7900 XTX held back big time by current build...

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silentcircuit

Weaksauce
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Sep 7, 2023
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Picked up the Sapphire Pulse 7900 XTX - way more than I wanted to spend but the RTX 2080 was getting really long in the tooth - and it is definitely a step up, but I'm not getting the kind of "new top end card" performance I hoped for. Granted, a lot of this probably boils down to Bethesda not doing a great job of optimization on Starfield and will improve with time, but it's still hard looking at charts and realizing I'm leaving like 2/3 of what the card could do on the table.

Currently I've got:
Ryzen 5 3600
Gigabyte X570 mITX board
240mm AIO
32GB DDR4
2 PCIe3.0 nvme 2tb SSDs
Radeon 7900 XTX
850w Lian-Li SFX PSU

All this in the Lian-Li x Dan A4-H20. It is... Dense. I double checked the length of the 7900 before ordering and it's scary tight; if the case front didn't pop off it wouldn't fit at all.

I think it's insane that the Ryzen 3600 is only good for ~45 fps at 1440P in Starfield and a modern high end chip can manage 150ish. Doesn't help that I've got an mITX setup when it comes to pricing or options.

$300ish for a new board, $400 for a nice X3D chip, $100 for 32GB of reasonably fast DDR5... Ugh.

Would I be better off with Intel? The boards seem to be a little less, but the chips (that can keep up with something like the 7800X3D, at least) look like they're more... And there's only one more generation on the current socket, so no meaningful upgrade path. Is it just a wash in the end? I'm not brand loyal at all, just want the best performance I can get for the money. Don't really care about power draw either, as long as cooling won't be a problem. The Lian Li A4-H20 is tiny but the airflow isn't bad, and I'm running a cheapy 240mm AIO. Should be okay with most things. No temperature issues for now.

I used to be up on all of this but it's been like 3 years since I did much hardware wise. Any help appreciated.
 
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I would slap a 5800X3D in there and call it a day. You'll get a huge uplift in performance over the 3600 and not require a motherboard change (just a BIOS flash perhaps). At 1440P you'll see a slight bottleneck compared to the newest platforms but everything will be plenty playable at 1440P.

quick edit: It's $269 at B&H right now: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1696096-REG/amd_100_100000651wof_ryzen_7_5800x3d_3_4.html

decent-bubbles.gif
 
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I second the 5800X3D suggestion. That chip is basically at the level of Intel 12th-gen or the non-X3D Ryzen 7000 chips for gaming and way faster than a 3600.
5800X3D would let you stretch your AM4 build another couple years, and by that time Ryzen 8000/9000 and Intel 15th-gen will be out which will be much faster than anything available now- and if history of AM4 is anything to go by, next-gen AM5 chipset will have much better memory support than 600-series to get that good memory scaling.
 
I have a really hard time justifying spending more on AM4, but the fact is that a full rebuild is going to cost ~3x as much.

Moving to the Detroit area in a couple weeks so I'll be within easy driving distance of a MicroCenter for the first time in my life, will probably just watch the combo deals there.

Thanks for the suggestion.
 
silentcircuit said:
I have a really hard time justifying spending more on AM4, but the fact is that a full rebuild is going to cost ~3x as much.
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Sounds like you wouldn't have a [H]ard time justifying then.
Sell your old CPU and the logic only become clearer.
 
silentcircuit said:
I have a really hard time justifying spending more on AM4, but the fact is that a full rebuild is going to cost ~3x as much.

Moving to the Detroit area in a couple weeks so I'll be within easy driving distance of a MicroCenter for the first time in my life, will probably just watch the combo deals there.

Thanks for the suggestion.
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You ought to take the suggestions in this thread and the Starfield thread.

Given everything you've explained the 5800X3D is a no brainer. It can be had at less than $300 new at this point, and is a drop-in replacement without you needing to touch anything else with your build. It's a huge multi generational performance increase over the 3600. It's basically 7600 levels of performance and you don't need to touch anything else. (And technically better than the 7600 depending on the games since it has two extra cores)

Otherwise, yes, you're looking at basically building a whole new PC which doesn't make much sense given that a 7800X3D (If you can even afford to go that high) realistically isn't going to give massive gains over a 5800X3d currently anyways.
 
