Computer games.

[Rita_Poon]

Unfortunately with the amount of money in gaming now it's only going to get worse.

But, I strongly believe there will always be nerds determined to make janky original games out of the love of it. PC gaming is by far the best in that regard.

Faster than light (2012)
Into the breach (2018)

 

[DualityNSNO]

over 2k for an i5?
put the sherry down,

Tbh it's not overpriced, just questionable setup.

That said, most things will run well regardless lol

 

[neil999]

over 2k for an i5?
put the sherry down,

I'm pretty sure it's gone up in price! I'm a real novice of this but just enjoying the research and the inevitable nerd put downs ?

 

[Dylan]

After reading what @Dylan has said this seems like a good deal https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers-for-next-day-delivery/1373/

@Baines' left foot

How do you know which AIB you are getting?

And this goes across the board, Nvidia and AMD Radeon......AIB partner and model matters. The good ones have great power delivery and excellent coolers. The cheap ones are just that. Cheap. Tend to struggle with any kind of overclocking and tend to have crap thermals, or only passively cool the VRAM.

My 6700XT is a Powercolor Red Devil, and apart from the fact it has red in the name, its a bloody excellent card!

 

[DualityNSNO]

How do you know which AIB you are getting?

And this goes across the board, Nvidia and AMD Radeon......AIB partner and model matters. The good ones have great power delivery and excellent coolers. The cheap ones are just that. Cheap. Tend to struggle with any kind of overclocking and tend to have crap thermals, or only passively cool the VRAM.

My 6700XT is a Powercolor Red Devil, and apart from the fact it has red in the name, its a bloody excellent card!

Cheap =/= good value, basically. Coincidentally a good Linus video about that from last week or thereabouts lol

Powercolor and Sapphire for AMD GPU's are where it's at, really. Maybe yours is a tribute to the Belgium NT lol

 

[neil999]

How do you know which AIB you are getting?

And this goes across the board, Nvidia and AMD Radeon......AIB partner and model matters. The good ones have great power delivery and excellent coolers. The cheap ones are just that. Cheap. Tend to struggle with any kind of overclocking and tend to have crap thermals, or only passively cool the VRAM.

My 6700XT is a Powercolor Red Devil, and apart from the fact it has red in the name, its a bloody excellent card!

Oh god, I thought a website like that would prevent these issues

 

[DualityNSNO]

I suppose you can ask pcspecialist about that, just drop them an email. They probably work with a certain AIB anyway.

 

[Dylan]

Cheap =/= good value, basically. Coincidentally a good Linus video about that from last week or thereabouts lol

Powercolor and Sapphire for AMD GPU's are where it's at, really. Maybe yours is a tribute to the Belgium NT lol

The RGB is set to purple at my daughters request.

The LTT vid you are talking about (if i am thinking of the right one) is about a budget PC, where cheap is the name of the game. And if that is the game, you aren't buying a 6700XT

 

[Dylan]

Oh god, I thought a website like that would prevent these issues

I just find it weird they don't list an actual model, and just say "AMD 6700XT"

Anyhow, for an example, check out this:

AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Review

The new Radeon RX 6700 XT arrives with the promise of significantly improved supply when compared to previous Big Navi GPUs. Targeting the $480 price point, let's...

www.techspot.com

AIB Cards, Temps & Clocks​

Ahead of this launch, we ended up with half a dozen AIB cards, so we're going to look at the peak GPU hotspot temperature after half an hour of gameplay in an enclosed ATX case (we used the Corsair Obsidian 500D). This is stock, out of the box performance as I didn't have time for noise normalized testing, dialing in each card takes quite a bit of time.

The highest clocking models were the Gigabyte Gaming OC and XFX Speedster Merc 319 and of the two, the XFX was far more impressive, operating its fans at just 1000 RPM for a hotspot temperature of 85C. The Gigabyte model was 2 degrees cooler, but you're looking at almost twice the fan speed which increases the operating volume quite drastically. The Gaming OC should be a fair bit cheaper though, so it could still represent better value.

The PowerColor Red Devil and Hellhound models were very impressive, both ran the fans at 1000 RPM for sub 80C temperatures. The Red Devil clocked around 100 MHz higher and that made it one of the best models we tested.

