Question

[ACB]

@zeusthemoose @Moonzy

 

Thank you both for the info. 

 

If you both don't mind ima be asking questions as they pop into my mind. You guys just explain the stuff easier to me than what I'm generally finding LOL. 

 

I kinda understand the basic use for VRAM. What I want to know is, does the 3080 (in your opinion) seem to have enough VRAM for what Nvidia is promising? Can VRAM be added externally? As in placed of the motherboard then somehow connected to the GPU?

[Moonzy]

Just now, AbishekCB said:

If you both don't mind ima be asking questions as they pop into my mind.

sure

 

Just now, AbishekCB said:

does the 3080 (in your opinion) seem to have enough VRAM for what Nvidia is promising?

i would trust nvidia's engineering team, they havent failed us spectacularly... yet

 

1 minute ago, AbishekCB said:

Can VRAM be added externally?

not easily, no

 

2 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

As in placed of the motherboard then somehow connected to the GPU?

no, a VRM has to be as close as possible to the GPU die (or anything it's supplying power to) for electrical reasons, especially for high current applications.(i can elaborate if you'd like)

[ACB]

@Moonzy

 

Yes please do!

[Moonzy]

2 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

Yes please do!

how familiar with electrical knowledge are you?

 

V=IR <--- know what's this at least?

[Moonzy]

i'll just go ahead and explain as easily as I can in one sentence:

 

because VRM is responding to real time requirements of the CPU, having it far away will hinder's its ability to monitor the actual voltage that's being supplied to the CPU accurately (due to conductor resistance) and electrical noise (from neighbouring switching appliances)

[ACB]

@Moonzy

 

TBH I am a complete noob to all this but your simplified explanation was perfect. Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.

[ACB]

 @Moonzy @zeusthemoose

 

So guys, I somewhat understand that Nvidia has a build reference for their GPU, 3rd Party Manufactures buy this reference and mass produce it with more performance? + in a different look and whatnot. What I want to know is, is there a generally respected manufacturer that in your knowledge has a good track record of building better GPUs with the build reference? What is the cost to value benefit of going with a third party build of the GPU?

 

Also, I rememberer when I bought cheap controllers in the past they would come with USB like sticks which were essentially how the controller connected to the console via Bluetooth. Is this the method people are using today for Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity?

[Moonzy]

17 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

I somewhat understand that Nvidia has a build reference for their GPU, 3rd Party Manufactures buy this reference and mass produce it with more performance?

since the 10 series (i think), nvidia have called their own cards the Founders Edition (FE), which is using their own cooler

 

Nvidia will provide a Reference PCB blueprint to their board partners, and it's up to the board partners to use it, or create their own PCB layout with different components.

 

Reference PCB normally have the most basic components, I'm not sure if there are lower end designs than reference.

Some manufacturer will vastly improve the VRM for the GPU to allow better OC, in theory.

but in practice, Die quality matters more than VRM design, assuming the VRM design isnt a pile of dog crap.

that's why some manufacturer Bin (cherry pick) the GPU they get from nvidia, and put better chips in higher end cards.

 

since 20 series, nvidia have been using open air cooler for their FE cards, so the cooling performance isnt too bad either (and rumored to have higher binned chips)

 

one thing about reference PCB is that it's easy to find waterblocks for them to water cool, since it's the most common board design, so water cooler manufacturers will definitely make a waterblock for it. aftermarket cooler may have harder time looking for a block, other than popular models.

 

24 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

What I want to know is, is there a generally respected manufacturer that in your knowledge has a good track record of building better GPUs with the build reference?

each generation, different manufacturer makes different cooler styles so there's not one best design

look at reviews to determine the best performing cards*

 

*though this may be hard to be done accurately as even the same GPU model will act differently from die to die, ie one Strix 3070 might run at 70c, while the other might run at 72c due to GPU Die quality differences and manufacturing tolerances.

 

so generally speaking, as long as a cooler isnt performing super bad (like XFX's thicc boy 5700XT), just pick based on what brand you like/aesthetics you prefer, or price, of course.

 

27 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

What is the cost to value benefit of going with a third party build of the GPU?

for 20 series GPU, Nvidia actually had 2 different pricing for their card

one is their own cooler's pricing, and one is MSRP for board partners

they sold their own cooler at a higher price than MSRP, so there are some third party coolers that are cheaper than FE cards.

 

Though im not sure what's the situation for 30 series.

 

also do take note that some manufacturer sells their card with a basic cooler, expecting people to take off the cooler and use a waterblock, so those coolers arent very well performing. take note of that.

