New PC Help *warning* lots of data/text

Gothch1ck

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So I did some research, and, came to the conclusion that "upgrading my PC" isn't going to be enough in the long term. Sure another 6GB RAM would max out my Mobo, get me along for a few more months or even a year, but then the absolute need to change out the CPU and Motherboard and GPU would come.

This means.... new PC building time. In car terms, my PC is "totaled" being more to fix than to just replace.

So.... Did an amazing 13 hours of research. Now I want some input. I am about to list off a few builds. They will use the same HDD and SSD, my old Case (and PSU if it works for them) as well as other things like my monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc- so they will NOT be included. (I can factor those in later)

What I would like to know is, how viable each option is with an expectation of 3-4 years of GAMING needs. (although I use my PC for virtually everything, I need to play ME:A)

Build 1. "The Modest Intel" Roughly~ $787
i5-7600k quad core @ 3.8 GHz (LGA 1151)
Asus Maximus mobo (DDR4/Usb3.1)
G.Skills RipJaws V DDR4 2800 RAM 2x8GB (16GB)
Asus RX 480 4GB GPU


Build 2. "High End Intel" Roughly~ $922
i7-4790k quad core @ 4Ghz (LGA 1150)
Asus Z97-a Motherboard (DDR3, Usb3.1)
G.Skills Sniper DDR3 1600 RAM 2x8GB (16GB)
Asus GTX 1060 6GB GPU


Build3. "New AMD" ~$747
AMD Ryzen 7, 1700, 8-core @3Ghz (AM4)
Asus Prime motherboard B350-Plus (single GPU)
G.Skills Ripjaws V DDR 2800 RAM 2x8GB (16GB)
Asus RX 480 4GB GPU


Build4. "Shiny AMD" ~$772
Same as "New AMD" but using an RX 480- 8 GB GPU instead.


The questions come down to, which one will be most likely to play Mass Effect Andromeda (as well as future games) for the next few years, as well as which one will have easier/cheaper updates. (replacing a GPU after 4 years is no biggy, or adding more RAM) The LGA 1150 socket may be seeing it's last days,
and as the i7-4790k is comparable to the new Ryzen 7 - it may have seen it's last.

I'd prefer gaming performance over benchmarks, as 1-8FPS doesn't matter to me unless it makes the game "unplayable" I also don't plan to play on extreme resolutions or anything, at most 3x 24' monitors, all 1920x1080 , but that's further down the road. (only main is gaming, rest are for all my multi tasking, which I do a lot of, so more RAM will be used too)
 
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The only part you screwed up on is the 3x24. If you're doing surround or anything past 1 monitor you'll need much better than an RX 480 or 1060.

You want to game? Drop all of the extra BS, the Haswell i7 is obsolete in terms of buying new. If you want the AMD you'll need to OC to play at 1080p resolution and you'll need 3000MHz or faster RAM.

So that leaves you with, stick with one monitor, drop the dumb Maximus board for a cheaper ASRock or MSI, and get the best GPU budget can afford.

You have a 922 based rig, here's one for slightly more with a 1070, a 7700k, and an H60.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/p22g4C

Or you can drop the i7 in favor of an i5 for 32GB of RAM.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/NBTdzM

Remember, DDR4 will be around a while, Kabylake chips won't.
 
thanks for more info to look into! (really helps!)


also I didn't think more than 16GB was going to effect gaming much? Was that data misleading or incorrect? (since even newer games are just now "recommending" 8GB)

I was just snaggin parts mostly with low or "working" order, I do plan to look for some better here and there, not just "cheapest on the market".

Saddens that I won't be able to multi monitor - but I think I found a way around that. (This PC still works fine for communication, web browsing, etc) so when the need or desire for that "multi display" comes up, I'll just get this one running (probably need a PSU and some RAM) and it'll be hanky-dory.
 
Background bloat is becoming real. You can always add more later, in case what I said confused you.

Having 3 monitors on any one of those GPUs isn't an issue, but wanting to game on all 3 will be (aka Nvidia Surround). Regardless, I still recommend the best GPU you can get even for gaming on one monitor. It's hard to recommend going either way (AMD, i5, or i7) due to not knowing where the gaming industry will take us. DX12 promised reduced overhead making CPU not that important, but also promised better utilization of more cores. What we really got was massively decreased performance compared to DX11 across the scale and a bunch of idiots on forums arguing over Async Compute. In the end we have to go with what's present rather than future, and that's deciding for 1080p gaming. That would be the i5 or i7 unless you're comfortable with overclocking and want to dump more money into faster RAM.

