# Unpopular opinion: GPU shortage is actually a good time



## The red spirit (Jun 14, 2021)

This isn't a troll thread, but for real not everything is bad during GPU shortage. There are some great things about it:
1) It's the best time to appreciate low end hardware
2) It forces people to know which settings to adjust in order to get a better experience
3) It forces people to be more creative, when it comes to graphics card buying
4) It's the best time to revisit classic PC games
5) It's a good time to just appreciate what you already have
6) It certainly helps to reduce conspicuous consumerism
7) If GPU shortage lasts a long time, then PC game makers will be forced to make games that run on lower end specs and that's good news for low end gamers (also FSR)

Frankly those threads about "oh no, RTX 3080 isn't available" are getting annoying. And to be honest, I never liked high end hardware. This GPU shortage just uncovered how much snobbism there is and it seems that most people that are into PC gaming aren't in PC gaming at all, but instead are just into buying high end shit and anything that isn't running at Ultra settings at 4K and at least 60 fps is literally unplayable to them. Thankfully, these times are doing a good job of getting rid of such people. And that said, in long term PC gaming may get cheaper and more accessible, that is if GPU shortage lasts long enough and instead of going bankrupt, game makers will make games that run on lower end hardware.


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## oldwalltree (Jun 14, 2021)

That is a very positive outlook for a situation most people find frustrating. You must be a glass half full person which great!


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## Liquid Cool (Jun 14, 2021)

I agree with each of your observations.  Perhaps the glass is truly half full.....

Best,

Liquid Cool


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## Shrek (Jun 14, 2021)

I still think it will speed development of video cards; miners will drive computational power.


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## silentbogo (Jun 14, 2021)

That's pretty much my thoughts on the situation as well. 
I'm still taking advantage of whatever's left of this mining boom. Sold my 2060S, bought 3060, sold it and got a few 1070Ti's for my small mining rig.
My outlook on this situation, is for the past few months I'm getting paid for self-education and honing my skills in spider solitaire. Less distractions from work, more time to do stuff at home etc. Also managed to beef-up my rig to a proper workstation level. Between videocards I was rocking a hefty "special edition" GT730 with a physical PCIe x1 slot, and AFAIK it did not interrupt my workflow a single bit. The only cons are 30FPS on my 4K monitor and no 4K Youtube, but that's not really a big deal.


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## Tomgang (Jun 14, 2021)

I see your point and it's valued points. But it doesn't change my feeling about it. I really hate this shortage, I had been looking for quite a lot to get RTX 3080 OR 3080 TI. To finnally experience a 144 Hz monitor (comming from a 10 year old 1080P 60 Hz monitor) and above 120 fps gaming after so many have talked about it and told me about how great it is. I get a 27" 1440P 144 Hz monitor and a great new system based on Zen 3 5600X and 5950X cpu. To only get gtx 1660 super as the best gpu available and still not capable of trying it out for real cause I can't get my hands on a proper gpu for it.

So even though it's annoying here others complaining about it. I do also hope you understand why some people are utter disappointed about the whole situation right now like me.


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## Jetster (Jun 14, 2021)

The high prices is going to push people to consoles eventually, PC gaming will decline, supply will become saturated, prices will plummet. I will buy up stock at a fraction of the MSRP 

A guy can dream can't he?


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## Dr. Dro (Jun 14, 2021)

I'll agree with you, but only because I managed to get my 5950X and my 3090 at MSRP.  

Nah, i'll be honest with you. What bothers me the most about the current situation is any unforeseen hardware failures. Ouch. It's gonna sting, with RX 570-4GB's fetching the same price the RTX 3060 Ti launched for in my country. I could always survive with what I had before, but yep... may the computer gods help us all and ensure our rigs have a very healthy life this generation.
You also forgot to mention that it's an amazing time to pay some mind to those components we usually gloss over as "good enough", like the monitor, keeb, mouse, and even the chair


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## evernessince (Jun 14, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> I still think it will speed development of video cards; miners will drive computational power.



More money = more R&D resources.  Once the supply issue is solved it can only be a positive IMO.


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## Sithaer (Jun 14, 2021)

Well I don't like this current situation but as a budget-at most mid range user I can relate tho those points.

I did want to upgrade earlier this year but nothing ground breaking or fancy, just my usual performance uplift I do every ~3 years.
In this case I was planning to upgrade my RX 570 4GB to a RX 5600 XT/5700 or a RTX 2060 maybe Super before the prices went up and to be honest I was also fine with the borrowed 1660 Super I tried.

Didn't happen cause I was too late _'had no spare/saved up money before the prices went up' _so I missed my chance.

That being said I'm still gaming alright/daily basis on my 570 just gotta mind the settings in new games but that I'm used to anyway since I never used/bought high end hardware.
There are few selected new games that I rather not play like this but eh there are more than enough older games in my backlog that runs with no issues even on higher/max settings + I don't care about high FPS/refresh gaming either.

In reality I can still find myself enough games to last me a year or two if not more, especially since Lost Ark is finally coming to NA/EU and I might give MMO gaming a last chance._ 'tried the Russian version for a month and I liked it'_

I still do hope that this situation will go away sooner or later cause yea if my 570 dies on me I will have to buy something and the second hand market prices aint funny where I live.


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## qubit (Jun 14, 2021)

Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but I think its garbage. It sounds like you're happy people that can afford high end hardware can't get it, because _you_ can't afford it, bringing them down to your level, rather than you aspiring to do better and you're using a whole load of specious reasoning to justify it. There's a world of difference between them and I know, because I've had both.


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## tabascosauz (Jun 14, 2021)

Everyone likes a glass half full-type person, but there's really gotta be a limit to what constitutes a "good time" like come on    are we gonna start picking positives out of SARS and coronaviruses and calling it a good time because people started working from home?

I can only appreciate those points because I bought a 2060 Super to replace my 1070 in Oct 2019. People told me I was wasting my money on a dead generation, people told me I replaced a card that didn't need replacing, people laughed at 2080 Ti owners for wasting their money......those same people aren't laughing anymore. I sold my 1070 to my friend for a reasonable price by pre-pandemic standards, and now we both have a good 1440p GPU.

I think my 4650G mini SFF HTPC is great, so great that I'll probably move to a 5600G in a month and a half. Take away my 2060 Super and that opinion will change real fast when all of a sudden about 2 of the 10 or so games remain playable, even on a heavily OC'd Vega 7 with 4200CL16.



The red spirit said:


> And that said, in long term PC gaming may get cheaper and more accessible, that is if GPU shortage lasts long enough and instead of going bankrupt, game makers will make games that run on lower end hardware.



Yeah you see, now you're just dreaming. The Xbox and PS5 exist, Apple will continue pushing GPU efficiency and power, and GPU performance doesn't just stop for want of supply. If you think future AAA titles along the lines of Halo Infinite / next COD / BF2042 are going down in hardware requirements just because "gamers" can't buy graphics cards, you're in for a very, very nasty surprise.


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## silentbogo (Jun 14, 2021)

Tomgang said:


> To only get gtx 1660 super as the best gpu available and still not capable of trying it out for real cause I can't get my hands on a proper gpu for it.


There's tons of cool older games that will satisfy your 1440p 144Hz display. Borderlands was easy enough for my old GTX950 2GB to run @1440p and playable 60-ish FPS with some setting tweaks. 4K also worked, but with dips to 30. Same for the good-ole Rage. Bioshock Infinite will do as well, or some indie shooters like QCDE or Amid Evil. Source engine games, Arkham series, Anything with DLSS, lots of MOBA/MMO-related titles etc. etc. etc. Hell, Spider Solitaire probably looks wa-a-a-y cooler at 144Hz


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## Tomgang (Jun 14, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> There's tons of cool older games that will satisfy your 1440p 144Hz display. Borderlands was easy enough for my old GTX950 2GB to run @1440p and playable 60-ish FPS with some setting tweaks. 4K also worked, but with dips to 30. Same for the good-ole Rage. Bioshock Infinite will do as well, or some indie shooters like QCDE or Amid Evil. Source engine games, Arkham series, Anything with DLSS, lots of MOBA/MMO-related titles etc. etc. etc. Hell, Spider Solitaire probably looks wa-a-a-y cooler at 144Hz


Problem is just that It's not old games I want to play now on a completely new system. I want new games. All ready waiting for Far cry 6 and Dying Light 2 and the new Forza Horizon 5. Just to name a few.

Old games was fine with X58, but I have something new now. I also want to play the new stuff. No my gpu needs will not be satisfied before I have a proper gpu capable of running newest games at ultra And high fps at 1440P. Until then I will be unsatisfied.


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## Space Lynx (Jun 14, 2021)

there are loads of games on my backlog that gtx 1070 can run just fine still, so im fine.

that being said... if I made more money than I do, I wouldn't mind having an elite system all the time.  its fine either way. it all just depends how you look at it and your current situation in life. 

shortage won't last forever.


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## Sithaer (Jun 14, 2021)

lynx29 said:


> there are loads of games on my backlog that gtx 1070 can run just fine still, so im fine.
> 
> that being said... if I made more money than I do, I wouldn't mind having an elite system all the time.  its fine either way. it all just depends how you look at it and your current situation in life.
> 
> shortage won't last forever.



Sry for the off just curious.
I take it you managed to sell your AMD system? The one with 5600X and the 6800 if I recall.

But yea 1070 is still more than capable of running bunch of good games.


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## The red spirit (Jun 14, 2021)

oldwalltree said:


> That is a very positive outlook for a situation most people find frustrating. You must be a glass half full person which great!


Oh, that's totally not true. However, I always notice that I'm oddly positive during bad times and oddly negative during good times. 

Before my current setup I used to own AMD FX 6300 and AMD RX 560 4GB. It was a good combo back then and it could run games really well. That RX 560 could run GTA 5 at 1440p medium-high settings with maxed out textures, CoD WW2 at 1440p, low settings + 2xAA + maxed out textures and mostly 50 fps. Most people dismissed RX 560 as sub 1080p card and yet that wasn't my experience at all. I got it in 2018, but soon it became clear that it wasn't going to cut it anymore. Once Far Cry 5 came out, it couldn't really do any adequate fps at 1080p and it was usable only at 1600x900 or less. It was a shame, because for me RX 560 defined Polaris. It was phenomenally cool card, that consumed around 40 watts (because I got a rarer version without 6 pin connector) and it could play games at 1440p and it was really cheap. It was a great card while it lasted, but when it ran out of steam I got RX 580. Of course it gets good fps at anything and runs games at 1440p without any problems, but imo my specific model (Powercolor Red Dragon V2) runs hot and loud and it was so stupidly loud that I could barely hear games over fan noise. I pretty much hated it since the day I bought it. It didn't help it any that it also consumes a lot of power. It basically delivers 2.5 times better performance, but at like 6 times the power consumption, when compared to RX 560. It really is a stupid card and I wish that I got some GTX 1060 6GB model instead of this. 

And then once I bought a new motherboard, RAM and CPU I wanted to put the whole system together and accident happened. I pushed CPU cooler too strongly and not only that bent motherboard pins, but some of them fell off. And I couldn't go back to FX 6300 as for some reason motherboard was no longer stable and it was very picky with RAM until it eventually stopped booting at all. So during the worst of lockdowns, I started to use my "retro" gaming computer as my main computer and it had Athlon X4 870K, 8GB DDR3, GTX 650 Ti, 1TB HDD and Windows 7. It absolutely had to work, because I was relying on it to complete my university work, but when I didn't work, I played games and it turned out to be oddly capable machine. It could run GTA 4 at 1440p well, it ran Test Drive Unlimited at 1440p Ultra and got over 60 fps, Test Drive Unlimited 2 at 1440p Ultra, CoD 2 at 1440p Ultra, Colin McRae Rally 2005 at 1920x1440 Ultra, Victoria 2 at 1440p Ultra, SimCity (2013) at 1440p Ultra, UT 2004 at 1920x1440p Ultra, Monopoly Plus at 1440p Ultra, CS:GO 1440p High. It maybe even played FEAR at 1440p Ultra. I really didn't expect 650 Ti to run TDU2 at 1440p and Ultra settings, but it did and ran at over 60 fps. Seriously, that 650 Ti was surprisingly good at what I used it for. And the most surprising thing out of all is that that system could run GTA 5 at 1080p Normal and get 40-50 fps, also run Doom 4 at 1024x768 low and sort of run Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 640x480 low with some nV control panel tweaks. And yet that machine was never supposed to do so much. Knowing that GT 1030 GDDR5 runs GTA 5 at 1080 high settings and it gets 50-60 fps, buying and using something like that wouldn't be all that bad. It likely still runs all games, just at low settings and some lower resolution. It never really was out of stock in most of this world. If it's really faster than 650 Ti, then I'm 100% sure that during lockdown you could have had a decent gaming experience in older games and often good enough experience in new games. In my region, it was the fastest card that was still at acceptable price and mostly available (although at one point people got so desperate, that they bought out all GT 1030s, GT 730s and even GT 710s, strangely enough even GeForce 210 sold quite well. There was even a local short shortage of Quadros and Radeon Pros). Right now even RX 550 4GB is somewhat available and 190 Euros. It's over MSRP, but still quite sanely priced card and it's faster than GT 1030. If there was another lockdown and that's all you could afford for entertainment, it really wouldn't be all that bad. And if you stick to older or low spec friendly games like Overwatch, Valorant or Genshin Impact, it will be totally fine. I assume that in US, it was possible to get RX 560 or even GTX 1050 and in used market I saw some RX 570s at under 200 Euros. If you needed a card that could get you by during GPU apocalypse, there were some good options and most of that camping near Microcenter drama was utterly useless. At less than ideal settings, those cards can run any game at acceptable fps.

And now that my main computer is fixed, I can now suffer in RX 580 again. The stupid thing is that with wattage reduced by 35% it's cool and quiet. I tried to mess with vBIOS and permanently lock it at that, but after a month I started to get some random black lines on screen and once I lost video output at all and also fan behaviour was odd and broken. The main fault of my work was that I have no idea what is the real difference between TDP, small power limit and maximum power limit. I probably set one of them too low and once GPU core is loaded, there may not be enough power budget left for RAMDAC and fans, explaining their not so good behaviour. It's a bit hard to explain it that way as those faults mostly happened when computer was idling, although once that happened during a mild load.

Despite RX 580 being an awful card, I will wait until those times, when it won't be able to play games at 1080p low and maybe then I will think of upgrading it. Current hardware lasts quite a while, so there's no need to upgrade it often. RX 580 still runs most titles at 1080p high and 50-70 fps. It will probably take 5 years for RX 580 to become truly obsolete and FSR just made made it last quite a bit longer.



tabascosauz said:


> Everyone likes a glass half full-type person, but there's really gotta be a limit to what constitutes a "good time" like come on    are we gonna start picking positives out of SARS and coronaviruses and calling it a good time because people started working from home?


Most people didn't get C19 and about 50% of people actually preferred working from home, rather than in physical workplace. Due to special conditions I found time to spend about 1 hour outdoors and enjoy thick snow without seeing another almost any people during any day of the weak in middle of the city. That wasn't so bad at all and I sometimes walked for 3 hours and managed to reach some places on foot that I have never walked to. I also started growing small ginger root at home and managed to get Emerald badge at WCG's Open Pandemics project. I personally had a great time during lockdown. My relatives had either neutral or slightly negative experience. Some people certainly didn't like lockdowns, but some people loved them. It's complicated and depending on your specific conditions, it could have turned out well or awfully. 




tabascosauz said:


> Yeah you see, now you're just dreaming. The Xbox and PS5 exist, Apple will continue pushing GPU efficiency and power, and GPU performance doesn't just stop for want of supply. If you think future AAA titles along the lines of Halo Infinite / next COD / BF2042 are going down in hardware requirements just because "gamers" can't buy graphics cards, you're in for a very, very nasty surprise.


Eh, who knows. I don't really expect that, but it would be rather logical step. And during GPU shortage sure those things exist, but you also have same limited supply issue and currently a pricing issue too. Obviously those AAA titles won't have any lower spec friendly settings as game development takes years and there's a lot of planning ahead and making some deals ahead of time. Pretty much everything about them is already pre-planned, so GPU shortage would need to be truly long and likely even more severe for games to become lower spec friendly. But who knows, maybe some devs will manage to make something easier to run on lower end hardware. Indie devs are more likely to react to such things, if their game development time is quite short.


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## tabascosauz (Jun 15, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Despite RX 580 being an awful card, I will wait until those times, when it won't be able to play games at 1080p low and maybe then I will think of upgrading it.



Hardly an awful card......when my main rig is down for whatever reason, I'd love to have RX580/GTX1060-level performance in a 75W low profile card.

If you had a regular 10400 and had to make do with UHD 630, I'm sure you would have a very different opinion lol.



The red spirit said:


> Eh, who knows. I don't really expect that, but it would be rather logical step. And during GPU shortage sure those things exist, but you also have same limited supply issue and currently a pricing issue too. Obviously those AAA titles won't have any lower spec friendly settings as game development takes years and there's a lot of planning ahead and making some deals ahead of time. Pretty much everything about them is already pre-planned, so GPU shortage would need to be truly long and likely even more severe for games to become lower spec friendly. But who knows, maybe some devs will manage to make something easier to run on lower end hardware. Indie devs are more likely to react to such things, if their game development time is quite short.



Indie games are always going to be simpler, smaller, less demanding. That has nothing to do with the GPU shortage.



The red spirit said:


> Most people didn't get C19 and about 50% of people actually preferred working from home, rather than in physical workplace. Due to special conditions I found time to spend about 1 hour outdoors and enjoy thick snow without seeing another almost any people during any day of the weak in middle of the city. That wasn't so bad at all and I sometimes walked for 3 hours and managed to reach some places on foot that I have never walked to. I also started growing small ginger root at home and managed to get Emerald badge at WCG's Open Pandemics project. I personally had a great time during lockdown. My relatives had either neutral or slightly negative experience. Some people certainly didn't like lockdowns, but some people loved them. It's complicated and depending on your specific conditions, it could have turned out well or awfully.



Happy to hear that you were able to find new experiences and enjoyment in the pandemic, it for sure ain't easy. Unfortunately, not everyone had that sort of experience.

I have a less well-off friend who had the misfortune of finally pulling the trigger on getting into PC gaming, on the eve of the GPU shortage. Man's stuck with a physically questionable GTX 650 Ti - if it kicks the bucket, the entire PC is unusable, because he's on a second-hand X99 that he got for cheap. He doesn't have the resources to get a scalper card or a scalped 2nd hand card, and doesn't have the money to buy/resell an OEM PC for the GPU. His line of work also doesn't afford him the opportunity to work from home, or have time to go out and explore, or honestly other hobbies of any kind. In light of current financial pressures and stresses from other life events for him, gaming is proving quite a bit more important than just a privileged side hobby that he should put down in favour of going outside for a walk.

By the time I knew of his intentions, I had already sold the 1070 to my other friend. Had I known, I would've told had him get a 1660 Super (available at the time) so the 1070 could go to someone who actually really needs it.


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## ThrashZone (Jun 15, 2021)

Hi,
I'd add more worth wild hobbies in the same price range 
I can buy a freaking little car for 2k.us same price as a 3090 lol


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## maxx2575 (Jun 15, 2021)

I had the money to buy the 5700XT I wanted but I thought "well they're most likely going to release the 6700 so I'll wait for that." this was just after the 6900 and 6800 were just released and I had no idea it would be this way. I am sad


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## Solaris17 (Jun 15, 2021)

I always skip generations anyway. I think for people that generally bulk build machines like myself all at once instead of throwing parts at it every 6 months are less affected than others.

I feel for people who wanted or needed to upgrade this gen, but TBH the shortage doesnt affect me at all.


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## R-T-B (Jun 15, 2021)

I sort of have always not minded when hardware stagnates, secretly.

It means less upgrading.  Yes there are drawbacks but it helps at Christmas time to know my rig is still good... lol.

The last time I remember thinking this was when Intel was dominating the CPU market, and my X58 was holding up way too well for what I could justify to upgrade.  But still.

I mean, I probably have no room to talk being I actually finally got an Ampere at msrp, but yeah, I did anyways lol.


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## chrcoluk (Jun 15, 2021)

I got my RTX 3080 FE at MSRP.

The problem with this half glass full theory, at least in the UK many sold their old cards seeing the inflated market, thinking it wouldnt be too hard to get a new one and now have rigs with no GPU in.

