- Joined
- Dec 10, 2022
- Messages
- 484 (0.70/day)
System Name | The Phantom in the Black Tower |
---|---|
Processor | AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D |
Motherboard | ASRock X570 Pro4 AM4 |
Cooling | AMD Wraith Prism, 5 x Cooler Master Sickleflow 120mm |
Memory | 64GB Team Vulcan DDR4-3600 CL18 (4×16GB) |
Video Card(s) | ASRock Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phantom Gaming OC 24GB |
Storage | WDS500G3X0E (OS), WDS100T2B0C, TM8FP6002T0C101 (x2) and ~40TB of total HDD space |
Display(s) | Haier 55E5500U 55" 2160p60Hz |
Case | Ultra U12-40670 Super Tower |
Audio Device(s) | Logitech Z200 |
Power Supply | EVGA 1000 G2 Supernova 1kW 80+Gold-Certified |
Mouse | Logitech MK320 |
Keyboard | Logitech MK320 |
VR HMD | None |
Software | Windows 10 Professional |
Benchmark Scores | Fire Strike Ultra: 19484 Time Spy Extreme: 11006 Port Royal: 16545 SuperPosition 4K Optimised: 23439 |
It's really rather simple for me. The RTX 4090 costs 70% more money than the RX 7900 XTX (even more for me because I got Newegg's open-box card that they're STILL advertising..lol) but only has 24% more performance and the same amount of VRAM. An intelligent person who is just a gamer doesn't have to think very long (or hard) to make that decision, eh?Not sure shouting "You unfortunate AMD users AMD DRIVER SUCKS lol BUY NVIDIA HAHA" while showing off a 3090 and an Arc GPU of all things after used 3090 is deemed not an option and I ordered a 7900XTX is anything constructive, but it is what it is.
I will immediate concede if I'm really dragged into a dick contest (I have no interest in spending 3090 or 4090 money, watercooling and shunt mods; I have a prejudice / psychological limit? that any single component costing USD>1000 equivalent is not a good idea that was why I really hesitated on buying 7900XTX in the first place, and that limit was established as USD500 equivalent back when Geforce FX5800 was the top end card and I was a kid), but I will try to summarize the thinking process on the buying decision here (most of the points is already said somewhere in this thread, and by some other members in other "should I buy" thread ) :
TLDR: I moved to a new place -> got a little more space -> gotta go 4K -> 3070 is overwhelmed -> need to buy new card -> both sides driver okay, feature no care -> Green pricing sucks -> Red lets goooooo
-Timing
The furthest I can wait is the Super launch. I'm completely fine with a consistently "smooth" V-Synced 30FPS like in a console (yes srsly), but the current setup fails to reach 30FPS consistently due to bad optimization / VRAM usage and I ain't wait until 2025.
I live in Macau, which means Taobao in Chinese is the best option in price (not necessarily for warranty; Local brick-and-mortar stores are better for warranty, but prices are always meh especially for AMD cards. Also, apparently the demand for current-gen AMD cards are very low to the point they don't stock the cards). And Taobao is running the 11.11 deals (think Black Friday, except it actually starts on 11.2 and lasts until 11.11 probably).
That leads to some implications:
- The 4090 ban has already turned the 4090 into unobtainium, and ruins the pricing of used 3090 and new 4080 and 4070Ti to an extent. (I didn't think of this when I made the buying decision, but the 4090 ban will also hurt 4080Super and 4070TiSuper because 4080S will be the best thing NVIDIA can legally ship to China)
- Even after 4080S launched, 4080 is not likely to price better than 7900XTX
- Pressure to cut price on 7900XTX is low
- See below; I will pick 7900XTX over 4080 if they are priced at the same level
- Judging on the deals I'm getting now, the pricing of the7800/7900 series should be no worse than after Super launch
--> BUY NOW !
There are likely flaws on such an overdose of guesswork on this part, but it is what it is.
Brand preferences
-Driver
It may be a suprise to the guy trying to run dick contest, but I have said in 1st post that I have some good and bad experience on driver stability on the current card (3070) and last card (5700XT) before I added the 4K monitor. Granted I skipped the 1st year of the lifecycle on both cards. And I pretty much skipped the 1st year of 7900XT(X).
