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

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

You can get good performance with surpsingly old cards. If you're getting into content creation like 3D and video you can get by with what you have, you will likely not push any real limits of your hardware and that's not a diss.

Hot tip: If you put X dollars down and feel that you get X dollars worth and it's X dollars you can comfortably spend then you've made a good deal. Look at how long your current card have held up.

Definitely, that R7 was a good purchase, considering it was already a budget card when i bought it for like 130$. My entire tower costed me like 500$ but held up surprisingly well and games from the current gen are playable albeit with modest specs and fps . It definitely can't handle new ones coming out though, i tried with horizon zero dawn and RDR2 and neither will even start, apparently they just don't work with older AMD cards and i am really not expecting i could run anything that will come out from now on so i won't even bother to waste my bandwidth on torrents to try them out. The pc i had before this one lasted me for like 8 years too and that one definitely wasn't high end, i always squeeze the most of it, so i am not in a rush or anything but it would be nice to save some money and treat myself, but i think even a 1000$ budget s lowballing given the current state of things.

 

[Fren]

Since Radeon put out some great new cards: How is doing Vulcan atm?
I´v had Nvidia Cards in my last two PCs and now I´m thinking switching for my next PC I will build after Christmas.

 

[CreamyHerman’s]

A few days ago I found a old Core 2 Quad in one of my drawers. I think it may have come out of an old Dell computer I had years ago. What should I do with it?

Build a retro PC

 

[An Avenging Bird]

Apparently there is going to be a CES Special GeForce Event on January 12 where it is rumored that the RTX 3080 Ti will be unveiled.

Join us for an NVIDIA GeForce RTX: Game On Special Broadcast Event

Explore the latest innovations in gaming and graphics on January 12, 2021 at 09:00 PST.

www.nvidia.com

Personally, I say Nvidia (and AMD) really needs to develop a product line specifically targeting cryptomining. Get that market the hell out of the gaming sphere.
Because stock is so absolutely depleted that many current and would-be PC enthusiasts are saying fuck it I'm just buying a next gen console, and then those customers are gone.
Short-term gains over long-term benefits and all that.

 

[Aqua Panda]

Getting really sick of all the miners and bots/scalpers eating up stock the second any of the new 30xx cards becomes available. I've been lurking multiple storefronts for a RTX 3060ti and have had the card pulled from my cart multiple times now before I can checkout.

It's made even worse that the old last gen cards are all now out of production and there is literally nothing else on the market that can be a viable substitute. (AMD cards are in the same boat.) I lived and found a card during the big mining craze a few years ago, but it's just barren right now.

I know that the current new console generation is experiencing something similar. To the point that Sony has come out and said that only 1 out of 3 new ps5's actually had a game purchased for them.

 

[Overly Serious]

Personally, I say Nvidia (and AMD) really needs to develop a product line specifically targeting cryptomining. Get that market the hell out of the gaming sphere.
Because stock is so absolutely depleted that many current and would-be PC enthusiasts are saying fuck it I'm just buying a next gen console, and then those customers are gone.
Short-term gains over long-term benefits and all that.

The two different lines of GPUs would still be competing with each other for the limited silicon production capacity. It's not a terrible idea because if done right it could be a form of ring-fencing for non-mining suitable GPUs to protect gamers. But it wouldn't mean there would be any more graphics cards on the market and when miners have bought up all of "theirs" what's to stop them falling back on buying up the gaming-focused ones anyway just because it's better than no card at all?

I think you could only pull this off by making the cards fundamentally inefficient for mining and I don't think that's viable. You could put some kind of stuff in the drivers to detect popular mining programs I guess maybe but I doubt that couldn't be circumvented quite easily. Essentially you have a hardware device specifically created to do massively parallel calculations and are trying to find a way to stop people using it for its basic purpose.

You could increase manufacturing capacity by releasing on different nodes maybe? But performance per watt is the most critical feature of mining so the miners will always want the latest cards.

