That's basically my system...but I have more, faster, RAM.
You know what must be done.
I'm torn on the RAM actually. I know I can push this b-die super fast if I want to. Going up to 64GB seems like it will come with performance hits overall for gaming.
Joking aside it won't make a difference in gaming either way. My RAM runs faster, but has slightly higher CL (16 v 14)...it probably comes out in the wash, well within error statistically. Capacity will have nothing to do with performance generally. It's just tougher to get very high capacity modules with super tight timings which is where some of the "More RAM = more slow" comes from.
The real reason to run DDR4-3600 with Ryzen is that infinity fabric runs 1:1 with your FSB up to a point and DDR4-3600 is the sweet spot. So by running 3200 MT RAM you're technically throttling your 5950X's interconnect fabric...but you'll probably never notice in 99% of workloads.
I've been playing my 1999 PC a lot lately. Wrapped up Doom 2. Been playing a ton of Populous. Dabbled in Descent. But the SBLive I have in there is kind of a dog when it comes to DOS. It's OPL3 seems bugged? If you try to use it, games like Descent and X-Wing seem to run way too slow, and the tempo of the music rises and falls abnormally. It requires EMS memory, which rules out a smattering of Origin games. And then there are the games where SB16 emulation or no, they just aren't gonna fucking run. Like Privateer or Tyrian.
Now sure, a lot of these games have individual solutions. Like just don't use OPL3. Use the MyJemm win9x fan engine for Privateer. Hunt down an old Tyrian fan page which has the SBLive patch archived. Etc, etc, etc.
Bottom line is, I'm tired of it. So I bought an old ISA AWE64 Value off ebay for about $30 shipped. Thanks to the mad lads at VOGONS, it fits into my setup like a dream.
For instance, one magnificent lunatic programed a universal ISA sound card initializer. Someone else made a dos utility which just turns the SBLive into a mixer far more powerful than any of Creative's drivers allow. These two things combined let me route the AWE64, PC Speaker and CD Audio through the SBLive in DOS. And in Win98SE, the AWE64 is disabled and the SBLive does it's thing none the wiser. I had to make sure IRQs 3,4,5 and 7 were reserved for Legacy ISA in the bios, but that didn't seem to have any externalities so far.
The only slight hitch is the AWE64's midi emulation is plainly inferior to the SBLive's in DOS. So sometimes I'll still use it in DOS for that. Like for Populous. Also there is some added line noise from the pass through cable. I could solder on an SPDIF header and pass it directly into the SBLive digitally to get rid of it. If I ever feel that adventurous. Lastly, and this one is just weird, the uninitialized, mixing, SBLive is generating a boatload of internal noise. Wasn't doing this before when I ran the PC Speaker through it without drivers. But it is now with the AWE64 sitting next to it. Weirdly enough, initializing it on one boot, resetting, then initializing the AWE64 instead on the second boot clears it up. Thought the solution I settled on was the mute all the internal lines of the SBLive when the AWE64 is active, which works even better.
So those issues aside, I am seriously digging this new and improved setup.
Reject modernity. Play old games.
You won‘t find one device which plays all midi from all the games correctly, because the technology changed many times during the late 80 till the 2000s. And getting one retro PC to support all standards in hardware and do Playback correctly is going to be very headache inducing.
You could try using midi out and connect an external PC with USB MIDI-in cable and pipe everything to the midi player application from Falcosoft (Freeware). This application is portable and you can configure for example soundfont playback, a Roland SW Synth (Canavas SG 55), Yamaha SW Synth, various Adlib SW synths and switch the instances as needed. This is something I use with DOS Box (on the Same PC obviously), but it accepts external midi input as well. You could also use a cheap Windows tablet for this and basically turn this into a small, all purpose midi appliance. The sound-out could be routed back to the SB Live in your 99 Retro PC. The YouTube channel Phil’s computer lab has great tutorials for this. This would save you money and time hunting down ancient music equipment or expensive Synthesizer and it would free up the resources (RAM for soundfonts, drivers, conventional memory, IRQ reservation) because a modern machine does the Heavy lifting.
Dratatoo on
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
1440p for monitors, 4k for home TV.
Good rule for quite some time. I don't even think the next gen of cards will push 4k consistently like ours do with 1440p now because of several new graphics techs that are coming out.
That's basically my system...but I have more, faster, RAM.
You know what must be done.
I'm torn on the RAM actually. I know I can push this b-die super fast if I want to. Going up to 64GB seems like it will come with performance hits overall for gaming.
Joking aside it won't make a difference in gaming either way. My RAM runs faster, but has slightly higher CL (16 v 14)...it probably comes out in the wash, well within error statistically. Capacity will have nothing to do with performance generally. It's just tougher to get very high capacity modules with super tight timings which is where some of the "More RAM = more slow" comes from.
