PC Gaming Hardware

[paulca]

My PC is three years old, but I thought I would dip my toes in the water and see what I could put together on overclockers co.uk

Well, things have moved on quite a lot.  Lots of new terms, that weren't really a "thing" 3 years ago, certainly not as prominent in specs as they are today.  Things like number of CPU threads, versus cores and PCI Express lanes.

Last time I made the mistake of staying with AMD as I'd been with them for 3 PCs before when their performance per £/$ exceeded Intel quite a bit.  However the AMD PileDriver FX I got is a gaming dog with much poorer single core performance compared to Intel i5 at the time.  Still 50% of my high intensity computing still benefits from the 8 cores.

So I thought this time I would go for Intel, but a bit of research suggests that this might not be the best plan as the gap between gaming AMD and gaming Intel performance has significantly reduced with the Ryzen 5/7 chips.  They are maybe 85-90% the single core performance, but games are more and more often utilising more cores.  Also the bang-for-buck of AMDs is still higher than Intel.

Currently my credit card is hiding because I am looking at:
Ryzen 7 1700
16Gb DDR4 3200
NVidia GTX 1070 (or maybe a 1080)
PCIe 3.0 SSD 512Gb 5400M/s
Asus Mobo
Bundled kit all aluminium water cooler for CPU and GPU 240mm radiator.
Corsair 750W modular PSU
All aluminium case.
£1600 (ish)

The only thing is... my current system is still no slouch, so i think my credit card is safe for now, but it's tempting just to have new shiny hardware to play with.

[Halcyon]

Yes AMDs have caught up but I'd be focussing your attention more on the GPU's capabilities as opposed to the CPU. How many games do you play are actually CPU intensive?

On the other hand, I would avoid AMD GPU's altogether. They tend to run hotter, consume more power and have a higher failure rate (in my experience) than Nvidia cards.

The old saying: "Stability, Performance, Cheap -- Pick two" is still very much relevant.

[paulca]

GPUs are a bit of an issue at the moment.

I currently have a GTX 970.  Which runs most things with the "sliders maxed", but I'm aware that won't remain that way.  Most of the performance annoyances come from only have the OS(es) on the SSD, games are on a HDD.  With 16Gb of RAM a few games in particular decided to cache their world textures to take advantage of the large RAM resulting in several minutes of loading time. 

The GTX-1080 is silly money cause by crypto-miners. 

CPU performance isn't really something I spend a lot of time waiting on.  Rebuilding my Linux system from source certainly lights it up on all 8 cores, but alas unless the air-cooler is clean it risks locking it up due to over temp.

I play one game that would benefit from CPU performance.  DCS World.  It runs absolutely fine, 60+FPS but if you accelerate time in cruise the CPU takes the hit and it gets very lurchy at around 3x time. 

Maybe I should wait until the Threadripper comes down from silly money and hopefully the custom crypto miner boxes become more main stream and take the heat off GPU prices.

[DimitriP]

Kinda hard to tell without knowing what you are using for video now but  a  1070 will breathe new life into "whatever you have".

[Ice-Tea]

Threadripper will never be a good idea for gaming. Not a single game is optimized for so many cores and single core frequencies take a kick in the nuts.

And the second generation Ryzen is just around the corner. Nothing groundbreaking but I'd certainly wait for it, either to pick up a 10-15% performance increase or a price drop on the first generation

[paulca]

Kinda hard to tell without knowing what you are using for video now but  a  1070 will breathe new life into "whatever you have".

A GTX-970 so one generation down on the 1070, so we would not be talking day and night, more like 10-15%.

Can anyone summarise the new stat on the block "PCI Express lanes"?

From a quick bit of research I seemed to have picked up that CPUs have support for N PCI Express lanes which allow direct CPU control to the PCI Express pins.  Additonally motherboards report their support for PCI Express lanes, the motherboard then chooses to re-route PCI express lanes between cards, SATA, USB3.0 buses as they please.  If you end up with fewer PCI express lanes available to a give device the slot will still operate but will downgrade in speed, say 16x down to 8x.

I'm just not entirely sure of how that all pans out.  How many PCI Express lanes are required for various devices like GPUs, SSDs, SATA, USB ports etc.

Also... what exacly is a PCI Express lane?  Is it a DMA control channel or an actual serial data pipeline?

[Ice-Tea]

It's a serial data line.



Roughly, you'll need x16 for the GPU and x4 for the M.2 slot for the SSD. Normally, PCIe lanes are not an issue unless you start doing funny stuff with it, like multiple GPUs, when you add in a lot of additional networking interfaces (say, 10GB ethernet ports for datacenters and such), ... For regular use, standard configurations are just fine.

As with most things, AMD tends to make whatever is on the chip available, Intel: not so much.

[wraper]

A GTX-970 so one generation down on the 1070, so we would not be talking day and night, more like 10-15%.

So far for truth. 1000 series made a huge leap over previous generation making it instantly obsolete. 1070 has almost double the performance of 970 in most cases. However currently it's a bad time to buy GPU due to crypto miners, and as said, there soon will be updated Ryzen with higher clock.

