PC Building Guide and Discussion #14

[Osprey]

Reviews are now out for the Ryzen 7000 series CPUs.





The general consensus seems to be that they're quite fast, but the fact that they require costly new motherboards and RAM reduce their value, especially for the lower tiers, like the 7600X.

 

[PeteWorrell]

Nothing really surprising considering there is always a tax being an early adopter of a new platform. Intel's 12th generation and AMD Zen 3 have budget options that will work perfectly until prices go down.

 

[Commander Clueless]

I would love a 7600X, but the 105W TDP and the pricing are kind of crazy for this tier.

For someone who's been a midrange kind of guy lately, the number tiers I'm used to shopping in keep getting lower

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

Personally, the 7700X is what really has me excited. Just f***ing wish there was more than ONE ITX board out there for AM5...

 

[Osprey]

Personally, the 7700X is what really has me excited. Just f***ing wish there was more than ONE ITX board out there for AM5...

The 7700X looks pretty impressive, beating even the 7950X in most games.



What has me excited is the 7800X3D that's rumored to be announced in January at CES. The 5800X3D is so much faster than the 5800X and rivals even the 7000 series in some games, so the 7800X3D should be a beast. I would wait for that, rather than upgrading now to the non-3D versions. There'll be more MB and RAM options by then, as well.

 

[mouser]

Currently on a 5600X, may sit out the 7000 series and wait for the reported 3nm 8000 series. Nothing official yet, but the 8000s might be released in less than 24 months.

 

[The Nuge]

So I’m pretty new to PC building and I’m a little stumped. I was playing some GTA V and my CPU usage is sitting at like 12%, GPU at like 60%, and ram isn’t even close to used up. I’m sitting at like 100 FPS except I’m getting single digit 1% lows and the game is stuttering badly. Any suggestions for where to start? GPU driver is up to date (I’d read that could be an issue) and I’m kind of not sure what to check next

Specs are
12100F
Z690
32 GB DDR5
3060TI

 

[mouser]

So I’m pretty new to PC building and I’m a little stumped. I was playing some GTA V and my CPU usage is sitting at like 12%, GPU at like 60%, and ram isn’t even close to used up. I’m sitting at like 100 FPS except I’m getting single digit 1% lows and the game is stuttering badly. Any suggestions for where to start? GPU driver is up to date (I’d read that could be an issue) and I’m kind of not sure what to check next

Specs are
12100F
Z690
32 GB DDR5
3060TI

The 12% suggests GTA is CPU bound on a single thread (100%/8 threads on the 12100F = 12.5%).

I would do some searches like "is gta v pc single threaded" and "gta v not using all CPU cores". There may be some configuration settings in GTA that will improve your experience.

 

[Osprey]

So I’m pretty new to PC building and I’m a little stumped. I was playing some GTA V and my CPU usage is sitting at like 12%, GPU at like 60%, and ram isn’t even close to used up. I’m sitting at like 100 FPS except I’m getting single digit 1% lows and the game is stuttering badly. Any suggestions for where to start? GPU driver is up to date (I’d read that could be an issue) and I’m kind of not sure what to check next

Specs are
12100F
Z690
32 GB DDR5
3060TI

If you haven't already rebooted the computer, do that first. Next, I'd check Task Manager via Ctrl+Shift+Esc or Ctrl+Alt+Del to see if something else is using much CPU or Disk. They should be close to 0% when the game is launched.

It also matters if the stuttering happens immediately or only after a while because the latter could indicate that something is overheating. HWiNFO64 can tell you what if you Alt+Tab out of the running game and check it.

I'd also turn off the Xbox Game Bar in Windows Settings, since that reportedly can cause stuttering, especially in GTA V. You might also close as many processes from the system tray that you can because 3rd-party software (like Logitech's) can sometimes cause problems.

Finally, you might try some of the things listed in the Issues Fixed section at PCGamingWiki: Grand Theft Auto V - PCGamingWiki PCGW - bugs, fixes, crashes, mods, guides and improvements for every PC game. Some of those, like turning off v-sync and setting a refresh rate in the game's graphics settings might help.

 

[The Nuge]

The 12% suggests GTA is CPU bound on a single thread (100%/8 threads on the 12100F = 12.5%).

I would do some searches like "is gta v pc single threaded" and "gta v not using all CPU cores". There may be some configuration settings in GTA that will improve your experience.

Thank you! When I searched that, it came up with a thread about someone having that issue and the “game mode” setting being the issue, and in my searching for a fix, I definitely remember it being on. I’m not there at the moment, but that seems like it would be the cause.

If you haven't already rebooted the computer, do that first. Next, I'd check Task Manager via Ctrl+Shift+Esc or Ctrl+Alt+Del to see if something else eating much CPU or Disk. They should be close to 0% when the game is launched.

It also matters if the stuttering happens immediately or only after a while because the latter could indicate that something is overheating. HWiNFO64 can tell you what if you Alt+Tab out of the running game and check it.

I'd also turn off the Xbox Game Bar in Windows Settings, since that reportedly can cause stuttering, especially in GTA V. You might also close as many processes from the system tray that you can because 3rd-party software (like Logitech's) can sometimes cause problems.

Finally, you might try some of the things listed in the Issues Fixed section at PCGamingWiki: Grand Theft Auto V - PCGamingWiki PCGW - bugs, fixes, crashes, mods, guides and improvements for every PC game. Some of those, like turning off v-sync and setting a refresh rate in the game's graphics settings might help.