The real reason to run DDR4-3600 with Ryzen is that infinity fabric runs 1:1 with your FSB up to a point and DDR4-3600 is the sweet spot. So by running 3200 MT RAM you're technically throttling your 5950X's interconnect fabric...but you'll probably never notice in 99% of workloads.
Yeah, my comment was a bit of a throwaway and I do know these things you brought up (and agree). What I meant specifically by going up to 64 was running 4 sticks instead of 2. While I am not currently doing crazy tight timings with my RAM, if I wanted to I would lose some capability if I ran with 4. I could just swap to 2x32GB but then I'd be wasting these very very nice sticks I already have.
Fun thing I could try though, and maybe I will, these specific sticks will handle 3600 @ 16CL ezpz according to what I've seen from others with the exact same kit. I would just have to manually set everything instead of using the very ez xmp route. I could probably get some minor tangible benefit there if I do more intensive code compile on this box.
So here I am. I don't have the current funds to build a new box, so I'm wondering what I can do to my 2012 build. Currently, I can play 99% of the games, albeit on low/med settings. The problem is, I'm also a streamer now a days, so I have to ratchet everything down a notch or two to be able to keep a solid looking 720p/30fps.
What I am Thinking of doing:
2x the RAM
a Video Card upgrade to a medium range, not anything super big. Something with more than 2Gb of RAM on the GPU.
Does anyone have any suggestions? I really do not want to pay through the teeth for a temporary upgrade path. Though I may use this PC when I build a new one as the streaming pc in a 2 pc setup.
Anything you do on that PC is just life support / buying time. We are probably at the point where your ram is obsolete enough someone will give you something they have sitting around that is better for the cost of shipping.
If you are looking at less than $500 I'd give it a month and look for a 3060 at MSRP since that will be ok in a new build in the future and be your best bang for the buck.
I assume you are on an SSD for OS / main drives? An SSD is cheap and hands down the difference between that and a platter drive is the biggest bang for the buck just about ever.
Anything you do on that PC is just life support / buying time. We are probably at the point where your ram is obsolete enough someone will give you something they have sitting around that is better for the cost of shipping.
If you are looking at less than $500 I'd give it a month and look for a 3060 at MSRP since that will be ok in a new build in the future and be your best bang for the buck.
I assume you are on an SSD for OS / main drives? An SSD is cheap and hands down the difference between that and a platter drive is the biggest bang for the buck just about ever.
Yes I have SSD's already. Just trying to prolong the life a little bit more. I'm trying to keep my budget to $300 or less if possible. Any more than that I should just start buying the parts needed for it's replacement.
Anything you do on that PC is just life support / buying time. We are probably at the point where your ram is obsolete enough someone will give you something they have sitting around that is better for the cost of shipping.
If you are looking at less than $500 I'd give it a month and look for a 3060 at MSRP since that will be ok in a new build in the future and be your best bang for the buck.
I assume you are on an SSD for OS / main drives? An SSD is cheap and hands down the difference between that and a platter drive is the biggest bang for the buck just about ever.
Yes I have SSD's already. Just trying to prolong the life a little bit more. I'm trying to keep my budget to $300 or less if possible. Any more than that I should just start buying the parts needed for it's replacement.
You could potentially look to upgrade the CPU but you'll have to deal with the secondary market. 2x the RAM is a good start but again, you'll need to find used sticks.
Good rule for quite some time. I don't even think the next gen of cards will push 4k consistently like ours do with 1440p now because of several new graphics techs that are coming out.
I'm still on a 50" 720p plasma for my TV. Still looks amazing. I've seen my friends nice sets at 1080p and 4k and honestly the only nice feature that I want is good HDR implementation.
Anything you do on that PC is just life support / buying time. We are probably at the point where your ram is obsolete enough someone will give you something they have sitting around that is better for the cost of shipping.
If you are looking at less than $500 I'd give it a month and look for a 3060 at MSRP since that will be ok in a new build in the future and be your best bang for the buck.
I assume you are on an SSD for OS / main drives? An SSD is cheap and hands down the difference between that and a platter drive is the biggest bang for the buck just about ever.
Yes I have SSD's already. Just trying to prolong the life a little bit more. I'm trying to keep my budget to $300 or less if possible. Any more than that I should just start buying the parts needed for it's replacement.
With a $300 budget, I'd start hunting for a 3060 at MSRP - it'll be a bit higher than your budget, but you're not going to have a bigger impact even with the rest of your PC bottlenecked than that and it has the added benefit of having a good life ahead of it if / when you decide to build a new PC.