I didnt sell my old GPU until I managed to get my 3080.


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## ThrashZone (Jun 15, 2021)

Solaris17 said:


> I always skip generations anyway. I think for people that generally bulk build machines like myself all at once instead of throwing parts at it every 6 months are less affected than others.
> 
> I feel for people who wanted or needed to upgrade this gen, but TBH the shortage doesnt affect me at all.


Hi,
I skipped 20 series it was tough but makes skipping 30 easier for sure 
I picked up a evga b stock 980ti for 150.us just before all this nonsense hit wish I would of got two or three lol


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## elghinnarisa (Jun 15, 2021)

If I was able to get a hold of low-end cards, then I would agree. But seeing as I am generally unable to get anything other than an occasional GT730, I do not agree.

Even using older low end hardware is generally fine, my sister have a 1050Ti in her computer, as I have in my laptop as well, and its does just fine for my gaming needs really. I very much prefer the RTX3070 in my desktop but I dont _need _it to enjoy my games. I can enjoy games all the way down to 30fps without concern. I would however enjoy them a lot more at 120fps for that extra smoothness. 

But as it is now, I had to try and find a GPU for computers in which the GPU had died, and I just can't. There arn't any, of any kind. And I am not paying twice the old new price for a 5 year old used GTX 960.
So instead one has to sit there and spam f5 for days on end to find _anything _and I do not see that as a positive experience at all because it doesn't lead me to appreciate low end hardware, it leads to me *no hardware at all*


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## The red spirit (Jun 15, 2021)

tabascosauz said:


> Hardly an awful card......when my main rig is down for whatever reason, I'd love to have RX580/GTX1060-level performance in a 75W low profile card.


Well RX 580 core itself isn't bad at all, but what Powercolor did with cooler is awful. Imagine playing Tomb Raider and hearing two fans wooshing at 3k rpm, becasue some bloke at PowerColor thought it was a good idea to set temperature target at 70C.

And RX 580 performance at 75 watts is sort of possible now. RX 5500 XT was RX 580 fast and at lower wattage. 1650 Super performed a bit better than RX 580, but it also was lower wattage then RX 580. With minimal TDP tuning and undervolting, it might be doable to make it into 75 watt card, but there's nothing that you can do about low profile form factor. 1650 was the best bet, but it wasn't as fast as RX 580.



tabascosauz said:


> If you had a regular 10400 and had to make do with UHD 630, I'm sure you would have a very different opinion lol.


I doubt it. It has rather okay graphics, that are sort of on par with GT 730 DDR3. It may be okay at 720p. I helped some other person to build a PC on other forum and that person used some old Windows XP era laptop, he built a machine with i7 9700K and decided to not buy graphics card, because integrated graphics were good enough for him. So, I would be pretty excited to try out the regular 10400. That's not really all that low end. I have used nVidia FX 5200 128MB card and I was happy that it ran Far Cry at 800x600 minimum settings with maxed out textures and it got 30-40 fps (it's slower than GeForce 2 GTS). The only thing that I truly fear is nVidia 6150 Go. That's the first GPU that is literally so bad that it's unusable. The only notable thing that it can do is run UT 2004 at 640x480 with minimum settings and get 40 fps and score really low in 3DMark 2001 SE, which is 1300 points. That's like literally slower than Radeon 7000 SDR. It's probably the only thing on Earth that I could never recommend to anyone.




tabascosauz said:


> I have a less well-off friend who had the misfortune of finally pulling the trigger on getting into PC gaming, on the eve of the GPU shortage. Man's stuck with a physically questionable GTX 650 Ti - if it kicks the bucket, the entire PC is unusable, because he's on a second-hand X99 that he got for cheap. He doesn't have the resources to get a scalper card or a scalped 2nd hand card, and doesn't have the money to buy/resell an OEM PC for the GPU. His line of work also doesn't afford him the opportunity to work from home, or have time to go out and explore, or honestly other hobbies of any kind. In light of current financial pressures and stresses from other life events for him, gaming is proving quite a bit more important than just a privileged side hobby that he should put down in favour of going outside for a walk.
> 
> By the time I knew of his intentions, I had already sold the 1070 to my other friend. Had I known, I would've told had him get a 1660 Super (available at the time) so the 1070 could go to someone who actually really needs it.


Oh well, that's quite sad, but physically questionable bit is so oddly familiar. My GTX 650 Ti has one resistor (I guess it is a resistor, but I'm not sure) missing after accident. I thought that card was toast, but it works just fine without it, so . If you want to help him and don't spend a lot of money, you could get him Ryzen APU with board and RAM. 10 year old hardware is certainly questionable and you never know when it will fail and Ryzen APU should be somewhat faster than GTX 650 Ti or maybe i3 10100 with RX 560 4GB.


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## wolf (Jun 15, 2021)

I like your attitude, but on a balance I wouldn't call it a good time, so much money has gone to the 'wong' people, depending on your perspective. I'd probably do a few of your suggestions if I missed out, but that's just making the best of a bad situation.

I count myself _*exceptionally*_ lucky (despite putting in the 'work' at launch time) to have gotten a launch 3080, especially with the insane market and now 3080Ti being abysmal value even if you compare MSRP vs MSRP. In Australia, we always get hit with higher prices, but even my $1399 AUD TUF 3080, is not only perpetually out of stock, but is listed at $2049 AUD straight from the retailer.

I suppose I'd have been fine on my GTX1080 still if I hadn't gotten so lucky, but I skipped a gen waiting for this series, I can readily admit I wouldn't have your rosy attitude if I missed out, and _still _didn't have one. Power to you.


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## 80251 (Jun 15, 2021)

Aside from how the play ended how did you enjoy the rest of the performance Ms. Lincoln?


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## 64K (Jun 15, 2021)

I don't really have to but I've gone back and playing my backlog of old games. I just started Duke Nukem 3D. I started it years and years ago but never finished it. There are a lot of games that are fun to play that you don't need a modern GPU. GOG is hosting a sale now if anyone wants to look around.


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## The red spirit (Jun 15, 2021)

64K said:


> I don't really have to but I've gone back and playing my backlog of old games. I just started Duke Nukem 3D. I started it years and years ago but never finished it. There are a lot of games that are fun to play that you don't need a modern GPU. GOG is hosting a sale now if anyone wants to look around.


I play a lot of Victoria 2, which runs on anything that renders 3D and on anything that's X86 compatible.


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## birdie (Jun 15, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> ...



Looks like you're new here. According to Steam HW Survey over 70% of people run by today's standard low-end GPUs and never leave comments on any of major tech websites. What you see on TPU/LTT/Hardware Unboxxed/etc. are computer enthusiasts who are ready to throw thousands of dollars just to get the best experience money can buy.

Even here on TPU most people run 1440p HRR monitors, not 4K most reviewers are so obsessed with. ~25% of TPU users still run 1080p monitors for which the likes of RTX 3080 are just a bloody overkill, nothing less, nothing more. 4K users on the other hand? Around 12%.

I'd really be glad if tech reviewers paid more attention to average people who can barely afford RTX 2060 and they certainly don't pair it with the Ryzen 9 5950X or Intel Core i9 11900K.


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## The red spirit (Jun 15, 2021)

birdie said:


> Looks like you're new here. According to Steam HW Survey over 70% of people run by today's standard low-end GPUs and never leave comments on any of major tech websites. What you see on TPU/LTT/Hardware Unboxxed/etc. are computer enthusiasts who are ready to throw thousands of dollars just to get the best experience money can buy.
> 
> Even here on TPU most people run 1440p HRR monitors, not 4K most reviewers are so obsessed with. ~25% of TPU users still run 1080p monitors for which the likes of RTX 3080 are just a bloody overkill, nothing less, nothing more. 4K users on the other hand? Around 12%.
> 
> I'd really be glad if tech reviewers paid more attention to average people who can barely afford RTX 2060 and they certainly don't pair it with the Ryzen 9 5950X or Intel Core i9 11900K.


But isn't 1440p monitor at 120Hz kinda the same same as 4K in power you need to drive one? 1440p is half of 4K, but you need twice the fps, so in the end it would be the same granted that there aren't any card bottlenecks like inadequate memory bandwidth or slow core. And you still can get like 70-80 fps with RX 580 at 1440p at medium-high settings. Take a look at performance graphs:









As long as you don't play games at Ultra, RX 580 should be fine for 70-80 fps at 1440p. That's not weak at all. And there are settings that don't affect performance like texture quality and anisotropic filtering. You likely can set textures to max and anisotropic to 16X and have a nice graphics boost. Also not all settings in game impact performance the same. And if you tweak all those things, you end up with mixture of settings and games looking fine at 1440p and 70-80 fps.

But here's another thing, people at TPU for some reason are all so obsessed with latest titles and that's one thing that I feel isn't entirely right as games like entertainment, a form of media and as long as they run, they don't really become obsolete. There are a lot of old titles that were much more fun to play than new ones and if game is truly good, then it's timeless. And some people also enjoy emulators, for which you don't need much GPU power, but instead need a lot of CPU power. And there might be some random indie titles that you found and liked too. I think that in the end you simply end up with mixture of old, new, emulated and indie titles. In terms of graphics hardware, only new games are very taxing and if you have a weak GPU, well, there's still a lot of stuff that you can enjoy. Something like RX 550 might not be great at latest games, but it can run them all at low settings and on top of that basically 75% of your game library will be the games that don't require nearly as much graphics power and you can run them really well. 

Assuming that you spend some time tweaking settings, for 1440p 120 Hz gaming you need only one step above RX 580, which is Vega 56 or GTX1070, which converted to never cards is GTX 1660 Super or RX 5600 XT and that's way below anything RTX 3000 series. According to TPU's relative performance graph, RTX 3080 is 272% faster than 1660 Super. And going by my logic that end sup way overkill for just 1440p 120 Hz. Perhaps that's what you need to get all those fps and play at Ultra settings, I admit I don't know, because I never bought hardware with intentions to max out games. I can understand wanting more, but ever so often there's not much difference graphically in games that would make Ultra settings worth the performance hit. I really relate a lot to this video:









And here's a little bonus, RX 550 can achieve 50 fps in pretty much any modern title. Sure at potato settings, but at least it runs them all well:


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## outpt (Jun 15, 2021)

got blender doing some rendering as i react to this post. it is something different and fun if not difficult to learn. not everything has to be about gaming. try something different. it just might be fun and a welcome distraction. my 2 cents


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## arni-gx (Jun 20, 2021)

today.........in my city, the price of gainward GeForce RTX™ 3070 Phantom "GS" is US$ 1600-1660, since the last Q1 2021...........


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## Vayra86 (Jun 22, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> This isn't a troll thread, but for real not everything is bad during GPU shortage. There are some great things about it:
> 1) It's the best time to appreciate low end hardware
> 2) It forces people to know which settings to adjust in order to get a better experience
> 3) It forces people to be more creative, when it comes to graphics card buying
> ...



Spot on.

Small caveat, youre not playing much if your GPU somehow finds the render retirement home.

Other than that yeah, we are not missing much not having high end hardware really. A small handful of new games actually worth playing can also run fine on a 2016 GPU and no RT. Games run fine at 50-70 FPS on decent monitors and variable refresh options are also an option. 

And yes... retro gaming ftw. Im 35 hours in Shin megami tensei Nocturne with pcsx2.. Best game I have already played but it still works better than many newer iterations of (j)RPG. Also not being in snowflake land or kiddie /fortnite game land copies is refreshing in a great way. Shows of real creativity instead of a tightly managed PR story infecting the game. And the apprecation of talent involved in making older games as they are with limited tools and hardware. Some stuff is truly brilliant in its simplicity.

Yep. We're old


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## The red spirit (Jun 22, 2021)

Vayra86 said:


> Yep. We're old


Oh well, I'm the oldest 21 year old now.


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## 64K (Jun 22, 2021)

Marketing pressures gamers to think that they need the latest and greatest GPU around or your missing out. Some games I can't even see a difference in picture quality going from Ultra Settings to High Settings.


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## The red spirit (Jun 22, 2021)

64K said:


> Marketing pressures gamers to think that they need the latest and greatest GPU around or your missing out. Some games I can't even see a difference in picture quality going from Ultra Settings to High Settings.


Oh and AMD finally rolled out FSR. I watched some reviews about it and it looks really good and gives a massive performance boost. That and if you have Radeon, then you can use Radeon sharpening  on top of it and you can make games look great. I personally found out that games that look blurry with FXAA look better with some sharpening. And if FSR works great during motion, then that pretty much means that AMD just killed DLSS, as FSR seems to be far better than DLSS 2.0.

Oh and yeah, there's a lot of marketing and social pressure for gamers to want way better hardware than they actually need. It's one of the most sensitive markets to various marketing nonsense.


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## claes (Jun 23, 2021)

There’s a difference between making practical purchases and glorifying poverty. Poverty is awful, even if it hypothetically helps you enjoy the little things.


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## The red spirit (Jun 23, 2021)

claes said:


> There’s a difference between making practical purchases and glorifying poverty. Poverty is awful, even if it hypothetically helps you enjoy the little things.


We aren't anywhere close to poverty and graphics cards shortage doesn't lead to poverty. Your analogy doesn't work.


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## claes (Jun 23, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> We aren't anywhere close to poverty and graphics cards shortage doesn't lead to poverty. Your analogy doesn't work.


What are you talking about lol? I wasn’t trying to make an analogy at all...

Some are discussing having the privilege of being able to afford the inflated prices, and some others are talking about how the feeling of not being able to afford things has afforded them a new humility/appreciation for the things they have. That’s fine, but it sometimes shifts into glorifying poverty as something that teaches you values that you can’t develop with financial freedom which risks obfuscating how terrible not being able to afford things actually is.

I’m not sure what analogy you think I’m trying to draw, it was just a soliloquy you on some of the moral claims being drawn from characterizations or “have and have nots” at play in this thread.


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## Mescalamba (Jun 23, 2021)

People will buy consoles and PC gaming will die, along with companies that depend on it.


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## Soulander (Jun 23, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> This isn't a troll thread, but for real not everything is bad during GPU shortage. There are some great things about it:
> 1) It's the best time to appreciate low end hardware
> 2) It forces people to know which settings to adjust in order to get a better experience
> 3) It forces people to be more creative, when it comes to graphics card buying
> ...



WT****! I need a gpu for yesteryear and not for 2024! I'm f******* stressed! Console is very unaffordable here and console games are very expensive(30% of minimum wage/month, pratically)

Edit: In pre-2021: PS5 price = ryzen 2600/3600, b350m/b450m, 16gb ddr4 3000, ssd 240gb, hdd 1tb, psu 500w 80+ and a gtx 1660. beside of games and mouse, etc(vacation included).


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## claes (Jun 23, 2021)

Mescalamba said:


> People will buy consoles and PC gaming will die, along with companies that depend on it.


This is kind of an inevitability anyway. Desktops are going the way of the dodo. I don’t think the shortage affects that timeline though.


Soulander said:


> WT****! I need a gpu for yesteryear and not for 2024! I'm f******* stressed! Console is very unaffordable here and console games are very expensive(30% of minimum wage/month, pratically)
> 
> Edit: In pre-2021: PS5 price = ryzen 2600/3600, b350m/b450m, 16gb ddr4 3000, ssd 240gb, hdd 1tb, psu 500w 80+ and a gtx 1660. beside of games and mouse, etc(vacation included).


This is what I was referring to in my previous post, although in a more abstract way. Not having things is fine when you’re already secure, but when you’re insecure it’s just that — insecurity.


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## Atomic77 (Jun 23, 2021)

Truth is PC will always be more powerful then console. PC can do more while console is just mainly for games.


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## The red spirit (Jun 23, 2021)

claes said:


> Some are discussing having the privilege of being able to afford the inflated prices, and some others are talking about how the feeling of not being able to afford things has afforded them a new humility/appreciation for the things they have. That’s fine, but it sometimes shifts into glorifying poverty as something that teaches you values that you can’t develop with financial freedom which risks obfuscating how terrible not being able to afford things actually is.


Ain't nobody is glorifying poverty here and you are pulling it off-topic with "how terrible not being able to afford things actually is".


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## Jetster (Jun 23, 2021)

Yep, its not about not having money. I have 0 debt and I'm not buying any GPUs right now. I refuse to pay inflated prices. That's how you keep money you make


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## claes (Jun 23, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Ain't nobody is glorifying poverty here and you are pulling it off-topic with "how terrible not being able to afford things actually is".


You don't have to understand my posts, or read between the lines of others.

Also, that sentiment is plainly on-topic -- why'd you make this thread other than to counter the "how terrible not being able to afford GPUs is" crowd lol?

Have a nice day and keep that glass half full!


----------



## BSim500 (Jun 23, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> 2) It forces people to know which settings to adjust in order to get a better experience


I'm sitting here bemused at people only just realising (with FSR / DLSS review comments) that we've always been able to "get more FPS for just only slightly quality loss!" in general. We've had that for years. It's called "High vs Ultra" or "knowing how to tweak stuff that's a bit more intelligent than the usual dumbed down presets", and it works on all games not just a few cherry picked "supported" ones or locked to hardware. Half the time I get both an fps boost and quality improvement simultaneously just by turning off the dumb cr*p games come loaded with (500x layers of blur, Chromatic Abhorration, etc). No, I don't have untreated cataracts / glaucoma or severe uncorrectable myopia. Stop trying to "simulate" that silly post-process sh*t where I become half blind when speaking to someone 3ft away and performance improves anyway. The number of people who buy into the "Ultra or nothing" BS though as a "benchmark" for everything simply because that's how some tech sites benchmark hardware is unreal though...



The red spirit said:


> 4) It's the best time to revisit classic PC games


100% agree. The past year has been the ultimate opportunity for backlog clearance. Playing them oldest to newest is certainly one thing where an increase in common sense can make up for lack of hardware.



The red spirit said:


> 7) If GPU shortage lasts a long time, then PC game makers will be forced to make games that run on lower end specs and that's good news for low end gamers (also FSR)


It's a stretch to expect very low end APU's to run new AAA's, and if it lasts a long time then it could end up driving away many people from the hobby altogether. Having said that, some devs could certainly optimise a lot more than what they have been doing. It wasn't that long ago that 2012-2015 era AAA's like Bioshock Infinite, Alien Isolation, Dishonored, The Talos Principle, even Prey (2017), etc, were playing well on low-end GPU's of the day at launch time with little issue or we had 2014 Indie games that looked like this on 3GB VRAM cards, and a lot of AAA performance turds today are definitely nowhere near as optimised as they could be relative to hardware requirements vs visuals.



The red spirit said:


> This GPU shortage just uncovered how much snobbism there is and it seems that most people that are into PC gaming aren't in PC gaming at all, but instead are just into buying high end shit and anything that isn't running at Ultra settings at 4K and at least 60 fps is literally unplayable to them.


A lot of that stuff is the same enthusiast selection bias you see in audiophile circles where people of like mind get together (tech forums) but then spend all day every day talking only to people who own the same stuff they do leaving them with a heavily skewed vision of what the average actually is (as can be seen on Steam HWSurvey where even in 2021, GTX 1060 & 1050Ti top the GPU board, where despite almost punch drunk levels of overhype from tech sites only 2% of gamers actually own 4k, 8% use 1440p and +80% are on 1080p or lower, etc). I can see 60Hz vs 144Hz difference but it's not even close to being the same as 60 vs 30fps or "unplayable". Just ignore the hyperbole and understand that as someone said above, the vast majority of gamers don't post on tech sites at all. You can tell who the real gamers are - the ones too busy playing games to argue over what a "Real Gamer (tm)" is...


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## The red spirit (Jun 23, 2021)

BSim500 said:


> I'm sitting here bemused at people only just realising (with FSR / DLSS review comments) that we've always been able to "get more FPS for just only slightly quality loss!" in general. We've had that for years. It's called "High vs Ultra" or "knowing how to tweak stuff that's a bit more intelligent than the usual dumbed down presets", and it works on all games not just a few cherry picked "supported" ones or locked to hardware. Half the time I get both an fps boost and quality improvement simultaneously just by turning off the dumb cr*p games come loaded with (500x layers of blur, Chromatic Abhorration, etc). No, I don't have untreated cataracts / glaucoma or severe uncorrectable myopia. Stop trying to "simulate" that silly post-process sh*t where I become half blind when speaking to someone 3ft away and performance improves anyway. The number of people who buy into the "Ultra or nothing" BS though as a "benchmark" for everything simply because that's how some tech sites benchmark hardware is unreal though...


