Take it like this. If the game you currently play is 100%ing your GPU Usage then upgrading CPU will not help (i.e. multi-threaded game) even if your CPU is at like 20% usage. Not all multi-threaded games will take advantage of high core counts, so your GPU may not hit 100% and upgrading CPU in this case will help but not as greatly as the scenario in the next sentence. If your GPU is not at 100% Usage then a CPU with a better single threaded performance will help.
Go with a used video card. You can get a GTX 1070, if you're lucky a 1070 Ti for that price.
Get a 1TB SSD. It's an extra $5. There's no need for spinning rust.
I'd also get a used monitor.
eBay is your friend.
You could go for just 8GB of RAM, which would technically be enough. If all he does is gaming you could go with a cheaper CPU like a R3 1200.
If it isn't necessary to cut costs I would keep this though, it's a nice build and if it fits the budget it would be a waste to get worse components.
So I know this is a decently well covered topic in the reviewer community. But I wanted to ad my voice to the topic as I feel the reviews have been overly negative. Google Stadia is not the greatest experience as of yet, but it is not necessarily terrible either. If my benchmark is a gaming PC or a console there are things that Stadia is inherently better at, and things it is worse at. However, if improvements can be made I think that Stadia can become a true console killer and an "acceptable" gaming PC replacement for those who cannot afford a gaming PC.
Right now I have had my Stadia Founders edition since November 26th, so exactly 2 weeks. With probably 15+hrs played. I actually never recommend pre-orders but the founders edition at $180 cad is not a crazy investment compared to an Xbox or Playstation, and I wanted to be an early adopter. I have listed how my Stadia is being used below, as my setup would likely be the "ideal" configuration according to Google. I fully recognize that for those who cannot meet the requirements that Google notifies users of, that the experience would likely be a lot different than mine.
My setup is a hardline ethernet connection at 100/MBs, on a 75" LG 4k HDR TV.
Stadia arrival, unboxing, and setup:
I pre-ordered the Stadia Founders edition on August 11th of 2019, I got my order confirmation email right away. The next email I received from Google was on November 18th. It was a run through of the Stadia setup that had some worrisome information for Wi-Fi users (I will elaborate further), and general info. On November 20th I got an email saying my order was dispatched with an arrival date of November 26-27th. The next day I got the setup email with more instructions on my gamertag setup and more info on hardware setup. I received my Stadia on the 26th and easily setup the Chromecast Ultra, the remote is setup through the Stadia mobile app (easily done on my Samsung S10+). The instructions provided were clear and concise, the controller was well packaged, and the process took less time to setup than an Xbox. The fact that updates and downloads are not required is one of the best features I initially noticed, and is hugely appealing.
Now, this said I have seen many reviews and comments on those reviews stating that the setup emails did not get sent and that the Stadia app would not download unless the device was a Google device. The fact that the vast majority had this problems is discouraging, it sways potential buyers from ordering the product and Google really dropped the ball here. I am happy I did not have these issues but that is meaningless for those that did.
My personal setup experience is rated at a 10/10, I'd give an Xbox One a 7.5/10 for reference. But I recognize that others cannot get their Stadia to work at all because the app which is required to setup the controller will not work on certain devices. I am not sure if me living in Canada makes a difference but something for potential buyers to consider. And something for Google to improve on.
Gaming visuals:
This is another positive in my books. Having just bought my new 75" 4k TV and having first used my original Xbox One, that felt like an awful experience. 1080p on a 75" 4k TV is brutal, it feels like I went back in time to playing a PS2 again. (No hate on the PS2 but I remember first playing my PS3 and thinking that the PS2 was just an ancient piece of s#!t). First playing my Xbox One, and then playing the Stadia feels like that experience. In particular AC Odyssey, it is visually stunning, with no delays downloading the content, and it looks amazing in 4k HDR. It feels like a premium experience and is probably heightened by the fact that this is the first time I have experienced 4k gaming on a screen bigger than 27". But regardless I am impressed, it maintains 60FPS as promised and there is no image lag. Destiny 2 looks pretty great as well, not AC Odyssey great, but still a pleasant experience.
I would rate the visual experience at a 9/10, again for reference my gaming PC would be the benchmark at a 10/10, and my original Xbox One is a 5/10 on my TV setup.
Gaming latency:
Here is where I get critical. As predicted, latency was always going to be an issue. My initial reaction when typing my account info at the start of AC Odyssey (uplay account login) was holy crap this is awful. My standards were immediately lowered which was probably good because during actual game play in AC Odyssey it did not feel nearly as bad. In certain hand to hand combat situations it is slightly noticeable, but overall not as bad as expected. It takes getting used to but in a game like AC Odyssey it does not feel terrible and it does not hinder game play.
FPS games on the other hand are a different narrative altogether. In Destiny 2 the latency when trying to quickly look down the gun sights and aim is a lot more noticeable. I have yet to play online multiplayer in any game but I already know I would likely find it unplayable. If I died because my reaction time would be quicker than the latency time I know I would get frustrated. The good news being that others may have the same issue so it is not like I would be the only disadvantaged.
But having spent the last year primarily playing Battlefront II, GTA V, and Apex Legends on a 144hz G-sync monitor with an overclocked i7-8700K and GTX 1080, the latency in Destiny 2 feels... frustrating to say the least. Now, if you have not experienced gaming with the performance I have then you may feel differently, but it's hard to go from a dedicated high-end gaming PC to Stadia.
Open world adventure type games like Odyssey fair a lot better, if you enjoy these types of games Stadia would feel perfectly fine. Unfortunately, for players who love hardcore, fast, FPS games, Stadia is not the device for you (yet). Assassins Creed is one of my favorite game series so my initial experience being played on Stadia has been great.