Plus it'll probably take some time to get one so you can put some more cash aside and think of the hunt to find one as a really shitty fetch quest.
Otherwise yeah, if you can find some used DDR3 cheap to throw a few more sticks in there that'll help prolong things a bit, but unless you're getting components free / cost of shipping there's not much else that you can really do with that PC that'll benefit you in the future.
I'd suggest maybe checking your local Craigslist for people giving away old computer stuff. DDR3 age / obsolescence-wise is near that sweet spot where an old computer might be still good enough people are reluctant to throw it in the trash, but still old enough they aren't really trying to make money off it. I'd bet you could find an old DDR3 Dell or something for less than $20 if you watch.
It looks like you have one of the best CPUs for the LGA 1155 socket so there isn't much of an upgrade path there. It looks like the only chip that's both compatible and a step up is the I7-3770 series so a marginal improvement and likely not worth the trouble of obtaining.
Beyond that, $300 does start getting you close to a budget motherboard & low to low-mid CPU along with a cheap stick of DDR4. If your case and PSU are solid that might be a viable path too as basic bones until you're able to find a decent video card. I might consider buying a super-budget CPU and slightly better motherboard with an aim to upgrade the CPU at some point in the future, but a lot would depend on how soon / how much you're looking to upgrade down the line. But depending on anticipated future budget and timelines I'd still lean toward the 3060 over that.
So as I keep waffling about my next computer, what are the opinions on getting a Steam Deck for gaming stuff? The long-running GPU shortage makes it seem much more sensible to get this weird cheap sorta-laptop for games and just leave my current tower as-is for random work/hobby shit.
So as I keep waffling about my next computer, what are the opinions on getting a Steam Deck for gaming stuff? The long-running GPU shortage makes it seem much more sensible to get this weird cheap sorta-laptop for games and just leave my current tower as-is for random work/hobby shit.
I mean, it is interesting in that it is a full, self-contained device that can also do general PC stuff. It's not going to blow anything out of the water performance wise (well, maybe the Switch), but maybe more FSR implementations in the future can help it stay relevant longer. (Maybe even Valve implements it directly into the OS.)
The "bad" is that it's launching until December, so things might be much better then. Then again, nothing stops you from reserving one and canceling if you change your mind before launch.
What's the word on monitors lately? Is ultra HD worth shelling out for, or what?
Good HDR is more important than resolution. If you can get a 1440p screen with 600+ nit HDR that's probably the sweet spot. 4K (ultra HD as you say) is a question of diminishing returns versus hardware power. It's a lot more pixels, for not a lot more visual clarity, requiring a lot more hardware power. I run my 4K screens at 1440p when running modern/demanding games because I can get visual clarity that's "good enough" through anti-aliasing and things like DLSS/FSR. I'd rather super smooth frame rates and good HDR.
You don't notice any distortion? I remember testing it and found I had to go down to 1080p with AA vs 1440p on my 4K OLED.
So as I keep waffling about my next computer, what are the opinions on getting a Steam Deck for gaming stuff? The long-running GPU shortage makes it seem much more sensible to get this weird cheap sorta-laptop for games and just leave my current tower as-is for random work/hobby shit.
Well it's a 4c/8t APU with Vega graphics cores running a 800x1280 7" screen. It's going to be about on the GPU level of a 1030GTX or so, unless there's something weird going on here. If you're fine with that, yeah it's pretty compelling.
I hope it's a success and that Valve do a follow on with a Zen3 + RDNA2 core APU because that's going to be a 2-generational leap in video performance.
EDIT: Well shut my mouth, it does have RDNA2 cores. OK that changes my view of it a lot.
Oh sweet, the new Lian-Li Uni Fans 120ALs came in today -- a bit earlier than I thought they would. Finally I can replace these absolutely wretched Corsair LL fans, iCue and the whole dumb ecosystem that has literally only worked correctly for me for a month before never lighting up correctly, or consistently for 2.5 years hence (Corsair also never made good on my RMA despite sitting on my returned fan for about 6 months, at which point I just stopped talking to them and replaced the single fan on my own).
Well, CC locally got a bunch of cards and fuck it, so long pandemic bonus, hello 3080ti. I know the ti are a scam, but in buying this, I assure a plentiful stock of regular 3080s starting next week - you're welcome.
When I picked up, the lineup was 5 or 6 3### cards going out.
So as I keep waffling about my next computer, what are the opinions on getting a Steam Deck for gaming stuff? The long-running GPU shortage makes it seem much more sensible to get this weird cheap sorta-laptop for games and just leave my current tower as-is for random work/hobby shit.
