommendations for a drive that I'll mostly be gaming on?

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

cmr means the drive will do random writes much slower than a cmr(or normal) drive. I believe ltt has some videos about it

 

DO you have good backups? Make them now. I have seen drive last a while with those errors, and some will die soon.

Okay, I'll definitely pick up a drive then as I don't have any backups of this drive. I just don't have the space for it. So would the wd blue be the best choice for my use cases? I'll store mostly games on the drive will be gaming off of it. Budget is also around the price of that drive.

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

DI probalby go blue or p300, they will all work about the same for a basic desktop use.

 

Id consider getting a bigger drive, not that much more, and the extra space is nice.

 

Reds will work fine, but really won't help you here, and aren't more reliable, if you want a better drive, get one without smr, like the skyhawk or n300

Thanks! What's the difference between cmr and smr? Could you also take a look at the errors thrown? Are those serious enough to consider a new drive? Is there a chance that those errors simply go away after wiping the drive? I mean could the drive become usable after that? 

Hey everyone, I'm looking to swap out my current aging storage HDD for a newer one as it started throwing errors on S.M.A.R.T.

So here's the list of drives (4TB) I'm interested in:

https://geizhals.de/?cat=hde7s&xf=1541_6000~958_4000&asuch=&bpmin=&bpmax=&v=e&hloc=at&hloc=de&plz=&dist=&mail=&bl1_id=30&sort=p#productlist

It's in german but it doesn't really make a difference in this case. Would really appreciate if you guys could give me some advice on what drive I should go with. Currently leaning towards the WD Blue 4TB on top of that list. Would there be any advantages to go with WD Red for about 10€ more if I'm just going to use it in a normal PC? (ie. not a server)

Thanks in advance!

Thanks everyone for the help, much appreciated!

13 hours ago, ragnarok0273 said:

No.

You boot to recovery mode from your current Windows install by mashing F11 while your system is booting.

Then you made your way to "Reinstall Windows 10" and do that.

Select "Keep my personal files and folders".

Alright, thanks. I think I'm gonna follow @Action_Johnson s advice and just reformat the boot drive. Just don't want any leftover stuff causing issues in the future, you know start with a clean slate.

12 hours ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

it depends.

for steam: no, you just tell it where the games are

for EGS: kinda. You have to rename the game folder, then start the install. then pause, then close the launcher (like in the bottom right hit exit) then delete the new folder, then rename the old one back to the old name.

for  MS Store/Xbox app: no

That's really informative, thanks.

1 hour ago, Sakkura said:

Basic files on other drives would be unaffected. Installed programs (including games) would no longer work. But with Steam, for example, it can "discover" those pre-existing files when installing the game, so it won't have to redownload everything.

Yeah I guess I gotta rediscover all the games as I have steam itself installed on my boot drive...

So I just reformat the boot drive during windows installation and I'm good to go, right?

1 hour ago, ragnarok0273 said:

Yes.

No - you can do a local reinstall from Recovery Mode. Mash F11 on bootup.

Not that I'm aware of.

Thanks. Do I just boot into the bootable USB to install windows? The windows installer then just reformats the boot drive right? I mean it doesn't touch the other drivers unless I explicitly tell it to do so?

Hi guys, finally switching from a 2600k to a 3600 and was wondering if I should reinstall windows. So reinstalling would just erase everything on my boot drive and all the other drives would be fine? Would my files/games on the other drives get corrupted somehow since the registry entries will be gone after wiping the boot drive?

1 minute ago, sykotikman said:

LOL , yes i do ,

it was just the heat i worried about , but doesn't seem to be an issue .

Thanks  

Np, you're welcome!