GPUs & CPUs & Enthusiast hardware: Questions, Discussion and fanboy slap-fights - Nvidia & AMD & Intel - Separe but Equal. Intel rides in the back of the bus.

[Archeops]

I've decided that, now that I've freed up some space in home after some serious spring cleaning, I'd decided to flip a coin on either getting into 3D printing or building my desktop PC. Other than avoiding custom-built PCs here's what I've got planned so far if the coin lands on PC building...

Spoiler: The List

• Housing

This is something I'm not too worried about. I may shop around to see if I can find a cheap case I could modify into something that's nice to look at.

• CPU

I'd like to give this PC a better CPU than the one my current gaming laptop has (for comparison's sake, the laptop has a 12th Generation Intel Core i7-12700H CPU). I'll probably stick to an i7 Intel CPU that's a generation or two ahead since I feel like an i9 is too much considering I don't play a lot graphics-heavy games. I won't take it off the table completely since I am interested in dicking around with other shit (modding, 4k gaming, 3d printing, etc.) that could benefit from an i9 CPU.

• GPU

This is probably where most of my money's going to go into. I did some research on my laptop's NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU and it hit the same benchmarks as an RTX 3070 desktop GPU before factoring DLSS 3.0. This is something I'll have to do more research on since I'll need the right GPU to really make the games I play shine. For the record, this will probably be the last part I buy considering the prices involved in buying a new GPU.

• RAM

I'll probably stick to having 32 GBs of RAM in this build. The only difference is that I'll to upgrade to DDR5 RAM since my laptop runs DRR4 RAM.

• Cooling

I'm looking into liquid cooling for the CPU. I'm not sure if the GPU needs anything special since all of the pics of desktop GPUs I've seen have fans on them already but if anything else is recommended I'll get that.

• Motherboard

This is something I'll admit I haven't done a lot of research into doing, but what I do know is that it'll have to support everything listed here.

• Monitor

I'll probably get one that's better than my latop's screen (which is 144hz FHD sRGB 100% IPS screen) but I'm still figuring out how to go about this.

• Keyboard and Mouse

I'm still ways off from this, all I know is that the keyboard'll be mechanical and both will have a matching color scheme.

• Speakers

This is something I'm not particularly worried about, I have friends and family that have barely-used speakers and more than likely wouldn't mind donating them for this project.

Oh, and you know the ASUS laptop I got last year? Best Buy sent that specific model out to the clearance bin pastures and they "released" a newer model with a 13th Generation Intel Core i7-13620H CPU. I'm not sure how feel about this considering I'm still getting good mileage out of my current laptop but I was warned about this happening since ASUS is a fan of doing this.

 

[WelperHelper99]

decided that, now that I've freed up some space in home after some serious spring cleaning, I'd decided to flip a coin on either getting into 3D printing or building my desktop PC. Other than avoiding custom-built PCs here's what I've got planned so far if the coin lands on PC building...

Spoiler: The List

• Housing

This is something I'm not too worried about. I may shop around to see if I can find a cheap case I could modify into something that's nice to look at.

• CPU

I'd like to give this PC a better CPU than the one my current gaming laptop has (for comparison's sake, the laptop has a 12th Generation Intel Core i7-12700H CPU). I'll probably stick to an i7 Intel CPU that's a generation or two ahead since I feel like an i9 is too much considering I don't play a lot graphics-heavy games. I won't take it off the table completely since I am interested in dicking around with other shit (modding, 4k gaming, 3d printing, etc.) that could benefit from an i9 CPU.

• GPU

This is probably where most of my money's going to go into. I did some research on my laptop's NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU and it hit the same benchmarks as an RTX 3070 desktop GPU before factoring DLSS 3.0. This is something I'll have to do more research on since I'll need the right GPU to really make the games I play shine. For the record, this will probably be the last part I buy considering the prices involved in buying a new GPU.

• RAM

I'll probably stick to having 32 GBs of RAM in this build. The only difference is that I'll to upgrade to DDR5 RAM since my laptop runs DRR4 RAM.

• Cooling

I'm looking into liquid cooling for the CPU. I'm not sure if the GPU needs anything special since all of the pics of desktop GPUs I've seen have fans on them already but if anything else is recommended I'll get that.

