Video Cards

[LunarMist]

The 4770 Ti is like $800-1000 and humongous. Bummer.

 

[sedrosken]

The 4770 Ti is like $800-1000 and humongous. Bummer.

Everyone knows it's just the "4080 12GB" from a few months back rebranded. They couldn't call it a 4070 or they'd be admitting they screwed up, so they call it a 4070Ti and jack that performance level's price point up to where they still make nearly as much money. Imagine a mid-high end card... with a 192-bit bus. Eurgh. It makes my skin crawl.

In all seriousness though, I think LTT hit the nail on the head when he said nVidia probably just looked at 3090Ti pricing on eBay, said "meh good enough" and set the price there since the card is by and large a 3090Ti killer. Around the same price, cheaper to operate (lower power) and newer, it's a nice little racket they've got going. I'm just pissed it's so expensive, it wasn't so long ago this class of performance was only around $550 or so. Even that feels ridiculous. Maybe I'm just not meant to be building high-end systems.

 

[LunarMist]

The 4070Ti is just too large to fit in the case with everything else. I need a card with about 2.5 slots wide and less than 12' long. 285W power drain is the problem. Realistically the next card down in power would make more sense, probably a 4070. I don't know if the performance is much of an upgrade from the 3060Ti.
What is LTT, Chewy or sombody I'm missing?

 

[Mercutio]

He's talking about Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips, a PC Gaming focused Youtube channel that seems to perpetually have infinite money and a staff that includes full on machinists and engineers and workshops dedicated to their craft. ddrueding was a big fan as well.

I have watched his videos about getting the setup right for the dozen video editors he has working for him and on building massive storage servers, although I think his big system these days is something like 2PB and entirely made of SSDs.

I'm making a pilgrimage to Microcenter to pick up an A580 this weekend. Hopefully I will know very soon if it's the answer. I'll be giving up my RTX2080, but the other people who live with me are absolutely thrilled about getting an upgrade* to the 6550XT on my second desktop.

* I'm actually surprised that it's not MUCH of an upgrade; that was an $800 card when I got it and the 6550XT was $300 this summer. Gaming-wise, it's basically just the question of playing at 1440p instead of 1080p, but the RTX also has better support for GPU computing tasks like Nadia's Adobe software.

 

[Mercutio]

Goddammitsomuch.

nVidia is also dropping support for Gameslink. One of the nifty things you can do with an nVidia Shield set top box is stream any supported game from a PC already in your home. Importantly, that meant that it worked with games acquired from GoG or Epic or good old-fashioned physical media. I'm not much of a gamer, but I did think it was an amazing replacement for a living room gaming PC.

The Shield will still stream PC games from Geforce Now, which uses games from a Steam Library and costs $10/month if you want it to work on-demand, or from Steam Link, which is obviously also Steam, the service that made me far less interested in PC gaming in general.

This is tangential to video cards, but it is a drag.

 

[sedrosken]

He's talking about Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips, a PC Gaming focused Youtube channel that seems to perpetually have infinite money and a staff that includes full on machinists and engineers and workshops dedicated to their craft. ddrueding was a big fan as well.

I wouldn't say I'm a fan, I find Linus himself pretty obnoxious and Anthony's about the only good thing about that channel anymore. But it's either that or the sometimes overly-negative snoozefest that's Gamer's Nexus. All of the other channels in the "techtubing" space are even worse.

 

[LunarMist]

ADHD?

 

[Mercutio]

I wouldn't say I'm a fan, I find Linus himself pretty obnoxious and Anthony's about the only good thing about that channel anymore. But it's either that or the sometimes overly-negative snoozefest that's Gamer's Nexus. All of the other channels in the "techtubing" space are even worse.

Youtube definitely wants to put some of those channels in front me me, no matter how many times I tell it "Not Interested."

 

[Chewy509]

I don't mind Hardware Unboxed as a channel, but I do think they skim over things a little too lightly. I think Jay (Jayz2cents) is starting to become jaded with the big manufacturers, and is starting to speak his mind which is refreshing. For me, I like when Jay does the custom case mod stuff, like building the StarWars case was cool to watch. Hardware Canucks is another one I watch weekly. Admittedly I've become less of a LTT watcher recently, too much click-baitish content, and the only one worth watching is Anthony on the channel. GN, I like because they explain the why and have in depth testing. I think the reason they have become negative, is that over the last 2-3 years a lot of companies have become complacent in new products, with a lot of stagnation in offerings, especially with GPUs.

