New PC or wait for Big Navi

[Cashmaster]

Hey guys, 

me and a friend are going to start a movie production company together. My computer will be built mainly for that purpose. However as you know a cool side effect of building a workstation for content editing is the fact that you can game on it as well. Now to my actual question, should I build a PC now or wait until Big Navi and the Ryzen 4000 series? Time is currently no issue for us as we wont be shooting anytime soon because of the COVID-19 situation.

 

 

Best regards and stay healthy from Germany!

[boggy77]

6 minutes ago, Cashmaster said:

Time is currently no issue for us as we wont be shooting anytime soon because of the COVID-19 situation.

then wait until you actually need it. 

[lafrente]

Wait until big navi, then wait for ddr5, then wait for big nvidia, then wait for ryzen 5000, then wait for pcie 5, then wait for... etc.

[Tootsie XD]

24 minutes ago, Cashmaster said:

Hey guys, 

me and a friend are going to start a movie production company together. My computer will be built mainly for that purpose. However as you know a cool side effect of building a workstation for content editing is the fact that you can game on it as well. Now to my actual question, should I build a PC now or wait until Big Navi and the Ryzen 4000 series? Time is currently no issue for us as we wont be shooting anytime soon because of the COVID-19 situation.

 

 

Best regards and stay healthy from Germany!

The PC industry is always improving and u will never have the best PC money can buy for very long... just always make sure the machine you build can later be easily upgraded down the line

[dizmo]

Waiting for big navi will be like waiting for disappointment. 

[Cashmaster]

On 3/31/2020 at 4:32 PM, dizmo said:

Waiting for big navi will be like waiting for disappointment. 

what makes you say that?

On 3/31/2020 at 2:11 PM, Tootsie XD said:

The PC industry is always improving and u will never have the best PC money can buy for very long... just always make sure the machine you build can later be easily upgraded down the line

I guess so, however in this instance it seems that waiting might actually bring large improvements and not just incremental gains.

[RonnieOP]

Theres very little chance big navi wont be delayed.

 

The release date was set for the end of this year before all this happened. So you could be waiting close to another year for that.

 

With the current situation i doubt your business will be going anytime soon but if you need a gaming pc now might as well just go ahead and buy it.

 

Also remember that most new businesses fail (no offense) so spending a shit ton on equipment just to have the latest and greatest isnt the best idea. Esp when whats currently out would be more then capable for your needs.

[Zando_]

On 3/31/2020 at 9:32 AM, dizmo said:

Waiting for big navi will be like waiting for disappointment. 

^^^ If AMD's attempts to compete in the higher end space are any indication (looking at you RVII and Vega 64), then yeah. They'll likely compete with Nvidia's last gen flagship but then big green will just drop new and far superior GPUs. AMD has had massive driver issues lately too, and some people (me included) are still suffering random blackscreens. Not something you want when it's your work machine, it's annoying enough just trying to play games. 

Also AFAIK most software outside of gaming works better on Nvidia and/or uses the NVENC encoders and CUDA tech Nvidia has quite well. According to a friend who works in blender and machine learning and such, even stuff that works on AMD is usually buggier than on Nvidia cards. Though I do know guys on the L1Techs forum working in Davinci Resolve with 1-2 RVIIs without much issue. 

[RejZoR]

Well, you can buy graphic card independently. If your current one is good, then just upgrade the platform if it's needed.

 

It's why I'm still stuck with ancient Intel Core i7 5820K. Overclocked it's still very capable. But I've upgraded graphic card few times on it. It can work the other way around too.

 

Without knowing what you have now it's hard to say. If you run something like GTX 1080Ti or even RTX 2080/Ti or RX 5700 XT, you're good graphics wise. If you're in no rush, I'd wait for Zen 3 for sure. Video production needs MOAR CORES and AMD will give moar cores for sure at lower price than now. Plus they'll clock higher and have better IPC. With graphic cards, it's also smart to wait for RDNA2 based offerings from AMD as they'll have ray tracing too and RTX 3000 series which should upgrade RT performance as well.

[dizmo]

5 hours ago, Cashmaster said:

what makes you say that?

History. @Zando Bob pretty much nailed it.

[Zando_]

18 minutes ago, dizmo said:

History. @Zando Bob pretty much nailed it.