[DimitriP]

A GTX-970 so one generation down on the 1070, so we would not be talking day and night, more like 10-15%.

Using numbers from videocardbenchmark.net  , it's about +29%.  Not night a day, but a sunny day instead of overcast  

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+1070+Ti&id=3842

[wraper]

A GTX-970 so one generation down on the 1070, so we would not be talking day and night, more like 10-15%.

Using numbers from videocardbenchmark.net  , it's about +29%.  Not night a day, but a sunny day instead of overcast  

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+1070+Ti&id=3842

Crap benchmark, the reality is such as:

[DimitriP]

Even more gooder

[tszaboo]

A GTX-970 so one generation down on the 1070, so we would not be talking day and night, more like 10-15%.

Using numbers from videocardbenchmark.net  , it's about +29%.  Not night a day, but a sunny day instead of overcast  

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+1070+Ti&id=3842

Crap benchmark, the reality is such as:

What year is this resolution from that I'm seeing there? 2007?
Get yourself a nice IPS 120Hz+ monitor with at least 2560x1440 resolution and G-Sync. It matters a lot more than the CPU or even if you debate between GTX1080 or 1070.
And otherwise... Why bother with the ryzen 7?  With a quad core i5 you are limited by the GPU most of the time. Or the second generation Ryzen is arriving in 3 days.

[wraper]

With a quad core i5 you are limited by the GPU most of the time. Or the second generation Ryzen is arriving in 3 days.

With 4 core core i5 you often get frame time jitter (stuttering) and FPS drops. It's no longer that it does not matter if you have i5 or i7 for gaming as it was a few years ago.

[Ampera]

1440p might be tempting, but I wouldn't bother unless you wanted it. Definitely don't go for 4k as it's a useless and underbaked concept with no real content, or even machines that can run anything at it well.

I do agree with high refresh rate. Go as high as you can find, and GSync makes the difference.

Also I do agree with waiting for Zen+ chips, but besides that you have a very solid list of parts there. Indeed AMD, I believe is the best option for CPUs, as they are giving the best bang for the buck. While I would normally disregard anything Halcyon says about AMD, as he is biased as all hell, he is right on GPUs. They suck, and I mean really suck. nVidia has been kicking AMD's ass since the ATI days, with only occasional bouts of coming up for air. Unlike their CPUs now, they are also massive space heaters.

[paulca]

I already have an Acer Predator 21:9 1440p monitor.  However it's only 100Hz and only when running on display port.  I am running it at 60Hz on HDMI currently.

I'm not a FPS gamer, I do like smooth performance, so G-Sync or V-Sync are on, so I'm maxed out at 60FPS anyway.

As an ad-hoc bench mark Rise of the Tomb Raider pretty much runs at 60FPS until I turn some of the higher end anti-alising/over sampling or realistic hair on.

My gaming stutters are entirely caused by IO on the hard-disk, usually unrelated processes in Windows poking around at things causing stutters.  Things such as AntiVirus which if I haven't been in Windows for more than a week seems to wait till I launch a game and then kick off scans and poking around.  Thankfully with 16Gb of RAM actual game HD access is minimal beyond loading screens.

So basically, my FX 9590 might be a bit of a gaming slouch, but it's probably not worth upgrading to a Ryzen 7 just yet and with top end GPUs costing well over £300 it's probably not economical to upgrade there either yet.

[Ampera]

The GPU is pretty much the true workhorse, but because of how monumentally terrible the 9590 was, even a Ryzen 3 or 5 could probably beat it. I would recommend if any upgrade were to be made, it would be to graphics, despite the stupid cyrptojerks wasting resources and energy on what I believe to be a collective waste of potentially life saving and useful computing power.

[paulca]

The GPU is pretty much the true workhorse, but because of how monumentally terrible the 9590 was, even a Ryzen 3 or 5 could probably beat it.

In gaming terms probably, but aren't the FX and the Ryzen about 2 years apart?

I have many things I do which will light up all 8 cores and outstrip an i5 of the same era and money.  Single core performance is it's let down,  multi-core it's strength, so the single threaded DX processing queue runs faster on faster clock speeds not on multiple cores.

[Monkeh]

As with most things, AMD tends to make whatever is on the chip available, Intel: not so much.

No, they play exactly the same games.

Want to split the x16 lane on your Ryzen to two x8s? Better make sure the chipset which plays no part in it supports it!

[wraper]

In gaming terms probably, but aren't the FX and the Ryzen about 2 years apart?

Although FX sort of has 8 things which can be called cores, they are not really full fledged cores. It's more like 4 cores with hyper-threading on steroids. In terms of technology they are more like 7 years apart, not 2. Unless you run heavily mutithreaded task, even 4 Cores, 4 Threads Ryzen 3 1200 beats it. If you take 3.2GHz Ryzen 5 1400 which has SMT (4 Cores, 8 Threads), it beats 9590 in any scenario.