I wonder how many people know that you can max out textures (assuming that you have enough VRAM) and anisotropic filter without fps loss.



BSim500 said:


> It's a stretch to expect very low end APU's to run new AAA's, and if it lasts a long time then it could end up driving away many people from the hobby altogether. Having said that, some devs could certainly optimise a lot more than what they have been doing. It wasn't that long ago that 2012-2015 era AAA's like Bioshock Infinite, Alien Isolation, Dishonored, The Talos Principle, even Prey (2017), etc, were playing well on low-end GPU's of the day at launch time with little issue or we had 2014 Indie games that looked like this on 3GB VRAM cards, and a lot of AAA performance turds today are definitely nowhere near as optimised as they could be relative to hardware requirements vs visuals.


For me even CS:GO looks great and it runs well on GT 1030. And the worst offender in terms of optimization are high end AAA games that look like turd on low settings and still run like crap (RDR 2, AC franchise, Kingdom Come Deliverance, PUBG, and etc.) or games that don't have low enough settings to truly improve performance on low end hardware (like Far Cry 5 or Dirt 5). DiRT 5 has been one of the biggest disgrace recently. It doesn't look great and it runs poorly, it really looks so bad that DiRT 3 beats it and maybe even original DiRT looks better and yet even fast cards get destroyed at 1080p low and those same cards could max out DiRT 3 and get 60 fps. Most other AAA games aren't great at optimization either and don't really look all that great and only small minority of AAA titles have actually adequate but not great optimization like Doom Eternal (I'm still salty that it forces TAA and that it's actually heavy on older CPUs like FX 6300 and it doesn't look great at those low settings).




BSim500 said:


> A lot of that stuff is the same enthusiast selection bias you see in audiophile circles where people of like mind get together (tech forums) but then spend all day every day talking only to people who own the same stuff they do leaving them with a heavily skewed vision of what the average actually is (as can be seen on Steam HWSurvey where even in 2021, GTX 1060 & 1050Ti top the GPU board, where despite almost punch drunk levels of overhype from tech sites only 2% of gamers actually own 4k, 8% use 1440p and +80% are on 1080p or lower, etc). I can see 60Hz vs 144Hz difference but it's not even close to being the same as 60 vs 30fps or "unplayable". Just ignore the hyperbole and understand that as someone said above, the vast majority of gamers don't post on tech sites at all. You can tell who the real gamers are - the ones too busy playing games to argue over what a "Real Gamer (tm)" is...


And yet it still sucks to see snobbism in forums. You see, I still have an antiquated mindset that forums are great places to learn how some stuff works or getting very detailed info about things. The average "gamer" person likely doesn't even know what game settings doo and just uses presets and then either thinks that it's just "cheap" stuff that he bought or that their hardware is weak. Those gamers likely aren't the most knowledgeable bunch. Some of them perhaps are, but many aren't. I have read how some people buy computers and I always find it astonishing how they have zero desire to find out what's in it and how easily they are willing to part with their money. I still remember one person on other forum, who thought that he bought a gaming computer and paid premium for it (1500-2000 Euros) and all it had inside was R7 350 with some i3. That was pre-mining era too. And the sad thing is that I have never seen any of my relatives to do anything much different.


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## Vayra86 (Jun 23, 2021)

claes said:


> This is kind of an inevitability anyway. Desktops are going the way of the dodo. I don’t think the shortage affects that timeline though.



Your words not mine; and history doesn't really have a strong indicator that they are. The only indicator is that the market is both diversifying and saturated on device usage. We gained mobile, we gained tablet, we gained laptop, and yet, enterprise is full of desktops and/or laptops connected to a screen on a desk, even if only just for ergonomic purposes; desktops still possess local processing power unmatched by any other device and deliver latencies and hardware upgrade cycles much faster and earlier to individuals.

In addition, PC is still the core machine for any development work and even with apps being huge these days, dev work still happens on a powerful desktop or laptop. I say desktop or laptop because I do see those as similar/same devices, its customizable hardware that runs any OS you want, instead of walled garden nonsense like consoles or mobiles have it - those are managed ecosystems built for consumers to buy stuff on. Its a different market that exists alongside the PC. It is, will be and has always been completely misguided to view those as a single market or at odds with one another - that only applies to the consumers that only consume and never get past it. However, both content consumption AND creation are major growth markets as they have always been. Irony has it that with more consumers you also need more creators to get content to consume.

Its the same thing for gaming. There are more games than there have ever been, the market generates more revenue than ever, and despite mobile and consoles growing YoY, the gaming PC is still here to stay. A few years of shite GPUs won't change that; cloud gaming won't change it; nor the fact people also use other devices to game on. There are no numbers backing that up. There are only numbers backing up a net growth and some shifts in the devices or services we use.

Last, a big aspect of the PC is the unmatched versatility and freedom. As gardens get more walls, the demand for such a free haven also increases or becomes more of a unique selling point. The demand for such devices, as a specific demand, not something 'nice to have'; is also growing - a similar trend that is a constant throughout history. People want control, and even more so when they feel it slipping away.

About glasses being half-full and all 



The red spirit said:


> I wonder how many people know that you can max out textures (assuming that you have enough VRAM) and anisotropic filter without fps loss.



This... now rewind a few months about the big discussions on VRAM on Ampere GPUs and how none of it was true, Nvidia was doing all as intended and everything is fine when gen-over-gen GPUs actually lost more than half their VRAM per % of core performance. We also have a few bright lights on this forum - scientists even  - that keep yapping about how AFx16 and ultra textures are nonsensical or performance hogs and can easily be turned lower for a big advantage in some odd way. Goes to show how people have different takes on reality - even those who spout being knowledgeable. Its staggering to see how a few marketing blurbs distort people's sanity or things they've always considered logical.

Welcome to the internet  We all do this though, whatever we think is true is our reality. The best we can do is learn as we go and admit we've been wrong. A quality many have forgotten lately, it seems; and I'll admit right here I can use a reminder from time to time myself.


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## The red spirit (Jun 23, 2021)

Vayra86 said:


> his... now rewind a few months about the big discussions on VRAM on Ampere GPUs and how none of it was true, Nvidia was doing all as intended and everything is fine when gen-over-gen GPUs actually lost more than half their VRAM per % of core performance. We also have a few bright lights on this forum - scientists even  - that keep yapping about how AFx16 and ultra textures are nonsensical or performance hogs and can easily be turned lower for a big advantage in some odd way. Goes to show how people have different takes on reality - even those who spout being knowledgeable. Its staggering to see how a few marketing blurbs distort people's sanity or things they've always considered logical.
> 
> Welcome to the internet  We all do this though, whatever we think is true is our reality. The best we can do is learn as we go and admit we've been wrong. A quality many have forgotten lately, it seems; and I'll admit right here I can use a reminder from time to time myself.


And particularly anisotropic filtering one has been probably known pretty much since anisotropic filtering was made. Texture one I don't even know since when. As long as they fit, there's no performance impact of setting them higher. This stuff has been known since early AGP era and now we are in PCIe 4 era. This stuff is literally ancient, but perhaps integrated graphics don't work the same way. I dunno, I never had proper integrated graphics to test that.


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## Mescalamba (Jun 23, 2021)

Atomic77 said:


> Truth is PC will always be more powerful then console. PC can do more while console is just mainly for games.


Fairly sure its not that hard to convert Xbox to Win 10 machine.


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## claes (Jun 25, 2021)

Vayra86 said:


> Your words not mine; and history doesn't really have a strong indicator that they are. The only indicator is that the market is both diversifying and saturated on device usage.


I'm not sure if this is a glass-half-full take or just wishful thinking  The writing's been on the wall for quite some time... Don't get me wrong -- I can't imagine desktops going away within this decade, but every market is moving to SoCs and SaaS.

Unfortunately, history actually is a strong indicator. The numbers are actually pretty stark — desktop sales are half of what they were ten years ago, while laptop and tablet sales have been increasing.








						Canalys Newsroom - Global PC market Q4 2020
					

Find the latest press releases, channels and tech analysis available




					www.canalys.com
				











						Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet Market Share Worldwide | Statcounter Global Stats
					

This graph shows the market share of desktop vs mobile vs tablet worldwide based on over 5 billion monthly page views.




					gs.statcounter.com
				











						Notebook, desktop PC, and tablet shipments 2025 | Statista
					

In 2021, 277 million laptops are forecast to be shipped, with nearly 160 million tablet units shipped in the same year too.




					www.statista.com
				





Vayra86 said:


> We gained mobile, we gained tablet, we gained laptop, and yet, enterprise is full of desktops and/or laptops connected to a screen on a desk, even if only just for ergonomic purposes;


Enterprise work is full of thin clients, tablets, and laptops, and more and more software is moving to SaaS (MS Office and Adobe being the "beacons" here).


Vayra86 said:


> In addition, PC is still the core machine for any development work and even with apps being huge these days, dev work still happens on a powerful desktop or laptop.


Most development happens on laptops... maybe if you’re talking about games, which only a minority of developers work on, but the vast majority of developers are working on the web. The processing power comes from a virtual machine in the cloud.

See also: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2020/


Vayra86 said:


> Its the same thing for gaming. There are more games than there have ever been, the market generates more revenue than ever, and despite mobile and consoles growing YoY, the gaming PC is still here to stay. A few years of shite GPUs won't change that; cloud gaming won't change it; nor the fact people also use other devices to game on. There are no numbers backing that up. There are only numbers backing up a net growth and some shifts in the devices or services we use.


I don't know -- maybe you have numbers that tell another story, but if the steam numbers posted here and the numbers I posted above are at all accurate, the answer is people are moving to mobile.








						The Games Industry on What Gaming Might Be Like in 2030 - IGN
					

Representatives from Xbox, Capcom, Blizzard, Rovio, Square Enix, SEGA and more peer into their crystal balls.




					www.ign.com
				











						The Future of Tech: The Desktop PC
					

In this first part of our "Future of Tech" series, we'll call some predictions about the next generation of PCs. Rather than dreaming far into the future,...




					www.techspot.com
				





Vayra86 said:


> Last, a big aspect of the PC is the unmatched versatility and freedom. As gardens get more walls, the demand for such a free haven also increases or becomes more of a unique selling point. The demand for such devices, as a specific demand, not something 'nice to have'; is also growing - a similar trend that is a constant throughout history. People want control, and even more so when they feel it slipping away.


The numbers don't seem to bear this out at all... If anything, consumers seem to be willing to give up control -- people love iphones, dvd/blu-ray/CD/vinyl sales are going down while streaming services dominate, major motion picture studios are streaming on the day of theatrical release... the list goes on and on.

Desktops are becoming more and more of a niche, especially for what were traditionally the largest markets. Workstations still make sense for AV production and scientific research for the foreseeable future, but most markets are moving to distributed and cloud solutions or embedded SOCs, precisely because desktop products are overkill/inefficient for most buyers. It's only a matter of time before desktop as a service becomes mainstream.

Gaming will probably go this way, too — we’re just a super-profitable afterthought market at this point. The real money (and innovation) is in the enterprise, research, and cloud markets — the stuff we buy is just a trickle-down of all of the investment Intel/AMD/Nvidia puts into those markets.

No disrespect to PCs (I am on this forum after all, and I’ll never give up my mouse and keyboard!), but the future for consumers, enthusiasts, and workplaces is the cloud and DaaS, for better or worse.


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## Vayra86 (Jun 25, 2021)

claes said:


> I'm not sure if this is a glass-half-full take or just wishful thinking  The writing's been on the wall for quite some time... Don't get me wrong -- I can't imagine desktops going away within this decade, but every market is moving to SoCs and SaaS.
> 
> Unfortunately, history actually is a strong indicator. The numbers are actually pretty stark — desktop sales are half of what they were ten years ago, while laptop and tablet sales have been increasing.
> 
> ...



Trends that may or may not work out this way. I think its a mistake to consider desktop a norm as it really never was; it was always catering to a subset of users. This market is so big... its ever more diverse alongside it. Was there ever a typical PC gamer? The nerd of yesteryear isnt it... the PC nerd that is. This wotld moves fast. But the basic needs really havent.


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## jaggerwild (Jun 25, 2021)

Not 1 game maker will be producing for old architecture, to even mention that? Yeah, lets build XP games....


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## The red spirit (Jun 25, 2021)

jaggerwild said:


> Not 1 game maker will be producing for old architecture, to even mention that? Yeah, lets build XP games....


What architecture? No software is made for any specific architecture.


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## xtreemchaos (Jun 25, 2021)

i could not agree more, "hardtimes" it brings out the best in all things and when "when" we can get hold of the gpu of our dreams we will enjoy it all the more. i find this a very up lifting post .thanks.
ps i think with china banning mining the rest of world will have to follow "im not judging miners, guys do what thay have to do to make a living" but i think by christmas the gpu situation will be back to normal " fingers crossed".


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## FireFox (Jun 25, 2021)

xtreemchaos said:


> ps i think with china banning mining the rest of world will have to follow "im not judging miners, guys do what thay have to do to make a living" but i think by christmas the gpu situation will be back to normal " fingers crossed".


Funny.
I don't mean to be rude but Miners are a plague that must be eliminated otherwise the GPU shortage won't end any time soon.


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## 80251 (Jun 27, 2021)

FireFox said:


> Funny.
> I don't mean to be rude but Miners are a plague that must be eliminated otherwise the GPU shortage won't end any time soon.


I'm against miners because of their environmental impact and the fact they waste power thus increasing the demand on already strained power grids.


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## xtreemchaos (Jun 27, 2021)

We all waste power, ive got solar but it dont give me power 24/7 i use far too much. i be a hipo-crite to say any diff. its really not a guy with a few cards trying there luck its these huge gpu farms whats the real problem one farm can use more power than a small city.


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## FireFox (Jun 27, 2021)

xtreemchaos said:


> its really not a guy with a few cards


A guy with a few few cards + another one with a few cards too and you continue adding more guys with a few cards all together become a problem.
Hope you got my point.


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## xtreemchaos (Jun 27, 2021)

yes you are quite right, but where do we draw the line , none of us can take the higher ground we are all killing the planet its just some are doing more and to want more is human nature bud.


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## Vayra86 (Jun 27, 2021)

FireFox said:


> A guy with a few few cards + another one with a few cards too and you continue adding more guys with a few cards all together become a problem.
> Hope you got my point.



If we allow systems to exist where capital can be used to generate more capital we have created a wasteful practice. Its that simple and if its not mining its something else - such as the 'get rich' mentality of liberal societies. All this will always only work at the expense of others. After all, my rich is your poor, Ill always get more faster - this is as old as human history. And so all these guys with a few cards are really pissing in the wind. Theyre not getting rich - some whales are getting a whole lot richer. So we get some more GPUs... 

The problem isnt mining. Its the concept crypto floats on right now. Proof of Stake is supposed to change that but its really more of the same, and much alike the real world and its stock markets.



xtreemchaos said:


> yes you are quite right, but where do we draw the line , none of us can take the higher ground we are all killing the planet its just some are doing more and to want more is human nature bud.



To want more is indeed human nature, a fundamental problem that requires robust and dynamic systems to keep in check. Systems we try to erode daily.


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## xtreemchaos (Jun 27, 2021)

what it all boils down to is Population, theres too many people and we still keep growing and we all want more. i dont think we can change im mean the writings on the wall and its been there for a long time but nobody truly reads it "me for one".


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## jaggerwild (Jun 27, 2021)

Oh they dont 


The red spirit said:


> What architecture? No software is made for any specific architecture.


Oh they dont make GPU drivers, my bad!!


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## Vayra86 (Jun 27, 2021)

xtreemchaos said:


> what it all boils down to is Population, theres too many people and we still keep growing and we all want more. i dont think we can change im mean the writings on the wall and its been there for a long time but nobody truly reads it "me for one".



1 child politics. I say go. Less people = higher quality of life for everyone, it is that simple. But its totally against human instinct 

When I think about this stuff, I can't help but think of sci-fi, and how species are all on a similar learning curve - how you progress through technologies, attain a higher form of understanding of how things could work, etc. Its like Stellaris is happening right in front of us   Time for us to make an evolutional leap?

Anyway, GPUs. I kinda want one soon-ish


----------



## Solid State Soul ( SSS ) (Jun 28, 2021)

*- Popular opinion:* if you want to get attention, pick any negative, controversial topic, and say publicly its a good thing !


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## cvaldes (Jun 28, 2021)

The GPU/semiconductor shortage is a bad thing if you're an American adult with a retirement account or pension fund.

These companies are leaving money on the table because supply cannot meet demand. Note that the inflated prices driven by scalpers do not line the pockets of the big corporations nor their investors. Increased shareholder value is stifled because these companies are unable to grow as fast as the market is calling for.

Note that the general semiconductor shortage also affects other big industries like auto and aerospace. It basically causes a trickle down effect to anything that has semiconductors in it which is practically everything powered by electricity these days.

So it's not just the Nvidias, Intels, AMDs, TSMCs, and Samsungs of the world that are affected. The semiconductor shortage affects all big business and thus all investments in those companies.

Ultimately supply and demand will come back into balance at some point but steady availability is better than massive shortages. Price gouging only benefits a few and not in a way that really benefits the typical investor.

I bought a wimpy Sapphire Radeon RX 550 2GB (for an SFF productivity build) in September for $65, about $14 less than the $79 launch price of the AMD reference card. $65 is what a Lexa Pro card was honestly worth. A week ago, these were going for $300 from Amazon third-party resellers. That is 4.6x what it was nine months ago.

Four. Year. Old. Graphics. Card.

The only ones who benefit from the GPU shortage are price gougers.

The semiconductor shortage only benefits the price gougers. Everyone else loses including people who invest in Fortune 500 companies for retirement. Heck, it affects people who just need to buy a webcam because of work-from-home COVID-19 policies or if you're some construction worker trying to buy a new pickup truck.

Cryptocurrency mining is rather stupid anyhow. The smart ones don't shell their money on silicon. They just buy the cryptocurrency. In the same way, you'd be crazy to think you'd get rich from Amazon by going to work for them as a delivery driver. You're better off buying AMZN shares.

Remember that most of the world's wealth is from investments not from wages. Moreover cryptocurrency investment gains (at least in the USA) are taxed as ordinary income; there is no accommodation for long-term capital gains. If you had $10,000 you'd be better off buying NVDA, TSLA, and AMZN instead of buying five RTX 3080 cards. If your appetite for risk is considerable, go ahead and buy some cryptocurrency. Just remember that as a financial instrument, cryptocurrencies routinely lose 50% of their value in short periods. Better off diversifying and not going all in on a risky bet.

No one is going to get rich mining. It might buy some groceries, maybe even pay rent.

Remember that companies that use semiconductors have several options. One is to increase product prices and pass the cost to the consumer. That hits YOUR wallet. Another option would be for manufacturers to eat the extra costs and see their margins erode. Shareholders don't like that. The primary duty of a publicly traded company is to increase shareholder value. That's why we see prices go up.


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## The red spirit (Jun 28, 2021)

Solid State Soul ( SSS ) said:


> *- Popular opinion:* if you want to get attention, pick any negative, controversial topic, and say publicly its a good thing !


That's still way better than 100th thread about some sore looser crying about RTX 3080 being expensive.


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## 80251 (Jul 2, 2021)

xtreemchaos said:


> We all waste power, ive got solar but it dont give me power 24/7 i use far too much. i be a hipo-crite to say any diff. its really not a guy with a few cards trying there luck its these huge gpu farms whats the real problem one farm can use more power than a small city.


Definitely. But when I'm having rolling power outages I definitely wonder if miners aren't contributing to that -- especially during the summer, when it's 100°F and their mining produces even more heat load because they have to run their aircon more often.



Vayra86 said:


> 1 child politics. I say go. Less people = higher quality of life for everyone, it is that simple. But its totally against human instinct
> 
> When I think about this stuff, I can't help but think of sci-fi, and how species are all on a similar learning curve - how you progress through technologies, attain a higher form of understanding of how things could work, etc. Its like Stellaris is happening right in front of us   Time for us to make an evolutional leap?
> 
> Anyway, GPUs. I kinda want one soon-ish


The People's "Republic" of China tried the one child policy and little infant girls ended up getting killed en mass because of it.


