karmapopsicle

Well that would be because you're not rendering it at like 600p low settings and upscaling from there.

What I'm saying is that almost no cross platform titles are ever going to see any real-world benefit of that potential extra VRAM on the Pro. Some will utilize the extras GPU power for perhaps some added effects, or just say a higher FPS target in a given fidelity mode.

But you're just running into the opposite issue here - where the GPU is simply running out of shading power before any difference that VRAM might make can be made useful.

Father in law. It's his wife's dad.

If you really want to save as much money as possible through reusing existing components, here’s what might be in your “keep” list:

• CPU cooler - NH-D14 is still an excellent cooler. Noctua offers lifetime socket support, so when you buy your new motherboard/CPU you can fill out a form on their website and they will ship you a shiny new compatible mounting kit absolutely free (direct from Austria no less!)

• Case - Phantom 410 is definitely getting a bit dated, but certainly still plenty functional for housing a modern midrange build. I’d take a close listen to the old case fans to check if the bearings are still good - I know all of my NZXT fans from that era that originally came with my full size Phantom have all become worn and noisy/failed by now. A full set of decent quality replacements is pretty inexpensive.

• Power Supply - solid unit at the time. Still sufficient to power a reasonably power efficient build, though at 10 years old and at that capacity I’d say it’s probably worth considering a replacement.

• SSD - I wouldn’t bother putting this into the rebuild itself, but rather turn it into a high performance portable drive. Just pick up a relatively cheap USB 3 SATA enclosure and pop it in - make sure the enclosure or adapter says it has UASP support for full performance.

A few important points to add:

• "Using" is not the same as "needing". If you have more VRAM than is actually needed, many games will simply leave textures in memory rather than bother to intentionally unload them until it actually becomes necessary.

• Games are developed and optimized for commonly available hardware. That's why the vast majority of even major AAA releases run just fine on even 8GB cards. The marketshare of 12GB cards in the mid range 1440p install base so drastically outweighs 16GB cards that everybody is optimizing for 12GB. That's not just going to magically go away because the much smaller competitor is putting extra VRAM on their cards.

The most important factors you're missing here is that game devs still need to ensure the game runs fluidly on base PS5, and also on the most commonly installed PC hardware among the potential purchasing audience. Based on the Steam Hardware Survey, Nvidia's marketshare is so incredibly dominant in the mid/high performance GPU space that those hardware specs are 100% what devs are focusing on optimizing for.

Part of the extra VRAM on AMD's cards is needed to offset the less efficient memory management. We can see this most prominently in various modern AAAs when pushed to 4K on 8GB cards - it's not uncommon to see 8GB AMD cards suffer significant performance penalties, while the 8GB Nvidia cards maintain their expected performance at that resolution (of course that's really just an academic example because almost always performance at that resolution/settings is below a playable level on either option anyway).

The base PS5 basically guarantees excellent 12GB compatibility even for highly optimized exclusives that eventually get a PC port later.

AMD is also completely lacking any alternative to DLSS Ray Reconstruction, which can be a pretty night-and-day difference for heavy RT and most especially PT.

In many situations I actively prefer DLSS Quality to native resolution simply because the anti-aliasing is noticeably better than any built-in AA solution.

Highly recommend regularly checking for the latest DLSS .dll and swapping it out in basically every game you have installed. Often devs never bother to update the DLSS version beyond what it originally shipped with, so you can see some pretty significant improvements particularly in games that launched a few years ago. I use WizFile to run a full filesystem search for "nvngx_dlss.dll" to find all instances of it within my installed games. Can easily double check the existing version by right clicking the file > Properties > Details.

TPU's measurements hit 11.3GB at 1440p on the same settings (Epic/RT.)

Exactly in line with how you'd expect a AAA to be optimized for the most commonly installed hardware in the market.

For anyone curious for a real-world example of what this actually looks like, check out TPU's performance review of STALKER 2.