Well it's a 4c/8t APU with Vega graphics cores running a 800x1280 7" screen. It's going to be about on the GPU level of a 1030GTX or so, unless there's something weird going on here. If you're fine with that, yeah it's pretty compelling.
I hope it's a success and that Valve do a follow on with a Zen3 + RDNA2 core APU because that's going to be a 2-generational leap in video performance.
EDIT: Well shut my mouth, it does have RDNA2 cores. OK that changes my view of it a lot.
How is it in terms of performance for price, do you think? Like right now the issue is that the 3000-series cards all cost more in time/money/buying a prebuilt so it throws off my general tendency to say that putting a bunch of components in a case will be cheaper than any all-in-one option. And I'm seeing people talk about how this is oddly cheap for the hardware so that may make up for the fact that it's not really all-in-one. Basically if Valve's subsidizing me to get one because they want to be a new weird console competitor I'm good with splitting out productive computer and games computer. Particularly if I can still grab stuff on itch.io.
I build like one computer every 6-7 years so all reasonably modern technical specifications just look like "[VERY GOOD]" to me, making it hard to tell what's a good deal.
What's the word on monitors lately? Is ultra HD worth shelling out for, or what?
Good HDR is more important than resolution. If you can get a 1440p screen with 600+ nit HDR that's probably the sweet spot. 4K (ultra HD as you say) is a question of diminishing returns versus hardware power. It's a lot more pixels, for not a lot more visual clarity, requiring a lot more hardware power. I run my 4K screens at 1440p when running modern/demanding games because I can get visual clarity that's "good enough" through anti-aliasing and things like DLSS/FSR. I'd rather super smooth frame rates and good HDR.
You don't notice any distortion? I remember testing it and found I had to go down to 1080p with AA vs 1440p on my 4K OLED.
Nope. I have a pretty modern screen and it supports 1440p natively. It's possible some older/cheaper/different sets only support 4K and 1080 natively and the screen has to up/down sample to do 1440p, but that hasn't been an issue with my 2020 model year LG.
For the Steam deck, I reserved one today. I’m not sure if I’m eventually going to buy one but I wanted to have the option.
High end PC gaming is starting to get out of my price range, especially for how much I do or don’t game on a PC anymore. Even if you assume MSRP a 3070 class card in Canada is close to $700 and it’s getting harder for me to justify those kinds of costs.
Yes, I can in theory step down to a solid 1080p card but youre still talking $500 just for that video card here. Pair that with a midrange 6 core processor like a 5600x for about $350 CAD at MSRP, decent ram for another $120, motherboard for maybe $200, and I’m talking about $1200 and I don’t have a case, storage, or power supply yet. This is why I think the Xbox Series X and PS5 are such an outstanding value for what they cost.
the Steam Deck in the midrange configuarion is $660 CAD, and it will allow me to keep my toes in the PC gaming space when my 4790k and RX580 system is finally retired.
Now, I’m not saying that the Steam Deck will be as powerful as a 5600x system with say, a 3060 in it. It’s not. But for someone who doesn’t game a ton on PC anymore, but still wants to have something that’ll work, something like the steam deck may be a decent, affordable option.
Again, this is me spitballing. I may end up not ordering the thing and ending up building a gaming PC next year. But I’m just starting to find that since I sit in front of a computer all day for work I’m just less inclined to sit in front of a computer to play games. I play a lot of Xbox and Switch now. If the Steam Deck lets me have some PC like gaming at a reasonable price, I think there’s something compelling there.
What's the word on monitors lately? Is ultra HD worth shelling out for, or what?
Good HDR is more important than resolution. If you can get a 1440p screen with 600+ nit HDR that's probably the sweet spot. 4K (ultra HD as you say) is a question of diminishing returns versus hardware power. It's a lot more pixels, for not a lot more visual clarity, requiring a lot more hardware power. I run my 4K screens at 1440p when running modern/demanding games because I can get visual clarity that's "good enough" through anti-aliasing and things like DLSS/FSR. I'd rather super smooth frame rates and good HDR.
You don't notice any distortion? I remember testing it and found I had to go down to 1080p with AA vs 1440p on my 4K OLED.
Nope. I have a pretty modern screen and it supports 1440p natively. It's possible some older/cheaper/different sets only support 4K and 1080 natively and the screen has to up/down sample to do 1440p, but that hasn't been an issue with my 2020 model year LG.
How does that work? Does it only use some of the screen space for 1440?
What's the word on monitors lately? Is ultra HD worth shelling out for, or what?