 

oh, and some manufacturers are cool with you opening up their card and not void your warranty, while some arent so keen on that, so take note of that.

 

i normally go for more premium cards with better VRM and cooler, because i like to run my components at cooler temps (my limit is 70c, which is pretty low for air cooling)

[zeusthemoose]

29 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

What I want to know is, is there a generally respected manufacturer that in your knowledge has a good track record of building better GPUs with the build reference? What is the cost to value benefit of going with a third party build of the GPU?

We won’t know which models have the best price to performance and cooling until they are all out and reviewed. But the gpu tier list in my signature should give you a good idea of which to look at for cooling. As for brand, I have heard the EVGA has great warranty. However, all brands make good cards and bad cards so you can’t really look at it by brand, instead look by product.

 

32 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

Also, I rememberer when I bought cheap controllers in the past they would come with USB like sticks which were essentially how the controller connected to the console via Bluetooth. Is this the method people are using today for Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity?

A lot of wireless products use dongles still but they aren’t bluetooth, they are wireless receivers that communicate over a certain frequency. Nowadays, Wifi and bluetooth are added to computers with a pcie card or a usb dongle. Some motherboards have it built-in but not many do.

[ACB]

@Moonzy @zeusthemoose

 

How do you guys personally deal with your old builds once you have a completely new build? Do you put it on Ebay? If the build lasted you 5 years do you have a preferred slash to the overall price you initially paid for the components as a whole?

[zeusthemoose]

20 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

How do you guys personally deal with your old builds once you have a completely new build? Do you put it on Ebay? If the build lasted you 5 years do you have a preferred slash to the overall price you initially paid for the components as a whole?

I’m still on my first pc but my old iMac (around 8-9 years old) is just sitting there incase mine goes down and I need it for something. But I will eventually sell it on a local reselling site. The way to price it is to see what others are selling the individual parts or a similar system for and base yours off that. It’s better to do local than eBay for desktops because shipping is very expensive for them.

[ACB]

@zeusthemoose @Moonzy

 

What is the maximum amount of time you would recommend I wait for new CPUs and motherboards to come out so that I can start my build? Early next year? If so USUALLY what month? or can I even start by the end of this year?

[zeusthemoose]

16 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

What is the maximum amount of time you would recommend I wait for new CPUs and motherboards to come out so that I can start my build? Early next year? If so USUALLY what month? or can I even start by the end of this year?

AMD has said they will be revealing Ryzen 4000 on October 8th and their gpus on October 28th. You can wait for those and unless you want to see what intel has to offer (sometime early 2021 I believe), buy when they are available.

[Moonzy]

10 hours ago, AbishekCB said:

What is the maximum amount of time you would recommend I wait for new CPUs and motherboards to come out so that I can start my build? Early next year? If so USUALLY what month? or can I even start by the end of this year?

the answer issssssss...!!!!!!

 

Spoiler

it depends

 

everyone have different urgency for a build, it also depends on how much of an improvement we're expecting to get as well as budget category.

 

if you have an urgent need for a build, then get one today of course

 

if not, then is the next architecture having a new jump? like DDR5? AM5 socket? (i just told my friend not to upgrade his PC until AM5 launch because AM4 is dead, that's a year+ of wait)

 

as well as depends on your budget

if you are spending over $1300, and a new product is looming on the horizon, (we know AMD is coming out with a new CPU every september-ish for past 2-3 years since zen 1, but only high end stuff first, low end stuff comes later)

then it's probably worth waiting for around ~2 months for it. but again, depends on urgency and how much of a jump we expected.

 

if you have a mid-range budget, waiting is also good if you can afford to wait. as newer CPU tend to have better gaming perf

 

but for extremely low budget like $500-ish, then i recommend looking at used stuff, which isnt affected much by the new stuffs coming out usually.

 

TL;DR, it's very situational and depends on how patience you are

 

edit: i would also love to add that you shouldnt feel buyer's remorse when new stuff launch, as long as you think that it was the right decision when you bought the PC, and it's still performing fine, then dont feel bad

[Moonzy]

oh one more thing about buying things at launch

you're a lab rat basically, especially for VERY new stuff like DDR5

 

so i would recommend giving it 1-2 months to mature, unless you wanna deal with it

 

and generally, i would give AMD Ryzen (CPU) about 1 month time after launch to see what bugs they have

for AMD Radeon (GPU), i would wait 2-3 months, because their previous track record have been crap

intel and nvidia i wouldnt mind buying immediately, their previous track records, although not clean, have no major issues and not common occurrence

[ACB]

@Moonzy

 

Your definitely a fan of Linus "It depends" is unfortunately the right answer lol. 