[Ice-Tea]

*shrugs*

Intels lower offerings have lower DRAM speeds, no overclocking on most CPUs and no clock boost. Seems Intel is more likely to take stuff of the table. But really, I have *no* intention to be dragged in a AMD vs Intel debate 

[Ampera]

The GPU is pretty much the true workhorse, but because of how monumentally terrible the 9590 was, even a Ryzen 3 or 5 could probably beat it.

In gaming terms probably, but aren't the FX and the Ryzen about 2 years apart?

I have many things I do which will light up all 8 cores and outstrip an i5 of the same era and money.  Single core performance is it's let down,  multi-core it's strength, so the single threaded DX processing queue runs faster on faster clock speeds not on multiple cores.

From what I can find, the FX-9590 launched in June 2013 for a price of around 960 USD, and this is the start of why I think it's such a joke chip. Ryzen came out in iirc, 2016.

Currently, a Ryzen 1500X, with a launch price of 190 USD (now 160-ish) will par the 9590 in multi-threaded applications (according to passmark, and only having 4 cores) and beat it out in single threaded.

The 9590 was "designed" as a factory overclocked chip that required watercooling in order to not catch fire for it's (at the time) insane 4.7Ghz base clock and 5Ghz turbo, with a TDP of 220W. To put this in perspective, my i7-4790k, which came out a year later, for about a third of the launch price of the 9590, with half the cores, can run at 4.7Ghz (stable with watercooling) and absolutely, and positively smoke the 9590 in every single possible way for less than half the TDP. It could possibly even go twice as fast in single threaded application in that configuration, while still being faster in multi threaded.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like, maybe even love AMD, but they have been releasing turd after turd since Sandy Bridge hit the scene. Ryzen is their new breath of fresh air, and I believe Zen+ secures their place as the price performer over Intel, in a position they haven't held since AM2+. I just think that the FX-9590 is quite possibly the worst chip AMD has ever made. It might be my German harshness, but it truly is a hot flaming turd.

I'm not saying it can't do anything, but for it's price, and especially it's launch price, also factoring in way higher power costs, the need for more expensive boards with the power management to even handle a chip that hungry, it never even made any sense when it was in the 200-300 dollar range. It's why I have a 4790k.

As for outstripping an i5, I have never seen an i5 cost that much. A 900 dollar i7 from 2013 would cream my 300 dollar 4790k. Granted, that price wasn't held for long, but Intel can actually be really really weird with their pricing, having some really shit chips be a lot of money, and then having some diamond in the rough blasting performers (Like the Devil's Canyon 4790k) be dirt cheap for the performance they kick out.

I will still maintain, despite being a turd, it's not useless. It will run every modern game fine enough, and I believe if a true upgrade is desired, spending the money on a new nVidia graphics card is the way to go.

[Ampera]

*shrugs*

Intels lower offerings have lower DRAM speeds, no overclocking on most CPUs and no clock boost. Seems Intel is more likely to take stuff of the table. But really, I have *no* intention to be dragged in a AMD vs Intel debate 

Those were, and still are definite problems. The issue as gamers is we legitimately didn't have anything else. Nobody wanted to throw money at AMD for their space heaters, and we were happy enough to live with Intel's douchebaggery. Now that Ryzen is out, and we have all chips unlocked, dirt cheap top end chipset boards, and high DRAM speeds, (Intel does have turbo boost, my i7 can turbo up to 4.4Ghz if I didn't peg it at 4.6Ghz) there is no reason to buy Intel in my opinion.

[The Soulman]

A noobs question: is it possible to run a (bottom end) graphics card on a single PCIe lane?
If it is, how greatly is the performance degraded?

[Ampera]

A noobs question: is it possible to run a (bottom end) graphics card on a single PCIe lane?
If it is, how greatly is the performance degraded?

Of course it's possible to run any PCIe device (afaik) on a single lane. The performance penalty depends on what kind of PCIe (PCIe 3.0 1x is a bit faster than 1.0 3x) what graphics card, and what application you intend to use it for.

If you just intend to do stuff like watching YouTube videos at 1080p60, then I have no doubt that a modern 2.0 or 3.0 lane will be able to power a cheaper graphics card just fine for those lighter tasks. The main issue occur when you try to do stuff like 3D acceleration. Not that you would put any powerful card on that sort of connection, but most games would probably choke and die at those speeds.

[paulca]

In gaming terms probably, but aren't the FX and the Ryzen about 2 years apart?

Although FX sort of has 8 things which can be called cores, they are not really full fledged cores. It's more like 4 cores with hyper-threading on steroids. In terms of technology they are more like 7 years apart, not 2. Unless you run heavily mutithreaded task, even 4 Cores, 4 Threads Ryzen 3 1200 beats it. If you take 3.2GHz Ryzen 5 1400 which has SMT (4 Cores, 8 Threads), it beats 9590 in any scenario.

Isn't that the argument that was leveled against the original Intel dual and quad cores?  That they weren't really cores just threads?  Where as AMD actually had proper cores.  Maybe that changed with the FX I donno.