Good HDR is more important than resolution. If you can get a 1440p screen with 600+ nit HDR that's probably the sweet spot. 4K (ultra HD as you say) is a question of diminishing returns versus hardware power. It's a lot more pixels, for not a lot more visual clarity, requiring a lot more hardware power. I run my 4K screens at 1440p when running modern/demanding games because I can get visual clarity that's "good enough" through anti-aliasing and things like DLSS/FSR. I'd rather super smooth frame rates and good HDR.
You don't notice any distortion? I remember testing it and found I had to go down to 1080p with AA vs 1440p on my 4K OLED.
Nope. I have a pretty modern screen and it supports 1440p natively. It's possible some older/cheaper/different sets only support 4K and 1080 natively and the screen has to up/down sample to do 1440p, but that hasn't been an issue with my 2020 model year LG.
When displaying a 1080p image on a 4k monitor, each pixel of the image can simply be displayed as 2x2 pixels on the monitor. When displaying a 1440p image on a 4k monitor, each pixel of the image would have to be 1.5x1.5 on the monitor and since that clearly isn't possible you instead get differently sized pixels, distorting the image.
This kind of distortion is more obvious when looking closely at a low resolution image, but there simply isn't any way to do non-integer scaling of an image without any distortion at all.
On the other hand, in my experience 1440 on a 4K monitor only softens it a little bit compared to e.g. 720p upscaled on a 1080p monitor.
I've had the same experience. My usual routine for demanding games (that can't maintain 60fps at actual 4k resolution) is to drop to 1440 and throw some AA on it, and the image quality is always great. I'm not sure any upscaling distortions would even be noticeable as long as the screen is normal-monitor sized.
So as I keep waffling about my next computer, what are the opinions on getting a Steam Deck for gaming stuff? The long-running GPU shortage makes it seem much more sensible to get this weird cheap sorta-laptop for games and just leave my current tower as-is for random work/hobby shit.
Well it's a 4c/8t APU with Vega graphics cores running a 800x1280 7" screen. It's going to be about on the GPU level of a 1030GTX or so, unless there's something weird going on here. If you're fine with that, yeah it's pretty compelling.
I hope it's a success and that Valve do a follow on with a Zen3 + RDNA2 core APU because that's going to be a 2-generational leap in video performance.
EDIT: Well shut my mouth, it does have RDNA2 cores. OK that changes my view of it a lot.
How is it in terms of performance for price, do you think? Like right now the issue is that the 3000-series cards all cost more in time/money/buying a prebuilt so it throws off my general tendency to say that putting a bunch of components in a case will be cheaper than any all-in-one option. And I'm seeing people talk about how this is oddly cheap for the hardware so that may make up for the fact that it's not really all-in-one. Basically if Valve's subsidizing me to get one because they want to be a new weird console competitor I'm good with splitting out productive computer and games computer. Particularly if I can still grab stuff on itch.io.
I build like one computer every 6-7 years so all reasonably modern technical specifications just look like "[VERY GOOD]" to me, making it hard to tell what's a good deal.
$369 for an RDNA2 APU, case, board and 16GB of RAM, plus the screen and the console controls? I would infer that at the very most, Valve aren't making any huge profit on the hardware. They're probably doing a little better for the top end version but not much. I'd guess they're shipping for close to or under cost price.
As for value to you, it all depends on how well the RDNA2 APU is running with LPDDR5 and we don't have any direct point of comparison there. I think it's 8 cores, which compares to 36 for the PS5 for 52 for the new Xbox. The comparison being made powerwise is with the PS4/XBone, which is... pretty reasonable for a handheld? But you also have to add in the utility of being able to buy games at Steam prices instead of at console company shop prices. Do you have a big library of Steam games already? You can play most those straight away without having to rebuy them. That's not a thing that Nintendo offer.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
What's the word on monitors lately? Is ultra HD worth shelling out for, or what?
Good HDR is more important than resolution. If you can get a 1440p screen with 600+ nit HDR that's probably the sweet spot. 4K (ultra HD as you say) is a question of diminishing returns versus hardware power. It's a lot more pixels, for not a lot more visual clarity, requiring a lot more hardware power. I run my 4K screens at 1440p when running modern/demanding games because I can get visual clarity that's "good enough" through anti-aliasing and things like DLSS/FSR. I'd rather super smooth frame rates and good HDR.
You don't notice any distortion? I remember testing it and found I had to go down to 1080p with AA vs 1440p on my 4K OLED.
Nope. I have a pretty modern screen and it supports 1440p natively. It's possible some older/cheaper/different sets only support 4K and 1080 natively and the screen has to up/down sample to do 1440p, but that hasn't been an issue with my 2020 model year LG.
How does that work? Does it only use some of the screen space for 1440?