Why go through all the trouble of rebuilding in a tiny case for an extra 10 or 12% with a 7800x3d? When you can just order a 5800x3d and you're back to gaming like a champ in the time it takes for UPS to get it to you, plus the 30 minutes it will take to install it.
 
hititnquitit said:
Why go through all the trouble of rebuilding in a tiny case for an extra 10 or 12% with a 7800x3d? When you can just order a 5800x3d and you're back to gaming like a champ in the time it takes for UPS to get it to you, plus the 30 minutes it will take to install it.
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IMO it's pretty silly to skip the 5800x3d unless you're just a whale and have money to waste. AMD basically extended the AM4 platform out a whole extra year by giving us that CPU. It functionally could be considered like a 6800 if that would have ever been a thing.
 
Mchart said:
You ought to take the suggestions in this thread and the Starfield thread.

Given everything you've explained the 5800X3D is a no brainer. It can be had at less than $300 new at this point, and is a drop-in replacement without you needing to touch anything else with your build. It's a huge multi generational performance increase over the 3600. It's basically 7600 levels of performance and you don't need to touch anything else. (And technically better than the 7600 depending on the games since it has two extra cores)

Otherwise, yes, you're looking at basically building a whole new PC which doesn't make much sense given that a 7800X3D (If you can even afford to go that high) realistically isn't going to give massive gains over a 5800X3d currently anyways.
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You're right, I'm just planning to grab one from Microcenter in a few weeks once some other hobby stuff sells. My fiancee is not thrilled I just spent ~$950 on a card, but she's happy Microsoft Flight Sim is prettier. Slowly winning her over.
 
I have a 5800X... and even I won't be skipping that upgrade path :LOL:

So 100% agree with everyone else on going the 5800X3D route if your board can support it. Awesome that AMD gave us the option.
 
Yeah I'm with everyone here, it's not silly to spend more money on AM4, there isn't enough of a difference to the 7800X3D to justify the upgrade. 5800X3D will be good for atleast two more years.
 
TrunksZero said:
I have a 5800X... and even I won't be skipping that upgrade path :LOL:

So 100% agree with everyone else on going the 5800X3D route if your board can support it. Awesome that AMD gave us the option.
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It's simply amazing that someone could build an X370/B350 based system in 2017, then to upgrade to a 5800X3D/5950X/5900X/etc... 5 years later and still have a relevant system. This is the longest socket support I've ever seen and I hope we see a similar trend for AM5 and beyond. It's also kind of funny to think that AMD originally didn't want to enable support, but the community backlash was so huge they pushed out the AGESA and let all motherboard vendors support it. IIRC Asrock was building some beta BIOSes for the X370 Taichi (maybe others too?) before this officially happened which I thought was a pretty ballsy move (unless they knew AMD was allowing this in advance and actually were sanctioned.)
 
Dopamin3 said:
It's simply amazing that someone could build an X370/B350 based system in 2017, then to upgrade to a 5800X3D/5950X/5900X/etc... 5 years later and still have a relevant system. This is the longest socket support I've ever seen and I hope we see a similar trend for AM5 and beyond. It's also kind of funny to think that AMD originally didn't want to enable support, but the community backlash was so huge they pushed out the AGESA and let all motherboard vendors support it. IIRC Asrock was building some beta BIOSes for the X370 Taichi (maybe others too?) before this officially happened which I thought was a pretty ballsy move (unless they knew AMD was allowing this in advance and actually were sanctioned.)
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AMD most likely looks back and regrets it... What better way to make something obsolete than to cease support and or mark that product EOL... AM5 won't have the same life.. will become too greedy to allow it to last :ROFLMAO:
 
AMD did sort of gimp the X470 boards by not allowing PCI-E 4.0 in the microcode. Most X470 boards were of good enough quality that they could have supported it, but AMD pretty much gimped it. But yes, at least we got the 5800X3D.
 
Got the 5800X3D. Sadly Comcast can't find the existing run to the apartment and needs permission from the leasing company (who are not the most responsive) to run a new one, so I have no Internet connection and can't reset my PIN (triggered by CPU change). I could tether to my phone but I'm out of "hotspot" data and the app I use to get around the limit requires setting a proxy... Which isn't an option without full access to Windows, as far as I can tell. So I thought "I'll just reinstall" only to lose the USB stick with Windows 11 on it. Gave up the search after half an hour.

