The State of PC Gaming Hardware

[tc119]

The past few years have been a roller coaster for retail computer hardware prices. 2016-2019 was the peak of good deals on GPU power with the GTX 10 series and the first crypto crash. We have not surpassed that benchmark since then. Let that sink in: the GTX 1080 and 1080ti are still roughly the price/performance king six years later. The RTX 3060 and 3060ti offer the same performance per dollar as the cards released more than half a decade ago. The original RTX Turing release (the 20 series) was more of a distraction for the fact that GPUs were not getting more power per dollar like we had for the generations preceding them. “Look at the ray tracing! Tensor Cores!” We seem to be in a computer age of diminishing returns. Stagnation.

I’m disappointed that a 3060 – a 60 class card – costs almost twice what I paid for a GTX 960 back in 2015. Gone are the days of good deals for new GPUs for the foreseeable future.

As for the used market, that’s an entirely different story right now. Crypto is finally crashing and the great GPU sell-off has already begun on Ebay. The best deals to be found are on AMD gpus, like the 6600 and 6600 XT. Going with Team Red has been a two-edge sword for awhile now. They have driver issues. They still have driver issues on anything older than the newer 6000 series. I say that because I don’t know anyone who has a 6000 series card. Maybe they’ve been fixed? Really, AMD cards have only been truly feasible on the Linux operating system because the open source drivers work so well – way better than NVIDIA. Windows is a shit show for AMD drivers.

Perhaps I should snag a 6600 sapphire card to see if the situation has improved? At the rate they’re going, they should be easy enough to acquire for under $200 very soon. I don’t really need it, but I’m curious. It’s a shame to see AMD/ATI getting utterly crushed by Nvidia lately, especially if the cards are decent.

AMD’s other business – CPUs – have been doing very well by comparison. So well in fact, they’ve been raising prices on the 5000 series of chips over previous generations. Like the GPU market, the budget segments have been completely ignored, so there haven’t been many options for those looking for a good deal the past two years. Thankfully, this situation changed somewhat in April with the release of a new round of cheaper Ryzen CPUs. The Ryzen 5 5500 looks like a very good deal for the power it provides. Intel has some good options on the low-end as well.

That’s all of my observations about the PC gaming hardware market as it stands now. Hopefully the crypto crash will allow prices to continue trending downwards. Rather, hopefully there will be some cool games to justify the expense of new gear in the first place!

[roperos]

GTX 1000 series was the peak of gaming gpus. RTX 3000 was promising, but it left a bad taste when crypto mania began and they were impossible to get at MSRP. I feel sorry for anyone that HAD to get a gpu in 2021-2022. RTX 4000 is a bust for anyone that wants to upgrade to anything less than rtx 4070. Even then you can argue that used / amd options are better value than a 4070

[tc119]

I also find that the 4070 is the only nvidia gpu worth upgrading to these days. It's almost twice as powerful as the 1080 for the same 200 watt power limit. Otherwise, I'm sticking with used parts.

[tc119]

What's the current state of PC gaming hardware? Well... it seems to be getting worse. Shrinkflation has started to hit GPUs hard and all the good silicone is being reserved for datacenters. The tech bros are milking the AI hype-train investor money right now. It'll be funny when everyone finally figures out that these chatbots are essentially bullshit generators and are not worth the massive amount of electricity it takes to run them.

On that note, I got an Asus ProArt 4070 last fall. It's a nicely built card. Not so ridiculously heavy that it requires a brace to keep from sagging, but also with a big enough cooler to ensure that I never hear the thing. No coil whine either, so I'm definitely holding onto this gem. Also, for a triple-fan card, it's still short enough to fit inside my Phanteks Enthoo Pro case.

computer_internals.JPG (333.57 KiB) Viewed 361 times

I've experimented with using this CUDA-crunching monster to run my own chatbots locally, using Koboldcpp and SillyTavern as front-ends. I only have enough VRAM to run quantized 12 billion parameter models, yet the fine-tuning from some of the model merges on Huggingface yield surprisingly good prose and dialogue for a story co-writer. Granted, I have to do some prompt-wrangling to overcome chatbot-dumbness, but it's still fascinating to see what it'll come up with. So long as the models fit entirely inside the VRAM, they spit out replies way faster than I can read them. I get similar speeds when doing local image generation - about 30 seconds for a fairly high-resolution composition. As of right now, NVIDIA cards are the only ones that can perform this level of compute, with Apple's SOCs coming in second.