Controls to limit cards to one per buyer, imperfect though they are, may be the only thing that makes a dent.

 

[An Avenging Bird]

The two different lines of GPUs would still be competing with each other for the limited silicon production capacity. It's not a terrible idea because if done right it could be a form of ring-fencing for non-mining suitable GPUs to protect gamers. But it wouldn't mean there would be any more graphics cards on the market and when miners have bought up all of "theirs" what's to stop them falling back on buying up the gaming-focused ones anyway just because it's better than no card at all?

I think you could only pull this off by making the cards fundamentally inefficient for mining and I don't think that's viable. You could put some kind of stuff in the drivers to detect popular mining programs I guess maybe but I doubt that couldn't be circumvented quite easily. Essentially you have a hardware device specifically created to do massively parallel calculations and are trying to find a way to stop people using it for its basic purpose.

You could increase manufacturing capacity by releasing on different nodes maybe? But performance per watt is the most critical feature of mining so the miners will always want the latest cards.

Controls to limit cards to one per buyer, imperfect though they are, may be the only thing that makes a dent.

I hear you as those are all very good points. Not just the silicon limitations but also memory for the units having a limited supply.
Also, I am correct in stating that mining requires more effort all the time, meaning it takes more power to achieve today than yesterday?
So inventory is destined to be even further depleted.

What may be the only hope is crypto taking a huge hit as then it isn't a viable investment anymore. Hopefully by RTX 4080 time.
Because fuck me, as it stands I have the means but no opportunity to upgrade since there's squadoosh to purchase without playing the scalpers' game.

 

[CreamyHerman’s]

Personally, I say Nvidia (and AMD) really needs to develop a product line specifically targeting cryptomining. Get that market the hell out of the gaming sphere

The issue with that is the turmoil of cryptocurrency. They had mining variants of the 580/570/1060, then crypto crashed and nobody was buying cards that didn’t have video ports on them. It was a good time to get your hands on a 8GB 580 for 120 bucks though, none of this bullshit going on with eBay

 

[Long Tongue Silver]

So I got a 1070 Ti and one of those 16:10 Dell Ultrasharps. I can afford to hang tight until the invisible anus of Adam Smith unclenches itself and shits me out a 3070, right?

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Also, I am correct in stating that mining requires more effort all the time, meaning it takes more power to achieve today than yesterday?

Yes, each block mined/won is set to take a certain amount of time, when hardware is added to speed things up the crypto system compensates by making the mining more complex. Someone adding more/faster hardware increases their chances to get those coins, they might go from controlling 2% of the total computational power to 3.5% if they buy 5,000 RTX 3080's(completely made up numbers). That means they now have a 3.5% chance of getting the coins in every hourly block(or whatever it is now). That is until someone gets their hands on 8,000 6800XT's, then that 3.5% becomes 1.7% and buying more cards is the only way to fix that.

Completely made up numbers, but you get the idea.

Getting really sick of all the miners and bots/scalpers eating up stock the second any of the new 30xx cards becomes available. I've been lurking multiple storefronts for a RTX 3060ti and have had the card pulled from my cart multiple times now before I can checkout.

It's made even worse that the old last gen cards are all now out of production and there is literally nothing else on the market that can be a viable substitute. (AMD cards are in the same boat.) I lived and found a card during the big mining craze a few years ago, but it's just barren right now.

During the craziest days of crypto mining, where NOTHING could be bought, I actually snagged a GTX 1050 for MSRP. One place that I didn't even know sold graphics cards said that they were expecting a shipment so I camped that page of their webstore and after a week they suddenly had 1,000+ in stock for MSRP(~$99 including VAT) and I bought that shit so fast... Within half an hour their stock was depleted. That they had them in stock and sold them at that price was so surprising that I didn't actually expect them to honor my order.