 

18 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

i would also love to add that you shouldnt feel buyer's remorse when new stuff launch, as long as you think that it was the right decision when you bought the PC, and it's still performing fine, then dont feel bad

 

This was great. Glad someone said it because it's like a game of a never ending wait lol. And since I'm new to this I'm excited/hesitant to pull the trigger because of buyers remorse. But yeah, you are right as long as its doing me justice I should not feel bad.

 

22 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

as well as depends on your budget

 

So as of now, I believe my budget will be around the 1500 mark. I can deal with a leeway of a 100 but I really do not wanna go over 1600 as a max. How would that budget be classified in your opinion? Is it mid range or top tier? From my limited understanding, i personally do not want to cheap out on my mother board, storage, power supply  and CPU.

[ACB]

@Moonzy

 

I see. TBH as of now I'm pretty much set on founders edition 3080 and Intel. I feel more comfortable with Intel because even at my previous low end Intel and AMD laptops Intel was just much smoother. I'm on a MacBook Pro rn just so you know but these laptops I'm mentioning are a few years back

[ACB]

 

I am a bit confused about the whole "Multi-Core" VS "Hyper Threading" situation. From what I understand, "Hyper Threading" for a lack of a better phrase is the "poor man's solution to Multi-Cores"? But in this video Linus mentions how anything above 4 cores is "over kill" because games don't utilise workloads being split up. Now this video was back in 2016. So, whats the state of triple A games in terms of Multi-Cores to Hyper Threading. Do both types STILL provide no real benefit?

[Moonzy]

46 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

How would that budget be classified in your opinion?

high end, and it's about as high as one should go for a gaming rig (R7/i7 class CPU + xx70 tier GPU)

 

46 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

i personally do not want to cheap out on my mother board, storage, power supply  and CPU.

people tend to skimp across "non crucial parts" of a PC because it doesnt give them more FPS

 

but for PSU, at least, you should scale the quality up with your system's tier

top tier system? get a top tier PSU

mid tier? mid tier.

 

motherboard too, top tier CPU draws more current so you'll want something to tame it well and not release the blue smoke when you're in an intense situation in games.

 

storage is have been a bit iffy as you can technically still run on a HDD, but no one wants that in 2020, so it's up to your Quality of Life choice. personally would at least run a reliable 240GB SSD for OS and softwares + 1/2 commonly played games, and HDD for games and other stuffs

my current storage config is 240Gb premium SSD for OS, 512gb cheapo SSD for games, and HDDs for bulk storage, works well.

though i suggest looking at SSD with DRAM over DRAMless SSD. they may cost a bit more but it's worth it imo.

 

as for CPU, you'll have to judge based on your own use case, do you need 6 core? 8 core?

though i tend to look at r7 tier if im building high end system, as those extra cores/threads can come in handy when you do have extra things you wanna do. 6 cores is still fine for today's games, but might struggle a bit in next 3-5 years.

this post can elaborate what i meant

 

42 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

TBH as of now I'm pretty much set on founders edition 3080 and Intel

you shouldn't be "set" on anything unless you have a good reason for it. "i prefer" might be a good reason, but it's a dumb reason.

look at benchmarks (FE card vs aftermarket coolers, intel vs AMD in a certain price point for certain workload) to determine the best option you can pick, and based on other factors that you may have (ease of use,looks etc etc)

 

42 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

I feel more comfortable with Intel because even at my previous low end Intel and AMD laptops Intel was just much smoother.

every company makes good and bad product, but that doesnt mean their next/prev product is also good/bad

 

42 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

I'm on a MacBook Pro

i tried using Mac OS once, spent 5 minutes cant even get the bloody browser open, i just gave up

 

31 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

From what I understand, "Hyper Threading" for a lack of a better phrase is the "poor man's solution to Multi-Cores"?

no, not really

 

in simpler terms, a CPU CAN do a few types of operations at once, and threads allows queuing of different type of operation, so the CPU core can work on both simultaneously as long as they dont use the same compute unit in a CPU core, boosting performance slightly compared to cores with only 1 thread

 

having 2 cores can do any type of operations simultaneously, but only 1 operation per core at a time.

 

why we dont see more than 2 thread on consumer CPU is because the performance gains from more threads gets less and less as you add more threads since there's not too many variety of operations to deal with. and more thread = more complex task scheduling

 

31 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

But in this video Linus mentions how anything above 4 cores is "over kill" because games don't utilise workloads being split up.

do take note that this video is from a simpler time when intel released 4 core CPU for a decade because AMD was busy firing their CEO and being dead. so game dev have no incentive to make their game scale on more than 4 cores.