My initial rationale for the 4070 was that it's the fastest card that I can get with a TDP of only 200 watts. I don't want to go any higher than that because I don't use air conditioning in my room and it can get pretty hot up here in the summer. Also, the chip die isn't so large that I have to worry about damage that can result from heat-cycling over many years. Another important deciding factor was that this particular card uses the older 8-pin PCI Express power plug, as opposed to the newer 12VHPWR plug that has been having melting issues under certain loads... or if it's not plugged in just right. Finally, and most importantly, I can fly around busy cities in Flight Simulator 2020 with little to no lag!

I was genuinely impressed with DLSS 4 on the Dune Awakening benchmark, so I'm not too worried about the gaming longevity for this card, especially since I insist on keeping my 1200p monitor resolution and aspect ratio until my last breath. I haven't had any problems with other games on Windows 10. Sadly, Linux support for gaming isn't there yet, thanks largely to the Wayland display server transition.

I feel bad for anyone who has to get a video card right now. They're either not available or massively overpriced. Also, NVIDIA has started dropping the ball on graphics driver quality since the 5000 series launched, as they're apparently an AI company now and could care less about the customers who built their business. I'd actually feel more comfortable recommending PC gamers give an Intel ARC or AMD card a try for this generation. Interesting times...

New motherboards are still wickedly expensive. "Budget-friendly" options start at $200. I'd say the best route for the enthusiast would be a Ryzen 7 7700 if building new, or an older AM4-based system with whatever 8-core CPU can be found for it. Otherwise, be prepared to spend $3k on a computer! At least SSDs and flash storage are still cheap.

[tc119]

A continuation on my thoughts about the pricing and availability situation with PC gaming hardware:

Gamer's Nexus recently put out a click-baity type video, as they often do, called The Death of Affordable Computing - Tariffs Impact and Investigation. From what I gather, it's essentially a three-hour long documentary of tech-Jesus going around to a few different computer hardware businesses and seeing how the tariff situation in the United States is going to affect prices.

Frankly, whenever I watch a GN video, I just skip to the benchmark charts and pause. I can't stand listening to Steve, or any tech-tuber, for more than three minutes. The fake journalist-media-personality-type voice grates on me like nails on a chalkboard. I much prefer to read their written reviews, if they have them. Needless to say, I'm NOT watching this video.

Anyway, I think it might be a case of "too soon" to pronounce affordable computer as dead, or at death's door. Policy changes like the ones we're facing in the US take many years to shake out, as we saw with the consequences of NAFTA and GAT trade agreements back in the 90s. There's a good chance that the current tariffs wont even stick, and are just being used as an incentive to bring other nations back to the negotiating table. But regardless, there's a lot of people out there eager to rage-bait, to borrow the Gen-Z colloquialism. And there are many business owners who are understandably upset.

Should we be so reliant upon cheap Chinese labor for our toys? Probably not. But the United States has been set on this course of off-shoring everything for many decades now. It's unlikely that we can so readily turn the Titanic around, especially when it's already taking on water. I think it's more likely that if any factories are to be built in the US, they're going to be so automated that the common folk will still be fucked regardless.

We'll see. Interesting times!

[roperos]

I've experimented with using this CUDA-crunching monster to run my own chatbots locally, using Koboldcpp and SillyTavern as front-ends. I only have enough VRAM to run quantized 12 billion parameter models, yet the fine-tuning from some of the model merges on Huggingface yield surprisingly good prose and dialogue for a story co-writer. Granted, I have to do some prompt-wrangling to overcome chatbot-dumbness, but it's still fascinating to see what it'll come up with.

This whole paragrapgh is pretty much why I got an RTX 3090 and still keep it despite awful power draw :P
Even after undervolting I can't get it below 280W when playing, while it has performance of an rtx 4070 super. I always was in a bit of a denial how slow it is, but seeing it being beaten by an rtx 5070 (250w vs 380w) is a bit of a wake up call.

I think it's a good time to get a gpu, it all depends on which price bracket. Around 850$ you can look for an rtx 4070 ti super, rx 7900 xt or either 9070 xt or regular. I feel sorry for anyone that has to buy a GPU below 500$. Even rx 7800xt is a bit of a stretch and anything below that feels like wasting money on a GPU that's not that much faster than equivalent from earlier generation. Used market is tempting, with 3080's going for 4060ti 8gb prices and you get 35% more performance and 25% more vram (or 50% if you're lucky) for the same price. But ye I get that used markets are different in each region, so I won't go too deep into that.

