hinch said:
Yeah the 60 class cards from both AMD and Nvidia aren't that ideal this gen. I'd argue that last generation stuff makes more sense from a value point of view but there are a few positives like better power consumption and features from the RTX 4000 series that are good, and useful (frame gen, better RT etc). I do think it may be worth waiting a bit for Black Friday sales if you can, as I can see Nvidia lowering prices of both 4060's (after AMD's launches).. and you potentially get a better card like a 4060Ti for not much more and maybe the 4060Ti 16GB closer to 400 euros which would be a compelling buy at that point.
But yeah thats just my opinion and I guess lowering a few settings here and there you can get by with lower RAM capacity. Especially if you plan on upgrading sooner rather than later. And in any case would be a massive upgrade from your GTX 1650. |
I've been quite patient for a long time, but now my patience is running out. 
At least I'll get a better deal than I would have some 2.5 years ago.
Also, don't forget the Super suffix. 
Bofferbrauer2 said:
Zkuq said:
Probably going to be ordering a new PC very, very soon, and while I'm happy to finally upgrade, I really don't like the current market situation: - GPUs: Not much to say here. It's a bad choice one way or another.
- CPUs: A bit unclear whether this is a good moment to get a new one. At least the next gen sounds like it's going to be a refresh for both AMD and Intel so nothing significantly different in a while, but pricing is a bit bad: I want to future-proof my PC as well as possibly while still not investing too much, so it sounds like Ryzen 5 7700 it is... which is terrible value. If it didn't sound like Cities: Skylines 2 was pretty CPU-heavy, I'd probably get a 7600 instead and consider upgrading later if necessary.
- motherboards/cases: USB-C and PCI-E 5.0 are kind of coming, and things are moving on this front. AM5 is terribly expensive, but I need it for future upgrade potential. USB 3.2 support in cases is also relatively rare.
- SSDs: PCI-E 4.0 sounds fine, but with PCI-E 5.0 coming along, I'm not confident my timing is great. At least prices don't seem too terrible (although I'm not sure if the situation is actually good, compared to historical prices).
Anyway, thinking of something like this: - AMD Ryzen 5 7700: Future-proofing, like I said. Terrible value, and I'm not quite willing to invest in a 7700X3D. An Intel Core i5-13600 seems like something that would be more suitable for my needs, but I'm kind of interested in power efficiency, and I'm more confident in AM5's longevity.
- GeForce RTX 4060: Again terrible value, but should do at 1080p, which is what I'll be using. I'll still have to check whether it's actually usable for ray tracing at 1080p and with DLSS, but I'm expecting it to kind of be. I'm betting for DLSS 3 to be worth more than the extra raw power I could get with the RTX 3000 series, but that's a bit of a gamble for sure (+ RTX 3000 availability seems a bit poor here at the moment). For me, it probably makes more sense to get an RTX 4060 and upgrade to something like an RTX 6060 whenever it comes out than getting a more expensive GPU now (but again a bit of a gamble).
- Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi or ASRock B650 PG Lightning or ASRock B650 Pro RS: A bit of a tough choice. Sounds like ASRock might be faster at booting, but dunno. It's really hard to find any usable data on the ASRock boards.
- a bunch of whatever for the rest (been looking into these carefully but not really interesting enough to write here, aside from complaining about poor USB-C and USB 3.2 support in cases + I absolutely hate how everything has a window these days)
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CPU: You could just go with the 7800X3D, it's just 62€ more last time I checked and miles above the 7700. GPU: You could have a look at the 6700XT. 4060 might be good enough for RT right now, but it's already getting limited in that regard. And to be fair, having to dial down the details for RT is a bit nonsensical. Plus, the 6700XT has more VRAM, so should last longer. SSD: PCi-E 5.0 SSDs are overpriced, just marginally faster than 4.0 SSDs right now, and often come with bulky coolers, making it difficult to actually fit them under the GPU where their slot often is. Better go with a PCI-E 4.0 SSD right now. |
I know it would probably make more sense to just get a 7800X3D, but even a 7700 is a bit expensive for my taste. I'm currently running the Xeon E3-1231 v3 I got back in 2014 and its value in the bundle must've been something like 200 €, so I'm actually significantly upping my CPU investment despite my presumably relatively modest needs.
