Decision time

Hardware GPU
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I’m in a major brain jam over something pathetically easy to normally decide. GPU prices are super high, I have a limited income but have about $1k to lay out towards a GPU because I can sell my Current Gigabyte RX 5600 XT Windforce Gaming OC for about $400 to offset the cost of these2 possibilities.

Looking at eBay, because it’s the only place that has cards, besides MicroCenter and they aren’t shipping them. They don’t even have what I think I want. Or do I need it period??

I feel like I’m having issues due to the 6GB VRAM and the puny 192 bit bandwidth with my current card. Not micro stutter, even FPS seems ok, but running games on “Ultra” at 1080p it’s just not smooth or something.

CPU is a Ryzen 5 3600X with PBO +200 10X scalar on, 16GB DDR4 3733 custom underclocked to 3600 to make it compatible with the “IF”. No problems in that area, so I figure I should probably move up to a card with at least 8GB VRAM. Looking at the VRAM usage in games, I’m maxing or getting close to maxing the 6GB most of the time.

Hence “brain jam”, I’m finding the “best” choices to be the RTX 3070 or the RX 6800 if I want to stay under $900. I know both cards are overkill for 1080p but I can’t justify spending $700-800 on a decent RX 5700 XT or used 2070 Super and the 3060Ti seems like a bad joke.

I feel like these cards will not go back to MSRP within 2 years, even if they roll out newer Nvidia and AMD stuff. Look at the RTX 20’s and even the GTX 10’s are way high, some equal to the new stuff but used! AMD has the same issues unless you go back to a Polaris card but I’ve seen the R9390X selling for $450+ again!

GIGABYTE AMD Radeon RX 6800 16GB GDDR6 WINDFORCE 3X Cooling Ships Tomorrow 889523025529 | eBay

NEW EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING 08G-P5-3755-KR 8GB GDDR6 Graphic Card 843368067496 | eBay

These are the 2 I’m bashing my head in about. Is it worth it to bother? Those 2 are “cheaper” options that are $200-300 over MSRP for “partner” cards. Reference models are $800+ for the 3070 and there are none for the RX 6800, just “partner” cards. The MSI “MERC”, looks good but not at $900 for a non XT. The XT version goes for $1k+ in any brand. A 3080 would be “nice” but those are $1200-1400.

Going by benchmarks, my PC is fine where it is. It keeps pace with the equivalent RX 5700 XT while running a modest OC. The CPU has good bench scores. I guess it feels like the “frame pace” is off. FreeSync is on but turning it off doesn’t change things. It might just be me. In any case, should I wait out the price’s or deal with a $200-300 scalping? Then which one will delivers the smoothest frame rate? Gamer’s Nexus did a review of both and it seems like the RX 6800 would be smoother and outperform the 3070 but it drives the cost way up. For the money, I should be getting the RX 6800 XT but not in this economy.

Sorry for the “WOT”, I’ve been up all night looking at cards and reviews.

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TBH, I’d just wait till things settle down, maybe by Spring.

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If you can live with what you have I would stick with it for as long as is bearable.

I am in the same position, wanting a 6800XT but they just don’t exist and I am not paying a scalper. I have an R9 290 right now, it works just fine and I have no complaints, I just want a new card to go with the rest of the new system.

Unfortunately there is zero telling what will happen with stock, prices and scalpers. Realistically unless they can FLOOD the market with card at a rate scalpers can’t compete we won’t see and end to it and AMD nor nVidia want do do this as it would errode their prices… Woo.

I want to say It can’t get worse, but it still getting worse so I just don’t know. Personally I am waiting.

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Well, on Newegg the XFX RX 6800 MERC is `$711+ tax, eBay has a few around the $900 or offer mark. They also have the XFX MERC RX 6800 XT ~$919-1K+. Both of those prices are $100-200 above Newegg or BestBuy. So not too scalpy, but I guess they went up some.

I might try to put an offer in on the RX 6800 for about $750 to start. If I try for an XT, I’ll go $800 and see. BestBuy has the XFX MERC 6800XT for $1049, out of stock. MSRP was $569/769 respectively back in November 2020. Other brands of the XT could probably be had for sub $900. The regular having 1000 less cores and ~150MHZ less stock clock, has plenty of snot and beats the 3070 and mostly the 2080Ti. Now the 6800XT beats them both and comes close to the 3090.

