GR ~ PC Hardware thread

[pilonv1]

Wow that is cheap. I've been avoiding most higher refresh 27" monitors because they're either 1080p or ridiculously expensive. If you get it let me know how it is.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Ordered, however special only runs to Jul 29. It's available from multiple retailers.

https://au.msi.com/Promotion/100-monitor-special-sales" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Deef]

That is a good deal. I paid $1000 for similar, without the curve. I was going to question viewing angles since back then I remember 1ms meant the kind of panel that didn't angle well, but it appeared to have that covered too.

[Peppermint Lounge]

I bought the MSI. It’s all good, no dead pixels, no manufacturing flaws. 3 year warranty. The viewing angles are way better than my old 60hz 1080p TN which you’d expect. I observe no ghosting. The transition from 60 to 144hz is like magic. Very happy.

[lestat]

RTX 2080/2080Ti reviews are out.

Review roundup below.
https://videocardz.com/78054/nvidia-gef ... ew-roundup" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I can see pccasegear have 2080 cards listed for around $1400-1500, no custom 2080Tis yet.

Basically performance of 1080Ti/2080 is within a few hairs, 2080Ti is a 20-30% improvement over the 1080Ti.

Price per frame and value is terrible, ray tracing fail at launch, no software supports it along with DLSS, seems very rushed.

[flipswitch]

I bet Cyberpunk 2077 will have some RTX exclusives. I will probably cave

[lestat]

I'm scared to see what the 2080Ti prices will be. Looks like I'll be spending more time on my consoles in future.

[unfnknblvbl]

Those are some sphincter-tightening prices. I want to know how much the 2070 will cost, but I doubt I can reasonably afford it...

[pilonv1]

Will be sticking with my 1070 for a while then

[lestat]

With the disappointment of the 2080 series and realisation that GPUs now have started hitting walls like CPUs did 5 years ago. I've decided to go back to my 1440p Gsync monitor, right now the sweet spot in PC gaming is 1440p and a large reason why I game on PC is due to the high framerates.

I still think we're a few years away from 4k being comfortable to run at 60fps+ for all new and upcoming games, with PS5/OneX2 probably due out in 18 months, the graphical bar will be pushed further probably making high FPS at 4k even harder on PC.

4k HDR is better enjoyed with current pro/X consoles, since TV hardware is substantially better than monitors right and it just works.

[lestat]

EVGA 2080Ti pricing... $2208

https://www.auspcmarket.com.au/evga-gef ... 4-outputs/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Great review from digital foundry, with good framerate bars charts to show the full performance range.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digi ... marks-7001" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[unfnknblvbl]

With the disappointment of the 2080 series and realisation that GPUs now have started hitting walls like CPUs did 5 years ago. I've decided to go back to my 1440p Gsync monitor, right now the sweet spot in PC gaming is 1440p and a large reason why I game on PC is due to the high framerates.

Well to be fair, CPUs didn't hit a wall, so much as Intel just had no realistic competition and thus had no reason to innovate until recently. I think GPUs are similar, but having hardware accelerated realtime ray tracing is a big ol' bucket of innovation. I look forward to what AMD bring to the party, since RTX is based on Vulkan... but I don't have high hopes.

[flipswitch]

RTX has been 10 years in the making. I don’t know if AMD have been working on something similar.

[lestat]

RTX is a basically a fixed function ray cast hit/miss unit that looks into a BVH(bounded volume hierarchy) structure. Since the number of rays casted in realtime are so low, it's too grainy/noisy to form a decent image, this is where denoising/machine learning clean up the image and allow it to be usable.

I don't think this was 10 years in the making because some of techniques are using technology that is open and based on machine learning research which NVidia had nothing to do with 10 years ago. Granted Ray tracing has always been an ultimate goal in graphics for a long time, so it was probably a goal somewhere in the internal road maps.

Also AMD released their open Radeon Rays earlier in the year based on Vulcan. So it's safe to say that AMD have similar fixed ray cast hit/miss hardware in the works too. RTX is also part of directx and can be run on DX12 cards, it's just a matter of how much of that path can be accelerated with fixed function units by a vendor.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some ray tracing hardware appear in the next gen of consoles, that's likely when it will really take off.

[unfnknblvbl]

I would be surprised if it makes it into the next gen. All the rumours point toward a Zen-based semicustom chipset for the Nextbox, at least - and I'd be surprised if the PS5 didn't follow suit. AMD's simply not in a position to stick realtime ray tracing into any APU at the moment.

The generation after that? Arcade hardware? Sure.

[lestat]

2080Ti cards available now at your usual outlets.

Prices are between $2000-2200, happy 3rd mortgage shopping.

[unfnknblvbl]

I just got a Thrusmaster T.Flight HOTAS One. A bit pricey just for playing Kerbal Space Program, but holy shit it makes a massive difference.
It's a bit cheap-feeling though, but I like the way the throttle and stick are detatchable. It'd be nicer if there were an extra 5cm of cable joining them, since it's marginally shorter than the width of my keyboard. It could also use some kind of resistance control for the throttle since it's really really loose by default.

8/10, recommended if you're hardcore enough to want decent control in your space/flight sims, but not hardcore enough to buy the massively expensive next step up.

Also got myself a Soundblaster ZXR soundcard.

Pros:
It's packed in velvet, comes with a fancy desk control unit, and a daughter card. And it's all gold plated.

