Midnitewolf

Honestly I forget the exact reason this occurs but it seems to be common whenever adaptive sync is being used. I seem to recall it has something to do with the frame rates momentarily dipping outside the adaptive sync range which is what causes the momentary flickers.

Get the best GPU you are comfortable paying for. I say this because 144 hz gaming is no joke, in fact it is more demanding then 4k60hz. Even a 2080ti can't run Metro Exodus and RDR2 1080p at ultra settings and push the 144 fps you ideally want for 144 hz gaming and your going to be down to like probably 80 fps at 1440p. Of course this is only true for the half dozen or so most demanding titles and setting your game settings down to High instead of Ultra works wonders but just be aware that if you looking for the best of the best graphics and 144 hz (144 fps) gaming on all games, your going to need the top GPU out there and them some. Honestly for most people I personally think they should focus on 1080p or 1440p 60 hz and just feel like it is a bonus when they can use the entire range of your 144 hz monitor. That is what I have done and have been plenty satisfied with my performance.

Just to reiterate what other have said, for current games your not going to see much difference between a 3600 and a 3950x, perhaps 1-2% at each step or about a 5-10% spread across all processors. However, in the future this might be different. Let's face it we are getting to the point where we just can't push the raw clock speeds any further which is why every chip is going further and further toward multicore/miltithread as the focus. That being the case, more and more games are going to start being developed to leverage the mutlicore/multithread capabilities of these processes. That being the case, at some point in the future, with at least some games, you might very well find that having 8, 10, 12 cores vs 6 give you a huge performance advantage. The challenge is deciding how long it will be before games actually take advantage of 8 or more cores and if you feel you would keep the processor you bought today, long enough for it to even be an issue before you upgrade. For myself, there are at least 2 games I am waiting on that are releasing in 2020 that have mentioned specifically they were planning on developing their games to take advantage of I opted for an 8-core 3800X or the 6-core 3600 just to give myself a bit more wiggle room just in case some time in the next 3-4 years, games started getting a big boost from having more cores. Honestly, though, I am not going to hold my breath waiting for games that get a huge performance advantage from having lots of cores/threads as I think we are at least 4-5 years out from that.

I am waiting and still limping along on my Vega 56. There is talk we could receive announcements for both Ampere and Big NAVI as soon as March and maybe have a launch relatively soon after. That being the case, there is no reason to pay $1100 plus for a card and technology almost 2 years old. Even if neither of the next gen card launch until Q3, it will still be worth the wait especially since early rumors have both Ampere and Big NAVI outperforming the 2080 ti by 15-30% or more. Further, since Nvidia will actually have a high end competitor coming out near the same time, pricing at the very least shouldn't go up and maybe if we are lucky, it might even go down a smige, especially if AMD continues its historical pricing model and undercut Nvidia's pricing by the usual 10-20% margin. Honestly, the 2080 ti would have to come down to the $900 range or less to get me to even consider purchasing one right now.

Nope. From what I have seen, the benchmarks are specifically designed to hit all cores to max which is why you see all cores operating at the same speed. The only time you really see the fluctuation is during normal operation or at least that is the only time I ever notice it.

You can also try to manually set the timings. I know my new 3800X for some reason wouldn't work with the XMP profile enabled but when I manually set the timings to what they were supposed to be, it works like a charm and at the proper speeds.

On the other hand just because the game will scale down to lesser specs, doesn't mean that having a 2080 ti wouldn't offer a jaw dropping visual experience compared to the scaled down experience. I honestly feel that you can really never have enough GPU power because when you consider the cutting edge AAA titles, the GPU is almost always the biggest limiting factor at some point in the lifespan of your computer. Generally speaking I have find myself replacing GPUs almost twice as often as CPU's over the years. For what is it worth though, I think that the demos we have seen for Cyberpunk 2077 were on a 9900k with a 1080 ti or so I heard. I think the demos were all 1080p so considering how well the demos looked, if you have a decently fast CPU and either a 5700XT or 2070 Super, you should be able to at least get the demo level of quality at 1080p.

The problem with that poll was it did not specify a time frame. We all know there were tons of driver issues at release so even if there were zero problems right now, this instant, the poll would be corrupted by those people who are responding based on their experience with them from months and months ago. A better poll would have been "How many people have had driver issues within the last 30 days?" I would bet in that case, the numbers with problems would be not much bigger than people who have had issues with Nvidia. Honestly this illustrates the problem with polls in general. Most of the time they just don't have enough controls in place to make the data relevant and it is very easy to warp the data either intentionally or unintentionally depending how the question is asked. It is like asking, "how many people have ever lost a significant amount of money on the stock market" If someone was in the market during the 2008 crash, they will likely answer yes, they lost a ton. If they got into the market after the economy recovered they would like answer no, since the market has been returning 10-20% a year since the crash. Both answers are right but result of the poll wouldn't really provide accurate information on current market conditions (the last two days of the market non-withstanding). This is how I kind of see the AMD driver situation. How good are the drivers, now, this second, not how good have the drivers been since they released. The poll doesn't take into account and remove peoples bad experiences from months ago to insure we are getting state of things.