I know a lot of guys here says AMD DRIVER BAD, but I don't know if it is a outdated take or not; The experience on my 5700XT is not bad enough to say "I will never buy AMD". In terms of driver stability it is ... about the same as the 3070 on my current setup (before 4K monitor upgrade). The card before (1070) was better, but I was not seriously gaming back then.
This can be a usage issue anyway: I got some trivial stuff that I would prefer not to shutdown the PC even when I'm out of home. That leads to the PC being virtually 24/7, which might have screwed up some (V)RAM, and kicks up some graphic driver related gremlins when I want to start a game after a long day. I'm probably spewing nonsense here. Also, if I don't count the kind of crashes after several days of idling, there are virtually no crashes on the 3070 , 5700XT and 1070.
The day 1 review of 7900XT(X) listed those ridiculous idle power consumption numbers, and that's what started this thread.
-Features
RT performance: yeah, sure...?
DLSS: I still got very bad experiences with DLSS/DLAA on the games I play today (Forza Motorsport 8 and Forza Horizon 5: very awful ghosting on at least the player car). Granted FSR/XeSS might also be that bad, but screw it, I'm gonna go native as much as possible anyway. Yes I know, FM8 crashes on 7900XTX, but it is mostly fixed.
AntiLag: I despises any kind of shooter because I suck at them. AntiLag is not (likely) an issue.
Frame Generation: What is that? Can I eat that? /s
NVENC: kinda is an issue (I sometimes do video transcoding), but there are lots of workarounds.
Being a Read-Only member most of the time here on TPU, I can see the sentiment on the higher end is "If you care any of the features enough, buy NVIDIA; else buy AMD. It's pretty obvious that I don't care about the features.
When I brought up the idea of upgrading to my friends, one mentioned the dreaded 12-pin connector on 4080 and 4090 as a reason to steer away from NVIDIA. Although AFAIK it should be safe on everything below the X090 tier.
He also suggested to go for AIO models like AsRock AQUA because it takes less slots, but both water leak and clogging are things I really don't want to deal with.
-VRAM
The main issue that prompted me to upgrade is that 3070 (and its VRAM) is overwhelmed because I went 4K. So 16GB is a hard minimum.
Now I established features and driver stability is a non-factor, the minimum I have to buy on the green side is the 4080 (will be 4070TiSuper / 4070Super/16GB probably. 4060 is a joke and at best a side grade). On the red side there is the 7800XT.
4080 is firmly above USD$1000. Even if 4080 and 7900XTX is in the same price bracket I will likely pick 7900XTX. And the possibility that the green side throws a better deal even after Super launch is low. Maybe it will be outside Asia, but no chance inhellTaobao.
If I ended up going for anything lower than 7900XT, the recent news suggested that the new NVIDIA products will be very competitive on that price range.
Now the choice is 7800XT or go higher, and probably because my monitor is kinda high-end in terms of refresh rate, someone here suggested to go as high as 7900XTX, and I bought into his argument. And it ended up just below USD$1000. yay!
Part of the reasons I chose the M27U as the monitor upgrade despite M28U being cheaper is that in a Techspot / Hardware / Monitor Unboxed's feature article they said M27U is more optimized on 60~100?Hz. Granted, Size is precious, and M27U is a new model, I deliberately go lower-mid end on the 4K monitor spectrum, and I thought I was very likely to buy 7800XT as the card upgrade here, but I digress.
For reference, the pricing here for the cheapest 4070Ti and 4080 is ~10% lower and ~20% higher respectively when compared to the cheapest 7900XTX. 7900XT is ~17% cheaper than 7900XTX.
While I'm also suprised to see a Youtube video dedicated to a freaking driver update...That's 2023 AMD Graphics driver, both in a good and bad way.
Now the 7900XTX Hellhound has been delivered. This is the first top-end card I have ever owned. YAY! 5700XT doesn't count.
I'm still at work now. Can't wait to see how great (or bad) the new card turns out to be...
The brand and model is of no real consequence when it comes to performance. I bought an ASRock Phantom Gaming model because it was on open-box sale at newegg.I was thinking of ordering the Sapphire Pulse (by far the cheapest non-reference card, with a listed height of 53mm, 3-slot, it should be fine size-wise) and call it a day, but I wanted the Powercolor Hellhound (height 62mm, also listed as 3-slot, ~10% pricier) if size is not an issue.
Or , buy a cheap riser cable to put the M2 adaptor elsewhere. Although without using a riser cable ever in my life I'm probably spewing nonsense here.