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Blackwell gpus

Maybe - depends on display / target fps.

My current way of thinking is dropping a 5090 into my 5950x rig - try to hit 100 FPS at 4K. Will I spend about £700 upgrading to AM5 for a few % points? Hmm, doubt it tbh.
I upgraded from 5950X to 7950X3D and it was relatively cheap for a nice upgrade.

If you're heading towards a 5090 that 5950X will bottleneck it substantially I suspect, even at 4K.
 
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Thanks for the comments - will have to see how I get on I guess… if I even get a 5090.

I just don’t really like the idea of “you must max it all out or what’s the point”.

If the 5090 is £2k and upgrading to AM5 is maybe £800… and both upgrades give ‘100%’… getting ‘merely’ ~70% from just the 5090 is fine.

And again, this only really matters if that ~70% of the ‘max performance’ is unacceptable FPS-wise… and I doubt it is.
 
Thanks for the comments - will have to see how I get on I guess… if I even get a 5090.

I just don’t really like the idea of “you must max it all out or what’s the point”.

If the 5090 is £2k and upgrading to AM5 is maybe £800… and both upgrades give ‘100%’… getting ‘merely’ ~70% from just the 5090 is fine.

And again, this only really matters if that ~70% of the ‘max performance’ is unacceptable FPS-wise… and I doubt it is.

The problem is that if you are CPU limited,the RTX5090 will be underperforming and you might as well get an RTX5080 or RTX5070. It's like putting a more powerful engine in a car,put not upgrading the transmission or tires.

When you do dGPU upgrades,you need to do one which is a good match with your CPU.

For example,I would rather get a 7800X3D/9800X3D with an RTX5080 than a Zen3 CPU with an RTX5090. I only have an RTX3060TI ATM,but see performance improvements at qHD going from a 5700X with 3600MHZ DDR4 to a Ryzen 7 7800X3D in a number of games.

You saw that in those two RT games,a 7800X3D and a RTX4070 was faster than a Ryzen 5 5600 and a RTX4080. The same would apply with an RTX4090.

Even a sub £200 Ryzen 7 5700X3D would be noticeably better in many of those games than a non-X3D Zen3 CPU.

Also,the 7800X3D doesn't need OTT hardware. A £100 motherboard like an ASRock B650M-HDV/M.2 would be fine with it. Fancy DDR5 is also less of a concern with a 7800X3D. It even does not need fancy cooling - a good £20 Thermalright air cooler would be fine.
 
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Yeh, cpu especially at the high end is more important than ever. 4090 was the first gpu that kinda forced me into a cpu upgrade. My 5950x was seeing bottlenecks even at 4k. Nothing major but was the first time in a long time that I couldn't skip a cpu gen and not leave performance on the table. Maybe with 5090 this becomes more prominent.
 
Which was the top end product of the era and still considered overpriced for the time! The X1900XTX was $400.

Then you had the 7900GS,X1900GT and X1950 PRO within one year of the launch of the 7800GTX too. They were around the $250 mark IIRC.

The complexity of the card, die size and process costs are different. The X1900XTX was a measly 135w in tdp. gtx970 was already 148w... the 4080, the equivalent of a x70 card as it's called, has the 320w tdp... 4090 goes to 450w for tdp and more than 600mm2.

nVIDIA did push the prices up, but (at least in part), it was justified.
 
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The complexity of the card, die size and process costs are different. The X1900XTX was a measly 135w in tdp. gtx970 was already 148w... the 4080, the equivalent of a x70 card as it's called, has the 320w tdp... 4090 goes to 450w for tdp and more than 600mm2.

nVIDIA did push the prices up, but (at least in part), it was justified.

Everybody can expect some level of inflation,but repeatedly between Nvidia,AMD and Intel they are trying Apple/Samsung tactics increasingly.

Within a year cards costing 40% or less of the price matched or exceeded the performance of said cards. 8800GTX was a huge chip too and the 8800GT was on a half node shrink a year later. GT200 was huge too,but soon had price cuts.The GTX580 and Geforce Titan were the same level in basic hardware positioning. The GTX780 you got was really a GTX570 replacement in hardware. It was only because of the R9 290X that Nvidia was forced to even release the GTX780TI and price cut the GTX780.