• Motherboard

This is something I'll admit I haven't done a lot of research into doing, but what I do know is that it'll have to support everything listed here.

• Monitor

I'll probably get one that's better than my latop's screen (which is 144hz FHD sRGB 100% IPS screen) but I'm still figuring out how to go about this.

• Keyboard and Mouse

I'm still ways off from this, all I know is that the keyboard'll be mechanical and both will have a matching color scheme.

• Speakers

This is something I'm not particularly worried about, I have friends and family that have barely-used speakers and more than likely wouldn't mind donating them for this project.

Oh, and you know the ASUS laptop I got last year? Best Buy sent that specific model out to the clearance bin pastures and they "released" a newer model with a 13th Generation Intel Core i7-13620H CPU. I'm not sure how feel about this considering I'm still getting good mileage out of my current laptop but I was warned about this happening since ASUS is a fan of doing this.

It sounds pretty solid honestly. What about storage?

 

[Archeops]

It sounds pretty solid honestly. What about storage?

If we’re talking about the laptop I haven’t done anything to it, it still has the OEM 1 TB NMVE M.2 SSD installed and I’ll install a second if I need more space.

As far as the desktop’s concerned I‘ll probably give it more storage compared to the laptop whilst sticking with the NMVE M.2 SSDs.

 

[The Ugly One]

I've decided that, now that I've freed up some space in home after some serious spring cleaning, I'd decided to flip a coin on either getting into 3D printing or building my desktop PC. Other than avoiding custom-built PCs here's what I've got planned so far if the coin lands on PC building...

Spoiler: The List

• Housing

This is something I'm not too worried about. I may shop around to see if I can find a cheap case I could modify into something that's nice to look at.

• CPU

I'd like to give this PC a better CPU than the one my current gaming laptop has (for comparison's sake, the laptop has a 12th Generation Intel Core i7-12700H CPU). I'll probably stick to an i7 Intel CPU that's a generation or two ahead since I feel like an i9 is too much considering I don't play a lot graphics-heavy games. I won't take it off the table completely since I am interested in dicking around with other shit (modding, 4k gaming, 3d printing, etc.) that could benefit from an i9 CPU.

• GPU

This is probably where most of my money's going to go into. I did some research on my laptop's NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU and it hit the same benchmarks as an RTX 3070 desktop GPU before factoring DLSS 3.0. This is something I'll have to do more research on since I'll need the right GPU to really make the games I play shine. For the record, this will probably be the last part I buy considering the prices involved in buying a new GPU.

• RAM

I'll probably stick to having 32 GBs of RAM in this build. The only difference is that I'll to upgrade to DDR5 RAM since my laptop runs DRR4 RAM.

• Cooling

I'm looking into liquid cooling for the CPU. I'm not sure if the GPU needs anything special since all of the pics of desktop GPUs I've seen have fans on them already but if anything else is recommended I'll get that.

• Motherboard

This is something I'll admit I haven't done a lot of research into doing, but what I do know is that it'll have to support everything listed here.

• Monitor

I'll probably get one that's better than my latop's screen (which is 144hz FHD sRGB 100% IPS screen) but I'm still figuring out how to go about this.

• Keyboard and Mouse

I'm still ways off from this, all I know is that the keyboard'll be mechanical and both will have a matching color scheme.

• Speakers

This is something I'm not particularly worried about, I have friends and family that have barely-used speakers and more than likely wouldn't mind donating them for this project.

Oh, and you know the ASUS laptop I got last year? Best Buy sent that specific model out to the clearance bin pastures and they "released" a newer model with a 13th Generation Intel Core i7-13620H CPU. I'm not sure how feel about this considering I'm still getting good mileage out of my current laptop but I was warned about this happening since ASUS is a fan of doing this.

As someone who has a gaming desktop (i9-12900 + 6700 XT) and a gaming laptop (R7 6800U + 3050 Ti), my recommendation is to buy one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/SongShen-Thunderbolt-Display-Moniter-Ethernet/dp/B0CKWVGWXL/

Plug in a good monitor and a gaming keyboard & mouse, and you're good to go. The difference in experience between the desktop and the laptop is so marginal that I regret wasting money on the desktop at all. With the 4070, there just isn't anything out right now that will make a difference.