I pretty much agree with everything you said. Honestly the biggest problem I have with Nvidia is that they are price gouging us and have been for some time now. I will admit that I think Nvidia does have an edge but it is an edge worth maybe $20-$30 more, not $100 more at least when your comparing the 5700xt vs the 2070 Super, and it is just ridiculous that the 2080 ti is selling for around $1200 on average when the 1080 Ti was only about $800. That puts a bad taste in my mouth and makes me NOT want to buy Nvidia or support them, especially when there is another option available like in the case of the 5700xt vs 2070 Super. It honestly would make me feel like an idiot to give Nvidia $100 more for roughly the same performance.

Here is the honest truth. Nvidia, when released has better drivers.....every time. In fact they probably have better drivers period. Additionally because the 2000 series has been around so long, Nvidia drivers for them are quite mature and stable. AMD on the other hand always has a rough release of drivers with any new architecture and it always takes longer for them to fix the drivers than it does Nvidia to fix theirs. Also their software in general is a step behind Nvidia. Combine that with the 5700 series being a new architecture and it is going to be pretty obvious Nvidia is going to have the better drivers at this stage of the game. However, the 5700 series has been out long enough that AMD's drivers are about 90% caught up to the Nivida's drivers in terms of quality and lack of bugs with very few people CURRENTLY reporting any issues with them. Therefore you have to ask yourself this question. "Is it worth paying $100 more for drivers that are 10% better considering both cards have roughly the same performance". If that answer is yes, then overpay for a Nvidia card. If not, the save yourself $100 and get a perfectly good 5700xt. As far as the difference between the different 5700XT, just keep in mind that the performance difference between the cheapest 5700XT and the most expensive 5700XT is about 2-4 fps.

I don't think this is the problem. I was following the whole drive issue almost daily from the release of the card and most issues seemed to be incompatibility with 3rd party software like MSI afterburner. Most of the major issues seemed centered around setting up custom fan curves and using FPS overlays though screen flicker and black screen issues were a problem as well and those were the most damning of the issues that were occurring.. There were also some issues with enabling enhanced sync and I think one other setting in the Radeon software. About 3 months or so in, most of the screen flicker and black screen issues that were what I classify as major, game breaking (literally) issues, went away and I haven't really heard of anyone having these issues recently. As far as the rest, I believe most of those were resolved as well. In fact, I can't remember the last time I saw someone post anywhere complaining about driver issues.

I think the "issues" are really overstated. I have used a Radeon GPU in my machines for the last 6 years or so and never had anything I would actually classify as an "Issue" occur. Sure there have been some minor annoyances here or there but nothing game breaking. Also most of the 5700 series issues have been causes by using overlays, setting custom fan curves, some minor feature like enhanced sync or using some other 3rd party software and most of these issues were easily avoided once identified and the majority have been fixed. Lastly, most of the negative press that exists now around the 5700 series, is just residual background noise left over from the driver issues at launch. Basically you heard there were issues from a friend, who read it from a forum user somewhere that got their information from yet another friend who heard it from their brother that had issues with their 5700 card which they bought the first day of launch or to put it more simply, the original source of the negative press can be traced back to the launch date rather than being based on the current state of things. I honestly don't feel there is anything wrong with the current state of the 5700 series, at least nothing major but I do get that it is easier to feel "safer" with a 2060 Super. It it just too bad you have to lose out on so much performance just to feel safer. Hopefully AMD keeps up the pressure and makes Nvidia offer competitive prices for competitive performance rather than continue pricing a 20% premium onto their cards just because their Nvidia.

Most of the issues that the 5700XT was having with its drivers have been corrected as I very rarely see anyone complaining about them any more. That being the case, you really can't beat the 5700XT for price to performance value.

All I can say is that despite building a new PC at Christmas, I am absolutely waiting for the new GPUs to come out. To me it doesn't make sense to buy the last gen cards 3-6 months before the next gen cards release, especially since I am targeting the upper high end GPUs. However, if I was looking to spend around $400-$500, honestly I probably would have just went ahead and picked up a 5700XT. The price to performance on the card is very good and I don't really think your going to get much better in the price range just because you wait 6 months.