Both of these companies are essentially running a cartel now and IMHO fixing the prices to their advantage. It reminds me of the suspicious price increases we had with other parts like DDR2,etc which years later had the companies in trouble with regulators. Just like when we had the last mining craze from 2017 onwards we ended up with Turing. Zero to do with cost and more that consumers just enabled it.

The initial RTX3000 and RX6000 series were launched well into a pandemic and the RRP took into consideration the higher component costs. The fact that gamers stupidly paid through the nose for these cards(and miners didn't help too) only sent one message - they needed to charge more. So both charged more for the second time in less than 5 years.

Remember,people try to explain away why Intel was literally releasing the same quad cores for years,because of costs,technical issues,etc. People defended launch Zen3 pricing after criticising Intel for doing the same. Then AMD went and charged as much for both Zen4 and Zen5 CPUs.

In the end it's because they know gamers are easy to exploit.

The same reason why games are so expensive now and full of bugs. Gamers complain and still buy them. So,the companies realise they can make no effort and we have both enshittification and shrinkflation in progress.
 
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Everybody can expect some level of inflation,but repeatedly between Nvidia,AMD and Intel they are trying Apple/Samsung tactics increasingly.

Within a year cards costing 40% or less of the price matched or exceeded the performance of said cards. 8800GTX was a huge chip too and the 8800GT was on a half node shrink a year later. GT200 was huge too,but soon had price cuts.The GTX580 and Geforce Titan were the same level in basic hardware positioning. The GTX780 you got was really a GTX570 replacement in hardware. It was only because of the R9 290X that Nvidia was forced to even release the GTX780TI and price cut the GTX780.

Both of these companies are essentially running a cartel now and IMHO fixing the prices to their advantage. It reminds me of the suspicious price increases we had with other parts like DDR2,etc which years later had the companies in trouble with regulators. Just like when we had the last mining craze from 2017 onwards we ended up with Turing. Zero to do with cost and more that consumers just enabled it.

The initial RTX3000 and RX6000 series were launched well into a pandemic and the RRP took into consideration the higher component costs. The fact that gamers stupidly paid through the nose for these cards(and miners didn't help too) only sent one message - they needed to charge more. So both charged more for the second time in less than 5 years.

Remember,people try to explain away why Intel was literally releasing the same quad cores for years,because of costs,technical issues,etc. People defended launch Zen3 pricing after criticising Intel for doing the same. Then AMD went and charged as much for both Zen4 and Zen5 CPUs.

In the end it's because they know gamers are easy to exploit.

The same reason why games are so expensive now and full of bugs. Gamers complain and still buy them. So,the companies realise they can make no effort and we have both enshittification and shrinkflation in progress.
8800gtx process was 90nm, costed around $2000-$3000 per wafer. For 4xxx series is around $16000-$20000. Add in all the extra from now vs then and you'll get a decent bump.

Obviously current gen is priced much higher than it should, but from my stance, gone are the times of $600-$700 for a high end card.

Processors and motherboards are something else, can't say much there other than greed is just as prevalent! :))

PS: considering the price of a phone, that people are paying willingly, complaining about the cost of a console or a decent PC is rather funny :)
 
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PS: considering the price of a phone, that people are paying willingly, complaining about the cost of a console or a decent PC is rather funny :)

Most people do not buy expensive phones, these are the minority of the market. Most of people (over 70% I'm summary last time I've seen UK statistics) change phones every 2-3 years, as they renew contract because that's what they get new phone with - they don't pay up front. Not as common to get GPU with a contract, is it? Though, you can get one on credit/financing but that's more hustle than just new phone contract. Most importantly, phone is these days primary computer people use, hence higher price is much more justified than a mere GPU for gaming on a PC

Every year percentage of people playing on their phones and moving away from pc gaming is growing - in 2022 it was about 40% of UK mobile users and growing every year till then. Amount of money people spend on mobile gaming also raises quickly reach year - they are horribly addictive and designed to suck money out of people. All that pulls people away from pc gaming, so the market for GPUs isn't growing nearly as much as mobile gaming is. This doesn't bode well for the pricing of GPUs either - sell less but for more.
 