Sure, the machine you described will be fine, but the difference you experience between spending $1500 or more on a desktop and a $150 on a charging dock will be barely more than a placebo. (You also don't need an i9 to do any of the things you listed - CPU does not affect maximum screen resolution, and the speed bottleneck on 3D printing is the printer.) Like I said, I've done almost exactly what you plan to do, just a couple years ago, and I regret wasting the money.

TL: DR - buy the 3D printer.

 

[Archeops]

As someone who has a gaming desktop (i9-12900 + 6700 XT) and a gaming laptop (R7 6800U + 3050 Ti), my recommendation is to buy one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/SongShen-Thunderbolt-Display-Moniter-Ethernet/dp/B0CKWVGWXL/
Plug in a good monitor and a gaming keyboard & mouse, and you're good to go. The difference in experience between the desktop and the laptop is so marginal that I regret wasting money on the desktop at all. With the 4070, there just isn't anything out right now that will make a difference.

Sure, the machine you described will be fine, but the difference you experience between spending $1500 or more on a desktop and a $150 on a charging dock will be barely more than a placebo. (You also don't need an i9 to do any of the things you listed - CPU does not affect maximum screen resolution, and the speed bottleneck on 3D printing is the printer.) Like I said, I've done almost exactly what you plan to do, just a couple years ago, and I regret wasting the money.

That’s actually kind of sobering to hear that the gaming laptop I have is pretty much one of the better budget models on the market right now (and I bought it when it was on sale too, got if for $999.99 before taxes and fees when you take its $1399.99 MSRP into consideration), I guess making a proper ”plug & play” station for definitely sounds like the smarter move considering that I’d probably reach that 1.5K with the CPU/GPU/RAM costs alone if I wanted to build a desktop PC.

Oh, and I got a callback from a relative about the speakers. They apparently have an old Harman-Kardon Sound Sticks system complete with subwoofer that they aren’t using.

 

[The Ugly One]

That’s actually kind of sobering to hear that the gaming laptop I have is pretty much one of the better budget models on the market right now (and I bought it when it was on sale too, got if for $999.99 before taxes and fees when you take its $1399.99 MSRP into consideration), I guess making a proper ”plug & play” station for definitely sounds like the smarter move considering that I’d probably reach that 1.5K with the CPU/GPU/RAM costs alone if I wanted to build a desktop PC.

Oh, and I got a callback from a relative about the speakers. They apparently have an old Harman-Kardon Sound Sticks system complete with subwoofer that they aren’t using.

Three things have happened.

1. Games now look so good that you have to squint to tell the difference between high settings and medium settings.
2. DLSS technology is so good that you have to squint to tell the difference between when it's on and when it's off.
3. Modern laptop GPUs are pretty close to the desktop equivalents one step down, i.e. a 4070 Laptop GPU is not that much different than a 4060 desktop GPU.

The one thing to watch out for is a powered docking station might not be able to actually power your laptop through the USB-C, since ASUS gaming laptops draw a lot of power. Check the specs. Mine can only draw 5A through the USB-C, which isn't enough to game on. If that's the case, just get a cheaper passive dongle and use your brick. You'll also want a monitor stand with a tray so air can circulate under your laptop.

 

[Fcret]

Preorders are already out for the new Snapdragon Elite machines:


These are basically Apple prices without the Apple clout bonus and worse support for x86 emulation. I worry that this product category is DOA.

 

[Archeops]

Three things have happened.

1. Games now look so good that you have to squint to tell the difference between high settings and medium settings.
2. DLSS technology is so good that you have to squint to tell the difference between when it's on and when it's off.
3. Modern laptop GPUs are pretty close to the desktop equivalents one step down, i.e. a 4070 Laptop GPU is not that much different than a 4060 desktop GPU.

The one thing to watch out for is a powered docking station might not be able to actually power your laptop through the USB-C, since ASUS gaming laptops draw a lot of power. Check the specs. Mine can only draw 5A through the USB-C, which isn't enough to game on. If that's the case, just get a cheaper passive dongle and use your brick. You'll also want a monitor stand with a tray so air can circulate under your laptop.