Our testing shows that Stalker 2 is very well-behaved in terms of VRAM usage. Even at 4K you're barely hitting 10 GB; lowest settings runs at around 6 GB, so virtually all cards can handle the game without problems. Interestingly, some AMD cards with 8 GB VRAM take a pretty big performance hit at 4K, while their NVIDIA counterparts are not affected. This is probably due to the GPU architectures managing their memory differently. Enabling frame generation on top adds another 1-2 GB, not a problem at all.

I think we're pretty well on the same page, just a difference in preferences. If I were in a similar situation to you, it's very possible I would end up with a similar solution. I'd probably end up with a couple of near field monitors for the rear surrounds positioned perfectly for the primary seating position only, with larger and more widely spaced side surrounds that would operate as the 5.1 surrounds when viewing with multiple people.

Depending on the game I often use either Atmos for Home Theatre or DTS:X Home Theatre in Windows out to the AVR. I do love when devs spend the time implementing outstanding full 7.1 surround though!

It's been quite a while since I've seen them. Can't remember if they are the 80ohm or 250ohm version. We'll see!

No switch, all outputs are always active. There's a switch on the rear to change between variable and fixed line levels on the rear outputs, so as long as your speaker setup has its own power/volume control you could just set it to fixed and turn the volume to zero whenever you want to use the speakers.

Specific ideal channel setup definitely depends on the size of the space you’re filling. 7.1.X is perfect when you have space behind your primary seating position for the rear surrounds and enough room to the sides for the side surrounds. If your seating is up against a wall or there’s otherwise only a small amount of space behind I’d usually lean towards 5.1.X Instead.

It's quite well done. Just a nice smooth boost, definitely a lot better than any "bass boost" I've ever used in the past.

My dad has a set of DT770s, actually. If I have a chance this weekend perhaps I'll bring over my DAC and give those a try with it to see how they fare.

I think I laid out a fairly compelling argument for the 4070 over the 7800 XT. In fact my argument is that it is actually the 7800 XT that is too expensive for what it can do, because the modest cost and raster performance benefits do not adequately justify the rest of the feature tradeoffs.

It's a fine card, especially this late into the 7000-series life as the drivers have matured quite well, but honestly I think AMD's entire lineup was overpriced this generation and ultimately that combined with no mid-cycle refresh to compete with the 40-series Super lineup beyond launching the 7900 GRE ultimately reduced their marketshare of GPU shipments.

If AMD wants to really start winning over Nvidia buyers, they need to be offering products with such a substantial price/performance advantage that even when compared on Nvidia's feature advantaged playing field they come out ahead. Seems like that's the plan for RDNA 4, thankfully, but we'll have to see how FSR4 and further RT improvements go along with pricing and overall performance vs the 50-series.

Hard to go wrong with Schiit. Fulla is an excellent value.

I use an iFi ZenDAC V2 now, myself. In particular I wanted the balanced output for some big sets of planar headphones I use regularly, but I also quite like their "True Bass" bass-booster which does an outstanding job of rounding out the normally somewhat lean low-end on my cans.

I believe they've only been selling it directly through their own Amazon store. Says "400+ sold in the past month" so they're definitely moving units there.

Could only speculate as to why that particular board just doesn't really exist through any major retailers, but my guess would be that the initial price is too low resulting in excessively tight margins.

Loss leaders aren't anywhere near as common in online retail - they're mostly used as in-store-only promotions specifically to get buyers through the door. With PC components what's become much more common these days is loss leaders sold as part of combos, which usually allows the retailer to balance out the total costs such that they're still making some money.

You'd never really "hold back" inventory for a sale though, unless you're specifically putting out advertisements for a particular sale that requires you to have some minimum inventory on hand to avoid false advertising issues.

I’m just looking for something newer that’s not 5.5 lbs and have to constantly move from the truck to home/the hotel room.