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Every year percentage of people playing on their phones and moving away from pc gaming is growing - in 2022 it was about 40% of UK mobile users and growing every year till then. Amount of money people spend on mobile gaming also raises quickly reach year - they are horribly addictive and designed to suck money out of people. All that pulls people away from pc gaming, so the market for GPUs isn't growing nearly as much as mobile gaming is. This doesn't bode well for the pricing of GPUs either - sell less but for more.
The PC gaming market is only growing and those stats are easily google-able. I hardly think large numbers PC gamers are migrating away to phones unless you have the figures to back that up.
 
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Yeh, cpu especially at the high end is more important than ever. 4090 was the first gpu that kinda forced me into a cpu upgrade. My 5950x was seeing bottlenecks even at 4k. Nothing major but was the first time in a long time that I couldn't skip a cpu gen and not leave performance on the table. Maybe with 5090 this becomes more prominent.
I got a 4090 when I was running a 5600 :p that made me get a 7950X3D lol
 
I have 1 game installed on my phone. It is a tower defence style game and I even hardly play that.

Mobile gaming is crap imo. Enjoyed it like 12-13 years ago with games like Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds, Temple Run, Plants vs Zombies and Hearthstone. But those new type of games soon got blasé.

Can't stand games that are free but want you to spend money in game.

I use Steam Deck and my PC.
 
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Careful not to go on the console section and say the PS5 Pro is overpriced and a rip-off ... Wow that shocked me over there and how I forgot the mentality of the console master race too.. just been a long time I was really over there because i was wanting to grab a PS5 PRO and wanted to see what was being said and release pricing made me spit up my tea.. and others too but of course you have the diehards there that backed Sony to rip-off their customers.. :rolleyes: Aka hidden influencers or shareholders in Sony.
 
PS: considering the price of a phone, that people are paying willingly, complaining about the cost of a console or a decent PC is rather funny :)
The phone market has competition though, you can buy a £500 from an alternative brand that performs just the same as a £1500 phone from say apple or Samsung but you don’t have that option in the GPU market which is the equivalent of having just apple and Samsung to choose from.
 
The PC gaming market is only growing and those stats are easily google-able. I hardly think large numbers PC gamers are migrating away to phones unless you have the figures to back that up.
That's not what I said at all. In other words, I said GPU (so a pc gaming) market isn't growing as much as it would if phones haven't made new generation of humanity never even look at the pc in the first place - they are happy enough with the phone to game on and small laptop or even Chromebook with touch screen and keyboard only to use at home, to browse etc. There's plenty of statistics showing that for a while now. Mobile gaming market is many times bigger than pc and consoles market combined, for a while already. Again, that doesn't mean pc market isn't growing, it's just nowhere near mobile gaming market in growth.
 
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Mobile gaming is crap imo. Enjoyed it like 12-13 years ago with games like Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds, Temple Run, Plants vs Zombies and Hearthstone. But those new type of games soon got blasé.

Can't stand games that are free but want you to spend money in game.

I use Steam Deck and my PC.

Absolutely agree. But we are old now, the current generation has been born with a mobile phone in hand and they often do not even know how to turn on a pc or how to use mouse (or even controller) to play games anymore. And likely will never reach for pc or console, as they don't know any better than mobile addiction. I've seen indie Devs talking about it multiple times, that every time they go to some convention or exposition to present their games they encounter current young people (kids mostly) not even knowing what a controller is or mouse - they can only use touch screens. This is the growing currently generation that will make us feel like old farts not understanding new generations anymore, soon enough. :p
 
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@CAT-THE-FIFTH yes, this is where it all started. During this period AMD's market share went from 35% down to 21%, incredible and what messaging do we think Nvidia got from this?

A, AMD are irrelevant and B, they will buy anything for any price.... Nvidia was right.

And how do we think AMD felt about this after having tried? They put a lot of R&D in to this GPU and sold it at a reasonable price, it was meant to be AMD's way back to 50%, instead they went from 35% to 21%, why do we bother? Utter dejection.

It was AMD's last 'Great' GPU.

Tg7HqI9.jpeg
 
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