No, it goes full screen. 4K, 1440p and 1080p are all the same aspect ratio. So if your screen supports it, it should just natively scale. Some older screens/sets used a really bad scaling algorithm that would cause 1440p to smear horribly. My 2020 LG does not have that issue and displays 1440p, full screen, at 120hz perfectly fine.
e: Your video card can also play a role here as well. You can tell your video card to do the scaling for you, so it will take your 1440p screen and upscale it to 4K output and generally GPU's are pretty good at this, with minimal artifacting. If your screen is smeared at 1440p, try fiddling with the GPU scaling settings and telling your GPU to scale the output for you.
What's the word on monitors lately? Is ultra HD worth shelling out for, or what?
Good HDR is more important than resolution. If you can get a 1440p screen with 600+ nit HDR that's probably the sweet spot. 4K (ultra HD as you say) is a question of diminishing returns versus hardware power. It's a lot more pixels, for not a lot more visual clarity, requiring a lot more hardware power. I run my 4K screens at 1440p when running modern/demanding games because I can get visual clarity that's "good enough" through anti-aliasing and things like DLSS/FSR. I'd rather super smooth frame rates and good HDR.
You don't notice any distortion? I remember testing it and found I had to go down to 1080p with AA vs 1440p on my 4K OLED.
Nope. I have a pretty modern screen and it supports 1440p natively. It's possible some older/cheaper/different sets only support 4K and 1080 natively and the screen has to up/down sample to do 1440p, but that hasn't been an issue with my 2020 model year LG.
When displaying a 1080p image on a 4k monitor, each pixel of the image can simply be displayed as 2x2 pixels on the monitor. When displaying a 1440p image on a 4k monitor, each pixel of the image would have to be 1.5x1.5 on the monitor and since that clearly isn't possible you instead get differently sized pixels, distorting the image.
This kind of distortion is more obvious when looking closely at a low resolution image, but there simply isn't any way to do non-integer scaling of an image without any distortion at all.
I'm aware of how non-integer scaling works. Even with that knowledge, in my experience, modern GPU/display combos, properly setup, have decent enough upscalers now that the image is minimally distorted. To the point where you need to put your face against my 65" TV to notice it. From 8 feet away it's 100% unnoticeable.
Caveat emptor if you're sitting right up against a 4K monitor.
At that point why not just drop the resolution from 4k to a lower res and enable DLSS to do the upfill to 4K -- isn't that the whole point to the tech?
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Joking aside it won't make a difference in gaming either way. My RAM runs faster, but has slightly higher CL (16 v 14)...it probably comes out in the wash, well within error statistically. Capacity will have nothing to do with performance generally. It's just tougher to get very high capacity modules with super tight timings which is where some of the "More RAM = more slow" comes from.
The real reason to run DDR4-3600 with Ryzen is that infinity fabric runs 1:1 with your FSB up to a point and DDR4-3600 is the sweet spot. So by running 3200 MT RAM you're technically throttling your 5950X's interconnect fabric...but you'll probably never notice in 99% of workloads.
You won‘t find one device which plays all midi from all the games correctly, because the technology changed many times during the late 80 till the 2000s. And getting one retro PC to support all standards in hardware and do Playback correctly is going to be very headache inducing.
You could try using midi out and connect an external PC with USB MIDI-in cable and pipe everything to the midi player application from Falcosoft (Freeware). This application is portable and you can configure for example soundfont playback, a Roland SW Synth (Canavas SG 55), Yamaha SW Synth, various Adlib SW synths and switch the instances as needed. This is something I use with DOS Box (on the Same PC obviously), but it accepts external midi input as well. You could also use a cheap Windows tablet for this and basically turn this into a small, all purpose midi appliance. The sound-out could be routed back to the SB Live in your 99 Retro PC. The YouTube channel Phil’s computer lab has great tutorials for this. This would save you money and time hunting down ancient music equipment or expensive Synthesizer and it would free up the resources (RAM for soundfonts, drivers, conventional memory, IRQ reservation) because a modern machine does the Heavy lifting.
Good rule for quite some time. I don't even think the next gen of cards will push 4k consistently like ours do with 1440p now because of several new graphics techs that are coming out.
Fun thing I could try though, and maybe I will, these specific sticks will handle 3600 @ 16CL ezpz according to what I've seen from others with the exact same kit. I would just have to manually set everything instead of using the very ez xmp route. I could probably get some minor tangible benefit there if I do more intensive code compile on this box.
What I'm working with:
Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. Z77X-UD3H
Intel Core i5 3570K @ 3.40GHz
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 800MHz (11-11-11-28)
2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 (EVGA)
What I am Thinking of doing:
2x the RAM
a Video Card upgrade to a medium range, not anything super big. Something with more than 2Gb of RAM on the GPU.
