re: PC Discussion - Gaming, Performance and Enthusiasts

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Future proofing doesn't exist.

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I think I agree with you more than I disagree with you, but with a caveat. While I don't think "future proofing" exists in the way people generally use it, I do think there's being penny wise and pound foolish in such a way that you're nearly immediately handicapped. There are also a very small subset of parts that can be future proofed, to an extent.

As an example, people who spent a ton of money making sure they had motherboards with PCIE Gen 4 half a decade ago probably replaced/are replacing that motherboard before they actually had a need, or even a use, for Gen 4. But on the slip side, when I was building my current PC three or four years ago, there was a lot of chatter about people "over buying" their PSUs, that unless you were doing some crazy XOC, you could get away with 650w and certainly didn't need more than 750w. Considering most people buy a PSU with an eye towards getting 7-10 years out of it, anyone who purchased a 650w PSU a few years ago is likely regretting the $20 or so it saved them compared to getting an 850w+ unit.

In short, if you *know* that you're keeping a part for a long time, paying attention to building in a bit of future proofing is probably a good idea. If you don't know that you'll be keeping a part for a long time, attempting to build in future proofing is generally going to be a fool's errand. But with *that* said, there's immediate idiocy. If you're building now, don't do something stupid like get 12GB of RAM. Or more relevant, if pricing rumors are true, I don't think I would spend $300 on a six core Ryzen 9600x. Now to be clear, I'm not necessarily opposed to someone building a budget PC with a six core chip, but at which point you're spending $300, that's not really a budget build, and I think there are smarter buys that will give you a bit more wiggle room for the future.

But to bring this full circle, the 9900x3D just doesn't really fit any reasonable future proofing criteria, and considering it's a six core chip for gaming, it's more future vulnerable than other chips in its class.

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No one knows what games will be like in just 3 years.

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This is sort of not true. And what I mean by this is that a very large part of the games industry is tied to the hip with console makers and their tech. The next gen consoles dictate heavily on how hard game devs push graphical fidelity.

The Ps5 has 16gb of unified memory for the whole system. The console can’t use all 16GB for the games because it needs to use some for the OS and other processes, but because it has 16, this is why older 8gb GPUs are not sufficient enough now since game devs are targeting more like 10-12gb of vram usage for textures.

We will know what the baseline PC requirements will need to be once we see the specs for next gen PlayStations and Xbox.

Yes, true.

I think we agree. We're just talking past one another.

Color gamut looks solid, as do the stand adjustments (which is a horrifically overlooked feature by most people).

I haven’t really kept up with the varying HDR-esque technologies, but when I do come back around to buying a 5k2k, that will be a significant feature I look at.

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Microcenter lets you substitute any mobo and RAM in their bundles now and you still get the discount on the CPU. The mobo (Gigabyte B650 Gaming X Wifi) and RAM (Gskill 2x16gb 6000 CL30) I got with my 7800x3d have been fine but I wish I would've waited until now.

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That's very high quality information. Hopefully that's not just a temp thing during this lull.

I normally wouldn't post console news, but if these rumors are true, it could have a significant impact on PC gaming in the next few years:

Leaker reveals new AMD RDNA4 Ray Tracing features, expected in upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro

RT has been really interesting (if you have the hardware to push it) in PC-centric titles over the last few years, but is either non-existent or an utter afterthought in titles with major console releases, as the consoles required the devs to also use baked in lighting, meaning the devs had to focus most of their time on that. If AMD, and by extension consoles, are moving towards more robust RT support, maybe in anticipation of UE5 going mainstream, we might start seeing mainstream "Control-esque" types of titles that really lean into RT when it comes to environment design.

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A 7700XT equivalent PS5 Pro GPU at 4K trying to run RT sounds awful unless consolers still think 30 FPS is okay.

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They do. As long as you let them set a "target" resolution and FPS and then hide the actual resolution and FPS from them, they are happy as can be. I got into a bit of a spat a few years ago on here with a console guy who swore up and down that his (insert whichever console here) was better than a high end gaming PC because it could do 4k 120fps. Probably took a dozen posts back and forth before I got him to believe me, kind of, that he wasn't actually getting those numbers because of dynamic graphics settings

Would have been better off with NVDA