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## Chomiq (Jul 2, 2021)

Looks like all 3070 Ti's have effectively pushed out 3080's LHR from the market, at least at caseking. You now have a choice between 3070 Ti at around €900 and 3080 non-LHR for €1400+.










AMD options are still overpriced:




Overall it looks like availability is improving but prices will take weeks if not months before (if ever) they come down to MSRP.


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## The red spirit (Jul 2, 2021)

Chomiq said:


> Looks like all 3070 Ti's have effectively pushed out 3080's LHR from the market, at least at caseking. You now have a choice between 3070 Ti at around €900 and 3080 non-LHR for €1400+.
> 
> View attachment 206224
> 
> ...


That's nice and all, but I think that the biggest problem now is that no manufacturer has a proper mid tier card at 200-300 Euros and at about 150W TDP. It seems that nV and AMD are now only serving rich people and people willing to spend a lot on their hobbies. I guess that's a good strategy, if you know you wouldn't be able to sell lots of units, so you sell less at more. Perhaps things will recover, but imo loosing top tier cards isn't a loss to gamer, the real loss to us are those mid-tier bang for the buck cards that have mass appeal. I would dare to say that pretty much any xTX xx70/xx80 card has been mostly irrelevant and very unimportant, same for AMD.


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## FireFox (Jul 2, 2021)

Chomiq said:


> Looks like all 3070 Ti's have effectively pushed out 3080's LHR from the market, at least at caseking. You now have a choice between 3070 Ti at around €900 and 3080 non-LHR for €1400+.
> 
> View attachment 206224
> 
> ...


Whatever you buy from Caseking it's always more expensive than other sellers.


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## Chomiq (Jul 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> That's nice and all, but I think that the biggest problem now is that no manufacturer has a proper mid tier card at 200-300 Euros and at about 150W TDP. It seems that nV and AMD are now only serving rich people and people willing to spend a lot on their hobbies. I guess that's a good strategy, if you know you wouldn't be able to sell lots of units, so you sell less at more. Perhaps things will recover, but imo loosing top tier cards isn't a loss to gamer, the real loss to us are those mid-tier bang for the buck cards that have mass appeal. I would dare to say that pretty much any xTX xx70/xx80 card has been mostly irrelevant and very unimportant, same for AMD.


You're still stuck in 2017 era of "mid tier. 200-300 € is no longer "mid tier", not with 1440p and 4K high refresh rates gaining more popularity. With 4K 144 Hz gaining ground mid tier will now be 1440p high refresh rate. 200-300€ is now the low-mid tier but yeah, there's nothing out there brand new that matches this price range. Unless this changes low end will be down to whether or not you want to buy a console and use basic PC for office stuff.


FireFox said:


> Whatever you buy from Caseking it's always more expensive than other sellers.


It's the only German retailer that's shipping outside of Germany to Poland (yeah yeah, mindfactory ships to Austria and Denmark or something like that). I'm well aware of their prices being higher than the competition. It's still cheaper than prices in Poland right now (but I'm not touching them unless they match the MSRP).


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## xtreemchaos (Jul 2, 2021)

this is the cheapist ive seen today in the uk.
EVGA NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FTW3 ULTRA GPU with EVGA SuperNOVA G3 750W 80+ GOLD PSU LN118229 - 08G-P5-3797-KL + 220-g3-0750-X3 | SCAN UK
free PSU to boot, but it needs to drop a bit more before i part with my cash maybe £200 less and i might bite.


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## Chomiq (Jul 2, 2021)

xtreemchaos said:


> this is the cheapist ive seen today in the uk.
> EVGA NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FTW3 ULTRA GPU with EVGA SuperNOVA G3 750W 80+ GOLD PSU LN118229 - 08G-P5-3797-KL + 220-g3-0750-X3 | SCAN UK
> free PSU to boot, but it needs to drop a bit more before i part with my cash maybe £200 less and i might bite.


Yeah, 3070 Ti alone would cost you £1100 over here.


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## xtreemchaos (Jul 2, 2021)

yes its quite a bargain, but ive got £650 in my head so im gonna wait for a bit. id bet scan soon runs outa stock with that deal.


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## sepheronx (Jul 2, 2021)

I noticed here that RTX 3060's are actually available.






						Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 EAGLE OC 12GB Rev2 LHR PCI-E w/ Dual HDMI, Dual DP - PCI-E Video Cards - Memory Express Inc.
					






					www.memoryexpress.com
				




While I think the price is bad for such a card, its at least available.  Same with RX 6700 XT's but those are $1000 CAD.


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## The red spirit (Jul 2, 2021)

Chomiq said:


> You're still stuck in 2017 era of "mid tier. 200-300 € is no longer "mid tier", not with 1440p and 4K high refresh rates gaining more popularity. With 4K 144 Hz gaining ground mid tier will now be 1440p high refresh rate. 200-300€ is now the low-mid tier but yeah, there's nothing out there brand new that matches this price range.


That there are higher end options doesn't make mid tier, not mid-tier. In automotive industry Camry is still a family saloon, Porsche Boxter is still a sports car, Porsche 911 is still a super car. And lately a new tier was created, called hyper cars. Same with graphics cards. Mid tier is mid tier, meanwhile RTX 3070 is certainly high end. RTX 3080 is the flagship. Meanwhile, something like RTX 3090 is Huang said, is a "BFGPU". When money is no object. 10 years ago, there wasn't anything like RTX 3090. Even Titan wasn't as high end as RTX 3090 is now. But the existence of RTX 3090 or RTX 3080 doesn't change the fact that mid tier card is RTX 3060 (and would be GTX 3060, without RTX extras). And lower mid tier card would be RTX 3050 Ti, with entry level card being the good old GT 1030 and cheap display driver still remaining GT 710 or GT 1010. 



Chomiq said:


> Unless this changes low end will be down to whether or not you want to buy a console and use basic PC for office stuff.


I dunno. It seems that lack of GTX 3060 or RX 6600 is corona special, so that nV and AMD stay profitable and have at least as much stock as they have now. On the other hand, Intel's UHD 750 has really stepped up the game for entry level gamers. It's getting close to integrated Vega 11 and is definitely usable for pretty much any AAA title at 720p low and many older AAA titles at 1080p low. Also AMD and nV are now probably selling a lot of GT 1030s and RX 550, despite them being old and not so great, it's what people are able to afford and they are available. That's a step up from UHD 750 or Vega 11 or anything less. I personally find new Intel chips with UHD 750 interesting value proposition now. You can get it with i5-11500, which has been in Europe far more available than any APU with Vega 11 and it has lower MSRP as well as actual market prices. Knowing Intel, they haven't gimped PCIe lanes, like AMD does (they only have 8 PCIe lanes in APUs). That makes Intel particularly attractive now and later, when cards will be cheaper. Intel platform seems to be better suited for long term inexpensive ownership. You also have better control of TDP and that's a nice extra. And Intel platform is far more stable and dependable than AMD has been with Ryzens, and you don't need to install AMD's crapola to use your computer. If this is still boring to you, there are cheap used RX 570s and RX 580s, going for 170 Euros and that's enough to play at 1440p 60 fps. And who knows how will technologies like FSR, RIS and DLSS will affect low end GPUs. On low end hardware, they can overburden low end graphics, but if you have good enough GPU, it helps to improve your framerate. IMO 2021 has been quite interesting for low end gamers, it's only painful due to there not being any 200-300 Euro card for us.


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## FireFox (Jul 2, 2021)

Another seller that i avoid to buy from
https://www.alternate.de/Grafikkarten


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## 80251 (Jul 2, 2021)

Chomiq said:


> You're still stuck in 2017 era of "mid tier. 200-300 € is no longer "mid tier", not with 1440p and 4K high refresh rates gaining more popularity. With 4K 144 Hz gaining ground mid tier will now be 1440p high refresh rate. 200-300€ is now the low-mid tier but yeah, there's nothing out there brand new that matches this price range. Unless this changes low end will be down to whether or not you want to buy a console and use basic PC for office stuff.
> 
> It's the only German retailer that's shipping outside of Germany to Poland (yeah yeah, mindfactory ships to Austria and Denmark or something like that). I'm well aware of their prices being higher than the competition. It's still cheaper than prices in Poland right now (but I'm not touching them unless they match the MSRP).


Why does anyone in Poland have to go to Germany to get a videocard? Poland's a huge country why aren't there any etailers there?


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## Chomiq (Jul 2, 2021)

80251 said:


> Why does anyone in Poland have to go to Germany to get a videocard? Poland's a huge country why aren't there any etailers there?


Officials etailers are as bad as scalpers with pricing.


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## tabascosauz (Jul 2, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Knowing Intel, they haven't gimped PCIe lanes, like AMD does (they only have 8 PCIe lanes in APUs). That makes Intel particularly attractive now and later, when cards will be cheaper. Intel platform seems to be better suited for long term inexpensive ownership. You also have better control of TDP and that's a nice extra. And Intel platform is far more stable and dependable than AMD has been with Ryzens, and you don't need to install AMD's crapola to use your computer.



Perhaps you need some actual hands on with Ryzen instead of hopping on the questionable bandwagon.

8x only lanes are only a thing on mobile. The Renoir and Cezanne desktop APUs have 16x lanes for the GPU like everyone else.
The chipset drivers have only really mattered performance-wise for chiplet CPUs - if you want to believe otherwise that "crapola" is necessary, get your hands on a 4650G or 5600G first? Windows Update automatically fetches the basic chipset drivers just like it would Intel ME firmware, and off you go to the races.
"Better control of TDP" just sounds like you haven't comprehended the simple PPT controls that every UEFI affords you, yet you're able to get a grasp of equally simple PL1/PL2/tau?
"Far more stable" is a hoooooot take - maybe you'd have some credibility referring to Z490 and Comet Lake (which was largely solid due to nothing being new), but you clearly aren't.


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## 80251 (Jul 2, 2021)

Chomiq said:


> Officials etailers are as bad as scalpers with pricing.


You and the rest of the Polish people should do something about that. You shouldn't have to go to Germany or ANYWHERE else in the Europeon Urinal to get decent hardware. Long live the Visegrad!


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## Chomiq (Jul 2, 2021)

80251 said:


> You and the rest of the Polish people should do something about that. You shouldn't have to go to Germany or ANYWHERE else in the Europeon Urinal to get decent hardware. Long live the Visegrad!


I don't have to go anywhere. I can order everything online and have it delivered via DHL or UPS. That's how I got my 1060, directly from caseking when the previous mining boom ended.
And there's nothing that can stop retailers from increasing prices. All you can do is boycott them and not give in.


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## The red spirit (Jul 2, 2021)

tabascosauz said:


> Perhaps you need some actual hands on with Ryzen instead of hopping on the questionable bandwagon.
> 
> 8x only lanes are only a thing on mobile. The Renoir and Cezanne desktop APUs have 16x lanes for the GPU like everyone else.


Sorry, I read somewhere that and author clearly wrote that about 3200G.




tabascosauz said:


> The chipset drivers have only really mattered performance-wise for chiplet CPUs - if you want to believe otherwise that "crapola" is necessary, get your hands on a 4650G or 5600G first? Windows Update automatically fetches the basic chipset drivers just like it would Intel ME firmware, and off you go to the races.


Well, you need chipset drivers, that AMD used to package in catalyst install manager, which was installed and did nothing. And if you have APU, then you need to install APU drivers. That's bearable if you only use APU, but if you decide to use a discrete cards like RTX 2060, you will have AMD Crimson combined with nV's crapola GF Experience, nV's Control Panel. And after removing APU drivers you could never be sure if AMD's software didn't also wipe out chipset drivers. That's a pain. 




tabascosauz said:


> "Better control of TDP" just sounds like you haven't comprehended the simple PPT controls that every UEFI affords you, yet you're able to get a grasp of equally simple PL1/PL2/tau?


I'm aware of PPT and some amp limiter. They are okay, but they are only for when you enable AMD's boost. AMD also doesn't have anything like Tau. Also on AMD side you have Windows power plan bullshit with special power plans just for Ryzens, because apparently Ryzen is too cool for Windows. I think that Intel is far better at power usage tweaking and adjustment. AMD is still in FX recovery phase and their technologies lack polish. 



tabascosauz said:


> "Far more stable" is a hoooooot take - maybe you'd have some credibility referring to Z490 and Comet Lake (which was largely solid due to nothing being new), but you clearly aren't.


Ryzens are clearly not great there. USB issues, RAM compatibility issues, shitton of AGESA updates. Ryzen has been awful at stability even for AMD standards. And this is the experience of person, who used every single Ryzen gen:









In short, it could be described as sticked to poop that will always remain poop and maybe will get polished a bit by time. Experience on Intel side is literally putting everything together and it works perfectly forever. And that's about motherboards and CPU's, but if you perhaps bought Ryzen machine with 3600 and RX 5700 XT, you were royally screwed with having most unstable modern garbage. RX 5000 series to this day still have black screen issues and it has one of the biggest RTG failure, probably since Terrascale 2. AMD tried to do something with drivers, but tin the end they mostly didn't resolve that widespread problem. I have read that return rate of those cards was around 20%. That's a lot and it pretty much ruined RDNA1. And also made my opinion to solidify that AMD doesn't give an f if they release something barely functional and with major issues. In FX days, some lower end boards were caching on fire due to incorrect specs that AMD provided. FM2+ was generally an incompatibility mess too. Needless to say, I don't trust AMD at all these days, despite owning almost everything exclusively AMD.

And here is this bloke:









Pretty much says that Intel is good at engineering unlike some others and they are good at being attentive to details, unlike some others. Intel has been dominating in mobile and enterprise space, not only because they delivered good performance, but because they delivered strong overall package and big part of it is making sure that clients trust their stuff to work exactly as expected without any exceptions and bullshit. Which is where AMD has been poor at for decades. The only cool trick that AMD has is "we made it faster". People that rely on their hardware, are pleased by that, but ensuring trust is still the most important thing to them.



80251 said:


> You and the rest of the Polish people should do something about that. You shouldn't have to go to Germany or ANYWHERE else in the Europeon Urinal to get decent hardware. Long live the Visegrad!


lol People from Lithuania go to Poland to buy food cheaper. That's just how EU works.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Jul 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> I still think it will speed development of video cards; miners will drive computational power.


They hinder it


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## ZoneDymo (Jul 7, 2021)

Im going to take your food away Red Spirit, just to see how "creative you get" and how you "appreciate what you have/had" etc


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## The red spirit (Jul 7, 2021)

ZoneDymo said:


> Im going to take your food away Red Spirit, just to see how "creative you get" and how you "appreciate what you have/had" etc


Do you eat GPUs, mate? I didn't know that Terminator was hanging out at TPU


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## sepheronx (Jul 7, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Do you eat GPUs, mate? I didn't know that Terminator was hanging out at TPU


Terminators don't eat period. They terminate. And they don't do a very good job at that either.


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## The red spirit (Jul 7, 2021)

sepheronx said:


> Terminators don't eat period. They terminate. And they don't do a very good job at that either.


Nonsense, depending on your kind of terminator they eat different things. Terminator of this type:





Drinks a lot of gasoline and some oil, meanwhile terminators of this type:






Certainly enjoys metal, leather and electronics. And the we have the last type of terminators:




They seemingly are quite chill and try to eat human food to better integrate into human society.


----------



## RealKGB (Jul 7, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Ryzens are clearly not great there. USB issues, RAM compatibility issues, shitton of AGESA updates. Ryzen has been awful at stability even for AMD standards. And this is the experience of person, who used every single Ryzen gen:


I've used Zen and Zen 2 and I've had no USB issues or RAM compatibility issues. Everything works perfectly fine, and if it doesn't, it's because I did something stupid, such as trying to install IomegaWare on Windows 10 (this caused Windows to bootloop, meaning reinstall).
In fact, I'm currently running a mixed set of RAM at an OC. 2x8GB 3200 C14-14-14-31 B-Die, 2x8GB 3200 C16-18-18-38 Nanya Tech, at 3333 C16-16-16-32. No stability problems, all that was required was a RAM voltage bump to 1.4V from 1.35V (IMC is at 1.1V, but that's standard for XMP/DOCP).


The red spirit said:


> Experience on Intel side is literally putting everything together and it works perfectly forever.


They've also spent 6 years releasing basically the same thing. It's not super hard to make everything work almost perfectly when you're just ironing out bugs for the past 6 years. I know there's IPC improvements but 14nm can't go forever.


The red spirit said:


> Pretty much says that Intel is good at engineering unlike some others and they are good at being attentive to details, unlike some others. Intel has been dominating in mobile and enterprise space, not only because they delivered good performance, but because they delivered strong overall package and big part of it is making sure that clients trust their stuff to work exactly as expected without any exceptions and bullshit. Which is where AMD has been poor at for decades. The only cool trick that AMD has is "we made it faster". People that rely on their hardware, are pleased by that, but ensuring trust is still the most important thing to them.


There's also that they've bribed OEMs to use their CPUs over AMD. Here, give this a read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v._Intel_Corp.


----------



## The red spirit (Jul 7, 2021)

RealKGB said:


> I've used Zen and Zen 2 and I've had no USB issues or RAM compatibility issues. Everything works perfectly fine, and if it doesn't, it's because I did something stupid, such as trying to install IomegaWare on Windows 10 (this caused Windows to bootloop, meaning reinstall).
> In fact, I'm currently running a mixed set of RAM at an OC. 2x8GB 3200 C14-14-14-31 B-Die, 2x8GB 3200 C16-18-18-38 Nanya Tech, at 3333 C16-16-16-32. No stability problems, all that was required was a RAM voltage bump to 1.4V from 1.35V (IMC is at 1.1V, but that's standard for XMP/DOCP).


1.2V is the official spec for DDR4. Are you sure that yours isn't dying already?



RealKGB said:


> They've also spent 6 years releasing basically the same thing. It's not super hard to make everything work almost perfectly when you're just ironing out bugs for the past 6 years. I know there's IPC improvements but 14nm can't go forever.


There weren't any IPC improvements since Skylake until Rocket Lake. Rocket Lake was a modest IPC bump, but that's it. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that every Core i chips worked fine and platforms didn't have any major issues. Unlike Ryzen, which was borderline unusable at launch and later became usable with some annoying problems.



RealKGB said:


> There's also that they've bribed OEMs to use their CPUs over AMD. Here, give this a read.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v._Intel_Corp.


I'm aware of all these things, but really AMD has been untrustworthy brand for a long time. And if they start to make properly reputable products, then it will take a long time to regain the lost trust.


----------



## RealKGB (Jul 7, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> 1.2V is the official spec for DDR4. Are you sure that yours isn't dying already?


"Official spec" LOL. That's for 2133 to 2666 MHz RAM, which is the "official spec" for DDR4.
XMP/DOCP profiles set the RAM voltage to 1.35V for 3200 kits (all I own), kits with higher frequencies and/or tighter timings require more voltage. 1.4V is fine for the RAM to take; it's been running that way since March and still holding strong with no problems. B-Die can take up to 1.5V if you cool it properly. The Nanya Tech dies I don't know what voltage is best since there's basically no info anywhere on the Internet.
The RAM does get a bit toasty but a small fan strapped over the modules solved that problem.
This is besides the point though.


The red spirit said:


> I'm aware of all these things, but really AMD has been untrustworthy brand for a long time. And if they start to make properly reputable products, then it will take a long time to regain the lost trust.


This piques my interest. What have they done that's "untrustworthy"?
They're a corporation, and their entire goal is to make money. Same goes for Intel, NVidia, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, Seasonic, Corsair, ECS, Dell, XFX, EVGA, ASRock, TSMC, and basically any other major player in the tech market. I bet that every single one of the companies I listed has done something untrustworthy.


----------



## The red spirit (Jul 7, 2021)

RealKGB said:


> "Official spec" LOL. That's for 2133 to 2666 MHz RAM, which is the "official spec" for DDR4.


Official spec also included 2933MHz kits and I think it now includes 3200MHz kits too. I don't see anything funny about it, it's just a spec to avoid having stupid problems. And it's plenty fast too. You can take a look at it here:





						DDR4 SDRAM - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				




Puget systems also underspec RAM to 2666MHz, so that Ryzen systems are more stable and robust. They also claim that it makes them more dependable and durable. 




RealKGB said:


> XMP/DOCP profiles set the RAM voltage to 1.35V for 3200 kits (all I own), kits with higher frequencies and/or tighter timings require more voltage.