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Why a top tier gpu for a mid range zen2 processor? I don’t see the point. Ohh… upgrade later? rdna1 is a botched gpu, works juuust enough, runs hot, drivers are trickling… essentially a beta tester for rdna2… Then that has come along and we’ve witnessed bottlenecks (sometimes it’s game engines, architechtures, platforms, scrappy coding).
An upcoming 6700 variant would be more complimentary for your system. Rtx at least has functioning features (dlss, voice, av1, better encoder). Name the equivalent planned products from amd you’re willing to pay more and leaving featurs off the table. (What adaptive sync monitor does this run on)?

  • Stay with the 5600xt, it compliments the system… Next years refresh of either nvidia or amd will be better equipped for the long lasting upgrade.

Hopper or Rdna3 is what my 5900x will get, until then rtx2080 will do. Before the rtx, it was rocking a r9Nano. (Let’s hope the new administration rescinds the gpu import tax… here’s to hoping :face_with_head_bandage:)

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I suggest you wait. If you have an good internet connection, try GeForceNOW to play some games with your current card in ultra settings. Cost is low.

When the time comes, I would go for the AMD, 6800 or 6800XT. The main reason is, I don’t trust Nvidia anymore. I may as well buy a 3070 for $700 and a month later, they release 3070ti, or 3080 at $600. They have done this multiple times in the past.

Only reason to go for Nvidia now, is if you are playing RTX game, and you cannot live without.

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Also rendering. I’m really hoping for more competition for “work” uses.

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The theory is 6GB VRAM at 192 bit was a bit light when I built this rig last April. I should’ve went with the RX 5700 XT, since it was ~$450 then vs. the $279 RX 5600 XT. I also should’ve went with the Ryzen 3800X due to the more forgiving “IF” that would’ve most likely handled my RAM at the 3733 it’s supposed to run at.

With GPU’s stuck for a long time and I’ve seen this happen back in 2018. Well, it is still going on, lmao, GPU’s aren’t losing value the way they normally would. Given that my CPU is good enough and there’s now rumor of SAM support for Zen 2, the RX 6800 is looking to be a better choice than the 3070. The 2070 Super or RX 5700 XT would be my 1st pick if they didn’t cost a ~$700 for USED and they want like $800 new for those!

The current price of the RX 6800 non XT is ~$699-800 at Newegg or BestBuy if they had them in stock. While the XT version is $900-1049 at BestBuy or Newegg at not in stock either. I don’t think prices will drop much further if at all with said “trade war” going on, etc.

The 5600X is actually still available for $400, so possibly next month or so I could grab that and fix the entire error in parts choice. The other part of my “thinking” is that I should keep a Pcie 4.0 card since I have an AsRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4S mobo. Otherwise, for the sake of cost, and the fact I’m not into resolution over 1080p, I could hunt down a 2070 Super for less than a good RX 5700 XT. The 2070 runs PCIe 3.0 and not sure if that’s a huge difference or not, I don’t think I play any games that would use that.

The monitor is a Sceptre 32" 1800R 1080p @ 185Hz, just got that a few months ago. It has FreeSync enabled and I’m running the 20.8.3 driver because it’s stable for me. If I drop $800-900 on a video card, that’s the last one I’ll be buying for at least 3 years. I would sell this one, since it goes for ~$400 used, lol. Same with the 3600x post replacing that with a 5600X, it goes for $200 used, about what I paid for it.

Reverse scalping?

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Sceptre 1800R 1080p, a 2016 gaming monitor? Hmm, no point in gpu being a 2.1 hdmi compliant. (I’d be amiss if a feature I paid for and cannot use it, though you already made concessions with your cpu and internal soc/ram/if issues, why make that a silver lining)? Rdna2 and rtx3k onward is meant for hdmi 2.1 screens going forward. I fail to see how you’ll utilize the features you’ve paid for then come to a realization it’s not wholly fulfilled.

Resize bar? Linux has it since 2015 (intel Haswell and there after https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-pci/patch/[email protected]/ ). For windows it’s a very LATE feature, so no gain for either Nvidia or amd.

If you’d had a threadripper or xeon equivalent I’d see the gain. Midrange desktop is not worth that much money for hardware and tangible performance. You’ve just got an itch to buy.