I saw this a couple of weeks ago and meant to post it here. Very impressive multi-GPU scaling. Not that many games support it though.

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT in mGPU: 2 x Big Navi GPUs = Insane Performance

What's better than one of AMD's new Big Navi-powered Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics cards? Two of them in mGPU mode and benchmarked.

www.tweaktown.com

 

[CreamyHerman’s]

People talk shit about the 1660 Super/ti but they're both pretty good cards for 1080p Ultra/1440p High settings. Good ~$250(MSRP) GPU for driving all but the least optimized modern titles.

The reason why people talk shit about those cards is because they're essentially the same performance as a 1070.. for the same price as one used and has only 6GB of VRAM. My buddy who was in the market for a GPU said this about upgrading from the 1060 to 1660: "Oh wow, 1060 to 1070 in 2 years, what a steal!". They're debatably nothing cards for those that want 1070 performance but are afraid to hop on the used market.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Yes, each block mined/won is set to take a certain amount of time, when hardware is added to speed things up the crypto system compensates by making the mining more complex. Someone adding more/faster hardware increases their chances to get those coins, they might go from controlling 2% of the total computational power to 3.5% if they buy 5,000 RTX 3080's(completely made up numbers). That means they now have a 3.5% chance of getting the coins in every hourly block(or whatever it is now). That is until someone gets their hands on 8,000 6800XT's, then that 3.5% becomes 1.7% and buying more cards is the only way to fix that.

Completely made up numbers, but you get the idea.

During the craziest days of crypto mining, where NOTHING could be bought, I actually snagged a GTX 1050 for MSRP. One place that I didn't even know sold graphics cards said that they were expecting a shipment so I camped that page of their webstore and after a week they suddenly had 1,000+ in stock for MSRP(~$99 including VAT) and I bought that shit so fast... Within half an hour their stock was depleted. That they had them in stock and sold them at that price was so surprising that I didn't actually expect them to honor my order.

I saw this a couple of weeks ago and meant to post it here. Very impressive multi-GPU scaling. Not that many games support it though.
View attachment 1796093View attachment 1796094View attachment 1796095

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT in mGPU: 2 x Big Navi GPUs = Insane Performance

What's better than one of AMD's new Big Navi-powered Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics cards? Two of them in mGPU mode and benchmarked.

www.tweaktown.com

Ouch, and Nvidia won't let you SLI on other than the 3090.

My 1080 Ti incidentally is from the mining peak of 2017. It was Scan's former display model that I lucked out on. As such it's a blower version which fit nicely with the case I had at the time inasmuch as it fires the hot air out the back rather than dumping it into the case. Which is why I was hoping at the time to get an RTX 3080 FE because the fore and aft cooler on that is basically a double blower.

As regards the rest of your post, this just proves what I've said all along about crypto mining. In a gold rush, the real money is in selling shovels. A few people probably made a couple million out of crypto mining (or would have if they sold up) but Nvidia and AMD probably made billions out of it.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Ouch, and Nvidia won't let you SLI on other than the 3090.

It's not SLI or CrossFire, it's the explicit multi-GPU support of DX12(plus OpenGL I think) and that's been around for quite a while. Mixing and matching cards is possible as well, even from different vendors. The game needs to support it though and that's where it gets hairy. I'm surprised that any game other than Ashes of the Benchmarkity actually supports it.

You got a 1080Ti but you should have bought a lottery ticket instead, you spent all your luck that day.

 

[Overly Serious]

It really is amazing the power of marketing and consumer culture. I keep wanting to buy one of these new generation cards even though the only game I played this past year has graphics like this:

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

It really is amazing the power of marketing and consumer culture. I keep wanting to buy one of these new generation cards even though the only game I played this past year has graphics like this:

Yup, that's the upgrade itch lol. I'd upgrade my 3600X to a 5600X if I could even though it probably wouldn't matter for anything I do.