If you want me 100% honest opinion, if this was ME holding onto the money to buy I'd get the first rig I linked if you have no intentions of using SLI later.
 
is all the "Gamer Optimized" and "Future Ready Technologies" advertisement from AMD just bloated hype to sell the Rx480 cards? Area any of the 480's getting the "thumbs up" from gamers, or is it just benchmarks and hype?
 
I seem to have crossed some wires here and got confused. So let me state a few things, and hope for some input.

- I plan to game mainly, 1screen, 1920x1080 resolution.
- I plan to have 1, or 2 extra 'side wings' that have things like ts3/twitch running on them
- while i could benefit from more RAM (all the apps aside, I do edit video, music, and more) 16GB should suffice for a while (the motherboard actually supports more, unlike mine now where capping it off would still be less than the 16gb starter)

I don't have a "price range" but I also don't have a budget, or income to spend on it. This PC will probably be crowd sourced (indiegogo, gofundme, something like that) through donations. That being said - a lower price IS more preferable.

I am not sure why I suddenly though the RX 480 wasn't a "high end card" - so if you have any input on that... please elaborate. (your not the only one, several skip my pick on that and state the 1060, 1070, or 1080's from GTX) I am not sure if they are just biased, or following the year+ gap where AMD was behind, or just fearful of new tech unknowing how it handles (as not many have bought the Rx480/Ryzen to show off)

I don't particularly care GTX or RX, or even "PinkUnicorn" branded, as long as they can get the job done, and handle actual use. I also don't particularly care AMD or Intel - but for some reason I can't get the new AMD out of my head that I should pick it. (which is one of the reasons I wanted some input) You might call it blind faith but I believe it's gonna pay off. (well at least until some facts can prove me wrong, if that happens)

I really only have a color preference, because for some reason I cannot stand the color blue. I also have a like, trust, and past experience that was good for hardware support, stability, and years of service with Asus - so I do prefer them. (I have many Asus products, none have ever had failures, and when tech support was needed, I got it quick from company- this is a 7+ year relationship as a buyer)
 
- I plan to game mainly, 1screen, 1920x1080 resolution.
- I plan to have 1, or 2 extra 'side wings' that have things like ts3/twitch running on them
This is fine, as I touched on that before. If you are wanting to stream you will want an Nvidia card, more on that later. Video editing WILL hog up your 16GB easily if using Premier Pro.

- while i could benefit from more RAM (all the apps aside, I do edit video, music, and more) 16GB should suffice for a while (the motherboard actually supports more, unlike mine now where capping it off would still be less than the 16gb starter)
I ran 32GB (4x8GB) on a low end Gigabyte P55 UD3R. "Max" support was only based on what was available at the time of release when 4GB sticks were hella expensive for DDR3. 24GB is not the max this board could handle, but it would be best to still upgrade due to the performance benefits.

I don't have a "price range" but I also don't have a budget, or income to spend on it. This PC will probably be crowd sourced (indiegogo, gofundme, something like that) through donations. That being said - a lower price IS more preferable.
Honestly, and I can only really say this one way, piece your parts when you have cash in hand. Otherwise later you'll notice things are different and have to make a new thread or ask the same questions with different recommendations in parts.

I am not sure why I suddenly though the RX 480 wasn't a "high end card" - so if you have any input on that... please elaborate. (your not the only one, several skip my pick on that and state the 1060, 1070, or 1080's from GTX) I am not sure if they are just biased, or following the year+ gap where AMD was behind, or just fearful of new tech unknowing how it handles (as not many have bought the Rx480/Ryzen to show off)
The reason being is because RX 480 is a midrange graphics card comparable to the 1060 3GB. AMD does not have any direct competition with the 1070 or higher. Also with Nvidia you have Geforce Experience which makes it effortless to stream and all that load is placed on the GPU itself rather than the CPU. Nvidia is also support by Premier Pro which helps with rendering and timeline scrubbing.

I don't particularly care GTX or RX, or even "PinkUnicorn" branded, as long as they can get the job done, and handle actual use. I also don't particularly care AMD or Intel - but for some reason I can't get the new AMD out of my head that I should pick it. (which is one of the reasons I wanted some input) You might call it blind faith but I believe it's gonna pay off. (well at least until some facts can prove me wrong, if that happens)
Let's move back to what I said previously about the Ryzen CPU. In order to have better performance (as in what you'd normally see stock with Intel) at 1080p you will absolutely need fast RAM (3000MHz or higher) and OC the chip to 4-4.3GHz. The reason being is due to their inter-core design or "infinity fabric" being limited at how quickly it can provide information to all pieces of the chip. Cache, cores, etc. This limitation is based on RAM speed, and from what I'm to understand lately, is that it's hard to get faster RAM working efficiently and stable on the platform currently. If you were running at 1440p or 4k this wouldn't be an issue as it tips the bottleneck back over to the GPU and how fast it can process frames rather than how quickly the CPU can provide frames to the GPU. The Ryzen chips are awesome, but they do lack in 1080p performance and AMD themselves have said on record that the CPU architecture is performing as intended.