That's questionable. I have Corsair XMS3 DDR3 kit and it tightens timings a bit without any voltage change. 



RealKGB said:


> 1.4V is fine for the RAM to take; it's been running that way since March and still holding strong with no problems. B-Die can take up to 1.5V if you cool it properly. The Nanya Tech dies I don't know what voltage is best since there's basically no info anywhere on the Internet.
> The RAM does get a bit toasty but a small fan strapped over the modules solved that problem.


lol imagine having a fan over RAM.




RealKGB said:


> This piques my interest. What have they done that's "untrustworthy"?
> They're a corporation, and their entire goal is to make money. Same goes for Intel, NVidia, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, Seasonic, Corsair, ECS, Dell, XFX, EVGA, ASRock, TSMC, and basically any other major player in the tech market. I bet that every single one of the companies I listed has done something untrustworthy.


Sure they did, but AMD is decently untrustworthy right now. Ryzen is still not completely fixed and it's been out since like 2017. Also AMD handled RX 5000 series fiasco poorly, many cards still black screen and reported RMA rate of those things is nearly 20%. That's awful. And pretty much since forever, AMD still doesn't stick to their TDP spec. That's kinda normal for them, but they could have adjusted PTT to stop that from happening, which they really should have done.


----------



## RealKGB (Jul 7, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> That's questionable. I have Corsair XMS3 DDR3 kit and it tightens timings a bit without any voltage change.


DDR3 and DDR4 are different, and even if your kit was DDR4 you don't have the same chips I do. I was able to run the sticks at 1.35V but I could only boot every other boot attempt,. A bump-up to 1.4 fixed it.


The red spirit said:


> lol imagine having a fan over RAM.


It's not my fault DIMMs are put super close together; if I could I'd make a custom heatsink with heat pipes to a fin stack and a fan. Super overkill but would definitely keep them cool.
The fan does solve heat issues though with no noise penalty.


----------



## The red spirit (Jul 7, 2021)

RealKGB said:


> DDR3 and DDR4 are different, and even if your kit was DDR4 you don't have the same chips I do. I was able to run the sticks at 1.35V but I could only boot every other boot attempt,. A bump-up to 1.4 fixed it.


So you weren't really able to boot at 1.35V, it clearly didn't work correctly. And it seems that your memory can't properly handle those timings and speed without overvolting it a lot. 1.2 volts is standard for DDR4 and some modules can do 3200MHz with that. Yours clearly fails and requires a massive overvolt. I remember 1.65V being quite high for DDR3, meanwhile 1.5V was standard and there were some low power DIMM doing 1.3V stock. 0.2V increase for DDR4 is a lot.




RealKGB said:


> It's not my fault DIMMs are put super close together; if I could I'd make a custom heatsink with heat pipes to a fin stack and a fan. Super overkill but would definitely keep them cool.
> The fan does solve heat issues though with no noise penalty.


It sure does create some noise, there's no such thing as noiseless fan. And no normal memory should ever require fans. Fans are only for memory overclocking. You know, some JEDEC DIMMs have no heatspreader and they run just fine at 3200MHz.


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## Chomiq (Jul 7, 2021)

I thought this was about gpu shortage? Used 3070s are going for $400 in HK if you buy in bulk.


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## The red spirit (Jul 7, 2021)

Chomiq said:


> I thought this was about gpu shortage?


It still is, but I don't mind derailing thread.


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## R-T-B (Jul 7, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> It still is, but I don't mind derailing thread.


Mods do.  They are pretty strict about intended topic  even if you are OP.  Just sayin'


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## claes (Jul 8, 2021)

Hmm


The red spirit said:


> Ain't nobody is glorifying poverty here and you are pulling it off-topic with "how terrible not being able to afford things actually is".


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## The red spirit (Jul 8, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> Mods do.  They are pretty strict about intended topic  even if you are OP.  Just sayin'


It seems like a pointless rule to me. FI everyone is fine with that, what's the point of enforcing strict adherence to topic?


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## RealKGB (Jul 8, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> So you weren't really able to boot at 1.35V, it clearly didn't work correctly. And it seems that your memory can't properly handle those timings and speed without overvolting it a lot. 1.2 volts is standard for DDR4 and some modules can do 3200MHz with that. Yours clearly fails and requires a massive overvolt. I remember 1.65V being quite high for DDR3, meanwhile 1.5V was standard and there were some low power DIMM doing 1.3V stock. 0.2V increase for DDR4 is a lot.


I was able to boot at 1.35V. It just acted weird.
When it did boot, it passed memtest86 fine. Bumping it up to 1.4V solved the every-other-boot problem since I like not having to hit the Reset button every time I restart.
Here's my timings:




Remember, this is a mixed kit on a B350 board, I'm running a CR of 1T, and my sticks are older (2x 2017, 2x 2019).
Here's what CPU-Z reports for SPD:


Noticing a theme with the voltage?
1.35V, 1.35V, 1.35V, 1.35V, on all sticks. Adding 0.05V fixed my stability problems, since I increased the frequency by 66 MHz or 133 MT/s and tightened the timings.


The red spirit said:


> It sure does create some noise, there's no such thing as noiseless fan.


It definitely creates noise, but I can't hear it, thus no noise penalty. Noiseless =/= noise penalty.


The red spirit said:


> Fans are only for memory overclocking.


And that's exactly what this is. Memory overclocking.
Does it provide any performance improvement over the XMP profile of C16-18-18-36? Probably not. Maybe it will help very slightly in memory-intensive workloads but I don't think any of the programs I run are.
Do I care though? No. I got it to go faster with no penalties to my system. Maybe I could get it to 3400 with an IMC voltage to 1.125 from 1.1 (stock XMP settings), since it POSTed twice at 1.35V RAM 1.1V IMC. Perhaps I'll do that tomorrow.


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## The red spirit (Jul 8, 2021)

RealKGB said:


> I was able to boot at 1.35V. It just acted weird.
> When it did boot, it passed memtest86 fine. Bumping it up to 1.4V solved the every-other-boot problem since I like not having to hit the Reset button every time I restart.
> Here's my timings:
> View attachment 207086
> ...


So in other words it wasn't stable at 1.35V, which is already a lot more than stock 1.2V. I have used memtest86 myself before and it's a joke. It never detects clearly barely functional memory or very unstable memory. Don't use it for stability testing. 



RealKGB said:


> Does it provide any performance improvement over the XMP profile of C16-18-18-36? Probably not. Maybe it will help very slightly in memory-intensive workloads but I don't think any of the programs I run are.
> Do I care though? No. I got it to go faster with no penalties to my system. Maybe I could get it to 3400 with an IMC voltage to 1.125 from 1.1 (stock XMP settings), since it POSTed twice at 1.35V RAM 1.1V IMC. Perhaps I'll do that tomorrow.


Whatever floats your boat, pretty much anything beyond XMP is essentially useless and XMP itself is barely useful in terms of performance gains.


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## Chomiq (Jul 9, 2021)

Updates at caseking:
3060's are down to around €640
Single 3060 Ti LHR SKU for €770
3070's Ties are down to €888 for the cheapest model in stock (and that is FTW3 from EVGA, so not exactly entry level)
3070's LHR are within the €850-930 range, regular models are €1100+
3080's LHR are nowhere to be seen (except for one model for €1200), regular are priced at €1500+
3080 Ties start at €1660

Looks like Nvidia is trying to make the most out of the situation by flooding the AIB's with chips for 3070 Ties and 3080s Ties.

On AMD front:
6700 XT goes for a minimum of €780
6800 - €1100
6800 XT - €1190

6900s and 3090s are in their own league with prices in the range of €1600-2500 and €2000-2700, respectively.


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## The red spirit (Jul 9, 2021)

Chomiq said:


> Updates at caseking:
> 3060's are down to around €640
> Single 3060 Ti LHR SKU for €770
> 3070's Ties are down to €888 for the cheapest model in stock (and that is FTW3 from EVGA, so not exactly entry level)
> ...


That stuff is expensive. The real good thing is that lower end hardware is now back to normal:
GT 1030 GDDR5 - 97.63
RX 550 2GB - 95.97
GTX 1650 GDDR5 - 193.85
GTX 1650 Super - 202.79

Now it's finally possible to get a decently performing card at close to reasonable price. Particularly 1650 Super is a great deal.


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## Chrispy_ (Jul 9, 2021)

The best graphics in the world will not make a shit game design any more fun to play.
Meanwhile, some of the best games I've ever played aren't graphically intensive.


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## Lei (Jul 30, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> That stuff is expensive. The real good thing is that lower end hardware is now back to normal:
> GT 1030 GDDR5 - 97.63
> RX 550 2GB - 95.97
> GTX 1650 GDDR5 - 193.85
> ...


1650s can run Forza 4 at 80fps with ultra settings. Considering that someone with 200 budget will most likely have a max 1080 monitor:










Don't feel burned that you can't get a better card, couple your purchase with this Xbox controller for PC


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## cvaldes (Jul 31, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> That stuff is expensive. The real good thing is that lower end hardware is now back to normal:
> GT 1030 GDDR5 - 97.63
> RX 550 2GB - 95.97
> GTX 1650 GDDR5 - 193.85
> ...


€95.97 is not the "normal" price for the RX 550 2GB. This was US$65 a year ago when I purchased one.

This isn't really a gamer's card, it was the entry-level card in the RX 500 series when it introduced over four years ago (April 2017). The RX 550 is essentially just a cheap card for CPUs that don't have integrated graphics. The 2GB VRAM doesn't provide much headroom for gaming. The realistic value of the RX 550 2GB is $50-55 in 2021 (the launch price was $79). Here in the USA, it is still going for nearly 4x what it was last year before the price gouging started. That's nuts.

The RX 550 isn't sufficient for decent gaming with even five-year old games. If the game is about 8-10+ years old, it'll suffice for 1080p gaming. Trust me, I play plenty of old games.

I don't anticipate US GPU prices to reach a "normal" level until 2023.


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## The red spirit (Aug 4, 2021)

cvaldes said:


> €95.97 is not the "normal" price for the RX 550 2GB. This was US$65 a year ago when I purchased one.


It's pretty normal, that's for how much it always went here in EU. 




cvaldes said:


> This isn't really a gamer's card, it was the entry-level card in the RX 500 series when it introduced over four years ago (April 2017). The RX 550 is essentially just a cheap card for CPUs that don't have integrated graphics. The 2GB VRAM doesn't provide much headroom for gaming.


I don't see any reason why it's not a proper card. It's a little bit downspecced RX 560, which I used in 2018 to play latest AAA games at 1440p and often medium-high settings and got 40-50 fps, sometimes more. Obviously it can't run Cyberpunk at either that resolution or framerate, but the most important thing is that at least it can likely do that at 720p. If person just wants something to have that plays quite a bit of games it's not a bad card. It should run pretty much every AAA game from 5 years ago at 1080p or higher. It certainly isn't futureproof, but it doesn't need to be. It only has to meet a modest criteria and it does that just fine. 




cvaldes said:


> The realistic value of the RX 550 2GB is $50-55 in 2021 (the launch price was $79). Here in the USA, it is still going for nearly 4x what it was last year before the price gouging started. That's nuts.


Strong disagree here. First of all, it always retailed for at least 95 Euros (it's not USA here) and wasn't out of production since launch. Another thing is that the old normal is gone like Atlantis. Forget that it ever existed, as market isn't going to return to "sanity" anytime soon. Considering current conditions RX 550 2GB is a fair deal at 96 Euros. Unless you get a really good local deal, you can't really find many performance equivalents at eBay at same price. For same price you can only get GTX 750 Ti, GTX 770, GTX 480, GTX 660 Ti, GTX 950, R9 280. None of them have close power consumption and all of them are used, meaning no warranty. In terms of performance, GTX 770 is a match for GTX 1050 Ti and according to TPU database it's 2 times faster. But it's also out of driver support. All I can say is that used deals don't look at great or are quite risky. RX 550 is adequate. If I needed a card today and needed it cheap, I would get RX 550. It's still faster than 1030 GDDR5 and is cheaper, so RX 550 is a no brainer deal. It's essentially waht Radeon x670 tier cards were a decade ago. Not great, but they got you by fine.




cvaldes said:


> The RX 550 isn't sufficient for decent gaming with even five-year old games. If the game is about 8-10+ years old, it'll suffice for 1080p gaming. Trust me, I play plenty of old games.


I guess your computer is broken then. RX 550 can certainly run 5 year old games at 1080p. I know it can, I used to play games with RX 560 and at 1440p, it worked quite well. Now there's RIS and FSR, so it gives a little bit of push for it. It's totally fine. That is unless you try to run games at Ultra (there's no point in doing that).




cvaldes said:


> I don't anticipate US GPU prices to reach a "normal" level until 2023.


Okay. But my post clearly wasn't about US. Not that it changes anything, EU is like US, but availability is poorer and everything is more expensive. Also retailers are even bigger scalpers than US scalpers.


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## cvaldes (Aug 4, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> I guess your computer is broken then. RX 550 can certainly run 5 year old games at 1080p. I know it can, I used to play games with RX 560 and at 1440p, it worked quite well. Now there's RIS and FSR, so it gives a little bit of push for it. It's totally fine. That is unless you try to run games at Ultra (there's no point in doing that).


I don't have any interest in playing games in Medium; I play games in Ultra on two systems. I have two good cards (RTX 3080 and RTX 2070 SUPER). The latter drives a 165Hz 1440p monitor. Pretty good.  The former is driving a 4K LG OLED TV. Looks great. 

I have an RX 580 8GB for my Mac mini 2018 (via a Sonnet external eGPU enclosure). I don't game on this system, the graphics card is for video and photo editing.

The RX 550 is used in a productivity system. Not worth it for gaming. With only 2GB VRAM, by definition this is not a card for Ultra gaming. This is the entry level model in the RX 500 generation. The RX 580 on the other hand was a capable gaming card when it was released 4+ years ago.

If I was really interested in gaming in Medium, hell I'd pick up a PS4 Pro instead. Heck, I can get 4K/120 gaming via a $500 PS5 right now if I wanted to. One thing for sure, right now $500 isn't going to buy a PC graphics card that will let you play at 4K.



The red spirit said:


> Okay. But my post clearly wasn't about US. Not that it changes anything, EU is like US, but availability is poorer and everything is more expensive. Also retailers are even bigger scalpers than US scalpers.


You know, I mention US prices only because I don't have the time nor interest in following the vagaries of local market price patterns on a global scale. 

Regardless where you live, the global GPU shortage is good for nobody except scalpers. 

If people resort to playing 5+ year old games because they can't get their hands on an affordable modern graphics card to play a demanding new release like Cyberpunk 2077 or Microsoft Flight Simulator, that isn't an ideal situation for game studios and their employees now, is it?


----------



## Cheese_On_tsaot (Aug 4, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> This isn't a troll thread, but for real not everything is bad during GPU shortage. There are some great things about it:
> 1) It's the best time to appreciate low end hardware
> 2) It forces people to know which settings to adjust in order to get a better experience
> 3) It forces people to be more creative, when it comes to graphics card buying
> ...


I fully agree, people are just all about themselves 95% of them, people like you, me and a few others are rarer than people really think.

Also the glass half empty folk are quick to make illogical decisions and emotional ramblings pretending they know anything and it is usually popular opinion that drowns out the rest.



wolf said:


> I like your attitude, but on a balance I wouldn't call it a good time, *so much money has gone to the 'wong' people*, depending on your perspective. I'd probably do a few of your suggestions if I missed out, but that's just making the best of a bad situation.
> 
> I count myself _*exceptionally*_ lucky (despite putting in the 'work' at launch time) to have gotten a launch 3080, especially with the insane market and now 3080Ti being abysmal value even if you compare MSRP vs MSRP. In Australia, we always get hit with higher prices, but even my $1399 AUD TUF 3080, is not only perpetually out of stock, but is listed at $2049 AUD straight from the retailer.
> 
> I suppose I'd have been fine on my GTX1080 still if I hadn't gotten so lucky, but I skipped a gen waiting for this series, I can readily admit I wouldn't have your rosy attitude if I missed out, and _still _didn't have one. Power to you.


People are intelligent, they understand that if a price rises, they can make money, it is simple and on a base level this is human survival instinct. Gathering as much resources as one can.

To think these are wrong people is to deny basic human nature.

This is a good read.






						The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature | Forum for the Future of Higher Education
					

Doctrines of Human Nature The long-standing Judeo-Christian theory of human nature, based on a fundamentalist interpretation of biblical events, was replaced in the 20th century by a secular theory of human nature grounded in three doctrines, commonly referred to as the blank slate, the noble...



					forum.mit.edu
				






qubit said:


> Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but I think its garbage. It sounds like you're happy people that can afford high end hardware can't get it, because _you_ can't afford it, bringing them down to your level, rather than you aspiring to do better and you're using a whole load of specious reasoning to justify it. There's a world of difference between them and I know, because I've had both.





tabascosauz said:


> Everyone likes a glass half full-type person, but there's really gotta be a limit to what constitutes a "good time" like come on    are we gonna start picking positives out of SARS and coronaviruses and calling it a good time because people started working from home?
> 
> I can only appreciate those points because I bought a 2060 Super to replace my 1070 in Oct 2019. People told me I was wasting my money on a dead generation, people told me I replaced a card that didn't need replacing, people laughed at 2080 Ti owners for wasting their money......those same people aren't laughing anymore. I sold my 1070 to my friend for a reasonable price by pre-pandemic standards, and now we both have a good 1440p GPU.
> 
> ...


The simple answer is... it's a graphics card, you already own graphics cards...

None of which are likely holding you back, your need to satiate a desire is why you can't hold back and give in to temptation, again also basic human nature but more complex than the other I mentioned as this is where greed comes from.

You deny the OP because you are jealous of others gathering those resources, really you want them too.

I have an R9 280x on Ebay if you like, it's at 5.00 pounds bid right now.


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## The red spirit (Aug 4, 2021)

cvaldes said:


> I don't have any interest in playing games in Medium; I play games in Ultra on two systems. I have two good cards (RTX 3080 and RTX 2070 SUPER). The latter drives a 165Hz 1440p monitor. Pretty good.  The former is driving a 4K LG OLED TV. Looks great.


I don't care about you flexing your poor financial decisions, but tell me, why exactly do you dislike medium settings so much? It's been known in enthusiast circles for over decade that ultra settings often give next to none visual benefit over high settings and often reduce fps by two times. And in last 5 years many games even on low do look quite good. So that's even more reason to don't care about ultra settings. The only time when they are good for something is when game becomes legacy and you can max it out, when you get another graphics card, otherwise ultra is just too hard to justify.



cvaldes said:


> The RX 550 is used in a productivity system. Not worth it for gaming. With only 2GB VRAM, by definition this is not a card for Ultra gaming. This is the entry level model in the RX 500 generation. The RX 580 on the other hand was a capable gaming card when it was released 4+ years ago.


Not sure what else did you expect. It was marketed as one and delivers like it was marketed. Nothing wrong with card itself.



cvaldes said:


> If I was really interested in gaming in Medium, hell I'd pick up a PS4 Pro instead. Heck, I can get 4K/120 gaming via a $500 PS5 right now if I wanted to. One thing for sure, right now $500 isn't going to buy a PC graphics card that will let you play at 4K.


Consoles imo are out of discussion in PC sites. Console is not a PC, even if it can run games, it's not the same. You can't use MS/KB with console, many games never come to consoles, there's a strong preference to increase graphics at cost of fps, often poor backwards compatibility, you don't own your own games, DRM owns you, TCO is a lot higher, due to games being more expensive on consoles, online multiplayer still requires paid services, consoles almost never have free titles, consoles don't have emulators, consoles often have design flaws that you aren't supposed to fix yourself. Simply put, a console isn't PC and PC isn't a console, two entirely different things that aren't directly comparable. And a very important thing that people often miss is that owning a console ends up being a lot more expensive than owning a computer, due to multiplayer subscriptions and games being more expensive than on PC. So the console itself might be cheap, but the rest isn't. 



cvaldes said:


> You know, I mention US prices only because I don't have the time nor interest in following the vagaries of local market price patterns on a global scale.


Same for me, I have no interest in following US market. Anyway, when I mention European hardware shop, then I really don't expect some out of context comments about how same cards were a lot cheaper in la la la land. Those prices weren't ever real here, so I don't care how they might had been at some point radically different on the other side of pond.



cvaldes said:


> Regardless where you live, the global GPU shortage is good for nobody except scalpers.


