Why Building a Gaming PC Right Now is a Good Idea: Good Timing, Great Hardware, Right...

[deemon]

Doesnt Navi start coming out in Feb. with the Radeon 7 which is suppose to give 2080 performance or even beat it?

Sadly no. It's Vega refresh on 7nm, or AMD internally called "Vega II". Everyone waited for Navi - but AMD didn't deliver.... yet. And came out with this Vega refresh instead nobody expected in consumer market. Although I must say I am impressed by the gains (according to AMD slides) of this refresh, yet the price improved even more over Vega (1st), so it's like... not really a win when we didn't gain any frames per dollar? You can think of Radeon VII almost like Vega 64 Ti or Vega 72 for better comparison (although yes, it has newer 7nm tech).

 

[paul s2]

NAND and Flash prices are due to fall all year.
old gen ryzen prices will fall a lot as well.
at back to school time is normally the best time to buy a new PC. or black friday
reason is your budget is likely to go other places like clothes .
ram will continue to fall in price as long as smartphones are not on a upturn.

 

[Colonel Blimp]

There is no Ryzen 2. There is only Ryzen 3, 5 and 7. Zen (ryzen 1000 series), Zen+ (ryzen 2000 series), Zen2 (ryzen 3000 series).

I meant Ryzen 2000 is just a refresh of Zen1, otherwise yes.

 

[Mac291]

'Scuse me but I'm heeding those articles about Zen 2 poorboy cpu's and plan on pulling the trigger then. Yeah they may be less powerful than predictions - somebody's always blowing smoke - but I think I'll hold out a little longer. Unless some deal just can't be passed up.

 

[Mac291]

Edit: Make that Zen 3. Fat fingers...

 

[Apogee777]

I have been holding out for quite a while. Debating if I should go 1070 or 1060... I'm open to suggestions.

Normally I would say 'Depends...', but currently in most countries Vega 56 is better value than 1070 and radeon rx 580 8gb better value than 1060. Personally for 1080p I'd get rx580 8gb, but if you have money don't worry and buy vega 56, it's a great card!

for people on a budget the rx580 is a steal, I still have a r9 390 on a 1080p 21:9 monitor and have no intention of upgrading atm. the radeon drivers for the 390/480/580 just get better and better.

 

[Bpsti]

Why do people keep saying the 2060 isnt good? Did I miss something, it performs better than a 1070 n may get you 1080 like performance.

For god sake will people stop saying Ryzen 3 when they mean Zen 3. Ryzen is just the processor, Zen is the architect.

Doesnt Navi start coming out in Feb. with the Radeon 7 which is suppose to give 2080 performance or even beat it?

Its not that it isnt good, its that its not "great". Its a 350$ GPU that performs the same as and has 2GB less ram then last gens 350$ GPU.

Nvidia did a great job confusing everyone with the model number switcheroo. The 2060 is in the exact same price bracket as the 970 and the 1070/1070ti so it doesn't compare to the 1060. Yes its as fast as a 1070ti, but it *should be* since it *costs the same!*. So we went from 970 to 1070 and got a 50%+ improvement and a 20$ price increase. Then we went from 1070 to 2060 and got a 5-10% improvement (over the 1070, none over a 1070ti) and lost 2GB of video ram.

Same thing happened in every other bracket of nvidias new cards.

I paid something like 650$ for a 1080ti and to just *match* the performance of my current card I would need to spend another 100$ more and lose 3GB of video memory. To improve my performance just 30% I would need to spend between 500-700$ *more* then I did on the last gen card! Yah for progress!!

The 20xx series cards are parts bin cards to try and recover some of nvidias R&D spent on AI and enterprise specific systems. Hopefully the 7nm cards are actually designed for gamers.

 

[nashathedog]

I have been holding out for quite a while. Debating if I should go 1070 or 1060... I'm open to suggestions.

If it was me I wouldn't buy a Pascal card now that it's been replaced, Usually Nvidia's driver support for future games takes a nosedive for last gen products which we'll see happen gradually over the next year or so. Just as we have with Maxwell, If you don't want to go with an RTX card we're seeing rumours of a Turing GTX model which should sell at a better price point than even the 2060, Google 1660ti to see what I'm talking about, That said we get a lot of clickbait articles so the 1660ti rumours may be something someone pulled out of a hat, What about AMD? My current choice would be an RX590 which comes with 3 games, Resident Evil 2, Division 2 & DMC 5. There's also the Vega 56 & Vega 64 which come with the 3 free games and they offer great performance at their price point today.

 

[GirlDownunder]

I'm in AU & while our prices are lower-- we're still held hostage by location/supply/demand.

I have an older couple trying to find a good desktop for basics (not gaming) and I cannot find anything worth rec'ing in the shops here. Can build it-- and it's looking that way.

What would you put together for your parents for best bang & speedy? I'm leaning AMD.
Cheers

 

[QuantumPhysics]

CPU - prices are reasonable on CPU and the 8700 and Core i9's are less than $500. Because most popular multiplayer games aren't extremely demanding, even the Core i5 can game comfortably.

RAM - 16GB of RAM is all you need for a gaming computer and the average price of 16GB (2x 8GB) is less than $150.

GPU - there is still a lot of inflation on GPU prices but new cards like the 2060 and 2070 are reasonable.

PSU - prices havent moved much on PSU but they are reasonable and offer rebates.

SSD - SSD prices have made the most progress of all components. 1TB is less than $150 nowadays and smaller units that can be used as OS boot drives can be had for as little as $23 for a 120GB.


The only issue that drives prices up to uncomfortable levels is 4K gaming. Most large gaming monitors right now are not 4K monitors and 144HZ. Pushing for 4K gaming at 60Hz doubles the overal build price unnecessarily.