Sapphire's Nitro+ almost forgot it had fans, spinning them at just 800 RPM after 30 mins of load. This model also appeared to sip power despite running the cores at 2.5 GHz. The hotspot temp creeped up to 91C, though that's not bad given the whisper quiet fan speed.

The MSI Gaming X was one of the least impressive models and we suspect it would be comparable to the Gigabyte Gaming OC under noise normalized test conditions. It was quite a bit better than the AMD reference design though, so there's that.

Worth noting that was written at release, and they have done updated testing with some impressive performance gains since then thanks to drivers maturing.

 

[DualityNSNO]

The RGB is set to purple at my daughters request.

The LTT vid you are talking about (if i am thinking of the right one) is about a budget PC, where cheap is the name of the game. And if that is the game, you aren't buying a 6700XT

Nah, this one


2 weeks ago apparently, my bad! Still isn't about people who are gonna go for an expensive one obviously, but he has some good information about what to look out for if you're on a budget and explains some stuff along the way that are useful even if you do have the money.

Purple's fine also. I am meh about RGB but I have no doubts you've done it tastefully

 

[Dylan]

Purple's fine also. I am meh about RGB but I have no doubts you've done it tastefully

I think it looks fine, but it is at the whim of a 5 year old.....

 

[DualityNSNO]

I think it looks fine, but it is at the whim of a 5 year old.....

The target audience for RGB really lol

 

[longers]

I’ve often considered Tarkov, but with my hearing conditions I haven’t got the confidence to wear headphones, and a lot of people say you really need them. I use Voicemeeter to limit the volume through my speakers and it’s fine, so I suppose the same logic could apply with headphones.

Yeh headphones pretty important tbh, that said one of the people I play with is completely deaf in one ear and yet still has lots of fun dispite a sizeable disadvantage, so speakers may be doable.

 

[Baines' left foot]

But by what measure...... Is it super geek level with nerds measuring stuff in minute detail?

Would a casual gamer sitting on two machines side by side with similar spec playing the same game notice the difference? (I'd say not a chance.)

It reminds me of the explosion in popularity in Digital SLRs, and the heavyweight fanboy battle between Canon and Nikon. They'd do what was to become known as "pixel peep" on studio grade monitors and argue the merits of a sensors performance for similarly targeted models within the respective range on offer.

Absolute biffs.

Nah. The only metric where there is a real gain is Ray tracing. Which honestly isn't with the frame hits you take to enable it. If you are a streamer, then Nvidia's NVENC encoder is better than AMD's, but it isn't by much, and with the AV1 codec gaining better adoption, that gap will be negligible at best for Nvidia.

If you bother to watch the actual videos comparing dlss to fsr, you have to be actively looking for the differences to see them...... In actual gameplay, en you are focused on playing the game, the are imperceptible.

AMD is by far the best bang for buck option (though still far overpriced imo). Nvidia still retain the absolute performance crown with the 4090, but it isn't by much and it's with an absurd price premium. Plus AMD unlock performance with drivers over time and continue to support their GPU's for much longer than Nvidia do.

Do the right thing, buy AMD this gen and send Nvidia a message forcing them to lower prices (and that's already underway with 4080's still sitting on shelves unsold since release all over the world).

Don't get me wrong though, AMD isn't our friend..... They are still charging $1000USD for the gpu class that would have cost $600 4 years ago. They are out to make a profit, just like Nvidia.

I do watch LTT daily. I think the proof is in the pudding that Linus is going to daily drive the 7900 XTX over the Nvidia offerings.

Clearly I’m wrong then!

As I said, I was / am only paraphrasing, but know people who have had problems with DayZ and that the support isn’t as strong as Nvidias. It would be great if AMD increased their market share.

From what I gather the GPU market is very difficult. Intel have had a go, but there’s been mixed reviews as apparently their drivers aren’t great. There’s rumours that they’re shelving the idea as it’s just not cost effective. But we will see, I suppose.

 

[BNJ1878]

So based on what @Dylan said, if you're playing a game rather than actively looking for differences, having the latest and greatest. (or even one that was the latest and greatest last year) is no biggie?

If you're constantly chasing the 'best rig' isn't that sucking the enjoyment out of the actual gaming? Or is the tweaking various bits and getting the rage with incompatible drivers half the fun? lol

I really want to get into PC games but I have such a short temper if it doesn't just 'work' I can see it getting launched out of the window ?‍