Does anyone have any suggestions? I really do not want to pay through the teeth for a temporary upgrade path. Though I may use this PC when I build a new one as the streaming pc in a 2 pc setup.
Anything you do on that PC is just life support / buying time. We are probably at the point where your ram is obsolete enough someone will give you something they have sitting around that is better for the cost of shipping.
If you are looking at less than $500 I'd give it a month and look for a 3060 at MSRP since that will be ok in a new build in the future and be your best bang for the buck.
I assume you are on an SSD for OS / main drives? An SSD is cheap and hands down the difference between that and a platter drive is the biggest bang for the buck just about ever.
Yes I have SSD's already. Just trying to prolong the life a little bit more. I'm trying to keep my budget to $300 or less if possible. Any more than that I should just start buying the parts needed for it's replacement.
Nope, mostly TI’s or 90’s in stock.
I see new SKU’s being added to Canada Computers.
eBay prices way down, so hopefully in the coming months it becomes easier.
You could potentially look to upgrade the CPU but you'll have to deal with the secondary market. 2x the RAM is a good start but again, you'll need to find used sticks.
I'm still on a 50" 720p plasma for my TV. Still looks amazing. I've seen my friends nice sets at 1080p and 4k and honestly the only nice feature that I want is good HDR implementation.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
With a $300 budget, I'd start hunting for a 3060 at MSRP - it'll be a bit higher than your budget, but you're not going to have a bigger impact even with the rest of your PC bottlenecked than that and it has the added benefit of having a good life ahead of it if / when you decide to build a new PC.
Plus it'll probably take some time to get one so you can put some more cash aside and think of the hunt to find one as a really shitty fetch quest.
Otherwise yeah, if you can find some used DDR3 cheap to throw a few more sticks in there that'll help prolong things a bit, but unless you're getting components free / cost of shipping there's not much else that you can really do with that PC that'll benefit you in the future.
I'd suggest maybe checking your local Craigslist for people giving away old computer stuff. DDR3 age / obsolescence-wise is near that sweet spot where an old computer might be still good enough people are reluctant to throw it in the trash, but still old enough they aren't really trying to make money off it. I'd bet you could find an old DDR3 Dell or something for less than $20 if you watch.
It looks like you have one of the best CPUs for the LGA 1155 socket so there isn't much of an upgrade path there. It looks like the only chip that's both compatible and a step up is the I7-3770 series so a marginal improvement and likely not worth the trouble of obtaining.
Beyond that, $300 does start getting you close to a budget motherboard & low to low-mid CPU along with a cheap stick of DDR4. If your case and PSU are solid that might be a viable path too as basic bones until you're able to find a decent video card. I might consider buying a super-budget CPU and slightly better motherboard with an aim to upgrade the CPU at some point in the future, but a lot would depend on how soon / how much you're looking to upgrade down the line. But depending on anticipated future budget and timelines I'd still lean toward the 3060 over that.
CC had PNY 3070s in stock...for 1399. Ha, forget that. I emailed them and they said PNY wants to sell high.
I mean, it is interesting in that it is a full, self-contained device that can also do general PC stuff. It's not going to blow anything out of the water performance wise (well, maybe the Switch), but maybe more FSR implementations in the future can help it stay relevant longer. (Maybe even Valve implements it directly into the OS.)
The "bad" is that it's launching until December, so things might be much better then. Then again, nothing stops you from reserving one and canceling if you change your mind before launch.
You don't notice any distortion? I remember testing it and found I had to go down to 1080p with AA vs 1440p on my 4K OLED.
Well it's a 4c/8t APU with Vega graphics cores running a 800x1280 7" screen. It's going to be about on the GPU level of a 1030GTX or so, unless there's something weird going on here. If you're fine with that, yeah it's pretty compelling.
I hope it's a success and that Valve do a follow on with a Zen3 + RDNA2 core APU because that's going to be a 2-generational leap in video performance.
EDIT: Well shut my mouth, it does have RDNA2 cores. OK that changes my view of it a lot.
When I picked up, the lineup was 5 or 6 3### cards going out.
How is it in terms of performance for price, do you think? Like right now the issue is that the 3000-series cards all cost more in time/money/buying a prebuilt so it throws off my general tendency to say that putting a bunch of components in a case will be cheaper than any all-in-one option. And I'm seeing people talk about how this is oddly cheap for the hardware so that may make up for the fact that it's not really all-in-one. Basically if Valve's subsidizing me to get one because they want to be a new weird console competitor I'm good with splitting out productive computer and games computer. Particularly if I can still grab stuff on itch.io.