Cons:
There's no front panel header. Not that it matters because of the desk control doohickey, but it's still annoying.

I haven't tested out any of the serious functionality just yet since all my gear is back in Tassie, but I'm pretty happy with it so far.

[lestat]

AMD planning a 7nm onslaught early next year.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13425/am ... s-and-gpus" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

AMD has announced that its CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, is to hold the stage for one of CES 2019's daily keynotes. The company stated in the press release that Dr. Su will discuss AMD’s plans to bring the world's first 7 nm high-performance CPUs and GPUs to the market.

Dr. Su's presentation will mark the first time that any AMD CEO has presented at an official CES keynote. It's important to note however that Dr. Su's keynote will not be CES's lead-off "prime" keynote like the one competitor Intel held in 2018 – that keynote has not yet been announced – rather Dr. Su will be presenting one of the show's more numerous and varied daily keynotes. These start with Ginni Rometti from IBM on the first day of the show, with AMD to follow the day after. Dr. Su will have other guests on stage in a bid to discuss the latest computing technologies that open up new opportunities when it comes to HPC, gaming, entertainment, and other aspects of life.

[Cletus]

I just got a Thrusmaster T.Flight HOTAS One. A bit pricey just for playing Kerbal Space Program, but holy shit it makes a massive difference.
It's a bit cheap-feeling though, but I like the way the throttle and stick are detatchable. It'd be nicer if there were an extra 5cm of cable joining them, since it's marginally shorter than the width of my keyboard. It could also use some kind of resistance control for the throttle since it's really really loose by default.

Does it have Yaw? I noticed the Thrushmaster Warthog does not...and that's about the most exxy HOTAS on the market, it's actually the only reason I bought the Saitek Rhino. The Warthog requires a pedal set up for Yaw which isn't included in the box.

[unfnknblvbl]

Yeah. I dunno the exact terms, but it has X & Y axes (the stick), Z (throttle), RZ (twisting the stick, hurrr), and a slider, which is a rocker on the back of the throttle.
You can buy separate pedals for it which adds a rudder and two more axes for brakes.

It's pretty good for the money.

[flipswitch]

Latest windows update? has caused this error which I’m getting in the Windows store app. So if I were to click on any game in the store this will pop up. I have tried a few fixes I found but they didn’t resolve the issue.



if I’m completely signed out the page will load, weird. I take it I can still buy games from the website but not app.

[unfnknblvbl]

To celebrate getting a new job, I just ordered one of these:



ThermalTake Level 20 GT. Given how awesome the Level 10 GT was, I'm looking forward to this!

[flipswitch]

Just saw a couple of video card benchmarks on YT ( duderandom84 , AC :O and FC5) comparing the 1080ti to 2080 and both showing the same FPS.

[unfnknblvbl]

Just saw a couple of video card benchmarks on YT ( duderandom84 , AC :O and FC5) comparing the 1080ti to 2080 and both showing the same FPS.

That's pretty much par for the course though; the new x80 is usually about the same as the last x80Ti.
Doesn't stop this new series being a tad disappointing though, given how long they were in development for. AMD need to bring something pretty exciting to the table with their next GPUs, since this situation is mirroring what things were like for CPUs for the past seven years or so.

[unfnknblvbl]

Alright, so I've bought a few pieces of PC kit over the past few months. Time for some short reviews.

Motherboard: MSI X470 Pro Gaming Carbon

This is a really, really nice motherboard. I don't even know where to start with the features, but the UEFI is jam-packed full of goodies. My favourite being the ability to set a fan curve directly in hardware. Really nice, given that Speedfan can't read my motherboard.
Also, being able to push my Ryzen 5 1600 to 3.9GHz is great, given that the board I upgraded from (some ASRock rubbish) could barely keep a 3.7GHz clock stable.

If you want a Ryzen rig but don't want to drop all of the money on a ROG Crosshair, then I recommend it.



Creative Soundblaster ZXR

Nice. Really nice. Quality gold plated bits and bobs, a daughter board, quarter-inch and RCA connectors on the back. Breakout box with built-in beamforming microphone to sit on your desk. Very nice indeed.
What's that? You want front panel audio? LOL nope. You want it to autodetect when you've plugged in headphones? LOL nope. You gotta flick a switch in software for that!
So. Brilliant hardware let down by rubbish drivers. Typical Creative.




Case: ThermalTake Level 20 GT.

This case is not fit to wear the Level xx name.

It's pretty-ish, but nowhere near as striking as the original.

side-by side pics:



Yeah OK, it looks a lot cleaner, and is vastly more customisable, but it's kinda bland.

It claims to fit six 3.5" hard drives, but in order to do so you have to do some serious gymnastics.
The first problem is that sure, it's nice that the drive cages are moveable, but this makes it impossible to use a right-angle SATA connector on those drives. Once you've filled up the four drive bays, you have to use mounting plates to put the rest of your drives on the back of the motherboard. This is a fucking nightmare, since you still can't use right-angle data connectors, and now you can't really use a right-angle power cable either (you have to jam them in there at an alarming angle). Oh, and they're nowhere near each other either, so you'll either have to run cable extenders from point ro point behind there, or additional cables from your PSU.

Honestly, I'd rather have syphillis than work on this case again. Not recommended if you have more than a couple of drives.