Nothing running, and the temps weren’t getting above 51 (I’m only running the stock cooler for now until I upgrade the CPU, so I was wondering about that). The game setting definitely seem to be the culprit by the sounds of it. Thank you! I was starting to pull my hair out that my new rig was getting worse performance than my old Dell Optiplex/1650 combo, and none of the settings seemed to fix it

 

[Osprey]

It sounds like, in order to maintain AM4 cooler compatibility, AMD made the heat spreader on Ryzen 7000 CPUs much thicker, which greatly hurts heat transfer and causes the CPUs to run at up to 95C. Removing that heat spreader and attaching a cooler directly to the CPU die, as der8auer does in the video below, results in a temperature drop of nearly 20C. In other words, it seems as though AMD crippled the cooling to save everyone from buying new coolers. The cooler compatibility seemed nice at first, but I'm starting to wish that they hadn't kept that, since I'd rather replace my cooler than have my CPU much hotter.

 

[PeteWorrell]

I find it more problematic that Eco Mode is not the default option on these chips. Many testers have activated Eco Mode or underclocked manually to run these chips much cooler and using a lot less voltage for a performance loss of around 5%. Very tone deaf of AMD to put benchmarks first and efficiency second, when in certain parts of the world, energy costs have skyrocketed and inflation has been hitting everyone hard.

 

[The Nuge]

Well after trying everything possible to get things running, I finally caved and reinstalled windows. GTA V is now running 150+ FPS perfectly. No clue what the issue ended up being, but it’s at least dealt with. Thanks again for the trouble shooting tips

 

[Osprey]

The guy who made the DOOM ray tracing mod has released a similar mod for Quake. I played through a couple of levels. It's not as mind blowing as the DOOM RT mod, only because Quake's engine is more advanced to begin with, but it's still neat to see torches lighting up walls, dynamically lit rockets and grenades and your weapon models being affected by the lighting. I'd play through the whole game again, like I did for DOOM, but I did that last year when Quake: Enhanced was released. BTW, it works with all releases and supports AMD.



Download: https://github.com/sultim-t/vkquake-rt

 

[Osprey]

Summary: The new Intel GPUs are a little faster and cheaper than the RTX 3060, but a little slower and more expensive than the RX 6650XT. On one hand, they're impressive for first gen products on unoptimized drivers. On the other hand, they're not good enough value at the moment to recommend them over the competition.

 

[GreytWun]

This is just ridiculous. The size of the 4090 is insane, we are all going to need giant cases when they release the 5090.

 

[Commander Clueless]

At this point if you're selling your kidney for a 4090 you might as well get the waterblock to actually cool the thing


That Strix card is nuts.

 

[PeteWorrell]

Those fans must sound lovely while pushing the card with something like 4K gaming.

 

[Osprey]

Those fans must sound lovely while pushing the card with something like 4K gaming.

Larger fans tend to be quieter than smaller ones and most of the added size is probably heatsink, so it might not be much louder than a 3090, but the unknown is how hot they'll get with their insane power draw. If it's so high that even that massive cooling potential isn't enough, it'll be a loud card. We should find out next week.

 

[93LEAFS]

Looking into building my first PC, and going into the higher end market. Since I'm seeing some decent sales today on GPU's does anyone think I'd get serious bottlenecks (I know bottlenecks can't be avoided, but I'm talking like >10% margins) on a 3090 and an i5 13600k?

 

[PeteWorrell]

Looking into building my first PC, and going into the higher end market. Since I'm seeing some decent sales today on GPU's does anyone think I'd get serious bottlenecks (I know bottlenecks can't be avoided, but I'm talking like >10% margins) on a 3090 and an i5 13600k?

There will not be a true bottleneck as those are very recent pieces of hardware that will be able to keep up for many years to come. The only bottleneck will be the GPU if you expect to play at 4K otherwise it's smooth sailing.

 

[93LEAFS]

There will not be a true bottleneck as those are very recent pieces of hardware that will be able to keep up for many years to come. The only bottleneck will be the GPU if you expect to play at 4K otherwise it's smooth sailing.

Hey man, thanks for the advice. As someone who is looking to build his first PC what are peoples cooling recommendations? Watercooling scares/intimidates me, but it sounds like the best option. Any recommendations on that front?

 

[PeteWorrell]

Hey man, thanks for the advice. As someone who is looking to build his first PC what are peoples cooling recommendations? Watercooling scares/intimidates me, but it sounds like the best option. Any recommendations on that front?

Never used water cooling myself so i can't help you there. Good air cooling always did the job for me. If you go the water cooling route, you are better taking your time informing yourself so you don't buy a cheap one that fails after a couple of years and has a poor warranty.

 

[93LEAFS]

Never used water cooling myself so i can't help you there. Good air cooling always did the job for me. If you go the water cooling route, you are better taking your time informing yourself so you don't buy a cheap one that fails after a couple of years and has a poor warranty.

Thanks for the info. I know bottleneck wise this doesn't really apply, but I grew up with my dad who is a complete audiophile, and I picked up the expensive but understandable habit of, your setup is only as good as the weakest component.

 

[Osprey]

I can't help you with water cooling, either, except to say that it being the "best option" is a matter of opinion, I think. Plenty of people, like me, are happy with their air coolers. The benefits of water cooling are mostly aesthetic. If you're going to put a windowed case on your desk to look at and show off its RGB-lit internals, a water cooler is probably the way to go. If you don't want a windowed case or it's going on the ground, where it'll rarely be seen, like mine, air cooling will do just fine.