Possible GPU upgrades

[dogememe]

For PSU's I typically go with either Seasonic or Corsair which are actually made by Seasonic. I also use EVGA and seems to be the one I've been going with as of late. I really liked EVGA but then they shutdown their GPU market but their PSU's seem to be built very well and on par with the others.

EVGA is probably not long for this world - just keep that in mind. That 10 year warranty will be worth nothing if the company goes bye-bye. Also, some of their lower end units use generic Chinese capacitors which bothers me. Of course, it makes sense, you get what you pay for, but I wouldn't just blindly recommend EVGA PSUs.

Personally I do like Seasonic and aim for Seasonic-built units but I tend to avoid actual Seasonic branded power supplies as I found their customer service horrible. I have bought A LOT of PSUs and the ONE time I tried to warranty a Seasonic they blew me off and told me no. Absolutely ridiculous. In fact I think that's the only power supply I've ever had to warranty.

Kinda off topic and you'll probably cringe but years ago I built a whole rack of 2U servers with $20 In Win power supplies. Nothing uptime critical and they were simple machines with i5s and two SSDs. After 5 years I think one died? Threw in a spare and back in business 10 minutes later.

 

[autoapprentice]

There are a lot of misconceptions here that I am facepalming at.
Firstly, per AMD's official specs, none of their GPU's require a 700w powersupply except the 6950xt, 7900xt and xtx. 600W is more than plenty for a 7800xt.
Second, the recommended power supply is to prevent any kind of failure and thus power spike/voltage spike. This does not mean that your GPU will consume the entire PSU's rated power, as a matter of fact, when gaming, NOTHING uses its peak power. Its extremely hard to reach peak power draw when gaming. The only time you would see peak load is probably running furmark + prime 95 simultaneously.
Third, your PSU pulls more from the wall than it is rated at. A 600w power supply at peak load will easily pull over 700 watts from the wall. This is the issue with 120 volt home power in the US. On 220/240v it would be more efficient, but still use more than whats on the box.
Fourth, TDP (Thermal Design Power) which is what GPU's and CPU's advertise, is NOT power draw, and is a horrible number to use to gauge power draw. Power draw is usually higher than TDP.
Fifth, not buying a GPU because of high powerdraw is like buying a space heater then complaining about a high power bill. Unless you are building an HTPC it is pointless to care about power draw. Just build what is best performance per dollar. The power bill between a 300w and 400w power draw is not going to be much over a 1-2 hour gaming session.

So rule of thumb:
Buy name brand, good warranty power supplies. I almost exclusively buy EVGA, Seasonic, or Corsair. Don't buy those chinese brands like apevia or from brands that don't actually make their own power supplies (like gskill which makes ram).
Overpaying for a good AIB card like Sapphire (which is by far the BEST AMD AIB card maker) or EVGA (which used to make NVidia cards) is the way to go. Better cooling, better warranty, better longevity.
Just don't buy asus. Period. Thank me later.

PS
Even if you have a 650w PSU and you buy a GPU that "recommends" a 700w powersupply, you won't blow it up, and like I said, rarely reach that peak load gaming or doing light/medium work. You rarely hit the CPU and GPU at 100% load (not the same as 100% usage) at the same time.

Also, if a game is badly optimized, dont buy it. Why incentivize this behavior by giving them your money? Same with hardware. I will refuse to buy GPU's over the price of 300-400$. I used to exclusively stick to the 200-250$ mark and made those last a decade without issue.

I'm glad to hear you say that about Sapphire. My wife and I decided on this card. We are going to hold out for some holiday deals.

 

[Merek]

EVGA is probably not long for this world - just keep that in mind. That 10 year warranty will be worth nothing if the company goes bye-bye. Also, some of their lower end units use generic Chinese capacitors which bothers me. Of course, it makes sense, you get what you pay for, but I wouldn't just blindly recommend EVGA PSUs.

Personally I do like Seasonic and aim for Seasonic-built units but I tend to avoid actual Seasonic branded power supplies as I found their customer service horrible. I have bought A LOT of PSUs and the ONE time I tried to warranty a Seasonic they blew me off and told me no. Absolutely ridiculous. In fact I think that's the only power supply I've ever had to warranty.

Kinda off topic and you'll probably cringe but years ago I built a whole rack of 2U servers with $20 In Win power supplies. Nothing uptime critical and they were simple machines with i5s and two SSDs. After 5 years I think one died? Threw in a spare and back in business 10 minutes later.

I have been wondering about them even after they ended the GPUs and a lot of their stuff is still out of stock last I checked on their website. For Nvidia cards they were the #1 seller for so long, I don't know how they can survive without it.

 

[dogememe]

I have been wondering about the even after they ended the GPUs and a lot of their stuff is still out of stock last I checked on their website. For Nvidia cards they were the #1 seller for so long, I don't know how they can survive without it.

I think they're just gently "winding down" vs just closing up shop but no way I'd buy anything EVGA at this point if I cared about the warranty at all.

 

[dogememe]

OK, so I was curious and bought the game.

Played it for a bit, created a city with about 5,000 population. The results? at 4K, with medium preset with a few customizations, I get around 40FPS. The only way to really make it smooth was to switch to 1080P and turn on Vsync. BUT I prefer the text crispness of 4K. I found it playable at 40FPS BUT I am disappointed in the performance.

Overall gameplay, yes a few things are improved over Cities: Skylines 1 and there are some quality of life improvements throughout the game BUT at least in my small city and limited time playing I don't think it's worth it right now. You'll probably have more fun playing the older game smoothly than the newer game less smoothly.