I did a quick check and apparently the USB-C port on my model has DisplayPort support and 100W Power Delivery while another USB C port is actually a Thunderbolt 4 port, I’m not sure if that’s enough for it to function without the brick but I’m not afraid to get a passive dongle and continue using the brick for this to work.

As far as the monitor’s concerned I was already looking for one with a stand since I plan on getting a nice mechanical keyboard/wired mouse combo for it. One thing I‘m considering doing is building some shelving just above the desk’s soon-to-be location so that I can rest the laptop there and provide some air to it via a cooling pad.

 

[DavidS877]

Preorders are already out for the new Snapdragon Elite machines:
View attachment 6033890

These are basically Apple prices without the Apple clout bonus and worse support for x86 emulation. I worry that this product category is DOA.

Microsoft's last trip into not-x86 Windows went so well too. Anyone remember Windows RT?

 

[The Ugly One]

I did a quick check and apparently the USB-C port on my model has DisplayPort support and 100W Power Delivery while another USB C port is actually a Thunderbolt 4 port, I’m not sure if that’s enough for it to function without the brick but I’m not afraid to get a passive dongle and continue using the brick for this to work.

As far as the monitor’s concerned I was already looking for one with a stand since I plan on getting a nice mechanical keyboard/wired mouse combo for it. One thing I‘m considering doing is building some shelving just above the desk’s soon-to-be location so that I can rest the laptop there and provide some air to it via a cooling pad.

Just make sure to get a dongle with enough USB ports for your keyboard, mouse, headphones, webcam, and whatever else. With Tbolt + USB-C, you can put as many devices as you want in there.

I got this stand for my monitor, keeps my laptop plenty cool:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09NFQML72/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[Susanna]

Preorders are already out for the new Snapdragon Elite machines:
View attachment 6033890

These are basically Apple prices without the Apple clout bonus and worse support for x86 emulation. I worry that this product category is DOA.

It’ll also have dramatically worse performance, and no macOS support (macOS is a huge selling point for MacBooks, it’s by far the best laptop operating system, very smooth to use with trackpad gestures).
Qualcomm cheats, this is very well known. As they say we can expect M4 performance from this thing, I expect it to actually perform about as well as an A14 while drawing low-end x86 levels of power.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

These are basically Apple prices without the Apple clout bonus and worse support for x86 emulation. I worry that this product category is DOA.

I thought I had seen more optimism around pricing just recently, like near-$1000 machines leaked, but I haven't been paying that much attention. The only one I know for sure is the dev kit, which is $900 for the top model with a high TDP limit, and people were complaining since it's higher than the previous dev kits.

If Windows on ARM fails yet again, heads will roll in Redmond.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

An Intel presentation for Lunar Lake leaked (archive). Photos for ants indicate that the Skymont E-cores could bring a 38/68% IPC gain (68% likely for floating point/vector math only). That would be gigantic, but a large double digit gain isn't unprecedented (see Goldmont Plus to Tremont) and it could come at the expense of the E-core becoming relatively larger.

A 30% IPC gain would mean that Skymont cores would feel like low-clocked Golden Cove (Alder Lake's P-core), just as Gracemont is compared to low-clocked Skylake cores. Crestmont in between Gracemont and Skymont is only about a 3-4% gain. A new all E-core die (sequel to Alder Lake-N) based on Skymont would be a huge upgrade. I'm guessing it would have single-threaded performance like Zen 2 despite having lower clocks. Multiply the N100's PassMark single (1959) by 1.3, and you get 2547 which is similar to Zen 2 chips.

Lunar Lake would be manufactured entirely by TSMC (archive), with N3B for the compute tile and N6 for the SoC tile. As was already leaked before, there are no LP E-cores as found in Meteor Lake.

 

[Overly Serious]

Preorders are already out for the new Snapdragon Elite machines:
View attachment 6033890

These are basically Apple prices without the Apple clout bonus and worse support for x86 emulation. I worry that this product category is DOA.