Good or not, but my argument is that it doesn't nearly affect anyone as much as they make it out to be (particularly gamers and TPUers). 



cvaldes said:


> If people resort to playing 5+ year old games because they can't get their hands on an affordable modern graphics card to play a demanding new release like Cyberpunk 2077 or Microsoft Flight Simulator, that isn't an ideal situation for game studios and their employees now, is it?


But I don't care about them, especially for studios that can't make reasonably optimized code. That's entirely their issue that they did such an awful job at making their shit playable. More importantly, I don't get what's the big deal about playing the latest games. It's an entertainment a type of media, so as long as it works and is enjoyable, its age is irrelevant. Imagine the insanity of people complaining that songs from 1920s don't sound nearly as crispy as modern songs, due to them being on vax cylinders and putting them into landfills, just due to some hardly important technical aspect. Or doing the same to movies... Sure in computer gaming space tech moves fast and things get incompatible rather quickly, so many games are simply lost due t that, but as long as they function and are enjoyable, there's no point in replacing them. Same for hardware, as long as it lets you do what you want, there's no point to replace it, even if there is something better. Just because there is something better, doesn't mean that you should upgrade to that. Particularly today, when you mostly don't even get any new features and only differentiating factor between hardware is generally performance (although argument for power consumption and some specific compatibility oddness, could be made too).


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## qubit (Aug 4, 2021)

Cheese_On_tsaot said:


> The simple answer is... it's a graphics card, you already own graphics cards...
> 
> None of which are likely holding you back, your need to satiate a desire is why you can't hold back and give in to temptation, again also basic human nature but more complex than the other I mentioned as this is where greed comes from.
> 
> ...


What? Your post makes no sense.


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## Cheese_On_tsaot (Aug 4, 2021)

qubit said:


> What? Your post makes no sense.


Then there is no use in me trying to explain further.


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## qubit (Aug 5, 2021)

Cheese_On_tsaot said:


> Then there is no use in me trying to explain further.


Nah, don't push it back onto me. You haven't explained anything.

Looks like you're trying to criticise me in some way, but what you've written is an incoherent mess that doesn't make sense and I've done you the courtesy of giving you a chance to write it properly.

To be honest, I'm not really interested in criticism from some rando on the internet and don't have to justify myself to you, so if you wanna rewrite it properly or leave it here, I'm good either way.


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## wolf (Aug 5, 2021)

Cheese_On_tsaot said:


> People are intelligent, they understand that if a price rises, they can make money, it is simple and on a base level this is human survival instinct. Gathering as much resources as one can.
> 
> To think these are wrong people is to deny basic human nature.


Sorry dude but scalpers are the wrong people to buy these cards, they literally never had the intention of anything other than taking advantage for personal gain. Sure it may be a part of human nature that a certain subset of people have no moral issues doing it, but the same could be said for all sorts of other acts that are generally considered immoral by greater society or even illegal. But hey, your opinion and all, you're allowed it as am I. If you meant miners, they contributed to the supply shortages for gamers, so they weren't really the intended audience but they just bought a product for their use case, I don't like it but they don't quite have that special place in hell that scalpers do.


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## Cheese_On_tsaot (Aug 5, 2021)

qubit said:


> Nah, don't push it back onto me. You haven't explained anything.
> 
> Looks like you're trying to criticise me in some way, but what you've written is an incoherent mess that doesn't make sense and I've done you the courtesy of giving you a chance to write it properly.
> 
> To be honest, I'm not really interested in criticism from some rando on the internet and don't have to justify myself to you, so if you wanna rewrite it properly or leave it here, I'm good either way.


You like being right, you also can't stand criticism.

I don't know what part of what I said made no sense, just sounds like you pretending so that no responsibility is taken.
I understand what I wrote, I am sure many do.



wolf said:


> Sorry dude but scalpers are the wrong people to buy these cards, they literally never had the intention of anything other than taking advantage for personal gain. Sure it may be a part of human nature that a certain subset of people have no moral issues doing it, but the same could be said for all sorts of other acts that are generally considered immoral by greater society or even illegal. But hey, your opinion and all, you're allowed it as am I.


Morals are subjective, it is all so that we remain in control, you also want a peice of the pie though so whats the difference?
You would not buy up a few cards and sell them on if you could?

If given to you, you would also not put them up on Ebay at a competitive price to the market value right now?

Lets say a RTX 2070 goes for 600 and you put it up for 559 to ensure it sells, no?

It's easy to have a stance and then not follow it as no one knows what you do on Ebay other than you and is easily bullcrapped. Words are words.
I don't trust anyone as most will stab me in the back anyway.

The hollier than thou crew who can't get what they want then when they do, will literally do the same.


----------



## Space Lynx (Aug 5, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> 1) It's the best time to appreciate low end hardware
> 4) It's the best time to revisit classic PC games
> 5) It's a good time to just appreciate what you already have




as someone who was lucky and had a rx 6800 and rx 5600x system. then sold it, because frankly i realized i wasn't using the horsepower it gave me. as most of the games i am enjoying are indie, FFXIV, or older backlog games that my gtx 1070 already handles just fine at 1080p 165hz.

I'm very happy with my decision.  modern AAA games simply don't interest me like they used to. /shrug


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## wolf (Aug 5, 2021)

Cheese_On_tsaot said:


> Morals are subjective, it is all so that we remain in control, you also want a peice of the pie though so whats the difference?
> You would not buy up a few cards and sell them on if you could?
> 
> If given to you, you would also not put them up on Ebay at a competitive price to the market value right now?


I wanted the card to game with, which is what I do, I didn't buy it *just *to sell it and turn a profit, disadvantaging someone else that wants to actually own and use the product. And no I wouldn't buy anything at all just to scalp them either, a chance which I've had and have not taken.

Selling something you genuinely don't want or use anymore and asking market value isn't quite the same, but it can make it hard to tell those real cases apart from people who 100% went into it with the intention to scalp.

If morals are subjective then here's my subjective take. F**K scalpers.


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## The red spirit (Aug 5, 2021)

lynx29 said:


> as someone who was lucky and had a rx 6800 and rx 5600x system. then sold it, because frankly i realized i wasn't using the horsepower it gave me. as most of the games i am enjoying are indie, FFXIV, or older backlog games that my gtx 1070 already handles just fine at 1080p 165hz.
> 
> I'm very happy with my decision.  modern AAA games simply don't interest me like they used to. /shrug


To be honest, that looks a bit like a waste. I'm not sure the current state of vBIOS modding of RX 6000 cards, but at least logically thinking it would have made some sense to set power limit to half of stock (essentially to 125 watts only), so that you would be left with big core, that works at more power efficient clock speed range. It should be more power efficient than GTX 1070 and still a bit faster. And when you will feel the need for more power, you can just roll back stock power limit.


----------



## Cheese_On_tsaot (Aug 5, 2021)

wolf said:


> I wanted the card to game with, which is what I do, I didn't buy it *just *to sell it and turn a profit, disadvantaging someone else that wants to actually own and use the product. And no I wouldn't buy anything at all just to scalp them either, a chance which I've had and have not taken.
> 
> Selling something you genuinely don't want or use anymore and asking market value isn't quite the same, but it can make it hard to tell those real cases apart from people who 100% went into it with the intention to scalp.
> 
> If morals are subjective then here's my subjective take. F**K scalpers.


The market value is the scalper price is the point I was making so you are by definition eating your own words.


----------



## Space Lynx (Aug 5, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> To be honest, that looks a bit like a waste. I'm not sure the current state of vBIOS modding of RX 6000 cards, but at least logically thinking it would have made some sense to set power limit to half of stock (essentially to 125 watts only), so that you would be left with big core, that works at more power efficient clock speed range. It should be more power efficient than GTX 1070 and still a bit faster. And when you will feel the need for more power, you can just roll back stock power limit.



nah, i'm happy with my decision. pricing won't stay bad forever. onceTSMC comes online with new factories next year the market will be flooded with supply by december 2022. im in no rush


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## wolf (Aug 5, 2021)

Cheese_On_tsaot said:


> The market value is the scalper price is the point I was making


The market value is ~the scapler price, but the persons intentions and actions are the moral difference, it's not exactly black and white, but there are important delineations there.


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## 95Viper (Aug 5, 2021)

Stay on topic.
Stop insulting other members... discuss the topic not people.
Be civil.


> *Behavior that is inappropriate/should be reported*
> Insulting other forum members (calling someone names makes you look stupid anyways).
> Hateful, toxic, and otherwise demeaning comments will not be tolerated; whether meant as a joke or not.





> All posts and private messages have a "report post" button on the bottom of the post, click it when you feel something is inappropriate. Do not use your report as a "wild card invitation" to go back and add to the drama and therefore become part of the problem.



Thank You, and, have a good day.


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## cvaldes (Aug 5, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> I don't care about you flexing your poor financial decisions, but tell me, why exactly do you dislike medium settings so much? It's been known in enthusiast circles for over decade that ultra settings often give next to none visual benefit over high settings and often reduce fps by two times. And in last 5 years many games even on low do look quite good. So that's even more reason to don't care about ultra settings. The only time when they are good for something is when game becomes legacy and you can max it out, when you get another graphics card, otherwise ultra is just too hard to justify.


I think purchasing high quality graphics cards for gaming is a good decision when done by someone who has the means. It's not an investment, it's a cost, just like buying a new refrigerator or an electric toothbrush. Buying shares of NVDA is an investment.

Games look better at Ultra settings if you haven't noticed. A decade ago there was no ray-tracing either. A lot of the more sophisticated graphics settings have developed over the years and weren't around in the first decade of this millennium. Heck, one simply needs to look at the evolution of anti-aliasing algorithms.

There's also the notion of screen resolutions increasing at a faster rate than years ago. Heck, you don't even need to look at PC hardware to recognize this. Today's smartphones are shooting 4K Dolby Vision in low light conditions that would have stymied the top-of-the-line smartphones from ten years ago.

There is a cottage industry of people modding older PC games to provide upgraded visuals that weren't attainable when those titles first released: reshade, high-resolution texture packs, etc. If you don't understand a graphics card with 8GB VRAM can support higher resolution textures than a 2GB card can.

Just as important: dickering with each game's setting to find adequate performance is laborious and time consuming. From a time perspective, it makes more sense just buying quality hardware, setting everything to Ultra and not wasting my limited free time futzing around with game configuration.



> Not sure what else did you expect. It was marketed as one and delivers like it was marketed. Nothing wrong with card itself.


Just because something is marketed as something doesn't automatically mean it will deliver. Look at Cyberpunk 2077. The world is full of "over promise, under deliver" and not just the PC hardware market.



> Consoles imo are out of discussion in PC sites. Console is not a PC, even if it can run games, it's not the same.


Unfortunately, the TPU operators have already let console discussions happen so you're too late complaining.

Moreover, the videogame console market essentially sets the parameters of the hardware requirements for PC gaming. With the debut of PS5 and Xbox Series X, 4K@120Hz gaming is THE standard for the next 6-7 years. It makes zero sense for a game studio to publish a title that can't be played on one of these two consoles so it's not like Bethesda, Ubisoft, Rockstar, et al. are going to start pumping out 8K games next year.



> Same for me, I have no interest in following US market. Anyway, when I mention European hardware shop, then I really don't expect some out of context comments about how same cards were a lot cheaper in la la la land. Those prices weren't ever real here, so I don't care how they might had been at some point radically different on the other side of pond.


Sorry, US prices here are very relevant because THAT'S THE CURRENCY WHAT AMD AND NVIDIA ANNOUNCE THEIR PRODUCTS. When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang takes the stage to announce a new GeForce product, he quotes US dollars.



> But I don't care about them, especially for studios that can't make reasonably optimized code. That's entirely their issue that they did such an awful job at making their shit playable. More importantly, I don't get what's the big deal about playing the latest games. It's an entertainment a type of media, so as long as it works and is enjoyable, its age is irrelevant.


Look, no one can please everyone all the time.

There are some great new games that demand a lot of hardware performance and there are terrible new games that demand a lot of hardware. There are great new games that have modest hardware requirements and there are terrible new games that require modest hardware. There are tons of older games that fit all the same description.

You clearly don't realize that all games were new at one point. Don't you remember the whole "But can it play Crysis?" era? Now it's a meme from an era before they were known as memes. And yes, plenty of today's systems can play Crysis, back when it was released very few.

There are games that have a rough start and got better. There are games that were better before then got worse. There are good games that stayed good, there are bad games that stayed bad.

However, if you have very capable new hardware you can play anything the game studios can pump out without spending any effort trying to figure out how to run it satisfactorily. That's the point of premium gaming hardware.

Remember that these developers (are supposed to) test their content on a variety of systems before they publish the minimum hardware requirements.

I never said that newer games were better than older games (in fact, I mentioned that play a bunch of older games). However, newer games will push hardware farther than older games.

One thing is for certain: you have much lower standards than some others here.

Everyone has that choice, just like the shoes you put on your feet or what you put on your dinner plate.


----------



## The red spirit (Aug 5, 2021)

cvaldes said:


> I think purchasing high quality graphics cards for gaming is a good decision. It's not an investment, it's a cost. Buying shares of NVDA is an investment.


Basically any card nowadays (except frying RTX 3090s) are well made. The only difference is price, performance, power consumption. So far there hasn't been a single properly priced, quite fast for price and reasonably efficient card in a while. The last attempt was GTX 1660 series, but they lacked performance for their price, so the last truly good all around card was AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB (4GB is e-waste). It was cheap, fast and efficient. More than half of Vega 64 performance for 3 times lower price. Good and it lasts forever, as it is on GCN architecture, also has 8GB VRAM and now with FSR, it's essentially immortal card for another 4 years. nVidia's last best card was GTX 1060 6GB, but it's just worse than RX 480 8GB in how it will fare long term.




cvaldes said:


> Games look better at Ultra settings if you haven't noticed. A decade ago there was no ray-tracing either.


Only sometimes. It's hard to say if high and ultra look any different at all.


















And I was benching RX 580 in Unigine Tropics yesterday, I went through every setting combination and many things made little visual difference. Often even medium was nearly indistinguishable from high. For example, shader quality past medium, made no difference, but reduced fps. AA past 4x made such a tiny difference that it just didn't matter. Disabling tessellation made zero visual difference. I'm still mystified as to what refractions setting does. Ambient occlusion makes some subconscious (I wasn't able to tell if demo had it on or not, but when it was on it felt a little bit better, but I still can't point a finger and answer where and why) quality difference, but costs quite a bit of fps. 

And same story is in games, thought visual difference is greater, it still isn't big enough for me to care.




cvaldes said:


> A lot of the more sophisticated graphics settings have developed over the years and weren't around in the first decade of this millennium.


That's mostly due to transition from fixed pipeline to unified shader architecture. After that switch, game devs can make their own shaders (graphics effects) in ways that they want, not in graphics card predefined ways. Other than that, as long as card is unified shader and supports proper API versions, there isn't any visual setting difference between two cards. They render exactly the same image, but perhaps at different fps. The only big innovation is ray tracing, but it's still somewhat too early as it still is too darn slow and current architectures for it aren't that great, also it is way too much cost prohibitive to truly become mainstream. Even if it is a future, currently it's not much better than other technologies like 3D Vision, ATi TruForm or PhysX, which eventually became irrelevant and died. Once their updated version, which fixed initial issues, rolls out (if it even does), only then technology stays for good. But before that, I think that something like FSR will do that a lot faster, as it solves a very relevant problem for many gamers, instead of offering nice visual candy that adds nothing to gameplay. 




cvaldes said:


> Heck, one simply needs to look at the evolution of anti-aliasing algorithms.


Not at all. The main reason why there are so many of them is because full supersampling anti-aliasing is already made and it looks as good as it could be, but it is insanely heavy even on powerful hardware. RX 580 can achieve consistent 60 fps with it in Colin McRae Rally 2005 (by that I mean average fps is a lot higher, but game never drops below 60 fps), running at 1280x1024 resolution. Let's say most powerful card today is 4 times faster than RX 580, that gives enough boost to run probably 5 year old AAA game at same resolution with 8x super sampling AA. That's simply not fast enough and that's why many AA techniques exist today, but even if they get close to SSAA, they still look somewhat worse than SSAA, but offer times better performance. It's certainly not because SSAA can't achieve best visual quality, why those AAs exist, it's only due to limited performance of current hardware. And here's one dirty secret, MSAA (multisampling AA) pretty much achieved a perfect quality and performance balance in early 00s already and there's not much point in having other AAs, unless even MSAA is a bit too heavy, but then you inevitably end up with some kind of blurry antialiasing, that just looks like game is running at lower resolution and that kind of defeats the whole purpose of anti-aliasing in the first place.




cvaldes said:


> There's also the notion of screen resolutions increasing at a faster rate than years ago. Heck, you don't even need to look at PC hardware to recognize this. Today's smartphones are shooting 4K Dolby Vision in low light conditions that would have stymied the top-of-the-line smartphones from ten years ago.


Phones aren't PCs. In PC space, resolution grows faster than even, but also stagnates more than ever. Because most people are still on 1080p and don't upgrade from 1080p, due to massive expense that isn't properly justified anymore as it was 15 years ago, when hardware was cheaper and generational gains were actually big.




cvaldes said:


> Just as important: dickering with each game's setting to find adequate performance is laborious and time consuming. From a time perspective, it makes more sense just buying quality hardware, setting everything to Ultra and not wasting my limited free time futzing around with game configuration.


Once you get more skilled at that, it takes no more than half hour to find the perfect setting config. And your free time is financially free, as you wouldn't work (or generate money somehow else) during it anyway.



cvaldes said:


> Just because something is marketed as something doesn't automatically mean it will deliver. Look at Cyberpunk 2077. The world is full of "over promise, under deliver" and not just the PC hardware market.


Same can be said for RTX 3090, it's the Cyberpunk of card. Many of them fry and you really can't run games at 8K, without some trickery that makes game to render at much lower resolution and then upscales it to 8K. It can't do that honestly, without DLSS it's dead meat at 8K, unless you play older games at lower settings and sometimes are fine with lower fps than you usually get. RX 550, however, delivered what it was advertised to do, which is replacement for older card, replacement for IGP or a card good for running esport titles. It does all that and it does a lot more. That was a proper card release.



cvaldes said:


> Unfortunately, the TPU operators have already let console discussions happen so you're too late complaining.


That's of no relevance here. PC isn't console and Console isn't PC, they can't be really directly compared as they are completely different products. I don't care if mods give bans for that or not.




cvaldes said:


> Sorry, US prices here are very relevant because THAT'S THE CURRENCY WHAT AMD AND NVIDIA ANNOUNCE THEIR PRODUCTS. When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang takes the stage to announce a new GeForce product, he quotes US dollars.


That same Jensen dude also announces products in US. Sure as hell, he won't announce price in Chinese Yuans or Brazilian Reals, as crowd won't understand how much it is. But that's it. Or maybe his side of business is also done in USD, but beyond that, cards aren't infallible to taxes and other factors that change their price. And also that's MSRP, Market Suggested Retail Price, he doesn't say this is GTX Ultra nd you sell it for 500 dolleroos or else you are going to be straightened out. Nah, MSRP is a soft suggestion and is only useful to know roughly for how much you will be able to the card. And also , if you don't want very loud and hot version, then you will pay more too.



cvaldes said:


> There are some great new games that demand a lot of hardware performance and there are terrible new games that demand a lot of hardware. There are great new games that have modest hardware requirements and there are terrible new games that require modest hardware. There are tons of older games that fit all the same description.


That's correct, and I just pick some titles from certain eras and play them. Latest and greatest isn't much more valuable than classics. There are plenty of old games that never got a new version, that is better in every way.  



cvaldes said:


> You clearly don't realize that all games were new at one point. Don't you remember the whole "But can it play Crysis?" era? Now it's a meme from an era before they were known as memes. And yes, plenty of today's systems can play Crysis, back when it was released very few. There are games that have a rough start and got better. There are games that were better before then got worse.