Here's my build, yes it's a bit all over the place but it's mostly thrown together from stuff I had floating around or got a good deal. Not the ideal component choice but it does run Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 at 4K smoother than it can play Cities: Skylines 2 which goes to show how bad this game really is.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/JZn6BL

 

[blufeb95]

I have a laptop with Intel i7 and built in Iris Xe GPU. I swapped the 1x 16gB stick out and put in 2x 16 GB so 2 operations could be started simultaneously. GPU performance increased dramatically although total bandwith didn't change. I averaged 50% increase in frame rates. On a side note, every metric increased by 10% or more, including disk speed.

So not directly comparable to what you have, but it seems that feeding data to the GPU is critical

Actually adding a second module would double the bandwidth since it'd have been running in single channel before and now the RAM would be in dual channel, I always hate how they do that on low end laptops they only put one module in with an IGP and severely gimp the performance since it's missing half the memory bandwidth. Like the IGP in intel GPUs since the 7th gen can easily play 8k60 VP9 video in dual channel but in single channel it drops frames.

 

[KrisZ]

Try 1440p resolution, 4k is to this day reserved for the top tier GPUs when it comes to new releases.

Also, try the up-scaling, that should make 4k upscaled to around 60fps I would think with DLSS.

 

[blufeb95]

If you haven't watched this, maybe you should, it sounds like the game was released in beta quality and may need more time to mature before you go throwing expensive hardware at it.

 

[Jetronic]

Actually adding a second module would double the bandwidth since it'd have been running in single channel before and now the RAM would be in dual channel, I always hate how they do that on low end laptops they only put one module in with an IGP and severely gimp the performance since it's missing half the memory bandwidth. Like the IGP in intel GPUs since the 7th gen can easily play 8k60 VP9 video in dual channel but in single channel it drops frames.

Could be but I was told it was running full bandwith, just 1 operation at a time, and now it can start a second operation while waiting on the first to finish. In any event, proper gains across the board

 

[Rand]

Could be but I was told it was running full bandwith, just 1 operation at a time, and now it can start a second operation while waiting on the first to finish. In any event, proper gains across the board

That was just someone who doesnt understand how it works trying to explain it simply.

 

[blufeb95]

Could be but I was told it was running full bandwith, just 1 operation at a time, and now it can start a second operation while waiting on the first to finish. In any event, proper gains across the board

I think more of what's being described there is rank interleveing that modern RAM controllers use, so if you use a 2 rank module then the memory controller can interleve the operations between ranks, you'll still only have the same 64-bit bus width but you'll have a lower effective latency.

 

[Merek]

I can't speak for the latest gen cards but even the 3060 or 4060ti would struggle with 4k, you're looking at possibly 1440p with either of them but really more for 1080. I haven't had an AMD card since the ATI back in the day so I cannot really relate to what's comparable.

 

[Jetronic]

I think more of what's being described there is rank interleveing that modern RAM controllers use, so if you use a 2 rank module then the memory controller can interleve the operations between ranks, you'll still only have the same 64-bit bus width but you'll have a lower effective latency.

Yes that's what it was. works with either 2 ranks on 1 module (I bought these hoping that's what I got but didn't) or with 1 rank on each module

 

[Pablo]

Zero faith in MSI longevity. Maybe I missed it, how old are your MB's?

Did the age of the MB ever get answered?

 

[VTECOverRated]

I have been wondering about them even after they ended the GPUs and a lot of their stuff is still out of stock last I checked on their website. For Nvidia cards they were the #1 seller for so long, I don't know how they can survive without it.

EVGA's GPU department was not even their biggest department. They can easily exist without the GPU department. The powersupplies are some of the bets on the market, with some of the best overclock capable motherboards, and much more.

EVGA split with nvidia about 2 years ago. They have actually grown in revenue over that time....says a lot.
They literally make the best selling water coolers on the market.

 

[blufeb95]

Yes that's what it was. works with either 2 ranks on 1 module (I bought these hoping that's what I got but didn't) or with 1 rank on each module

Newer dual channel memory controls do interleave, each module also has it's own 64-bit bus back to the memory controller so it doubles the memory bandwidth and you can perform operations on one channel while waiting for an operation to complete on the other channel so there's a latency benefit, when you do rank interleaving, you only get a latency benefit because the 64-bit bus to the one module is shared between both ranks.

 

[autoapprentice]

Did the age of the MB ever get answered?

I purchased my MOBO in December of 2021.

 

[Pablo]

I purchased my MOBO in December of 2021.

Fairly fresh. Thanks.

Makes a difference with MSI IMHO.

 

[KrisZ]

I'm glad to hear you say that about Sapphire. My wife and I decided on this card. We are going to hold out for some holiday deals.

I got this exact GPU during the black friday week. Great card, runs cool and quiet but it is big and thick, takes three slots, so keep that in mind.


I have a Seasonic 650W 80+Gold PSU. I've run it through a variaty of games and synthetic benchmarks and my system is 100% stable.
I've run both Cinebench (stresses the CPU) and FurMark (stresses the GPU) at the same time for about half hour and there were no issues.
I even overclocked the GPU so it pulled 310W instead of normal 270W and the system was once again 100% stable.

If you have a decent power supply, you should have no problems at all.

 

[autoapprentice]

Ok everyone, I pulled the trigger on the 7800XT. It's great so far playing World of Warcraft and Sims.

The issue I'm having is with Civilizatiin 6 and COD MW3. There is diagonal tearing in Civilization 6, which is almost non existent when running directs 12. MW3 is a different story, not only is there diagonal tearing, there are also black squares and lines flooding the screen.

I have reinstalled windows, GPU driver, battle.net, and MW3 to no avail.

Any recommendations greatly appreciated.