Kow and Gurt at Tanagra.

Officially giving up on upgrading my RAM. One of the reasons I bought my laptop was that it was (apparently) easy to access the internals. So today I decided to have a look at my RAM, to double check what HWiNFO was telling me. I get all the screws out and find that the bottom still won't come off. I did 'an Google' and found out you need to unclip the bottom too, which seems like a whole lot of effort. Apparently there's no cables attached to the external case, which is good. I may one day have to put a new battery in. But I don't know if I can be smegged with that rigmarole just to up my RAM a bit, when all I play is MTG Arena. (I've been doing a bit of Resi 2 recently, and that runs good enough.)

I’ve not done it myself but have seen people use plectrums.

As a consumer, apart from cost n speed, and I guess those niche graphical features, are there any major things that amd / Nvidia can or cannot do? Like any whole games that don't work, or "Windows is Nvidia-only" level stuff? No, right?!

hunk wrote:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-amd-radeon-rx-5700-rx-5700-xt-review-head-to-head-with-nvidia-super Navi is here!

No ray tracing isn't good.

Freesync is the open standard here and is supported by amd. Nvidia uses its own proprietary standard gsync but I believe they're opening up their gpu's and are incorparating free sync support as of late?

acemuzzy wrote:

As a consumer, apart from cost n speed, and I guess those niche graphical features, are there any major things that amd / Nvidia can or cannot do? Like any whole games that don't work, or "Windows is Nvidia-only" level stuff? No, right?!

Nvidia supports hardware accelarated cores for raytracing but there's a catch. You'll have to drop resolution to 1080p or lower to get playable framerates to enjoy the eyecandies. AMD doesn't support hw accelarated raytracing. Yet. We'll have to wait for the launch of the next gen ps5/xbone next to see how their hwa rt implementation turns out.

It might even be there wont be a hwa ray tracing implementation with amd opting for a sw solution instead with all those cpu cores doing all the heavy lifting?

I'm still lolling at PS5/Xbox 90000 saying they'll spunk out Ray Tracing as if its nothing.

Tbf though its a fucking outstanding thing to see in motion and the heft of the current NVidia cards means AMD can go swivel.

Dark Soldier wrote:

Nvidia supports hardware accelarated cores for raytracing but there's a catch. You'll have to drop resolution to 1080p or lower to get playable framerates to enjoy the eyecandies.

I'm running everything at 4k/1440p for RTX man, its easily doable.

Ah interesting.
How severe is the rt performance hit in general? Very noticeable or slight? Is raytracing worth it or do you turn it off after a while in favor of raw performance?

I'm guessing AMD will eventually support raytracing by letting cpu cores do the heavy lifting. A software solution basically just like the driver patch nvidia did for the older gtx 10XX series.

hunk wrote:

Dark Soldier wrote:

Nvidia supports hardware accelarated cores for raytracing but there's a catch. You'll have to drop resolution to 1080p or lower to get playable framerates to enjoy the eyecandies.

I'm running everything at 4k/1440p for RTX man, its easily doable.

Ah interesting. How severe is the rt performance hit in general? Very noticeable or slight? Is raytracing worth it or do you turn it off after a while in favor of raw performance?

Taking Metro Exodus as an example:

4k, Ultra RTX, everything maxed gives around 30-40 fps. If I drop RTX to High (its a negligible difference) and enable DLSS I get a solid 60fps throughout. I can drop it to 1440p and have Ultra RTX with DLSS and easily hit 60fps.

BFV I run 1440p RTX maxed with DLSS on, everything maxed out bar SSAO and easy 60fps.

DLSS has come on leaps and bounds and the image quality is barely different to it being turned off. If I drop to 1080p the GPU lols its tits off regardless of what settings but I've gone full snob and can't enjoy that res anymore.

As for RTX in general, once I've seen it on I can't go back. Lighting and reflections in games look shit now compared to Metro and BFV when RTX is running. Shadow of the Tomb Raider gives very good real time shadows but it isn't a deal breaker.

For me I think smoother frame rates will take precedence, after experiencing upwards of 90 FPS I don't think I could go back.

Its also mental how much of a difference 4k looks compared to 1440p. But yeah, to get it almost or near maxed in 4k you're looking at easy 2k to dump into a system.

GurtTractor wrote:

Yeah it seems that different people have very different experiences and perceptions with regards to framerate, if it's not so noticeable for you then it's handy as you can go with the cheaper and higher resolution displays and be dead happy. My next monitor upgrade is going to be expensive...

Ain't gonna lie I've been eyeing up 1440p 144Hz monitors for down the line lol

So the TLDR on the new Ryzen CPUs -

Basically if you are buying a new system or upgrading an old one then go for Ryzen. Better value all around as they come with good coolers, and can run on cheap B450 motherboards and still be overclocked. For gaming Ryzen either pretty much matches or is just slightly behind Intel (like within 5-10%), if you are playing with either a midrange GPU or at a high resolution then it really won't matter. And the greater core and thread counts will make a difference as the years go by and newer games make more use of cores (this will continue to happen as the new consoles will have 16 threads I think) they will likely overtake Intel CPUs with less fewer cores, and be smoother in terms of frametime overall.

For productivity stuff, 3D, video, compiling or similar work then Ryzen 3000 absolutely smashes it, a massive improvement over the previous gen and pretty much beats Intel is nearly all cases. Single core performance basically matches Intel now, despite the lower clock speeds. There's been a big increase in IPC.

So unless there's some specific reason to go with an Intel processor at this point, like if you do esports and a particular game performs slightly better with a 9900K, then just buy Ryzen.

Keep in mind that you can expect the prices to drop further once Intel responds, by the end of the year there will be a 16 core for the AM4 motherboards, and you might see prices drop further.

Ah, forgot all about DLSS, nvidia's upscaling (checkerboarding) trick.
4k raytracing would probably not be possible without it.

Interesting tech for sure. Will be interesting to see AMD's take on this for pc and next gen consoles.

4k raytracing is possible without DLSS but ya gotta ramp everything else down. Or run it at Medium