All that being said, if you do intend on moving to 1440p in the near future I can recommend the AMD platform over Intel because it does provide the extra power for video editing and rendering. Otherwise, if 1080p is where you'll stay and video editing is a back burner thought I can only recommend at least the i5 7600k.

I really only have a color preference, because for some reason I cannot stand the color blue. I also have a like, trust, and past experience that was good for hardware support, stability, and years of service with Asus - so I do prefer them. (I have many Asus products, none have ever had failures, and when tech support was needed, I got it quick from company- this is a 7+ year relationship as a buyer)
Their hardware is good, but that's as far as I can go when talking about Asus. Their CS is terrible, and unless you have throw away money I can't recommend them unless the premises is simply "you can afford it". Meanwhile, ASRock make solid boards competitive to Asus (the top OCers actually use mainly ASRock boards) and the board I linked is white and black. The Patriot RAM was a filler that can be replaced by Corsair LPX instead which is solid black (and what I use).
 
I read a few more reviews on it and got the same information about the 1080p being the "threat' to the AMD side. Which is.. .kinda strange, is it not? running a higher reso-in the past - always meant lower rates, conversely running lower reso gave higher rates.. this AMD is flipping that. I also read -that even though there is no hard evidence of this - that games have been optimizing for Intel - as it has been on the top scale of the CPU gaming boards for a long time now (and when you think about games running smoothly without a limiter of "same hardware for everyone" it makes sense to optimize for what parts you can)

I don't want to go into any conspiracy BS or nonsense, just saying it is possible that the same exact benchmarks run in these tests could show the Ryzen in better positions when more updates are released - no hardware changes.

I appreciate all the input, I have been told that my text sometimes reads the opposite of what I am feeling, so I sometimes break though to ensure the reader isn't on the wrong page. (I get flamed often, and never realize why until this was pointed out)

it puzzles me just like it's puzzling everyone else it seems.
 
You're missing the key points I made above. I'll quote and bold.

In order to have better performance (as in what you'd normally see stock with Intel) at 1080p you will absolutely need fast RAM (3000MHz or higher) and OC the chip to 4-4.3GHz. The reason being is due to their inter-core design or "infinity fabric" being limited at how quickly it can provide information to all pieces of the chip. Cache, cores, etc. This limitation is based on RAM speed

Firstly, no they can't optimize for a certain CPU unless they're optimizing for specific instruction sets but games don't rely on these as much anymore making it moot. It's all about IPC, which is what Intel has been king at since Core 2 Duo. AMD's chips weren't competitive in IPC with each passing gen until now.

Second, as I explained above, AMD's architecture is the limiting factor to 1080p performance. As I explained before, when you go higher in resolution the bottleneck tips towards the GPU as it struggles more to render the higher resolution frames. At 1080p, the GPUs are fast enough to be waiting cycles for the CPU to send information. Intel's processors are clocked faster and inherently have higher IPC due to having a faster architecture. In this one isolated case, Intel's clock speed is what helps in the key to 1080p performance because Ryzen is on par with Haswell (Intel 4th gen) in terms of IPC but clocked lower due to having a lower TDP and more cores. In apples to apples comparison, a Ryzen 1800x is matching in raw speed to an i7 6900k which is 5th gen but the same IPC as Haswell and same clock speeds relatively giving them equal performance. Kaby Lake (Intel 7th gen) has a small percentage gain over those 4th and 5th gen chips AND a higher clock speed giving it a clear performance gain. This, coupled with AMD's infinity fabric being limited to RAM speed makes it more sluggish at 1080p rendering compared to Intel. This is somewhat fixed by higher RAM speeds but AMD's IMC is new and immature making it harder to handle higher clocked RAM. If you're not experienced in stabilizing overclocked systems then trying to make these chips match Intel's performance at 1080p will be difficult.

These are all hardware limitations that simply cannot be changed in updates whether software or firmware. It's literally as simple as "CPU not feeding GPU info fast enough at this resolution causing a performance dip". The only way to circumvent this is AMD releasing a more matured architecture later in the Ryzen life cycle with a stronger IMC to accommodate faster RAM speeds so information can be handled quicker within the CPU itself. Nothing more.

This CPU architecture is brand new from ground up and is just a baby. They will get these architectural kinks worked out over later processor revisions. Right now, we're stuck with what we got which is a monster CPU for the price but limited to the budget 1080p gamer. What I suggest doing (which I can't do quite this minute) is looking at 1080p benchmarks with a 1070 for specific games and figure out whether or not the quoted framerates are to your liking. If they are, go with the AMD chip.
 
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