Bong price for that is £1,800 so I don't know why the US version is so high unless those are Canadian dollars (in which case why low?). Either way though, that's a Lenovo's premium line. Microsoft's ARM-based Surface Laptop is starting at £1,049 and the Snapdragon Plus doesn't look that much different than the Snapdragon Elite to me. The starting model for the Surface Laptop has 16GB RAM which is plenty for normal users. Everything I'm seeing with the ARM devices is looking pretty good. I'm waiting on reviews but open to getting one. The software compatibility list is impressive. And Docker for Windows on ARM w/ WSL has already released so that's a big part of my needs covered.

I don't really game but this shows off the level of compatibility we're looking at:

https://www.worksonwoa.com/

I also watched this presentation the other week introducing it at Microsoft Build:

https://build.microsoft.com/en-US/sessions/9d806202-be61-4b5d-ba0d-59ecfcaf0482

Qualcomm are also claiming both the Plus and the Elite are significantly faster in multi-threaded than the M3. Combined with having Windows rather than MacOS (which I loathe), I'm pretty interested in this.

 

[WelperHelper99]

Guess who finished his computer? Me. Asrock z690 extreme wifi 6e, i9 12900k, 64 gigs of ram. 4.5 tb total storage spread over 3 nvme drives and one 500 gig sata ssd, 64 gigs DDR4 3200 dual channel Crucial ram, aio cooler, MSI 4070 super slim, Hitachi DVD drive from 2010, 1000 watt psu, and Windows 11 pro as the OS.

I'm finished, this is done, took me 8 hours with my buddy last night to put it together, still needs a little set up, but otherwise, i am finished. Is this what victory feels like?

 

[Fcret]

I don't really game but this shows off the level of compatibility we're looking at:
https://www.worksonwoa.com/

It's not raw-compatibility I'm talking about, but speed. Apple's M-series chips implement certain aspects of x86's memory model specifically for the purposes of faster execution of translated x86 code. This is why you get ~80% performance of a purely native ARM application on Apple silicon when using rosetta2.

Qualcomm has already confirmed that it's not implementing things like TSO and is more or less sticking to a pure ARM implementation, so I imagine a lot of x86 binaries will run quite poorly.

 

[mandatorylurk]

Did anyone ever get an intel GPU like an A380 or even 770? A friend is looking to not get a new family computer (yet) but wanting to clean it up for better office/web browsing, and an A380 is $120 right now, well below the standard cure-all 1650 that's still usually $150-170. It's an intel 9700k processor that looks like it's using the onboard graphics so any graphics card will help it, but I was thinking an A380 with doubling the ram will really clean it up.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Did anyone ever get an intel GPU like an A380 or even 770? A friend is looking to not get a new family computer (yet) but wanting to clean it up for better office/web browsing, and an A380 is $120 right now, well below the standard cure-all 1650 that's still usually $150-170. It's an intel 9700k processor that looks like it's using the onboard graphics so any graphics card will help it, but I was thinking an A380 with doubling the ram will really clean it up.

I use HD 530/630 Intel iGPUs. I don't think you need to "clean it up" for office/web browsing. It is fast enough for those, can decode 4K videos, and can play Skyrim in 720p.

I wouldn't rule out picking up an A380 for some more demanding task or gaming, especially if it was $99. Look for a cheap 32 GB RAM deal ($50-60, check Slickdeals) and add that. Grab a 64 GB kit if it goes to $100 or lower and you want to feel like a king.

 

[Higgs Bonbon]

for pride month I'm marrying my 970

 

[DavidS877]

Did anyone ever get an intel GPU like an A380 or even 770? A friend is looking to not get a new family computer (yet) but wanting to clean it up for better office/web browsing, and an A380 is $120 right now, well below the standard cure-all 1650 that's still usually $150-170. It's an intel 9700k processor that looks like it's using the onboard graphics so any graphics card will help it, but I was thinking an A380 with doubling the ram will really clean it up.

Make sure the MB supports resizable BAR. Not sure if it's critical on the A380, but apparently on the A770 it causes significant performance loss.

I'm sad I got an A770. It can game, but that's about it, all the AI stuff is currently more or less unsupported. Luckily I have a sucker, er, friend, I can give it to who will be happy with the upgrade.