I don't necessarily mind dialing down other parts, depending. For example, using lower-resolution textures might be just fine for me, since I value lighting quite highly. I'll still to have to look more into the DLSS part at 1080p, but I suspect I'll be fine with it (and if not, I'll just upgrade in a few years, since I'll probably need only a GPU upgrade anyway).
JEMC said:
| Zkuq said: Ah, thanks for the tips! Yeah, it's a bit of a gamble with C:S2 too, but with the first one being my most-played game on Steam and the second one seeming even better, I just don't see a world when I'm not buying it very close to release. Ideally I'd wait of course, but there's the Starfield deal as well, and it might be worth more to me than any potential gains I might get by waiting. 'Convoluted' is exactly the right word, I'd say... I mean it's pretty clear where things are now, but it's much less clear where things are going to be moving to. Schools actually start a bit earlier here in Finland, around mid-August, so the back to school deals are already gone. I didn't notice anything interesting there though, otherwise I might have made by move already. I don't think I'm going to be needing PCIe 5.0 for a GPU, considering I probably won't be getting any 500+ € GPUs any time soon. Depending on how things go, it might be worth it for an SSD even in my case though. I've actually looked up some motherboard with those finer chipsets, but it's probably not worth the extra cost to me. Lancool 216 seems like a relatively reasonable option, although I'm trying to avoid a side window, and it kind of looks like a speaker to me. I've kind of been thinking about Fractal Design Define 7 Compact and Fractal Design North, but they're a bit on the pricier side, and I'm not 100 % happy with their features either - but I don't think I've found any decent-looking case with perfect connectivity at an acceptable price, so I'll just have to decide which bullet to bite I guess. But yeah, I'm getting a new case and everything inside it basically, but I'll be keeping pretty much everything else. Definitely not getting a gen 5 SSD yet. I'm not a fan of the prices, and I'm hoping they'll somehow mature a bit more, e.g. to help with the heat. I'm more interested in future-proofing so I can upgrade if I want to without having to rip everything out. I'm probably getting an WD Black SN850X, which seems like a significantly better investment at the moment. |
I mentioned the -E chipset because you've mentioned several times that you want a future-proofing system, and having the extra gen 5 PCIe slot may come in handy in the future if you upgrade to something like a 6060 in several years. But well, it's a gamble. Techspot reviewed (kind of) the 5800X3D with Cities: Skylines, but the engine appears to rely on single core performance and the extra cache doesn't do anything. Surely they'll use a new engine for Skylines 2, or at least an upgraded one, but the results may be the same, with the 7700 performing better than the 7800X3D due to its higher clocks. But again, it's a gamble. And yeah, in today's world, finding a case with no windows is extremely difficult, and you're basically limited to a case with at least one window or a case that looks like a fridge (not that it's a bad thing, tho).
Phanteks has good cases, but they're not cheap or lack USB-C. |
I'm essentially betting on PCIe 5.0 not becoming very useful for mid-to-low tier GPUs in at least a few years. It'd be unexpected to essentially deprecate essentially only a few years old hardware, and I don't expect GPUs to suddenly start heavily utilizing the benefits of PCIe 5.0 once PCIe 5.0 GPUs do come out. I haven't exactly beeing staying in the loop very much, so of course I could be wrong, but this seems like a much safer bet than some of the others I have to make.
Yeah, the first C:S doesn't really utilize multiple cores that well. The seconds one is supposed to, but I don't know to what extent. There's this promise, "However, the calculations are more efficient, resulting in higher performance across the board as the pathfinding and simulation among other calculations take advantage of all the available processing power of the multicore CPUs.", but I don't think it's really much to go by, since I don't think it's created to utilize any number of cores, and the recommended specs include only a Ryzen 5 5600X. It's another gamble.
I was actually looking at some fairly affordable Phateks case, but it had only USB 3.0 for the Type-C port. I don't think that's going to be a real issue, but I really don't want to switch cases, since that seems like a gigantic pain.
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