>am5
I think it's time to migrate. Even cheapest ryzen 7500f is on par with ryzen 5700x3d and am5 gives you options for simple plug & play upgrades in the future. Prices dropped quite a lot in europe in the last year. It's quite easy to get a basic 2x16gb ddr5 kit (6000 cl36) for 80€ (90$). Decent mobos are in stock for 150€ (170$) (asrock b650 pro rs / gigabyte b650 eagle / msi pro b650-S). Ryzen 7500f is like 140€ (160$), 7700 goes for 200€ (226$). My problem with am4 is that it's not much cheaper. Recently I put together few PCs around 1k€ (1130$) and difference between am4 V am5 is like 100€ (113$). To me it's not big enough to advice to go with am4 for new builds. IF you already have am4 then sure it's easy to look for a used ryzen 5600 or try your luck with a ryzen 5700x3d from aliexpress. Some people after various rebates and discount codes get them for as low as 150€ (170$)

I remember that intel exists, but it's been ages since I put a pc with their CPU and that whole voltage degradation thing still stings almost a year later. I heard that you can get ryzen 7800x3d levels of performance for 450-500€ (510-560$) because cpus are dirt cheap, but I haven't looked into it.


To close it in one reply.
Semiconductor manufacturing is so complex you can't just open your arms and say "cmon guys, come and make your products here" I found a channel on youtube that has a good balance between showing how complex it is and still explaining it to us mere mortals.

[tc119]

Hey Roperos, thanks for adding your findings!

I guess I just assumed that AM4 prices would come down substantially for used parts. Hell, I got my X470 board open box and it was still expensive for me 3 years ago! ($200 USD) And upon a brief glance at Ebay prices in the US, that price has not budged. It's even a little higher now. So yeah, you're right. It makes more sense to go for AM5.

Spending $600 on a GPU pains me like you wouldn't believe. I got by with $100 ATI cards and hand-me-downs for years. Now, you're only options for something that cheap is a rebuild-job from Ali Express, or a miner card. I've actually had some good luck with miner cards, so that wasn't so bad. The only way I could justify spending so much on my newer RTX card was that it felt like the first substantial upgrade from the GTX 1080 at a similar power draw. I was tempted to go the 3090 route, but I like my little 650 Seasonic power supply. And as I stated above, I want my machine to draw not much more than an Xbox or PS5 at load. So I'm happy with my 4070 and Ryzen 7 5700X combo. Stay cool!

[roperos]

One could say that i succumbed and switched sides

in reality it was time to let go. I don't think i will need so much power for quite a while, but with increasing coil whine (that sometimes lasted up to few minutes after exiting a game ) and a small hint from a friend i was able to replace my rtx 3090 for an rx 9070 xt and make 50€ from it.
I did some undervolting so RX draws 240W instead of 320W. Now i just need to mess around with a fan curve. stock curve starts from 55C / 130F and at 75C / 165F fans are already going full tilt (3k+ rpm). I'm tempted to disable "stop fan" altogether and keep it at lowest possible rpm till like 45-50C / 113-122F

[tc119]

That's not a bad move at all, Roperos. I encourage anyone who's building a new machine to go for all AMD at the moment, if they're chiefly concerned with gaming. Hell, even an Intel Arc card would work better on the budget-end vs. Team Green. NVIDIA is an "AI Company" now, so they've been dropping the ball hard on driver quality lately. Not to mention the 5000 series is an even worse deal than the 4000s.

Ugh... coil whine is the worst. I'm immensely happy that I've got a machine right now that has none of that noise. I'll keep any component that doesn't have coil whine and run it until it's dead - I don't care who makes it!

Not letting your GPU/CPU get above 75C is a good call. I don't care how much the manufactures claim they can run at 105C all day long - the stress of big heat-cycle swings will wear silicone over time. GPUs with big dies are especially susceptible, so I avoid those if I want my graphics card to last.

I personally haven't made any upgrades since last year. Everything still plays perfectly with my above machine. Though I'm always on the lookout for more cheap storage - SSDs and gigantic mechanical drives. I'm building mini Netflix-like Jellyfin servers everywhere I go.