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C325B-185RD 32" Gaming Monitor (sceptre.com)

That’s was made in 2020. It’s also 185Hz via DP and 1 x 165Hz HDMI 2.0 and 2 x 144Hz HDMI 1.4. I’m failing to see your logic that this is a “mid-range” rig when these very parts were the best for 1080p at the time.

This isn’t a “workstation” by any means nor a “media” device/server. This was built to do one thing besides read the horror stories about tariffs raising PC part prices until by April you won’t be able to afford to say the word “GPU”. It was built to game at 1080p.

Itch to buy or “hunch”. After reading some articles written 2 days ago about how the 2018 tariff exemptions on primary electronic parts, like CPU’s, motherboards, and GPU’s all expired and now 7.5-25% taxes are being heaped on parts that were already here, as well as new stuff coming in. Asus announced and showed it’s revised 2021 pricing sheet with the reflected increases so far. There’s a lot more to come as far as super high PC parts go.

I watched today as GPU’s disappeared from Amazon at triple to quadruple regular price. eBay went wild and prices skyrocketed for every GPU you can name. Motherboards, CPU’s it all rose like flood water. It will take months to more than a year they predict for prices to go back to “normal”. The pandemic is playing a huge part in the increase as well causing logistic problems.

So I’d say I made a “safe” investment in a XFX RX 6800 MERC 319 while I could grab it for $899 with a receipt so it has a warranty. Then next month “future” proofing a bit by snagging the Ryzen R5 5600X for $400, I think is a good plan. So I’ll have the ability to do 4k if need be and definitely 1440p with zero issues if I so desire for a total of $1300 and an RX 5600 XT to sell for at least $400, along with the R5 3600X with all the boxing, original cooler for ~$230, offsetting my spending by $630.

Dunno, doesn’t sound to wild or crazy to me. Of course there will be abilities that go unused only using a 1080p monitor. I prefer 1080p over 14440p or 4K for the games I play and for movies it doesn’t matter. I’m 3’ from the damned screen. What concession have I made with my CPU/SOC/RAM/IF? I tweaked the RAM so it reads and writes faster at the lower latency of 69ns vs. the 76ns or so of running with stock timings. The 3733 was too much for this 3600X’s IF to handle so I backed it down to 1800 vs. 1867 in BIOS. Dropped the RAM speed to 3600 from 3733, decreased my tRFC and other sub timings accordingly until it now runs like a well oiled machine. I get benchmarks that rival the 3700x combined with a decent RX 5700 XT with lesser hardware. That’s super tuning, not a “concession”. I can post my TimeSpy, 3DMark scores, Cinebench R-20 as well. But for now I need to eat, then sleep.

I noticed just something not flowing right in games is all. So I basically wanted to know if it was better to go with the newer AMD 6000 path or try the Nvidia. The Nvidia would’ve been ok but I needed a RTX3080 to meet what the RX 6800 brings to the table. Only a few games does the 3080 pull ahead and you can’t find one for under $2k.

Linux is a no gain period. You can only run a few games on that OS. Windows is also a derivative of several types of Linux. Blame Gate’s for being “behind”. He’s out now and there’s fresh blood working there making sure all the pain in the ass Linux crap I hate is slowly working into the center of the OS.

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Are you insane? Lower your damn settings and don’t spend so much money. Wait for normal prices. What is difficult to decide? Nothing. Hold on and keep holding on until stuff gets normal.

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I would advice to stick with what you currently have.
And wait untill prices are settled, it might get better it might not.

This assumption is a bit short trough the corner if you ask me.
Without a deeper and proper investigation on what you are actually experiencing.

  • system hardware details.
  • Os version.
  • Driver versions.
  • Games you exepriencing issues with.
    And which settings.
  • temperatures cpu and gpu during gaming.

etc etc could all be viable information for us to know,
to help figuring out what the cullprit could be.
Because it´s a bit vague i guess.

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So one cannot game as fast or maybe faster on a dual purpose thread ripper system? While I render and play games unimpeded? In threadripper one can shut down cores for faster rates and have more options still.

