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

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unaboomer said:
The problem with corpy PCs is most of them have proprietary PSUs that lack PCIe power connectors, limiting the GPU to 75W regardless of form factor. In most cases, you're better off buying a standard ATX PC second hand if you want to do anything more than slap a $30 RX 550 in it and work within those limitations.
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I did that, except it was about $35, an RX 560 4 GB, and not low profile.

The best the market has to offer that segment (outside of the crazy expensive 3060/4060/4070-based workstation options) are the RTX 3050 6 GB ($200+) and Arc Pro B50 16 GB ($370). It would be easy for AMD or Nvidia (maybe Intel if Celestial dGPUs materialize) to throw the segment a bone, but it could be a long wait.
Judge Dredd said:
Is it worth buying up parts cheap now for when the AI bubble bursts?
I keep seeing the claim on YouTube that the price of other computer components are crashing, but I see no evidence of that. Given that my motherboard I'm using is technically a 5 year old model, I'm not against hording some motherboards and cpus, plus good PSUs are always useful.
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You should be careful about hoarding parts unless you are able to test them immediately. I don't think anything is particularly cheap except for monitors. Which could end if things go south (china sea).
Judge Dredd said:
What are the options when it comes to ultra cheap mini PCs/sff/sbcs these days? Are 2gb Raspberry Pis worth it?
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RPi 4/5 is not worth the trouble/price for most people compared to used x86 PCs. Their pricing has gotten worse with two recent price hikes.

2 GB could be a sweet spot for media/emulation. Here's what LibreELEC said about the Raspberry Pi 5's decode/performance when it came out. I think the GPU is the limiting factor for most "newer" consoles, but I haven't looked at emulation in its current state.
 
The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
The best the market has to offer that segment (outside of the crazy expensive 3060/4060/4070-based workstation options) are the RTX 3050 6 GB ($200+) and Arc Pro B50 16 GB ($370). It would be easy for AMD or Nvidia (maybe Intel if Celestial dGPUs materialize) to throw the segment a bone, but it could be a long wait
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It was a huge pain in the ass finding a GPU for my low profile living room PC. I eventually lucked out and got the workstation RTX A2000 for a decent price. Its roughly equivalent to a 3050.

The low profile/low power segment is unfortunately absolutely shit, which is a shame. I think there could be decent demand with people looking to build console sized PCs.
 
Wccftech: New Optiscaler Version Brings Major Performance Improvements For FSR 4 INT8 On RDNA 2 GPUs (archive)
Once again, AMD lagged behind third-party apps in bringing FSR 4 (FidelityFX Super Resolution) optimizations for previous-gen GPUs. It's embarrassing for a company not to bring its latest upscaling technology to previous-generation GPUs even though the hardware is able to support it. Although FSR 4 carries a substantial performance overhead, with regular optimizations, the problem would have been solved by now.
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The only drawback is that these GPUs can see anywhere from 10 to 20% of performance regressions with FSR 4. Optiscaler's latest FSR 4 INT8 4.0.2b version reportedly solves it, as mentioned in the release notes. The latest version was rolled out on GitHub, and the developer team announced that the new FSR 4 INT8 will now offer improved performance on the RDNA 2 GPUs. Moreover, it fixes ghosting on these GPUs. The developer team says that users won't need to modify the old drivers to make them work, and the latest drivers will be sufficient.
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Optiscaler-FSR-4-INT8.jpg

Release notes do NOT match the claim that performance regressions are gone. Wccfkek probably hallucinated that one. It does say it at least "significantly improves" ghosting.
 
Pattern Juggler said:
What? Prices are inflated now, they'll go down when the bubble bursts.
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The parts that aren't ram, storage, or gpus, supposedly are crashing. I've yet to see it.

The idea being that vendors can't move motherboards, cases, PSUs, CPUs, etc. because they're useless without ram and storage, which people can't afford, so they are slashing prices in the hope that they can move some product. Mobos and CPUs are a bit of a gamble, but good cases and PSUs don't really become obsolete, at least not at the rate of other components.

Even then, a good CPU can last a while. I'm using a 5600x. It was supposedly released 6 years ago, and is still considered pretty good. Not cutting edge or anything, but solidly mid range even today. The x3D range in particular seems to be valued, though admittedly those are more recent.
 
Judge Dredd said:
The parts that aren't ram, storage, or gpus, supposedly are crashing. I've yet to see it.
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Yeh I had a quick look on Amazon and I don't see "crashing", at least not on decent AM4 CPUs.

If there were decent price drops I'd like to upgrade my desktop and kick the 5600G its got now into my living room PC because the i7 4790 in there is starting to show its age a bit.
 