I build like one computer every 6-7 years so all reasonably modern technical specifications just look like "[VERY GOOD]" to me, making it hard to tell what's a good deal.
If they can't hit that deadline I'm about at 50% for just cancelling the dang order and waiting another year.
Nope. I have a pretty modern screen and it supports 1440p natively. It's possible some older/cheaper/different sets only support 4K and 1080 natively and the screen has to up/down sample to do 1440p, but that hasn't been an issue with my 2020 model year LG.
High end PC gaming is starting to get out of my price range, especially for how much I do or don’t game on a PC anymore. Even if you assume MSRP a 3070 class card in Canada is close to $700 and it’s getting harder for me to justify those kinds of costs.
Yes, I can in theory step down to a solid 1080p card but youre still talking $500 just for that video card here. Pair that with a midrange 6 core processor like a 5600x for about $350 CAD at MSRP, decent ram for another $120, motherboard for maybe $200, and I’m talking about $1200 and I don’t have a case, storage, or power supply yet. This is why I think the Xbox Series X and PS5 are such an outstanding value for what they cost.
the Steam Deck in the midrange configuarion is $660 CAD, and it will allow me to keep my toes in the PC gaming space when my 4790k and RX580 system is finally retired.
Now, I’m not saying that the Steam Deck will be as powerful as a 5600x system with say, a 3060 in it. It’s not. But for someone who doesn’t game a ton on PC anymore, but still wants to have something that’ll work, something like the steam deck may be a decent, affordable option.
Again, this is me spitballing. I may end up not ordering the thing and ending up building a gaming PC next year. But I’m just starting to find that since I sit in front of a computer all day for work I’m just less inclined to sit in front of a computer to play games. I play a lot of Xbox and Switch now. If the Steam Deck lets me have some PC like gaming at a reasonable price, I think there’s something compelling there.
But if I'm going to go in the office and put on my headset and game I might as well go away from my family however long.
I can sit in the living room while my kid watches Disney playing Hades or Factorio on the Deck instead of fiddling around on my phone.
No I wont be able to play really engaged games, but it's a good bridge between the phone and the PC.
Nintendo ID: Incindium
PSN: IncindiumX
My switch never leaves it’s cradle either
How does that work? Does it only use some of the screen space for 1440?
When displaying a 1080p image on a 4k monitor, each pixel of the image can simply be displayed as 2x2 pixels on the monitor. When displaying a 1440p image on a 4k monitor, each pixel of the image would have to be 1.5x1.5 on the monitor and since that clearly isn't possible you instead get differently sized pixels, distorting the image.
This kind of distortion is more obvious when looking closely at a low resolution image, but there simply isn't any way to do non-integer scaling of an image without any distortion at all.
I've had the same experience. My usual routine for demanding games (that can't maintain 60fps at actual 4k resolution) is to drop to 1440 and throw some AA on it, and the image quality is always great. I'm not sure any upscaling distortions would even be noticeable as long as the screen is normal-monitor sized.
My Switch doesn't get near the level of activity it should.
$369 for an RDNA2 APU, case, board and 16GB of RAM, plus the screen and the console controls? I would infer that at the very most, Valve aren't making any huge profit on the hardware. They're probably doing a little better for the top end version but not much. I'd guess they're shipping for close to or under cost price.
As for value to you, it all depends on how well the RDNA2 APU is running with LPDDR5 and we don't have any direct point of comparison there. I think it's 8 cores, which compares to 36 for the PS5 for 52 for the new Xbox. The comparison being made powerwise is with the PS4/XBone, which is... pretty reasonable for a handheld? But you also have to add in the utility of being able to buy games at Steam prices instead of at console company shop prices. Do you have a big library of Steam games already? You can play most those straight away without having to rebuy them. That's not a thing that Nintendo offer.
No, it goes full screen. 4K, 1440p and 1080p are all the same aspect ratio. So if your screen supports it, it should just natively scale. Some older screens/sets used a really bad scaling algorithm that would cause 1440p to smear horribly. My 2020 LG does not have that issue and displays 1440p, full screen, at 120hz perfectly fine.
e: Your video card can also play a role here as well. You can tell your video card to do the scaling for you, so it will take your 1440p screen and upscale it to 4K output and generally GPU's are pretty good at this, with minimal artifacting. If your screen is smeared at 1440p, try fiddling with the GPU scaling settings and telling your GPU to scale the output for you.
I'm aware of how non-integer scaling works. Even with that knowledge, in my experience, modern GPU/display combos, properly setup, have decent enough upscalers now that the image is minimally distorted. To the point where you need to put your face against my 65" TV to notice it. From 8 feet away it's 100% unnoticeable.
Caveat emptor if you're sitting right up against a 4K monitor.