shmups.system11.org

I'm using what I think is a standard Verizon router with a fiber optic connection, I would guess the limited speed over wired has to do with the fact I'm using a random ethernet cable I found in the closet behind the cat's litter box daisy chained to the ethernet cable that came with the Xbox 360.

I guess I could just get longer, better quality cables...

It's more about getting a cable capable of transmitting the data at the speeds you want, but yeah, it sounds like you need a different one.

This thread had me investigating any updates for my x470 board regarding AMDs initial claim the x470 chipset wouldn't support Zen-3 due to bios limitations.
If you were slightly outta the loop as I was, they've reversed** that decision and now say Zen-3 support will be available via a beta-bios.

** it falls on the manufacturers. it's speculative at this point, but the presumption is the zen (ryzen 1000) instruction set will have to be removed to make room.
additionally, the majority of the images/graphics are removed/simplified; MSI already did this for several of their x470 boards with 16mb bios' when they added support for Zen-2.

Well, I got up early this morning, and camped out on Nvidia's shop page for 3 hours, waiting for 9 am est to roll around so I could purchase the literal second the RTX 3080 became available. Surely that was overkill right? Well apparently refreshing every minute 5 minutes before 9 am wasn't good enough, because the cards immediately went from "coming soon" to "sold out" in less than a minute.

Fuck Nvidia, I'm buying Big Navi instead.

It was obvious for a while only the lucky ones* would get a card at launch. I'm happy I placed my order early, so when the retailer I purchased from gets more I'm early in the queue (the retailer expects more cards for sale 1 November, but expects my order to ship 30 September. Both are probably made up numbers, but it gives some idea where I am in the queue). That and I won't be affected if they try to raise price due to demand.

* Or unlucky ones if it turns out to be a bad purchase for some reason. Some hardware flaw yet unnoticed, AMD coming out with something revolutionary soon.

Gamers Nexus claims this wasn't a paper launch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHogHMvZscM
I'm not sure they're trustworthy, they do want to stay close to the companies in question, but they're at least more trustworthy than Nvidia.

Also, unsurprisingly PCIe 3.0 vs 4.0 makes little difference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DKVVtirNM8
I've read another review that gives similar results, I'm not strictly trusting Gamers Nexus on this. Obviously if you're buying today, PCIe 3.0 vs 4.0 is decided by if you want an AMD processor or Intel processor, but if you have an older system, no reason to avoid the 3080 if you're going 4K (I consider 3080 overkill for 1440p. You could definitely benefit from it, I just wouldn't waste the money).

I'd be amazed if there's more than a handful of cards that fully utilize PCIe 3.0 32GB/s bandwidth. The little bit I've read on PCIe 4.0 points to it's real benefits being with storage, and unsurprisingly they're throwing theoretical limits around (with large files).

on the X570 boards. been awhile since i've seen active cooling.... maybe ~'05 or '06 when evga still manufactured boards. anyways, the bearings in those little fans are often prone to an early death.

Yeah, originally I was planning on getting a X570 board since they were the fanciest and I was under the mistaken impression that chipset lanes = all the lanes, and X570 was the only board type with PCIE 4.0 chipset lanes. I was later informed that B550 was a better choice since it was more recent, supports PCIE 4.0 over CPU lanes, the X570 was apparently rushed to market, and the X570 fans are apparently more trouble than they're worth.

I spent the last 5 days sitting at my PC, staring at my shop auto refresher and intently reading a Discord channel dedicated to tracking RTX 3080 stock. Whenever stock went up, generally either the site would go down from the massive spike in traffic (after which the graphic cards sell out while I'm struggling to access the site), or the cards go out of stock just as I'm finalizing payment. Despite receiving immediate alerts whenever stock went live, I was still unable to secure a RTX 3080. Until yesterday that is. See Zotac randomly put up stock on their website for a second time, and everybody immediately crashed the site. Again. While everyone else was busy trying to get onto Zotac's website, I had already given up on Zotac and randomly decided to check Amazon. They had suddenly gotten a small shipment of EVGA XC3 Ultra RTX 3080 cards at that moment. First attempt to check out, it returned an error. I tried a second time, it went through. Amazon sold out of the card about a minute afterwards. Amazon gave me a delivery estimate of October 17th.

Fast forward to today, my Amazon order was not voided (as had been experienced by people ordering on Newegg and during an earlier Amazon restock), and the delivery date had in fact been moved up to October 7th. Looks like I managed to secure the RTX 3080. And I won't have to worry about debating whether to wait for Zen 3, since my graphics card will be delivered right before the Zen 3 announcement.