Post Reply said:
Monitors are the only components I have seen with decent deals lately.
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that's because you probably live in a market where chinkshit is blocked to invade in droves.
in here all the salespeople are importing chinkshit monitors in order to not drop the prices of their top of the line shit, not to mention chinkshit PC components like Soyo motherboards or MAXSUN GPU's, it's fucking tiresome.
if chinks made cpu's you'd bet they would be importing that shit in order to not drop the price of the 5500X3D as time goes by, it's really fucking tiresome...
and no, retailers can't sell stuff like 7400f because AMD can sue them or else they absolutely would sell them doing some gay greed shit of making it cost 5% less than whatever it's comparable to.
 
Judge Dredd said:
What are the options when it comes to ultra cheap mini PCs/sff/sbcs these days? Are 2gb Raspberry Pis worth it?
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What do you consider to be 'ultra cheap?' RPi is only worthwhile if you're doing embedded or dealing with a power-constrained situation.

In all other cases, you're way better off grabbing a secondhand Mac Mini or Minisforum Mini PC.
 
is there a need to buy/build a new pc? im still running i7-3xxx/4xxxx and ryzen 1xxxx and gtx1080s pcs, and not missing anything game wise. is it a new game that requires the dlss or did your pc die? fsr and dlss look like shit to me.
 
Not sure if this fits the thread, but what's a good way to orginize/label ssds and USBs? Is there a way to check what's on them when it's a boot drive without booting from it? I don't want to accidently flash my motherboard with old firmware or whatever.


Fcret said:
In all other cases, you're way better off grabbing a secondhand Mac Mini or Minisforum Mini PC.
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Long story ...long. I'll try to keep it short.

I've been putting some thought into non-vital projects. The problem is the price hikes have messed that up, and I'm lazy, and I'm short on space. Here's just a few examples.
. eg. 1. I have a Window 7 machine that I've been meaning to put Win XP on, but lack era appropriate GPU. I was going to put linux on it, but don't want to spend on a big drive. I'm considering getting an Intel Arc for av1 encoding, though that would be a downgrade from the 1060 in it atm.
. eg. 2. I saw a project online about people making their own TV channel emulators. It sounded neat, but I doubt I'd use it.
. eg. 3 I've wanted to do the whole "get a cheap thinkcentre/optiplex and put a gpu in it!" thing for years, but the local scene for those isn't great. Even before the RAM shortage, people were asking £150+ for them. At which point I could just get a mini PC, a chinese handheld, or a good pi. I even saw old Pi 1-3s for £20, but as soon as you hit pi 4 or 5, the prices shoot up to the point where I might as well buy new.

I don't want to spend a lot of money to do any of these. Especially when the common, and likely sensible, answer is "just use a phone". But "just using a phone" doesn't have the same appeal.
 
Judge Dredd said:
1. I have a Window 7 machine that I've been meaning to put Win XP on, but lack era appropriate GPU. I was going to put linux on it, but don't want to spend on a big drive. I'm considering getting an Intel Arc for av1 encoding, though that would be a downgrade from the 1060 in it atm.
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A 1060 would be era-appropriate for Windows 8.1 or 10. For XP, that would be a GeForce 7 max.
Also, an Arc will probably be an upgrade from a 1060, unless you're talking about an A300 series unit.
 
I remember when my brothers 7600 GT died, EVGA didn't have a replacement, so they sent him a top of the like 7800 GT KO OC. I was on an AMD 2800+ with an AGP 6800GS, and he was on a 3400+ with his fancy PCI-E GPU. Seeing TES Oblivion run on a high end system was magical Oldge.png
 
I still have my AGP 7900 GS. I used it to play some Doom ports (ZDoom and Doom Legacy) and SC4. Prior to that, I had a Radeon 9600 which had been a mistake from the start (in addition to the mistake of getting an AGP system in 2005—what was I thinking?). It was a shit card that couldn't even scroll through an SC4 map properly. The 7900 GS fixed that.
 
Judge Dredd said:
. eg. 1. I have a Window 7 machine that I've been meaning to put Win XP on, but lack era appropriate GPU. I was going to put linux on it, but don't want to spend on a big drive. I'm considering getting an Intel Arc for av1 encoding, though that would be a downgrade from the 1060 in it atm.
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Re: Linux
Does your machine have a key for invoking the boot menu without going into setup? If so, you can avoid a messy single-drive dual-boot setup and just run each OS on separate physical drives:
Screenshot_20260320_053857_Chrome.jpg

Re: XP GPU
Are you targetting driver support or period-correct performance? Period correct is going to be more expensive if you want a decent card, as surving units are becoming rare. If you just want driver support, the Firepro W5000 (circa 2012) is dirt cheap and will outperform anything made in the 2000s.

Speaking of period correct, I had the displeasure of owning the notoriously maligned FX 5200. Watching my PC struggle to run Unreal at 800x600 is a thrill I'm happy to leave in the past.
 
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