This move has been miserable, just a string of stupid little indignities, and I am so beaten down. I dread going back to work in the morning.
 
Dopamin3 said:
And this is why you should always remember your actual password you set, not just your PIN.
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The pin is what windows uses to access the computer, not the password. He can't reset the pin without online access. He didn't say he lost the password.
 
Officially my worst day in years.

Stability problems now that I'm back in Windows, probably RAM, I can get a new kit locally but that's more money in AM4/DDR4.

Bigger thing, my cat is lost. Update: found, thankfully. One less thing falling apart.

Also, I'm not a man. That hardly matters right now, though. Feels like I'm dying.
 
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silentcircuit said:
Officially my worst day in years.

Stability problems now that I'm back in Windows, probably RAM, I can get a new kit locally but that's more money in AM4/DDR4.

Bigger thing, my cat is lost. Update: found, thankfully. One less thing falling apart.

Also, I'm not a man. That hardly matters right now, though. Feels like I'm dying.
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Are you on the latest bios for your board? That might be the cause. Why do you think it's the ram (I'm glad your cat is ok)?
 
Decko87 said:
Are you on the latest bios for your board? That might be the cause. Why do you think it's the ram (I'm glad your cat is ok)?
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RAM has been weird for a while, even when I had the Ryzen 5 3600. It doesn't like to run at XMP. BIOS is latest as of a few months ago, I doubt they've updated it since, but I'll double check.
 
silentcircuit said:
RAM has been weird for a while, even when I had the Ryzen 5 3600. It doesn't like to run at XMP. BIOS is latest as of a few months ago, I doubt they've updated it since, but I'll double check.
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I've got a corsair kit of 3200 8GB * 2 that has no issues if you want it. I really don't need it, and I'm willing to send it to you if you want to pay the $10 for shipping.
 
Mchart said:
I've got a corsair kit of 3200 8GB * 2 that has no issues if you want it. I really don't need it, and I'm willing to send it to you if you want to pay the $10 for shipping.
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Super kind of you, but thankfully the money isn't a very big deal for me right now. Hope you can offer it to someone in greater need at some point. ❤️
 
Right, so! I think the thing is finally working again.

No issues with the new RAM. FPS hasn't seen the uplift I hoped for everywhere (it's probably just a matter of time before I trade the 7900 XTX + cash for a 4090 - I hate that after spending this much I can't turn all the raytracing stuff on) but it's definitely an improvement. Smoothness is way up. Feels a lot like going from 980 Ti SLI to the RTX 2080 did; faster, yes, but latency and frame pacing are the biggest changes. I could have spent another ~1k for the 4090 and AM5, and part of me still wishes I did, but this is much better than what I had a couple weeks ago.

The goal is to make it another year or two, give this machine to my fiancee, and do a full rebuild then.
 
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silentcircuit said:
Right, so! I think the thing is finally working again.

No issues with the new RAM. FPS hasn't seen the uplift I hoped for everywhere (it's probably just a matter of time before I trade the 7900 XTX + cash for a 4090 - I hate that after spending this much I can't turn all the raytracing stuff on) but it's definitely an improvement. Smoothness is way up. Feels a lot like going from 980 Ti SLI to the RTX 2080 did; faster, yes, but latency and frame pacing are the biggest changes. I could have spent another ~1k for the 4090 and AM5, and part of me still wishes I did, but this is much better than what I had a couple weeks ago.

The goal is to make it another year or two, give this machine to my fiancee, and do a full rebuild then.
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I'm surprised it doesn't feel like more than that, I went from 3060 ti to a 6800 XT and it felt pretty big. Then I went from a 6800 XT to a 7900 XTX and that felt event bigger. The 3060 ti should be around the same performance as a 2080.
 
Decko87 said:
I'm surprised it doesn't feel like more than that, I went from 3060 ti to a 6800 XT and it felt pretty big. Then I went from a 6800 XT to a 7900 XTX and that felt event bigger. The 3060 ti should be around the same performance as a 2080.
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Maybe I'll notice it more as I play around with a wider range of titles, but so far it's certainly not night and day the way many of my previous upgrades were.

Probably just comes down to the 2080's staying power - I'm silly demanding, most people would be perfectly happy with it even now.
 
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