I can say that I didn't know much about computers in that era and certainly didn't know about that meme probably until 2013 or 2014. I only completed the game in 2019 or 2020 just to see what the big deal was and the game itself ended up being pretty boring sci-fi shooter. I don't even know how it got so popular for being such a mediocre game, that brought nothing new or fun. I'm not saying that it can't be enjoyed, it can be, but it really is quite generic and it has tons of similar games that you can play instead of it. It's also surprising how franchise didn't die after Crysis hardware spec disaster, for many games that would mean a tons of lost sales, but they made Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 even. It's hard to believe that Crysis franchise was even a modest financial success. I doubt that Crysis got better over time, I had a poor time on my GTX 650 Ti. It could only play it at 1024x768 resolution and pretty much everything set to low or medium, even then average fps was okay, but it tended to drop often. Kepler was released in 2013, 6-7 years after Crysis was made. And only then you could have expected to run it on sub native resolution. That's garbage optimization. And finally, a glorious day came, when RTX 2080 Ti was launched. It was the first single card that can max out Crysis at 4K and get average of 60 fps (it still dropped to lower than that). No matter how I look at it, but Crysis seems to be a shoddy game launch. Crysis 2 was a lot better, but it still was scandalous for tessellation. That one setting killed performance on GCN 1 cards. It wasn't a fault of game itself, it just exposed a fault of GCN 1 architecture, which had a really weak tessellator (which was shown to be true in other games and benches), but it was enough for many idiots to say that nVidia gimped AMD performance and for some that Crysis 2 might be as brutal to run as Crysis. 




cvaldes said:


> However, if you have very capable new hardware you can play anything the game studios can pump out without spending any effort trying to figure out what to run it satisfactorily. That's the point of premium gaming hardware.


Perhaps, that's a valid reason, but to max out games at say 1080p, for a while you really didn't need much of card. I go the other way, I buy lower end hardware and run games at higher than recommended resolution. And I found out that messing with settings, can yield minimal fidelity losses, but higher resolution and much better fps than what reviewers said. I even found out that RX 560 could run AAA games at 1440p, meanwhile reviewers said that it can't even do 1080p always. The only problem was that after a year or two it could no longer do that and I needed low settings and 1600x900 to make stuff run on that card, so it was upgraded to RX 580. 




cvaldes said:


> I never said that newer games were better than older games (in fact, I mentioned that play a bunch of older games). However, newer games will push hardware farther than older games.
> 
> One thing is for certain: you have much lower standards than some others here.
> 
> Everyone has that choice, just like the shoes you put on your feet or what you put on your dinner plate.


Perhaps due to me using nVidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB 128 bit for a long time. And for a long time having a very limited budget for computer hardware, basically I had to live with some poor choices that I may have made before for a long time. So my hardware buying rationale has always been to get a lot of bang for the buck and get stuff that will last for a long time. If my computer after 3 years couldn't play games at 1080p, then I would have to play at 1600x900 or 1280x1024, and then wait a lot until there was enough money to get something better. Such conditions certainly made me rather skeptical of ultra settings and many other things. I only cared about things that make a big impact and are inexpensive, ultra settings fails at that. My first completely mine card was GTX 650 Ti and since start, I had to make it work at 1080p as it certainly couldn't do ultra. Right now I'm less restrained by money, but things I learned before weren't forgotten and now it's no longer a necessity to be super stingy, just that beyond certain threshold there isn't anything really all that much better that I would really care about. And to be honest, I probably care about gaming much less than I did before. I think that I like learning about hardware much more than to actually use it. Right now I'm more interested in some GPU architectures and why some of them perform better than others, especially after fixed pipeline era. I might be stupid enough and buy GTX 560 Ti for benching only.


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Aug 5, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> This isn't a troll thread, but for real not everything is bad during GPU shortage. There are some great things about it:
> 1) It's the best time to appreciate low end hardware
> 
> 2) It forces people to know which settings to adjust in order to get a better experience


1 Right say what now I owned a phone already I don't game on that, I do appreciate it though , doing low end work.
2 AMD and Nvidia are happy to do that for you and that's patronising, what do you think people do


The red spirit said:


> 3) It forces people to be more creative, when it comes to graphics card buying


Yeah buying a GPU with a price hike and a not free PSU, or a whole extra not free pc , or twice the price, great.


The red spirit said:


> 4) It's the best time to revisit classic PC games


You get that one 


The red spirit said:


> 5) It's a good time to just appreciate what you already have


That's totally wrong to Some enthusiasts, I appreciate, but Nexxxxt.


The red spirit said:


> 6) It certainly helps to reduce conspicuous consumerism


Yeah sure those buying a GPU are the opposite, everyone else spent it on beer and tat.


The red spirit said:


> 7) If GPU shortage lasts a long time, then PC game makers will be forced to make games that run on lower end specs and that's good news for low end gamers (also FSR)


See below.


The red spirit said:


> Frankly those threads about "oh no, RTX 3080 isn't available" are getting annoying. And to be honest, I never liked high end hardware. This GPU shortage just uncovered how much snobbism there is and it seems that most people that are into PC gaming aren't in PC gaming at all, but instead are just into buying high end shit and anything that isn't running at Ultra settings at 4K and at least 60 fps is literally unplayable to them. Thankfully, these times are doing a good job of getting rid of such people. And that said, in long term PC gaming may get cheaper and more accessible, that is if GPU shortage lasts long enough and instead of going bankrupt, game makers will make games that run on lower end hardware.


Nice opinion here , I just realized, I know, bit slow on the owner of this thread, the Irony though I actually chuckled, they're are already a great many indie Devs making game's to run on Intel Igpu grade PC's.
Total tit , snobism, some pay decent money on golf clubs, I don't call them out despite not appreciating golfs merits, it's shit.

But that's their hobby , I like high end shit but can't afford it, yet buy what I can when I can, like Steam deck  

I replied to your numbered nonsense troll bait.


----------



## Bones (Aug 5, 2021)

Cheese_On_tsaot said:


> *1:* I fully agree, people are just all about themselves 95% of them, *people like you, me and a few others are rarer than people really think*.
> 
> *2:* Also the glass half empty folk are quick to make illogical decisions and emotional ramblings pretending they know anything and it is usually popular opinion that drowns out the rest.
> 
> ...


1: It's only natural for people to be about themselves, that's obvious.....
But then you went and made yourself out to be something special from the majority here, 95% in fact so from what I'm reading into this, _you're that good_......
Not.

2: And then classifying those that think in a certain way (Half empty) to automatically be "Wrong" is in itself wrong. There is no way any certain "Class" of people can be right ..... Or wrong all the time as you've put it by the words you used.

3: You said it yourself, it's simple so it doesn't take a genius to figure all that out.

4: We are not animals.
We can and do defy our nature at times because we have intelligence/intellect and if we use it, it's gonna happen at some point in time. Even animals at times defy it - I get what your point is but at the same time it's not a perfect point "As Made" by your own words.
And I don't need to read a book to figure it out.

5: Now - I really have to ask.
How is it _you know the guy_ to make that ass-umption?
I do know there are tendencies, that's real but at the same time it goes back to intellect so one's "Nature" isn't always in play. There is a time logic (Intellect) is the main factor in a decision making process too.
However you are correct about greed, that is a more basic thing we all have (Goes for me and even you too) so can't say you're wrong about it in that way but even with that, intellect _can_ override it.

6: Seriously  - Good luck with that.
----------------------------------
Guys, I understand there's going to be thoughts about it and also based on the very thing about it being right or wrong (Moral).
I'm no fan of these high prices and to me it's taking advantage of others regardless of the reason(s) why, which DOES go back to human nature, but at the same time we do have intellect and by that we can use logic to decide.

However as it's also been pointed out (Correctly) it's the property of the seller and they can ask whatever price they want.

I'll also say there is a point I've made myself a few times in that this is nothing more than controlling the supply so prices, in turn can be controlled too. There is no logical "Need" for bots to be buying out an entire site's supply of cards within seconds IF greed wasn't part of it...... But it also takes intellect/logic to figure out how to do it.

In this case, it's a decision to take action based on greed over logic.

It's a very complicated "Thing" being discussed and there is no easy answer except if the price is too high, don't buy.


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## 95Viper (Aug 5, 2021)

Warned you (all) to stop the personal insults and a few can't seem to help themselves.
This the last warning...
Stay on topic.  And, stop the insults... be civil.

Thank You.


----------



## The red spirit (Aug 5, 2021)

TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> Total tit , snobism, some pay decent money on golf clubs, I don't call them out despite not appreciating golfs merits, it's shit.
> 
> But that's their hobby , I like high end shit but can't afford it, yet buy what I can when I can.


I thought that it got particularly bad when it came to RTX 3000 series. Jensen said, that they have more demand than ever and I think it might be true. You only need to look at TPU and see folks here going apeshit for RTX cards. Some remain sane, but they are no more than 20% of those that reply to those threads. I don't really recall any other time, when people were so crazy for latest cards and not only latest, but high end cards and often scalped up. CPU section is only a little bit better, but not much. Some dudes just need to chill and remember that "nothing looks as bad as it does, nothing looks as good as it does". And I mention TPU here, OCN is too toxic in that regard, so I'm not coming back there for a while.


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Aug 6, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> I thought that it got particularly bad when it came to RTX 3000 series. Jensen said, that they have more demand than ever and I think it might be true. You only need to look at TPU and see folks here going apeshit for RTX cards. Some remain sane, but they are no more than 20% of those that reply to those threads. I don't really recall any other time, when people were so crazy for latest cards and not only latest, but high end cards and often scalped up. CPU section is only a little bit better, but not much. Some dudes just need to chill and remember that "nothing looks as bad as it does, nothing looks as good as it does". And I mention TPU here, OCN is too toxic in that regard, so I'm not coming back there for a while.


Am I that old?!, Damn.

So so many times shit got expensive for a bit, quite random, but obviously not at all random.


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## Hachi_Roku256563 (Aug 6, 2021)

I think its not fair to say A high end card Doesnt give a better experience it definitely does and its compltlty reasonable to what the best gaming experience
but its also not bad to not want the best


The red spirit said:


> AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB (4GB is e-waste). It was cheap, fast and efficient


the 480 AND 580 where anything but efficent
they where hot and heavy Not bad by any means but not efficent

Futheremore to the extent that high and ultra are not very diffrent
it also goes the same foer the performance hit ultra takes over high


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## The red spirit (Aug 6, 2021)

Isaac` said:


> the 480 AND 580 where anything but efficent
> they where hot and heavy Not bad by any means but not efficent


I can agree on 580, not so much on 480. RX 480 was decently efficient for its time and depending on cooler, it was really cold, although reference cooler, didn't rape ears either. But even RX 480 was clocked a bit past most efficient clock speed point, so even modest power limiter modifications can make it a ton more efficient. They are also notorious for being great undervolters. Not that nV doesn't undervolt, but I doubt that they do as much as Polaris cards. RX 580 was a lame attempt to compete with GTX 1060, so it was clocked way too high than it could do efficiently and thus it's a disgrace to original Polaris. RX 580 is a legitimate space heater.


----------



## Hachi_Roku256563 (Aug 6, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> I can agree on 580, not so much on 480. RX 480 was decently efficient for its time and depending on cooler, it was really cold, although reference cooler, didn't rape ears either. But even RX 480 was clocked a bit past most efficient clock speed point, so even modest power limiter modifications can make it a ton more efficient. They are also notorious for being great undervolters. Not that nV doesn't undervolt, but I doubt that they do as much as Polaris cards. RX 580 was a lame attempt to compete with GTX 1060, so it was clocked way too high than it could do efficiently and thus it's a disgrace to original Polaris. RX 580 is a legitimate space heater.


480 runs hotter then the 580 the 580 is legit just a more efficent 480 
its slightly faster
and slighty cooler


----------



## The red spirit (Aug 6, 2021)

Isaac` said:


> 480 runs hotter then the 580 the 580 is legit just a more efficent 480
> its slightly faster
> and slighty cooler


What are you talking about? Are you sure aren't mixing it up with GTX cards? RX 580 is literally the same RX 480 with no other improvements made, other than increased clock speed. Absolutely nothing else was done. No new features, interchangeable BIOSes, often interchangeable coolers, everything is the same. There's zero new technology in RX 500 series, same old stuff clocked higher. 

Take a look at them yourself:








						AMD Radeon RX 480 Specs
					

AMD Ellesmere, 1266 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR5, 2000 MHz, 256 bit




					www.techpowerup.com
				











						AMD Radeon RX 580 Specs
					

AMD Polaris 20, 1340 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR5, 2000 MHz, 256 bit




					www.techpowerup.com


----------



## Hachi_Roku256563 (Aug 6, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> What are you talking about? Are you sure aren't mixing it up with GTX cards? RX 580 is literally the same RX 480 with no other improvements made, other than increased clock speed. Absolutely nothing else was done. No new features, interchangeable BIOSes, often interchangeable coolers, everything is the same. There's zero new technology in RX 500 series, same old stuff clocked higher.
> 
> Take a look at them yourself:
> 
> ...


Its again its more efficent 
it runs cooler 
my freinds 480 runs hot enough to shutdown the pc
My 580 does not run hot enough to throttle


----------



## eidairaman1 (Aug 6, 2021)

Ellesmere RX 480, Polaris 20 RX 580.

Both are 14nm process size.
I believe some yields were cherry picked or refined so the RX 580 launched, some pcbs were refined.

Polaris 30 is a 12nm process shrink of Polaris 20. Perhaps some RX 580s were actually Polaris 30s. I see it possible to flash RX 580 8Gs into RX 590s.

2048SP cards were RX 570s and Chinese RX 580s.

1002 67DF 1DA2 (RX 580 Full)
1002 6FDF 1DA2 (RX 570/RX580 2048 SP) some RX 570s could be made into RX 580s, not sure if 2048 model or full model)



The red spirit said:


> What are you talking about? Are you sure aren't mixing it up with GTX cards? RX 580 is literally the same RX 480 with no other improvements made, other than increased clock speed. Absolutely nothing else was done. No new features, interchangeable BIOSes, often interchangeable coolers, everything is the same. There's zero new technology in RX 500 series, same old stuff clocked higher.
> 
> Take a look at them yourself:
> 
> ...





Isaac` said:


> Its again its more efficent
> it runs cooler
> my freinds 480 runs hot enough to shutdown the pc
> My 580 does not run hot enough to throttle



Neither of you are wrong. I really see no point on continuing the pissing match.

@The red spirit

In 2016 AMD GPU dept was hemmorhaging money due to Raja Koduri (noticed his firing by Lisa Su?)

GCN 4.0 was a refinement of GCN 2.0 (R9 290/X) so Polaris and Island GPUs are very a like. FSR should do wonders on the R9 200 series, possibly R7 too, maybe HD 7000?

Vega 56/64 should of had better support possibly a package shrink before launch.


----------



## The red spirit (Aug 6, 2021)

Isaac` said:


> Its again its more efficent
> it runs cooler
> my freinds 480 runs hot enough to shutdown the pc
> My 580 does not run hot enough to throttle


No, it's not. RX 580 got 8 pin connector instead of 6 pin. Then RX 580 has beefed up BIOS, it has TDP (and power limits) set to 147 watts, meanwhile RX 480 has them set to only 110 watts. That's increase of 37 watts (in terms of percents, it's a whopping 33.6% increase in wattage). Base clock speed (the actual guaranteed speed in any game) went from 1120 MHz to 1257 MHz (increase of 12.2%), boost clock increased from 1266 MHz to 1340 MHz (increase of 5.8%). Realistically, neither card runs at base speed and they are always on boost, so RX 480 is usually at 1180-1220 MHz, meanwhile RX 580 is at 1310-1340 MHz. For massive increase in TDP, gains in clock speed are tiny. On top of that, clock speed doesn't seem to scale well on Polaris cards:









I guess, that this poor scaling is due to AMD using low power dies, that perform best at certain clock speed. But if you raise clock speed beyond that, you need a lot more voltage and that means a lot more heat and loss of efficiency. RX 480 likely already was clocked past greatest efficiency point as it is very common in consumer market, RX 580 doubled down on that and turned RX 480 into everything that Polaris isn't. 

You can even use RX 480 BIOSes on RX 580s, if you inject your card model into RX 480 BIOS. As long as memory is the same, RX 480 BIOSes work on RX 580s. PowerColor reused same cooler, same PCB, same memory and likely electric circuitry between RX 480 and RX 580. They only increased maximum fan speed, lowered temperature target from 80C to 70C and cranked up clock speed. Beyond that BIOSes were identical, without even minor changes anywhere else. That tells a lot about how RX 480 and RX 580 are same dies, with RX 580 being clocked higher and requiring more voltage as result. 

Your found out differences are likely from different BIOSes used (you would be surprised by how much BIOS can change your card) and from different coolers used and they show nothing about RX 480 and RX 580 difference.


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Aug 6, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> What are you talking about? Are you sure aren't mixing it up with GTX cards? RX 580 is literally the same RX 480 with no other improvements made, other than increased clock speed. Absolutely nothing else was done. No new features, interchangeable BIOSes, often interchangeable coolers, everything is the same. There's zero new technology in RX 500 series, same old stuff clocked higher.
> 
> Take a look at them yourself:
> 
> ...


Your the one saying one (580) is efficient and the (480) isn't, they're the same?!.

The 580 was on a matured process offering negligible efficiency gains that were blown on max clock speeds.

So same.


----------



## The red spirit (Aug 6, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> GCN 4.0 was a refinement of GCN 2.0 (R9 290/X) so Polaris and Island GPUs are very a like. FSR should do wonders on the R9 200 series, possibly R7 too, maybe HD 7000?


If you actually look at what AMD has done to improve GCN over time, it's hard to say that they are minor improvements. If you compared GCN 1 with GCN 4, tessellation performance has been in creased 7 fold or more. That's insanely big improvement. GCN 2 added support for Freesync, True Audio and had updated PowerTune. That tessellation improvement was the culmination of GCN, but even in GCN 2, there were big strides made. GCN 3 further improved tessellation, it also had improved compression, which reduced memory bandwidth needs. GCN 3 has some new instruction sets, new multimedia engine, improved video scaler. GCN 4 cards, were made on smaller node and had naturally higher clock speed. GCN 4 has updated HW scheduler (a really important component of moderns cards), primitive discard accelerator (improves geometry processing) and new display controller, which now supports 10 bit, 4K, 60 fps, HEVC decoding. GCN 5 or more well known as Vega was a again an improvement to GCN. Now GCN gained more IPC, more instruction sets, higher clock speeds, HBM 2 support, larger memory address space, support for updated cache controller (only used in discrete cards), upgraded rasterization, packed rapid math support, added primitive shading stage (as replacement for vertex and geometry shaders).

And all that work results in quite some improvements in real world conditions:










Anyway, AMD really changed a lot in GCN, but they also made all GCN versions backwards compatible, so that new GCN chips are compatible with older ones found in consoles. If you look at what they have done to GCN, you really can't say that those are minor improvements or small refinements. A difference between GCN 1 and GCN 4 is big and between GCN 1 and GCN 5 is huge. You can even look at GCN 1 and GCN 5 dies:










They are indeed quite different and only very remotely resemble each other.



TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> Your the one saying one (580) is efficient and the (480) isn't, they're the same?!.
> 
> The 580 was on a matured process offering negligible efficiency gains that were blown on max clock speeds.
> 
> So same.


I never said that RX 580 was more efficient than RX 480. It never was and will never be, unless you tweak RX 580's BIOS. Again, I'm not sure why are you mentioning process maturation. It's the same process, same lithography, same dies, same everything on core itself. I really don't get why you people just don't understand that RX 480 and RX 580 are using exactly the same cores, but with different clocks and voltages.


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Aug 6, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> If you actually look at what AMD has done to improve GCN over time, it's hard to say that they are minor improvements. If you compared GCN 1 with GCN 4, tessellation performance has been in creased 7 fold or more. That's insanely big improvement. GCN 2 added support for Freesync, True Audio and had updated PowerTune. That tessellation improvement was the culmination of GCN, but even in GCN 2, there were big strides made. GCN 3 further improved tessellation, it also had improved compression, which reduced memory bandwidth needs. GCN 3 has some new instruction sets, new multimedia engine, improved video scaler. GCN 4 cards, were made on smaller node and had naturally higher clock speed. GCN 4 has updated HW scheduler (a really important component of moderns cards), primitive discard accelerator (improves geometry processing) and new display controller, which now supports 10 bit, 4K, 60 fps, HEVC decoding. GCN 5 or more well known as Vega was a again an improvement to GCN. Now GCN gained more IPC, more instruction sets, higher clock speeds, HBM 2 support, larger memory address space, support for updated cache controller (only used in discrete cards), upgraded rasterization, packed rapid math support, added primitive shading stage (as replacement for vertex and geometry shaders).
> 
> And all that work results in quite some improvements in real world conditions:
> 
> ...