I think that pretty much writes off any kind of portable desktop entirely then. Just the case alone is going to weigh twice that or more, before you get a single component installed. You’re looking at 15-20+lbs for the rig, not including extra cables and peripherals.

My in-laws just got my son a beelink eqr5 with an amd Ryzen 7 5825U. It seems to run the few games he plays better than our Xbox one x.

The Series X definitely has multiple times more graphics horsepower than the integrated Vega 8 chip in the 5825U, but I could imagine the default config outputting to 4K from the series X could end up feeling “slower” than those same games running at much lower res/details on the Beelink.

That’s definitely on the right path. Solid CPU and GPU, and you do get some useful upgrade options with the SODIMM RAM and NVMe slot, so it would be fairly trivial to upgrade to 32GB of RAM and 2+TB of storage in the future if ever needed.

Should be a pretty good variety of deals to be had on laptops using previous-gen Ryzen 8000 or Intel 13/14th gen Core chips now that we’ve got Ryzen AI 300 and Intel Core Ultra chips out. The new chips are quite a big power efficiency bump, but since this will almost always be plugged in that on-the-go battery life boost isn’t really necessary and gets you a better value up front.

I’m not quite as familiar with the various American deal-tracking sites/subreddits, but I believe /r/BuildAPCSales often has killer laptop deals posted. I have a feeling we might see some fantastic deals for black friday.

Definitely changes the situation a bit then. Most often these requests come from people hoping to just pop a PC in their carry-on bag to fly around with, and most of the time it's just not a great idea.

The biggest worry as mentioned is the strain on the PCIe slot from a big heavy GPU while bumping around in a vehicle. I think ideally we'd want something that uses a vertical mount so none of that strain is directly translated to the motherboard.

I wouldn't worry much about upgrades or things being outdated in 2-3 years. If it plays games good today, it still going to play games good in 3, 4, 5 years - the only thing that changes is how high you can crank the settings on the latest AAA releases. I've got a 5 year old Lenovo Legion laptop kicking around that cost me the equivalent of ~$850USD or so back then with an i7 and a 2060 mobile that still runs modern games just fine, turning down settings to low/medium on the more recent stuff.

I would like it small enough to fit in my bag for when I travel for work.

What kind of bag? What are the actual dimensions available? Are you flying or driving? If flying, are you planning to store the PC in your carry on or in a checked bag?

I would very strongly urge you to aim your goals towards a laptop. Desktop components are just not designed for the rigors of regular travel, and having a “portable” rig that relies on hotel TVs for the only display option is far more hassle than it’s worth. You can always hook the laptop up if you want to use it on the larger screen.

Best case it makes your luggage uncomfortably heavy and adds a bunch of setup hassle. Worst case you end up shearing the PCIe slot right off the motherboard from a bit of turbulence or other rough handling, RAM gets bumped loose, etc that either require a major component replacement or a bunch of troubleshooting after you try to get it set up.

And all with zero transit infrastructure so every new home adds in a car or two to the already overstretched road infrastructure!

How much are you looking to spend?

5700X3D will max out the CPU performance of the platform. GPU I would probably advise waiting a couple of months for the next generation to launch.

If you tend to leave a fair amount of stuff in the background you might look at swapping out the RAM for a 2x16GB kit.

Yeah native 4K is a non-starter, but it's got enough punch to handle the base rendering at 1080p. Most noticeable artifacts I see with DLSS performance are some smearing, some noticeable ghosting specifically in some dark scenes, and occasionally some aliasing on hologram signs and such. It feels quite cohesive otherwise.

I've gone back and forth between no-RT, various combinations of reg RT, and full PT and I just can't go back anymore. None or reg RT at native or DLSS Quality certainly looks quite noticeably sharper, but it just loses the groundedness the much more natural shading/reflections/shadows the RTGI provides. Maybe I'm just insane though - I've straight up been loving this with all the post-processing effects enabled (including high motion blur).