On the 4070Ti, I highly recommend you watch Buildzoid's PCB breakdowns. Looking at some of the cards and what is actually on them, you would think that some of the cards are really US$200-300 level cards and not US$800+...

 

[LunarMist]

I watched about 5 minutes. Does he work for Warranty Week? LOL
What is the normal percentage of COGS to gross sales for video cards? I would have no clue.

 

[Mercutio]

It's sounding like the 4060Ti is going to be a $500 8GB card with roughly 3070 (no Ti) performance and a 160W TDP.
The Arc A770 16GB @225W for $300ish and 3060 - 3060Ti performance doesn't seem THAT crazy right now for midrange gamers, especially since it's not easy to pick up a new 3060TI any more.

I did stick a cheap A380 in my workstation. The biggest place I can see a difference is that I can scrub through camera native video in Resolve Studio without seeing my CPU utilization spiking to 70% every time I move the timeline. I haven't had much time to spend with it as I'd like otherwise, but I did confirm that it's using the Arc card for camera-native video.

 

[sedrosken]

After some (expected!) struggles getting the A770 to play nicely -- I had to build and install the 6.2-rc4 mainline kernel, and switch to Wayland -- I do have it working under Linux. For something that's only supposed to be getting, like, 70% of the performance that it is under Windows, it's a screamer, easily claps my 1070 and it's reliable and even does integer scaling! (glares at nVidia)

This thing is a monster for what I paid for it and the software I got with it to sweeten the deal. With the prospect of it only getting better with age, I find myself with no buyer's remorse whatsoever for my first real GPU I've bought new. Yes, that's right, everything else I've had up till now has been used. Except the GT610 and 730 I had back in 2013-2015, but let's just forget about those... Yes, it's a little annoying. Yes, the Intel drivers still kinda stink. That stuff is actively getting better and while it really shouldn't have released in the condition it did, I'm happy with my purchase.

 

[LunarMist]

225W seems like a lot for 3060-3060Ti performance. Won't the plain 4070 also be about 225W, but with significantly better performance?

 

[sedrosken]

Possibly, but nVidia's likely to price it such that no one looking for a mid-ranger will give it a second glance. Not everyone has 700 dollars US to spend on a GPU, I know I certainly didn't, plus at least for the next couple cycles nVidia's name is mud with me. Also bear in mind that with the Arc you get that fat Intel encode block, and probably more VRAM given nVidia pushed the "4070Ti" with 12GB -- although the A770 arguably won't be fast enough to use most of it in a game (outside of situations where, for some reason, uncompressed textures are distributed).

The Arc is a ridiculous value proposition by comparison.

 

[Mercutio]

nVidia seems intent on adding $200 to the price of every GPU at this point. I'm really looking forward to the $325 4050 they're going to inflict on us once enough 4060s have hit retail.

225W is just a touch more than a 3060ti or a 2080 and seems reasonable for that desirable level of performance.

 

[LunarMist]

I don't find the plain RTX 4070 yet, only speculator commentaries. Does it exist or not?

 

[ddrueding]

The main advantage of the 4090 for me is turning the power limit way down gives the most efficient performance available. Considering I only have one screen and it is limited to 4k@120, I can set the power limit to 50% and get all the frames I need.

Yes, this is absurd.

 

[LunarMist]

I'd prefer a 2-fan card or one that is less than 10' long though it may not happen.
My power concerns are mainly about overloading the UPS.
Wouldn't a MAC give you the best power efficiency?

 

[sedrosken]

Likely not for the kind of performance dd needs, and a new Mac doesn't even have the ability to natively run x64 Windows, so either way there's likely a learning curve. Me, I daily Linux outside of work, so I could probably prod anything into useful service of some kind, but the pricing is what's keeping me well away from the Macs. It's ridiculous, even a 10 year old mini with a quad Sandy i7 still holds onto its value absurdly well. It's like people treat these as investments instead of the commodity computers they are.

 

[ddrueding]

I'd prefer a 2-fan card or one that is less than 10' long though it may not happen.
My power concerns are mainly about overloading the UPS.
Wouldn't a MAC give you the best power efficiency?