Here’s a hypothetical: Should I get a 1200 Watt SeasSonic Platinum power supply @ $350 for a P45 based Core2Duo e8500 and a Radeon r7 260? Surely the motherboard will function, heck total draw will be no greater than 90 watts combined. I can rest easy knowing I’ve made the MOST optimal decision in regards to powering my rig. At a very high cost however, with no discernable difference than a FSP 300Watt model.

Brings me back to my point; your cpu is mid-range, multi-functions to a degree and not the top tier (hence consumer desktop). Not until Zen3’s arrival does one truly flex its platform capability, but you’ve got a rx5600xt for a particular reason (great find local, swap maybe, rebate awsome, deep discount) and whatever the reason you’ve got envy for gpu’s outclassing and it unsettle’s you to some extent.

As others have been opining about… get a 6700 or 3070ti gpu when it’s released (and priced accordingly) to compliment the system in its current incarnation. It will provide the frame boost necessary and the upcoming features to enjoy the platform. (If you’re upgrading later make the decision in that junction, don’t allow the present to dictate future buying options). Good Luck.

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Looks like I’m personally looking to go RTX3080 (or a variant of whatever looks good by the time supply exists).

Why?

VR support
DLSS

Unless AMD comes out with something comparable to DLSS and gets more consistent on VR content real soon now…

DLSS 2.0 looks like a game changer to me. The performance improvement is just that big.

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I’d reanalyze this with benchmarks over stock. Make sure you’re actually getting more performance. Zen2 was a mess in that respect. The bios updates and agesa shenanigans. Sometimes what should be more bigger more better is actually hurting performance.

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It’s a weird problem that after watching a video on Gamer’s Nexus he explains a little about “frame timing” and it’s affects on overall “smoothness” perception. In the graphs between the RX6800 and the RTX3070 he shows via graph how the frames are rendered seamlessly smooth by the RX6800 vs. the spikiness of the RTX3070. That’s what I’m noticing and it probably was like that from day 1. It has to do with VRAM bandwidth and the fact of running all games on Ultra with only 6GB of VRAM. Some titles buffer loads of frames into the GPU, overflowing into the system RAM and that’s more than likely what I’m just noticing now.

The only “solution” is hardware based. Changing the GPU to an 8GB one would probably solve the issue that for some reason just started to bug me a little. That video card fell through, my purchase crossed the supply time line by seconds and I lost it. So waiting things out will probably be my choice.

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@Adubs
I build PC’s and did sop for a living for 20+ years. Doesn’t mean I know it all, but I do know how to do bench tests the right way. I’m fully aware of the Agesa B.S. and run an older BIOS version for that reason. The results are quite real and about 20% better than stock all around. I’m not going to waste time posting screen shots tom prove a pointless point at this time.

7 months were spent figuring out my personal Hell of the Zen 2 and it’s weirdness. Even Zen 3 is weird. This latest BIOS should and seems to fix the Zen 3 issues, like they do hit 2000Mhz IF 99% of the time. Less complaints and I can say with caution, it’s ok to buy a 5000 series CPU and even a 6000 series GPU if one can find either at a decent price.

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@thro

If you do VR, I’d say the same thing, go with the 3080, skip the 3070 and forget the 3090 as a waste of money. DLSS only works in about 12 games that I don’t nor will play, so it better get a whole lot bigger before I hinge my purchase decision on that alone.

I’ve seen the increase in review videos and they are impressive. However, if one steps into the RX6900XT , with SAM on and use the 5900X (5600X might work, just no video on that), it is head to head, sometimes beating Nvidia badly. The 6800XT will pull even most of the time, so then cost comes into play at the end and personal preference.

At least with Nvidia one doesn’t need a matching CPU to obtain the extra performance, but you lose out on 6GB of VRAM. Both companies need to step up their game because it’s not a true competition at this point but a tug of war.

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Lmao ok bud. Hope you figure it out.

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@Adubs
Don’t see what the “cynicism” in your tone is about. I’m not your “bud” and don’t appreciate the “tone”. I’m 47.5 years old with years of experience under my belt. If it’s “lmao” because I’m in this forum , then “lmao” to you to “bud”, because you seem to ask a lot of questions too.

Compare those to stock 3600X scores. I also got the card sorted by buying a Gigabyte RX 6800 new for $877, only $150 more than it sold for in December.

cinebench 12_12_2020 3600x
cinebench 12_12_2020 3600x1920×1080 2.03 MB