Of course, I wonder whether I'll have to repeat this nightmare to get a Zen 3 CPU during that launch... I'm thinking if I can't get a Zen 3 CPU after a week of trying, I'll just go with a (most likely discounted at that point) Ryzen 3900X.

Probably a wise choice on the B550. I've read nothing but problem about the X570, all of which pertain to heat. But,what do I know.... I thought evga hadn't manufactured a board in almost 15 years.
I presumed they called it quits after the chipset I mentioned (nforce 680sli) was marred with problems. anyways....

Regarding the Zen 3: I expect the 4300|4350 will be difficult to find if 3300X is any indication.

AMD 5xxx news are out. Performance is higher than expected, prices are higher than expected. Date is November 5th. Intel has preemptively countered by announcing they're launching their next CPU lineup, another 14mm refresh in Q1 2021.

Still really undecided between 5900x or 5950x. I'm guessing sanity will prevail and I'll get the 5900x though, but unlike RTX 3080 vs 3090 here there's a noticeable performance difference.

I'm actually going to be going with a 3900x and ideally start building tomorrow.

The 3900x is like $400 now, and comes with a free air cooler.

The 5900x is going to be $550, performs about 25% better in gaming *at most*, assuming 1080p (and I'm going to be using 1440p, and possibly even moving up to 4K later), and the fact they didn't mention an air cooler at all combined with their most recent CPU releases omitting the cooler makes me think AMD is not going to include an air cooler with the new chips. Yes, the one that comes with the 3900x isn't the best cooler, but it gets the job done, and I don't have plans to overclock.

edit: Listings have revealed that the new chips do not come with a cooler. So assuming I was going to pay $100 for a separate cooler, that brings the cost of the 5900x for me up to $650, so $250 higher than the 3900x.

If you're so price-conscious you should probably wait a month to see if there's any 3900x deals around 5900x launch.

No? At least not according to the only source we have:

You'll get anything from 5% to 50%.

Not sure I would recommend a 12 core CPU strictly for gaming though.

The highest end air coolers don't cost 100$. Considering you're not going to overclock, paying 100$ for an air cooler is doing something seriously wrong. You can probably get away with a 50$ air cooler.

Well I went with the Ryzen 3900x and built my PC friday night. Took about 5 hours, and I was super cramped afterwards, but the result booted up on the first attempt, and passed 3dmark benchmarks and stress tests!

Cabling job was kind of bad though, so I opened up the PC last night to try and redo some of the cabling.

In the process I had to remove my graphics card, and I was thinking, "strange, this thing doesn't want to pull out. Well I guess I just have to pull harder!" Turns out I had forgotten about the retention clip on the PCIE slot (to be fair it was hidden underneath the bulk of the GPU), and when the graphics card finally came out it took the retention clip with it. Also I had forgotten to unplug the displayport cables because I'm a silly boy.

I reassembled the pc without the clip, ran benchmark tests, they came back fine, but then somebody in discord informed me that the clip is needed to properly secure the GPU (which would explain why it was suddenly so easy to remove the GPU), so I opened up the PC again, tried to pop the clip back in place, and surprisingly, it did. I pushed the graphics card in, this time with a confirming *click*, and tugged on it to make sure it didn't come out easily. Benchmarks came back fine, however I have yet to actually play a game following this.

Holy shit guys, I just upgraded my GPU .. to a GTX 970.

I'm a little behind the curve at this point. :p

Sonic 2 is free on Steam right now. The lovely Yukuza series is cheap as well. Yakuzu 0 is stunning on a PC

Aw crap! The PSU requirements for the 3000 series of GPUs are out of control.

I splashed out for a Seasonic fanless 700W PSU because I wanted something that would have longevity, and figured 700W was overkill for my needs.

Nope! The 3070 I've been waiting for wants 750W minimum with my i9 CPU, or I could face sudden system shutdowns.

Huh? What 3070 are you planning on buying that needs 100W more than the reference design*? And why?

* And judging by what I've read about the RTX 3080, Nvidia's system requirements are very worst case, so you might not even need 650W for the reference design.

My mistake, this chart is from Asus, not Nvidia itself:



I have an i9 CPU. However, I'm not overclocking it so there's that?

like zell said, that's worse case scenario. they often overstate the requirements because most people buy mid-range psu's. I'd be amazed if a top-tier, efficient PSU like a seasonic couldnt handle that.
3070 power draw is ~220w? There's a ~20% increase in consumption vs previous gen; pretty big.

RDNA2 "details" are out now. RX 6900 XT looks tempting if Asus can't manufacture a RTX 3080 for me by December.