The card I bought in particular is the MSI SuprimX, and has 3 massive 120(+)? fans and an absurdly large heatsink. The upside of the oversized cooling solution is that it is nearly silent. The downside is I'm suspending the weight using strings of zip-ties from the top of the case to prevent it from snapping the PCIe slot off the motherboard.

The card is enormous, but this computer doesn't need to be portable, so I just got a larger case.

My objective is delivering 120fps at 4k in the games I play, and no MAC at any price can do that.

 

[LunarMist]

I have no idea what programs you are watching and how your eye can see anything at that speed.
It reminds me of Trinton Azeleth.

 

[sedrosken]

I don't know about seeing 120 FPS, but I can certainly perceive more than 60. Typically my floor for "buttery" FPS these days is around 90.

 

[Mercutio]

Honestly even 75Hz is subjectively noticeable.

 

[ddrueding]

120hz is the fastest reliable connection for 4k resolutions. I used to have 144hz, but it would de-sync for a second every 30 minutes or so. The difference between 120 and 144 is something I cannot notice. I can notice taking the next step down to 75 when testing them side-by-side. Dropping to 60hz is something I can notice without needing the reference. For gaming you also want a bit more performance than just enough to match your display, so that you can enable VSync and know a full fresh frame is available every time the screen wants to display it. Otherwise there is tearing and that looks gross. NVidia and ATI both have technologies that can dynamically scale refresh rate to match GPU performance, but I don't trust them yet.

 

[LunarMist]

I will defer to your younger eyeballs. I think 60Hz is normal. Years ago I watched TV with the 120Hz setting and after a while it was nauseous.
I read about the FreeSyncs if that is similar to what the competitors are doing.

I measured my new build and it is limited to 3 slots at the most. That 4090 is just too huge.

 

[jtr1962]

No idea what the number is for me. I don't have any monitors that go over 60 Hz anyway. Maybe something higher would seem more "continuous" to me but I won't know unless I experience it. Also, since I'm using an APU, I doubt I can get over 60 Hz regardless, except maybe with all the settings turned way down.

 

[Mercutio]

There's a bit of a curve in this because there is no One True Display that has both extremely high refresh AND high color accuracy. You usually get one or other the other. Samsung hauls out weird high end displays that kinda-sorta do both for big trade shows, but then they use nonstandard ultra wide resolutions that aren't quite 4k and AFAIK those monitors never go on sale in the USA anyway.

The Dell Ultrasharp monitors I use seem to top out at 75Hz. That's good enough for me.
I'm sure we will eventually see that LG/Apple/Samsung/Dell super-monitor eventually, but it'll probably also cost $1500 or $2500 a pop and we'll all quietly go back to our regular $150 - $500/each guys until some of them come off business leases, and by then we'll probably have attainable 8k options as well.

The "soap opera effect" on TVs is usually called something like motion sync and it should basically be the first thing you turn off on any new TV.

 

[LunarMist]

No idea what the number is for me. I don't have any monitors that go over 60 Hz anyway. Maybe something higher would seem more "continuous" to me but I won't know unless I experience it. Also, since I'm using an APU, I doubt I can get over 60 Hz regardless, except maybe with all the settings turned way down.

I thought you lived in the city with plenty of electricity.
FWIW, my display supports 23.75-30.5 Hz, 47.5-61.0 Hz.

 

[LunarMist]

There's a bit of a curve in this because there is no One True Display that has both extremely high refresh AND high color accuracy. You usually get one or other the other. Samsung hauls out weird high end displays that kinda-sorta do both for big trade shows, but then they use nonstandard ultra wide resolutions that aren't quite 4k and AFAIK those monitors never go on sale in the USA anyway.

The Dell Ultrasharp monitors I use seem to top out at 75Hz. That's good enough for me.
I'm sure we will eventually see that LG/Apple/Samsung/Dell super-monitor eventually, but it'll probably also cost $1500 or $2500 a pop and we'll all quietly go back to our regular $150 - $500/each guys until some of them come off business leases, and by then we'll probably have attainable 8k options as well.

The "soap opera effect" on TVs is usually called something like motion sync and it should basically be the first thing you turn off on any new TV.