 

31 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

Do both types STILL provide no real benefit?

fastest way to tell is look at recent CPU release benchmarks

look at CPU of the same generation, and compares different core counts to get a grasp of the current situation

 

right now 4c/8t and 6c/12t have a noticeable difference, and 6c/6c and 6c/12t have noticeable frametime stability difference (stutters)

above 6c/12t, you dont see much difference

[ACB]

@Moonzy

 

Thank you for the info/knowledge. Genuinely helpful. As of rn, who has the best 6c/12t or higher offering? Cost to value if applicable but most importantly stability-wise. 

 

Also, I understand this is a very hypothetical question since reviews aren't out but would current CPUs somehow bottleneck the 3080 or is that not a big deal as long as I got a top tier motherboard, i can upgrade that CPU if need be in the future? 

 

And yh your def right. I should NOT be set. But tbh I like the aesthetic of the FE 3080. I understand that most 3rd Party versions are most beneficial for water cool type of person. Which belive me is not me. Id be very anxious about water cooling lol.

Edited September 12, 2020 by AbishekCB

[Moonzy]

6 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

who has the best 6c/12t or higher offering? Cost to value if applicable but most importantly stability-wise. 

cost-to-value: AMD, but Intel's gaming prowess might make it worth it

stability: I would say both, but Intel is better in this regard

Features: Intel, they have more mature and better validation for features, seen too many bugs when people try to use AMD CPU in niche cases (like trying to enable iGPU with dGPU plugged in, works flawlessly for intel but somehow doesnt work for AMD)

 

8 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

would current CPUs somehow bottleneck the 3080

depends on resolution, as higher resolution put more strain on GPU than CPU

 

so it's a CPU bottleneck in 1080p pretty much, and GPU bottleneck in 4K probably, but 1440p would be a grey area for most games, as some games are heavier on CPU, some are heavier on GPU.

of course there are also games that bottleneck the GPU on 1080p, but those aren't the norm

 

10 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

is that not a big deal as long as I got a top tier motherboard, i can upgrade that CPU if need be in the future? 

i wouldn't suggest buying top tier motherboard like ROG Crosshair stuffs, those are way overpriced and you would never need those unless you're doing extreme overclocking on liquid nitrogen and stuff

 

a decent high end board would do you just fine for a high end build.

as for which component to upgrade, just run the games you like, observe individual cpu thread and GPU usage, see which is capping out, and upgrade that  simple

RAM capacity too

 

12 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

But tbh I like the aesthetic of the FE 3080.

if it's performing on par (like, within 3-5c diff) then getting it for aesthetics is a solid choice

looks and performance both can be considered as "worth"

 

13 minutes ago, AbishekCB said:

Id be very anxious about water cooling lol.

i've helped solve enough AIO and watercooling thread on this forum to deter me from it

[ACB]

• @Moonzy

 

Do you have tips for choosing the right case for the PC? Or any personal recommendations? It'll need to have room. I can manage a big case if need be.

[ACB]

Also does having two GPUs or more of the same make improve or add to the gaming performance of using just one card? For example, having 2 2080Ti's means I get double the performance or horse power of just the 1 GPU.

[zeusthemoose]

2 hours ago, AbishekCB said:

Do you have tips for choosing the right case for the PC? Or any personal recommendations? It'll need to have room. I can manage a big case if need be.

What I do when looking for cases is just go through pictures or manufacturers websites and see what I like. When I find one I like, I look at reviews to make sure it has good airflow. Some cases with great airflow are:

• Fractal Design Meshify C
• Fractal Design Focus G
• Corsair 275r airflow
• Lian li lancool2 mesh
• Phanteks p300a
• Phanteks p400a
• Phanteks p500a

 

2 hours ago, AbishekCB said:

Also does having two GPUs or more of the same make improve or add to the gaming performance of using just one card? For example, having 2 2080Ti's means I get double the performance or horse power of just the 1 GPU.

You can put multiple GPUs in a system (called sli for nvidia cards and crossfire for amd cards). That used to be popular, how ever developers need to do specific things to make it work so way more often than not, it leads to a tiny performance increase that is not worth the cost. In fact, the 3070 and 3080 no longer support sli. Only the 3090 has the necessary connector.

[Moonzy]

And makes sure the casing spec meets your requirements like amount of hard disk bays and CPU cooler height

Other than that it's just airflow and looks

 

Dual GPU is pretty dead for gaming

For other tasks it's still good