Doesn't help that I could probably probably get $200 for my used cpu when I bought it for $170 a year ago. Thankfully, upgrading the utilities in my house is taking care of my spending itch

 

[Secret Asshole]

Apparently there is going to be a CES Special GeForce Event on January 12 where it is rumored that the RTX 3080 Ti will be unveiled.

View attachment 1794284

Join us for an NVIDIA GeForce RTX: Game On Special Broadcast Event

Explore the latest innovations in gaming and graphics on January 12, 2021 at 09:00 PST.

www.nvidia.com

Personally, I say Nvidia (and AMD) really needs to develop a product line specifically targeting cryptomining. Get that market the hell out of the gaming sphere.
Because stock is so absolutely depleted that many current and would-be PC enthusiasts are saying fuck it I'm just buying a next gen console, and then those customers are gone.
Short-term gains over long-term benefits and all that.

Its insane. The miners buy up all the new cards and then buy up all the old ones so there's nothing left for months. And MSRP becomes 'suggested'. I have never seen a product where this is the 'norm' before.

 

[CreamyHerman’s]

Yup, that's the upgrade itch lol. I'd upgrade my 3600X to a 5600X if I could even though it probably wouldn't matter for anything I do.

Doesn't help that I could probably probably get $200 for my used cpu when I bought it for $170 a year ago. Thankfully, upgrading the utilities in my house is taking care of my spending itch

I feel the upgrade itch every time I enter VR, it’s crazy

 

[AmpleApricots]

It really is amazing the power of marketing and consumer culture. I keep wanting to buy one of these new generation cards even though the only game I played this past year has graphics like this:
View attachment 1799813
View attachment 1799815

I've figured out about a ~year-ish ago that my gaming needs can be covered by about 80% through iGPUs. Imagine my surprise.

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

I've figured out about a ~year-ish ago that my gaming needs can be covered by about 80% through iGPUs. Imagine my surprise.

If only the better Ryzen ones were ever in stock....or even released on the market in the first place. Can't wait to see Navi-based APUs.

 

[DNA_JACKED]

It really is amazing the power of marketing and consumer culture. I keep wanting to buy one of these new generation cards even though the only game I played this past year has graphics like this:
View attachment 1799813
View attachment 1799815

I REALLY wanted to get a 6800xt or even a 6800 to replace my old vega 64, and like you I think I was influenced by the power of CONSOOMing. Now that supply has been out for months I'm thinking of just waiting another generation. The two most played games for me this year so far are Star WArs Battlefront, the OG from 2004:

And Sins Of a Solar Empire Rebellion

Neither of which require a supercomputer to run.

Definitely, that R7 was a good purchase, considering it was already a budget card when i bought it for like 130$. My entire tower costed me like 500$ but held up surprisingly well and games from the current gen are playable albeit with modest specs and fps . It definitely can't handle new ones coming out though, i tried with horizon zero dawn and RDR2 and neither will even start, apparently they just don't work with older AMD cards and i am really not expecting i could run anything that will come out from now on so i won't even bother to waste my bandwidth on torrents to try them out. The pc i had before this one lasted me for like 8 years too and that one definitely wasn't high end, i always squeeze the most of it, so i am not in a rush or anything but it would be nice to save some money and treat myself, but i think even a 1000$ budget s lowballing given the current state of things.

The R7 cards are all GCN. They support DX12, there is no reason they shouldnt run either RDR2 or HZD. When they say "older AMD cards" They're referring to Evergreen, EG the HD 6000 series and lower, which are unsupported.

What card do you have? It may be time for a OS reinstall, could easily be a software issue instead of hardware.

Since Radeon put out some great new cards: How is doing Vulcan atm?
I´v had Nvidia Cards in my last two PCs and now I´m thinking switching for my next PC I will build after Christmas.

Vulkan is only used in a handful of titles, and most of those were from iD, who is now owned by microshaft. So I wouldnt count on vulkan seeing widespread use anytime soon.