I can back it up too lol. I've had the Vega FE and 1080, and the RVII and 1080 Ti. Vega FE/V64 equaled the 1080, but the 1080 Ti existed so yeah no high end. RVII matched/slightly beat the 1080 Ti (depending on game), but then the 2080 came, the 2080 Ti, and the 2080 Super a bit later on that also absolutely dunked on the RVII. The current 5700XT can barely equal a 2070 Super, overall it's beaten out. But the time "Big Navi" comes out, Nvidia will have - or be ready to - drop their 3000 series and slam dunk on Radeon again. 

Also Nvidia cards come with much better NVENC encorders for video editing and recording software that takes advantage of those. They have CUDA acceleration, RTX, DLSS 2.0, and are better supported by almost all software overall. AMD cards have a solid performance lead in Vulkan titles, so they're better if you play like the 3 (admittedly mostly excellent) games that actually implement Vulkan well.

Also driver reliability. In my experience Nvidia drivers have been much more stable. I've very rarely had issues with them, whereas AMD drivers since late 2019 have been a clusterfuck. They're fixed-ish now, though I'm still experiencing random blackscreens with my RVII (and I've changed my CPU and RAM settings so I'm sure it's not those). Less often but still usually right when I'm into the flow of a game, to call it a mood killer is an understatement. 

Vega/Navi cards have a lead in the ability to push stupid power through them (excess of 400W), Vega II as well if you find drivers where OCing isn't broken (pushing a .002v higher core voltage to see clocks *drop* while still remaining below throttle temps is uh kinda broke). 

 

Basically:

Radeon cards are good for OC enthusiasts. Outside of that, Nvidia cards are consistently better. AMD Radeon moves too slowly, and by the time they compete on pure fps numbers Nvidia has dropped a new generation of cards with a larger and more useful featureset, dunking on Radeon on every front but pure price/performance - measured only in fps, if you consider additional features at all then AMD Radeon loses again - (though turing offerings have had a few models that are quite competitive there too). Their driver team is consistently behind on stability as well. The "fine wine" myth is more "the drivers were broken on launch and 2 years later they finally fixed them so it actually runs like it's supposed to now". 

As much as people want to insist AMD Radeon can win in the GPU space like AMD Ryzen currently is in the CPU space, they can't. At least not if history and current rumors can be believed. Everyone hyped about Big Navi completely ignores the fact that Nvidia's 3000 series also looms on the horizon.

all that said I still want a Vega Frontier Edition again, so this is more do as I say, not as I do. Spare yourself the agony of trying to deal with the damned things in your main rig

[Pickles von Brine]

I would wait till the dust settles with everything going on. 

[Cashmaster]

@dizmo @Zando Bob

 

thanks guys for the help! sorry for the infrequent posting haha. I think I will definitely go team red as far as CPU is concerned (unless team blue comes out with an amazing price competitive CPU which i frankly do not really see for the consumer market but who knows!). 

And you are right i completely forgot to factor in GPU limitations on certain codecs... so i guess NVIDIA it is which is fine by me!

 

@RejZoR as for buying a card independently. i guess i didn't make it clear in my first post but i would essentially be building the PC from the ground up. Essentially my gaming computer in my last 4 years has boiled down to a ps4 pro and a surface pro 4... so i have absolutely no Base. However i still have the chassis of my old gaming PC from many many moons ago haha.

[RejZoR]

Well, in that case, I'd personally wait for Ryzen 4000 series and GeForce RTX 3000 / Radeon RX 8000 graphic cards. All of it is not "that" far away so rushing it now would be silly if you ask me. Especially since Ryzen 4000 is promising another IPC uplift. RTX 3000 are rumored to bring even faster ray tracing and new Radeons will actually get ray tracing. So, yeah it would be stupid to rush things now.

 

When it'll all be released is still unknown, but we can assume early fall 2020. NVIDIA is known to launch new products at that time and getting them ready for pre-holiday season and AMD is hinting at the same thing.

 

And even if only Ryzen 4000 arrives, you can buy some crappy graphic card just so you can use it to crunch on video already and buy high end graphic card later when they come out. If everything comes out at the right time, then you can just grab it all at once. That's how I'd do. Always go full on with platform (though not necessarily with Threadripper, just top end Ryzen would do imo) and then it'll serve you great for 5-6 years. Don't cheap out on that!