Because I owned a fair few of both types, flashed both with home made BIOS and generally messed about with them including quadfire bench runs.
I know that they're the same chip but the process WAS refined after a year of production so that a 580 used a little less power or clocked 50-150 MHz higher.
I know because I saw, did not thought or read.
Processes and node's mature, the engineers use they're tools to improve the product, not just leave it as is and churn them out , read the f#@£ up and stop throwing Google regurge at us.

You said in reply. "


> saac` said:
> the 480 AND 580 where anything but efficent
> they where hot and heavy Not bad by any means but not efficent


I can agree on 580, not so much on 480. RX 480 was decently efficient for its time and depending on cooler, it was really cold, although reference cooler, didn't rape ears either. But even RX 480 was clocked a bit past most efficient clock speed point, so even modest power limiter modifications can make it a ton more efficient."

Someone is confused and it isn't me, how can a 480 be decently efficient yet the same card plus a year(580) isn't, baffling.


----------



## The red spirit (Aug 6, 2021)

TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> Because I owned a fair few of both types, flashed both with home made BIOS and generally messed about with them including quadfire bench runs.
> I know that they're the same chip but the process WAS refined after a year of production so that a 580 used a little less power or clocked 50-150 MHz higher.
> I know because I saw, did not thought or read.
> Processes and node's mature, the engineers use they're tools to improve the product, not just leave it as is and churn them out , read the f#@£ up and stop throwing Google regurge at us.


Sorry, but I messed with my own RX 580 in similar manner and know what's up. There was no refinement. Maybe RX 480 had voltage set higher, but likely it was too much, so they reduced voltage a bit in RX 580. My own card can do a lot better than default. It needs only 1025 mV in state 7 (1350 MHz), compared to 1150 mV stock, in state 6 I need less than 950 mV, compared to same 1150 mV stock (1310 MHz). Perhaps RX 480 had higher voltage set at maximum MHz, so RX 580 reduced that slightly, but that only happened due to how much overvolted Polaris cards came from factory already. My specific card is heavily overvolted and is set to use 12-25% more voltage than it actually needs. Considering that volts scale in square, that more or less translates in 24-50% more power used than needed. 




TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> You said in reply. "I can agree on 580, not so much on 480. RX 480 was decently efficient for its time and depending on cooler, it was really cold, although reference cooler, didn't rape ears either. But even RX 480 was clocked a bit past most efficient clock speed point, so even modest power limiter modifications can make it a ton more efficient."
> 
> Someone is confused and it isn't me, how can a 480 be decently efficient yet the same card plus a year(580) isn't, baffling.


Because it's clocked way past optimal efficiency point and stays in it, unless further tweaked. That's basic stuff.


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Aug 6, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Sorry, but I messed with my own RX 580 in similar manner and know what's up. There was no refinement. Maybe RX 480 had voltage set higher, but likely it was too much, so they reduced voltage a bit in RX 580. My own card can do a lot better than default. It needs only 1025 mV in state 7 (1350 MHz), compared to 1150 mV stock, in state 6 I need less than 950 mV, compared to same 1150 mV stock (1310 MHz). Perhaps RX 480 had higher voltage set at maximum MHz, so RX 580 reduced that slightly, but that only happened due to how much overvolted Polaris cards came from factory already. My specific card is heavily overvolted and is set to use 12-25% more voltage than it actually needs. Considering that volts scale in square, that more or less translates in 24-50% more power used than needed.
> 
> 
> 
> Because it's clocked way past optimal efficiency point and stays in it, unless further tweaked. That's basic stuff.


And did you own a 480 , they wouldn't clock past 1366 easy, where every 580 I owned went past 1400 , refined.

Your talking so much shite I can't even be arsed trying to figure out what your saying.

So a 580 is efficient because" Because it's clocked way past optimal efficiency point and stays in it, unless further tweaked."

Yet a 480 isn't because?!

They're the same even process optimization doesn't take it to new levels of efficiency ,yet does have an effect regardless of your deluded opinion.


----------



## The red spirit (Aug 6, 2021)

TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> And did you own a 480 , they wouldn't clock past 1366 easy, where every 580 I owned went past 1400 , refined.
> 
> Your talking so much shite I can't even be arsed trying to figure out what your saying.


Doubt that:








						Sapphire NITRO+ RX 480 OC 8 GB Specs
					

AMD Ellesmere, 1342 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR5, 2000 MHz, 256 bit




					www.techpowerup.com
				




That's still on same stock watts.



TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> So a 580 is efficient because" Because it's clocked way past optimal efficiency point and stays in it, unless further tweaked."
> 
> Yet a 480 isn't because?!


Because it's clocked at more sane values. I feel my brain cell dying after such questions.




TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> They're the same even process optimization doesn't take it to new levels of efficiency ,yet does have an effect regardless of your deluded opinion.


Even if what you say is true, it changes nothing about efficiency, only about clock speed. RX 580 sacrificed a lot of watts for small performance gains and as result ran hot and consumed as much power as GTX 1080. RX 480 ran at lower clocks and was far more efficient. Efficiency = fps/watt. RX 580 wasn't great at that.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Aug 6, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Doubt that:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I'm done with this convo, I owned four rx480s 12 580s I water blocked the reference 480s and ran xfire than quad, they all still topped out at 1380 relatively unstable, simple.

All the 580s beat 1400.  All, and most got to 1466 on air.  Refined.... .

As for your opinion on the 580 being less efficient than the same chip older clocked less than 100Mhz typically lower, they're so close on efficiency it's a massive ,epic stretch to call it "far more efficient",.   It wasn't.


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## The red spirit (Aug 6, 2021)

TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> I'm done with this convo, I owned four rx480s 12 580s I water blocked the reference 480s and ran xfire than quad, they all still topped out at 1380 relatively unstable, simple.
> 
> All the 580s beat 1400.  All, and most got to 1466 on air.  Refined.... .
> 
> As for your opinion on the 580 being less efficient than the same chip older clocked less than 100Mhz typically lower, they're so close on efficiency it's a massive ,epic stretch to call it "far more efficient",.   It wasn't.


Stock RX 480 BIOS has power limit set to 110 watts, RX 580 stock BIOS has power limit set to 147 watts. Sure as hell those cards don't set it that way so they throttle or have it unrealistically high. You can also look at reviews. RX 580 is much less efficient and doesn't achieve much with increased clock speed. It's still the same GCN 4. There was a massive leap from GCN 1 to GCN 2, but not from Polaris to Polaris refresh. RX 580 needs a lot more watts and beefed up power delivery for those last MHz and it's all pointless, when RX 480 achieve almost all clock speed with far more modest other hardware needed and doesn't suffer from being clocked nearly as high.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Aug 6, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Stock RX 480 BIOS has power limit set to 110 watts, RX 580 stock BIOS has power limit set to 147 watts. Sure as hell those cards don't set it that way so they throttle or have it unrealistically high. You can also look at reviews. RX 580 is much less efficient and doesn't achieve much with increased clock speed. It's still the same GCN 4. There was a massive leap from GCN 1 to GCN 2, but not from Polaris to Polaris refresh. RX 580 needs a lot more watts and beefed up power delivery for those last MHz and it's all pointless, when RX 480 achieve almost all clock speed with far more modest other hardware needed and doesn't suffer from being clocked nearly as high.


There are ways around such power limits, easy I've overjuiced even this vega64 though it was much harder to do than on Polaris, I could fully edit bios on Polaris, it wasn't even hard.
The 580 would do the same clocks with less power, they were setup 100Mhz ish higher and the reference rx480 board had quite the power delivery setup ,power was never an issue, chip limits decided the end spec,  and after a year the process had matured so they Could push clocks higher , it was less efficient, not massively less.


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## The red spirit (Aug 6, 2021)

TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> There are ways around such power limits, easy I've overjuiced even this vega64 though it was much harder to do than on Polaris, I could fully edit bios on Polaris, it wasn't even hard.
> The 580 would do the same clocks with less power, they were setup 100Mhz ish higher and the reference rx480 board had quite the power delivery setup ,power was never an issue, chip limits decided the end spec,  and after a year the process had matured so they Could push clocks higher , it was less efficient, not massively less.


Oh well, no shit there are ways around them, but I don't care about that. In fact, if cards are good, I shouldn't be even aware of them. Unfortunately, with RX 580 I had to. I would say that 30% increase in power for around 100 Mhz is totally not worth it and that is a clear marketing fail. AMD pushed Polaris as efficient cards and RX 580 is certainly failing at that. Even back then, it was supposed to compete with GTX 1060 6GB. In actual market it failed hard. Sure it was a tiny bit faster, but it consumed as much power as GTX 1080, a full flagship card. Even if RX 580 was a little bit faster, power consumption when compared to GTX 1060 was a clear turn off. Polaris was supposed to dispel the myth (or reality), that Radeons are hot, loud and inefficient. Polaris was okay at that, but Polaris Refresh failed hard. If 100 MHz ruins the card so much, then it really is pointless. AMD could have been much better off if they kept the same clock speeds, but reduced voltage to bellow 1 volt.

Anyway, this is boring off-topic. If you want to write about power efficiency of cards and if it matters to people, do it at some other thread.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Aug 7, 2021)

@The red spirit  I wrote the words "very a like" relating to gcn arch, I did not say "exactly the same."

GCN 3, 4, 5 are improvements upon gcn 1 and 2. GCN 5 is inclusive of 1-4.


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## The red spirit (Aug 7, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> @The red spirit  I wrote the words "very a like" relating to gcn arch, I did not say "exactly the same."
> 
> GCN 3, 4, 5 are improvements upon gcn 1 and 2. GCN 5 is inclusive of 1-4.


The only alike thing in them is that they are backwards compatible architecture level, but there were some quite major rehauls. Big rehuals were GCN 2, GCN 4. GCN 5 was a moderate rehaul. GCN 3 was more like refresh.


----------



## arni-gx (Aug 7, 2021)

i dont get it about all that argument .....

but, i just wanna know about this news.....



			Ethereum mining will soon be obsolete, as 'London' update moves key deadline to December
		


is that true, because of that...... is ALL nvidia and radeon GPU price, it will be coming back to MSRP on Q3-Q4 in this year ?? ASAP ???


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 7, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> The only alike thing in them is that they are backwards compatible architecture level, but there were some quite major rehauls. Big rehuals were GCN 2, GCN 4. GCN 5 was a moderate rehaul. GCN 3 was more like refresh.



Ok from what im understanding is that you would disagree with me about the sky being blue.

Anyways hows the modded 580 holding up?


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## The red spirit (Aug 7, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> Ok from what im understanding is that you would disagree with me about the sky being blue.







eidairaman1 said:


> Anyways hows the modded 580 holding up?


My last tweak was setting it to 100 watt power limits and locking clock speed up to 1100 MHz. That sounds quite drastic, but it works out well for me. Performance loss is small, I can go play games at same settings and I can't tell that they run much poorer. I can still play GTA 5 with Vsync on and that requires 60 fps or more. It works without low speccing. In terms of fan speed, I don't see more than 1400 rpm at all. Temperature is great, I haven't seen it reaching 70C in both gaming and mining. Pretty good. Unfortunately, now it's cold outside and I can't test thermals as well (it was over 30C everyday and now it's 11-14C), but I'm pretty sure that it will fare well. In terms of power limit, it might be set a bit too low, I likely could get clock speed up to 1200MHz, maybe even 1250 MHz, but I opted for non variating 1100Mhz. It turned out that something like ReLive actually takes up a lot of power budget, so I think I should get more consistent performance with 100 watt tune. I haven't tested ReLive yet and I actually wasn't at home for whole week, so I don't have much experience with my final tune.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Aug 7, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> My last tweak was setting it to 100 watt power limits and locking clock speed up to 1100 MHz. That sounds quite drastic, but it works out well for me. Performance loss is small, I can go play games at same settings and I can't tell that they run much poorer. I can still play GTA 5 with Vsync on and that requires 60 fps or more. It works without low speccing. In terms of fan speed, I don't see more than 1400 rpm at all. Temperature is great, I haven't seen it reaching 70C in both gaming and mining. Pretty good. Unfortunately, now it's cold outside and I can't test thermals as well (it was over 30C everyday and now it's 11-14C), but I'm pretty sure that it will fare well. In terms of power limit, it might be set a bit too low, I likely could get clock speed up to 1200MHz, maybe even 1250 MHz, but I opted for non variating 1100Mhz. It turned out that something like ReLive actually takes up a lot of power budget, so I think I should get more consistent performance with 100 watt tune. I haven't tested ReLive yet and I actually wasn't at home for whole week, so I don't have much experience with my final tune.


Im dealing with a 570/580 GA user that needs a bios that will do over 90W.


----------



## The red spirit (Aug 8, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> Im dealing with a 570/580 GA user that needs a bios that will do over 90W.


Assuming that cooling solution is adequate, shouldn't this be an easy fix in SRB Polaris or PBE?


----------



## eidairaman1 (Aug 8, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Assuming that cooling solution is adequate, shouldn't this be an easy fix in SRB Polaris or PBE?


Not necessarily due to voltage differences between a 90W and 148W level card. I only found 1 bios that seems a direct fit by Dev ID and Subsys ID.

With the price of gpus stoll too high, might as well go Buy a Switch and have fun lol


----------



## nguyen (Aug 8, 2021)

Dusted off an old PC with Intel 2600K + XFX R9 290 for my wife to play Genshin , repasted with Thermagic ZF-EX and the R9 290 stay in the 60C and remain silent even with 30C ambient, i can still feel the amount of heat coming off of it though


----------



## The red spirit (Aug 8, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> Not necessarily due to voltage differences between a 90W and 148W level card. I only found 1 bios that seems a direct fit by Dev ID and Subsys ID.
> 
> With the price of gpus stoll too high, might as well go Buy a Switch and have fun lol


I wonder if it isn't possible to use BIOS off some other RX 580 with same RAM chips instead. I have never seen RX 580/570 vBIOS with stock 90W vBIOS. I would assume that regular RX card would have higher voltage. If it is branded as RX 570, then my guess is that for some reason there was limited edition of reused RX 470 cards, that are flashed to be "RX 570". 

I personally avoid Switch now. It's way too old at this point and its hardware seems to be very weak. It can't play many titles at native resolution and 30 fps, it drops resolution and often fps too. R9 290 should still be quite similar to RX 570 in terms of gaming capabilities, so it's not a bad card. It doesn't lack VRAM, so it should be still quite okay. However, that FX is just too far gone. Sorry mate, but AMD FX in 2021 is simply not good enough, even 5 GHz one. You may be losing as much as 20-30% fps due to it causing bottlenecks. Even something as simple as i5 11400 would be a massive upgrade for your system. I owned FX 6300 as long as it was bearable and pretty much once FC5 rolled out, it became clear that it's the end for FX CPUs. There's not much point in getting new GPU for you, FX chips do bottleneck RX 570s/580s. Here is what owning FX nowadays looks like:









Many titles can't be played at 60 fps due to CPU bottlenecks. Even a 65 watt i5 will be faster than FX 8 core at 5 GHz. As for cards, there are some local deals perhaps. Where I live, I was able to find RX 570s 580s still for 140 Euros used, working. Not great, not bad, but beats paying scalpers. There are eBay auctions and you may score some older card that people aren't well aware of. Perhaps a Fury X?, or some GTX Titan version, maybe even Quadro or Radeon Pro stuff. There's also Aliexpress, Alibaba. There are some deals if you look for them.



nguyen said:


> View attachment 211690
> 
> View attachment 211689
> 
> Dusted off an old PC with Intel 2600K + XFX R9 290 for my wife to play Genshin , repasted with Thermagic ZF-EX and the R9 290 stay in the 60C and remain silent even with 30C ambient, i can still feel the amount of heat coming off of it though


Those R9 cards were notorious for being loud and hot. I still remember one review, where reviewer said that card so getting so loud, that he almost wanted to cancel benchmarking as he was afraid that it could fry. I personally really loved that they brought a lot of value for money, but they certainly were horrendous in thermals (or noise). And then AMD came out with that R9 295x2 monster card, that had 2 R9 290Xs slapped on one PCB. I have no idea how that stuff didn't catch on fire immediately, but somehow it worked with puny 120mm AIO. And so far it is the card with highest TDP I have ever seen, a whopping 500 watts. Obviously, it consumes even more watts in reality. It is probably the most insane thing that ever came out from AMD. To this day I'm still mystified how a single 120mm AIO could cope with all that heat. 120mm AIOS usually are one par with 120mm air coolers and those aren't known for being able to dissipate 500 watts of heat. And then there was Sapphire, the only OEM that had balls to overclock that thing. I wonder if their legal department actually had to deal with burnt down houses.


----------



## nguyen (Aug 8, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Those R9 cards were notorious for being loud and hot. I still remember one review, where reviewer said that card so getting so loud, that he almost wanted to cancel benchmarking as he was afraid that it could fry. I personally really loved that they brought a lot of value for money, but they certainly were horrendous in thermals (or noise). And then AMD came out with that R9 295x2 monster card, that had 2 R9 290Xs slapped on one PCB. I have no idea how that stuff didn't catch on fire immediately, but somehow it worked with puny 120mm AIO. And so far it is the card with highest TDP I have ever seen, a whopping 500 watts. Obviously, it consumes even more watts in reality. It is probably the most insane thing that ever came out from AMD. To this day I'm still mystified how a single 120mm AIO could cope with all that heat. 120mm AIOS usually are one par with 120mm air coolers and those aren't known for being able to dissipate 500 watts of heat. And then there was Sapphire, the only OEM that had balls to overclock that thing. I wonder if their legal department actually had to deal with burnt down houses.



Yeah the stock blower cooler on the R9 290 is incredibly loud, the core temperature reaches 94C easily and it sounds like a leaf blower (actual meme).
Not that hard to fix though, I just replaced the stock blower with the Accelero IV cooler and it was dead silent. Sadly that R9 290 died when an AMD driver botched up the fan speed (locking it at 20%) and frying the VRM/VRAM (GPU thermal was still fine because of the massive heatsink) 
Later I bought this XFX R9 290 for my nephew and it surprise me how quiet this AIB model is, can't hear it even without side panel.


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## The red spirit (Aug 8, 2021)

nguyen said:


> Yeah the stock blower cooler on the R9 290 is incredibly loud, the core temperature reaches 94C easily and it sounds like a leaf blower (actual meme).
> Not that hard to fix though, I just replaced the stock blower with the Accelero IV cooler and it was dead silent. Sadly that R9 290 died when an AMD driver botched up the fan speed (locking it at 20%) and frying the VRM/VRAM (GPU thermal was still fine because of the massive heatsink)
> Later I bought this XFX R9 290 for my nephew and it surprise me how quiet this AIB model is, can't hear it even without side panel.


Ahem, stock blower:









I just wonder what rpms it reaches at full speed, if it wasn't screwed, it might take off. I also wonder what's worse, nVidia FX 5800 Ultra with mtn dew leafblower or reference R9 290x, both are more known for their noise than actual capabilities. Anyway, here's the OG blower:









If that blower wasn't enough fail for nV, nV released FX 5950 Ultra. I wonder how much louder it was than original FX 5800 Ultra. It's crazy that such products even existed. When FX 5800 Ultra launched, there was faster, cooler, quieter and not cheating in benchmarks ATi Radeon 9700 Pro (and 9800 XT). There just wasn't any reason to get nV card. When R9 295x2 launched, there already was GTX 980, which was almost as fast, but with way lower power consumption, almost as good performance and much lower price.


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 8, 2021)

The red spirit said:


> Ahem, stock blower:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


My 290 is very quiet lol


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## The red spirit (Aug 8, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> My 290 is very quiet lol


That's surprising, I remember that back then in many benchmarks they ran quite loud or hot. After all R9 290 (non X) is rated at 275 watts, so quite a bit of lower end models likely got reference cooler or some other small cooler. R9 290X was rated at 290 watts and those were almost never quiet or cool. I just looked up your model at TPU database and I see why it was different. It was quite rare triple fan model. Most R9 cards that people bought were blowers or dual fan cards, so adding a third fan reduced noise and improved thermals. Also most reviewers got reference models for reviewing, so it was quite rare to actually see anything else. And some triple fan cards were also loud, due to vBIOS bias towards better thermals, rather than reduced noise.


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