My overall rating for latency is a 7/10 for open world games, and 3.5/10 for FPS games. an Xbox One would get a rating of an 8/10.
Overal thoughts:
Right now I have a hard time recommending Stadia to anyone, friends included. My biggest disappointment is the game library. It only has around 20 games, most of which feel like tier 2 and 3 games, they really need more AAA titles to attract more buyers, and I feel like more was promised. The 'free' games included with the Stadia Pro/Founders edition are pretty dismal. I know Destiny 2 and Tombraider have a decent following but the only other game I actually wanted, which I had to buy, is for-mentioned AC Odyssey. Otherwise, I really have no interest in buying any other titles for 2 main reasons. 1, they are not AAA titles that I am excited about, and 2, the pricing is very high. I got AC Odyssey on a Stadio Pro special pricing for $40cad, the regular pricing being $80cad. I can get Odyssey on Steam or Xbox for less than $30 because it is now a year old, so this feels like a complete rip off. It is still a game I really wanted to play so I bought it, but otherwise I am not paying the prices Stadia wants for games that I do not really want to play to begin with.
Here are a few examples:
Grid - $70 cad
Metro Exodus - $54 cad
Red Dead Redemption - $80 cad
NBA 2K20 - $80 cad
Football Manager 2020 - $60cad
And so forth, the same games are found for cheaper on other consoles or on Steam. That said if you buy games on Steam or for a console your initial cost is much higher as the initial investment price of the console/PC is much more than Stadia. So I suppose that is a trade off, but for someone who already owns a PC and console it is hard pill to swallow.
My second issue which is not something I experienced but I was worried about when reading, is the internet setup Stadia recommends. This is word-for-word what I received in the setup email:
"Connect your Google Chromecast Ultra to your router with an Ethernet cable. A wired connection between Chromecast and your router can make a big difference when playing games on your TV."
"If you don’t have that option, set up your wireless router in the same room as your Chromecast, but keep them at least a foot away from one another. If playing over WiFi and your home Wi-Fi network supports both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz, use the 5Ghz network."
I am glad that this is not an issue for myself as I have a 100/MBs ethernet connection, but for those who cannot hardline to their router the performance could really suffer. Furthermore I think that Google saying "but keep them at least a foot away from one another" is ignorant. If your router is one foot from you Chromecat device you could obviously hardline. My worry is that their expectation for how the device is going to be used is unrealistic and because of this people will have bad experiences, which through word of mouth will hurt the product.
Conclusion:
To wrap this all up my primary concerns with Stadia is the games library, latency in FPS games, and the overall user experience for those that cannot use the device in Googles "ideal" setup. But on the upside the device can output high quality 4k gaming at a fraction of the price vs a 4k gaming PC. And not having to wait to update your games/device feels like a god-send. The plug-and-play experience feels premium, and I think there is potential for it to be truly great.
I genuinely want to use this as a replacement for consoles in the future and I hope the Stadia experience can be greatly refined prior to Stadia Base being launched. Stadia shows promise but right now it is to early in the game (pun intended). My hope is that Google is willing to provide the resources to improve the experience so that enough units can sell to make this viable long term.
If you have any suggestions for further testing or any questions I will happily do my best to answer!
depends on the game. in some games you might be limited by the gpu as well, not just cpu.
i would first see if you're running your ram at 3000 or at the default 2133. that should make a significant difference
You'll be fine, especially if you're just comparing those two CPUs. The 2600 overclocks to the performance of the 2600x, so why don't you just do that?
Your rig will always have a bottleneck somewhere. It's impossible to avoid. It's not like a bottleneck bricks your system.
Hi!
I thought someone besides me might be interested in getting a TeamTrees counter set up.
1) I created a simple shell script which retrieves the number of trees which will be planted so far:
curl -s https://teamtrees.org/ | grep id=\"totalTrees\" |egrep -o '[[:digit:]]+' | head -1
With this you can choose your way to display it, e.g. a digital screen, a notification, an widget or whatever.. I chose a MacOS notification.
To do this I put the script in MacOS automator application like so:
Changed the icon to a random tree found in google.
And saved it to the Applications folder.
2) Then to run hourly I added a plist file to ~/Library/LaunchAgents named org.teamtrees.plist
With the following content:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>org.teamtrees</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/bin/open</string>
<string>-W</string>
<string>/Applications/Trees.app</string>
</array>
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>3600</integer>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>
3) Loaded it using:
launchctl load org.teamtrees
And now I get a notification like this one hourly:
VGA is an analog signal, not digital. It'll look worse when the cable gets longer.
It's pretty bad compared to the other ports/cables being used more commonly, though schools seem to be using VGA which makes it harder for me to take notes
mxk got a reaction from linuxChips2600 in Graphics Card (Cooling/VRM) Tier List (Navi Update).png "Funny")
mxk got a reaction from Techstorm970 in Intel Ghost Canyon Nuc
mxk got a reaction from handymanshandle in My parents won't get me a PC
mxk got a reaction from Nicnac in Verizon can't cover a basketball stadium with 5G
mxk got a reaction from FezBoy in Every other phone is dead to me
mxk got a reaction from xARACHN1D in Every other phone is dead to me
mxk got a reaction from ZigaZz in Games keep crashing after a while of gaming
mxk got a reaction from shinnv20 in CPU bottleneck
mxk got a reaction from matrix07012 in Verizon can't cover a basketball stadium with 5G
mxk got a reaction from Turtle Rig in Connecting 2nd monitor using VGA is blurry
.png "Funny"){kind=small}