Lots of hype today, but I doubt any of us plebs will be able buy anything that does 4k before next May. The power consumption might be a good thing; anything that pushes miner kids away is good.

Interestingly enough, the RTX 3080 is a 350W card that lists 750W as the required PSU, while the RX 6900 XT is a 300W card that lists 850W as the required PSU.

These days, I wait for third parties to test and benchmark just about everything. There's so much hype.

Of course, the power thing might be related to the way AMD is pushing overclocked numbers right out front.

I've seen solid indications that the Asus TUF RTX 3080 is actually a real card, that exists. So maybe I'll get one sometime.

I ordered a 5950x. So much for going with the reasonable option.

Can't believe AMD took the crown again. Intel's been asleep at the wheel for years. Will rocket lake let Intel take the lead again? Yeah, probably not. lol

I was initially going to get the 5900X but I'm not expecting to do anything that would take advantage of 12-cores so now I'm leaning towards the 5600X (the 5800X is pointless)
I'm also replacing a 2600X on an x470 board, which won't get the appropriate BIOS until Q1 2021 so I've plenty of time to decide.

And...... 5950x is delayed to 2 December where I ordered it. Yeah I no longer believe in RTX 3080 being a paper launch to counter AMD, I think this is the new marketing strategy for tech products. Make too little of it, so it seems like a premium product because it's highly in demand and make people desperate to buy them when they can.

This years season greeti....

OUT OF STOCK!

is brought to you by AMD and Nvidia.

Shit is ridiculous.

So at least done with the non-GPU upgrades, so since I'm a bit bored a few comments:

ROG Strix B550-F Gaming
My usual luck with these things: it doesn't seem to like my current GPU. It will boot with it, but the GPU won't support all resolutions. If I reboot by pressing the reset button, it will. Even when it is working, soft resets from Windows will bring it back to its failure state. Just going to live with this until I replace the GPU (I just have to start the PC by pressing power+reset) and I'll probably do another bios update then too.

The restrictions of B550 chipset is painfully apparent. I wanted to connect my capture card, but I have too much other stuff connected so I can't (2 M.2 drives + 4 SATA drives + 1 PCIe 2x SATA card because 2 M.2 drives disables 2 of the motherboard's SATA ports). Well I could if I replaced the 2x SATA card I have with a 1x one, which I might eventually do.

Had to remove the side fan on my case since this motherboard only has 3 chassis fan headers, though I doubt it's a big loss. If temperatures get too high when I get my RTX 3080 I will get a fan splitter.

AMD Ryzen 9 5950x
Upgrading from a i7-4790k, a 4 core to a 16 core is needless to say a very pleasant change when doing audio/video encoding. My cooling setup means 16 core boost maxes out at 4.35Ghz though. I guess it's possible to push it harder, but I don't really want it exceeding 85C.

I was actually shocked at how well GZDoom scaled. Yes the 5950x should be 30% faster than the i7 4790k in single threaded performance, but I did not expect that to translate to a 30% FPS boost. I was expecting some other bottleneck to kick in.

The CPU upgrade didn't do much for the emulation test cases I had though (Xenia + Renegade Ops / PPSSPP + Valkyria Chronicles II with software rendering). Xenia saw significant framerate improvements, but it didn't make the test game playable. I didn't notice a difference with PPSSPP, which was weird. Not that PPSSPP software rendering is supposed to be playable yet anyway.

Only multithreaded CPU limited game I have installed, Mirror's Edge Catalyst saw pretty significant improvements. It dipped to 70 FPS on my 4790k, and runs at a minimum framerate of 138 FPS now. For the CPU side at least, when I get my new GPU and want to play the game I'll probably aim for graphic settings that give me ~90 FPS.

Starcraft II loading times seems to have improved by quite a bit. I could be imagining it, but I don't think so. CPU usage while loading was maxed out on my old CPU and it isn't now. Don't have any test to compare ingame framerates.

G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4 3600Mhz 32GB
First waste of money, I have yet to see any benefits from 32GB of RAM. The included profile failed to run at 3600Mhz, not sure if motherboard of memory. I just set it to 3266Mhz. I'm sure it's possible to get it running higher, but don't want to spend time on that now.

Corsair Force Series MP600 2TB M.2 SSD
Maybe second waste of money, but I had 500$ I had to use on computer parts and couldn't think of anything else. I was going to make my SSD upgrade a Intel 660p/665p, but for the first time I was actually worried about the endurance of SSDs. Intel's warranty for those drives is 600 TBW, which I actually could hit in 5 years (no I don't use the SSD just to store games). I don't think I've exceeded 1.5GB read speed yet on this drive, so buying a high end SSD for the performance still strikes me as a waste of money.