My display that does 23.75-30.5Hz and 47.5-60Hz was about $2500 a few years ago. I could not justify much more money than that for the 27' 2560 display. How is the 120Hz on TV any different from 120Hz on a computer, just because the intermediate frames are faked?

 

[jtr1962]

I thought you lived in the city with plenty of electricity.
FWIW, my display supports 23.75-30.5 Hz, 47.5-61.0 Hz.

Yeah, and at over $0.30 per kW/hr we can't afford to use a lot. Besides, I don't want a system that uses so much power it needs lots of loud fans to stay cool. Nice thing about my system is the entire box uses not much over 100 watts, even at full tilt. I don't even need case fans. The CPU temps never get past the low 60s. And unless I'm using a lot of CPU power, the system is inaudible, even from 1 foot away.

 

[LunarMist]

I'm seeing up to 230W on CPU bunchmarks, but more like 200W in heavy actual use. My measly RTX 3060Ti only allows 200W, so that's 400W at least. I think the RAM, NVME NAND flash, chipset and PCI cards are maybe another 100W or so. Maybe the total could be 600W at the outlet, but most likely that isn't ever all maximized at the same time. I don't have any way of measuring it.

 

[jtr1962]

I don't have any way of measuring it.

Kill-A-Watt

 

[sedrosken]

I feel I should probably mention I'm not pushing 4K, myself, I upgraded to a 1440p monitor back in mid-2021 and that's what I'm running at 120Hz. It's a ViewSonic something or other, VK2768KP...? Anyway, I like it a lot, it's IPS, can do up to 144Hz (120 in 10bpc mode, which is what I'm running it at) and 27" is about the right size for 96DPI at 1440p. That's important to me because I've never had DPI scaling be 100% correct and it bothers me when UI metrics are out of whack.

 

[LunarMist]

27'" WQHD is about 109 ppi. That is about the highest resolution where I can see the pixels and read graphics of older applications that don't scale. That's one of the reasons I will not go to higher resolution, besides needing a crazy humongous video card.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm a little bit surprised you'd chose a 27" screen. I've had 32" monitors for 15 years at this point.

 

[jtr1962]

For me personally a large screen is a non-starter. I need to sit close enough to the monitor to see it clearly (no, I'm not going to wear glasses when I'm on my computer). For me that's about 11 or 12 inches. A large screen would exceed my field of view at that distance. I've been using a pair of 20" 1600x1200 monitors for a while now. For me it works better than any widescreen format would. My only complaint about my current setup is the dpi is only about 100. If something like 4000x3000 OLED monitors in 20" or so size became available for a reasonable price I'd get a pair in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, it seems 4:3 format is dead these days.

 

[LunarMist]

32" are typically 4K, so the pixel pitch is too small (~0.17mm or 149 ppi) to easily judge images or see the non-scaled graphics in many older applications. For whatever reason they seem to be geared towards the videos, with extra wide diplays 4096x2160 like the CG319X which isn;t the best for genreal use anyways. I liked the old 30" 2560x1600, but they were replaced with the 27" WQHD 1440 short screens.
Most likely my next display will be a CG2700S, which is an updated version of what I have. If I live long enough after that, I'll probably be using a MAC and viewing everything at 200%. LOL

 

[ddrueding]

Mine manages 104 dpi. which is just about perfect. It lets me peek pixels if I lean forward and really try, but the rest of the time it is just enough to be smooth. But honestly the best advancement in monitors in a long while is OLED and the related brand-specific stuff. The contrast is amazing.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm not going to wear glasses when I'm on my computer

Be glad you are still at a point where glasses are somehow optional. My eyesight can't even be corrected to 20/20 with glasses, and I am physically incapable of putting in contacts. Not hyperbole. I had a very patient optometrist and his assistant conclude, after three hours of trying, that the only I'd ever get them in was a Ludavico Technique scenario.

Are OLED displays in actual computer monitor sizes being made? I see them in 15" and 48" and really pretty much nothing in between.

 

[Mercutio]

Just to answer my own question, I did find this list.
Short version: There are affordable 48" 120Hz gaming OLED displays and weirdo longscreens, but the minute one starts looking at 24 - 32" screens with prioritized color accuracy, the prices range between $3500 and $5k. Oof.