Question Does PCIe 4 matter much over PCIe 3 ? Should I get Ryzen for PCIe 4?

[Pumice]

I am torn between the Ryzen 9 3900X and the Core i9-10900K. Both are within my budget of $500

The Ryzen has PCIe 4 while the Intel only PCIe3. I was leaning towards the Intel but am now wondering if I should go AMD for the PCIe 4 ?

I am building a new computer from the ground up, so if I go Ryzen I will have to get an X570 mobo. Is PCIe 4 only available on the AMD graphics cards?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

For now yea. But next gen cards will be pcie4.

Historically this hasn’t made much of a difference, like 2% to 5%.
I look at pcie4 as future proofing. May not need it now but certainly nice to have.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So you think this is a good card for someone to get now?

Do you think people would enjoy playing Red Dead Redemption 2 with this GPU?

I was pointing out the size of the INSTALLED BASE. If someone releases a game that won't play on 95% of the INSTALLED BASE of gaming PCs, be my guest, but they will be first to go bankrupt, after no-one can play their game upon release.

Edit: And to answer your questions, NO, I don't think that a GTX 1050 ti 4GB card is a good card to get TODAY, for a real ENTHUSIAST-level gaming PC. But not everybody has gear of that level. Some are a lot more mundane. My good buddy, whom I built him a $400 gaming PC like 3 years ago, was made out of a refurbished Sandy Bridge quad-core Dell MT, and has a GTX 1050 2GB installed, which he claims the fans are now acting up on. So I was going to get him a GTX 1650 4GB GDDR6 to replace it. Is that card enough to actually "Enjoy" RDR II? I don't know. It depends on the person, I guess. He mostly plays older Blizzard games, and Fortnite, and Minecraft.

(I did also offer him recently to throw together a Ryzen R5 3600 CPU, 32GB of GSkill DDR4-3200, the GTX 1650 D6, a 256GB NVMe, 2TB HDD, case, 80Plus Gold PSU, for somewhere between $800 and $1000. I told him $25/wk, get the whole thing paid off in like 8 months.)

I doubt I could, but that has absolutely nothing to do with anything I have said in this thread.

Sure it does, if you claim that 95% of gaming PCs will have PCI-E 4.0 NVMe SSDs, then that means that the INSTALLED BASE in 2024, needs to start building TODAY, and if there are NO pre-built PCs with NVMe PCI-E 4.0 SSDs in them being sold, how can you build that sizable of an INSTALLED BASE by 2024?

Surely, you realize, that the few of us, on a forum like this, that build our own PCs, and use state-of-the-art stuff like PCI-E 4.0 CPUs, mobos, and NVMe SSDs (and GPUs), are really, the cream of the crop of builders, and entirely outside of the mainstream INSTALLED BASE.

Sure, your average AT'er might have a PCI-E 4.0 NVMe SSD by 2024, but ... even 95% of AT'ers, are like 1% or less of the INSTALLED BASE of gaming PCs worldwide.

 

[Pumice]

Having just heard/read about the XT refresh , I am leaning towards the Ryzen 9 3900XT, which looks to be about the same price as the Core i9-10900K

Does the X570 mobos support the new AMD CPU reputed to be coming out in the Fall? I am thinking if I go AMD then I have the option of replacing the 3900XT with the Zen 3 CPU when it comes out, without getting a new mobo.

Intel's new chip will use a totally different socket right? So if I go Core I9-10900K I will have to replace the mobo when Intel's new CPU comes out?

Do any AMD graphics cards support ray tracing? Do I need ray tracing for current and upcoming games?

 

[Tabalan]

So you think this is a good card for someone to get now?

Do you think people would enjoy playing Red Dead Redemption 2 with this GPU?



I doubt I could, but that has absolutely nothing to do with anything I have said in this thread.

Doesn't matter if 1050Ti is good card. That's the most popular one, so if developer wants to increase his potential customer base, he'll have to make his game run on this card.

I can assure you than people are enjoying RDR2 on 1050Ti. GTX 1060 does ~28 fps in FHD Ultra setting. Lower it to medium/high and voila, 60fps on 1050Ti. Here you have test:

Red Dead Redemption 2 Benchmark Test & Performance Analysis

Red Dead Redemption 2 is the best-looking game ever released. You're getting a huge graphics upgrade over the console version. As expected, impressive visuals come with high hardware requirements. We tested the game on 23 graphics cards, at three resolutions, and took a closer look at DirectX 12...

www.techpowerup.com

Let's not forget that RDR2 on release was pretty unstable/buggy, so performance might have improved over time.

Resident Evil 3:

Resident Evil 3 Benchmark Test & Performance Analysis - 27 Graphics Cards Compared

Resident Evil 3 is Capcom's upcoming third-person survival horror video game featuring vastly improved graphics. Jill Valentine has received a long overdue upgrade and is now looking hotter than even Lara Croft. We compare both supported APIs, DirectX 11 and DirectX 12, on all recent graphics...

www.techpowerup.com

Doom Eternal:

DOOM Eternal Benchmark Test & Performance Analysis - 26 Graphics Cards Compared

DOOM Eternal is the long-awaited sequel to the epic DOOM series. There's even more carnage, and gameplay is super fast-paced. Built upon the id Tech 7 engine, visuals are excellent, and graphics performance is outstanding. We tested the game on all modern graphics cards at Full HD, 1440p and 4K...

www.techpowerup.com

In 3 years RX470/480/570/580 might be lowest common denominator for games.

 

[Spjut]

I'm hesitant in general to recommend buying a whole new gaming PC today because we don't really know how the next-gen consoles will affect things.

Most games will probably be released for the PS4 and One for the next two years, but I wouldn't be surprised if games four years from now require a fully DX12 Ultimate compatible card or higher, as well as 8C/16T CPU and an SSD. Both the Series X and PS5 will use that and PC users will simply be told to keep up.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I was pointing out the size of the INSTALLED BASE. If someone releases a game that won't play on 95% of the INSTALLED BASE of gaming PCs, be my guest, but they will be first to go bankrupt, after no-one can play their game upon release.


Sure it does, if you claim that 95% of gaming PCs will have PCI-E 4.0 NVMe SSDs, then that means that the INSTALLED BASE in 2024, needs to start building TODAY, and if there are NO pre-built PCs with NVMe PCI-E 4.0 SSDs in them being sold, how can you build that sizable of an INSTALLED BASE by 2024?

Surely, you realize, that the few of us, on a forum like this, that build our own PCs, and use state-of-the-art stuff like PCI-E 4.0 CPUs, mobos, and NVMe SSDs (and GPUs), are really, the cream of the crop of builders, and entirely outside of the mainstream INSTALLED BASE.

Sure, your average AT'er might have a PCI-E 4.0 NVMe SSD by 2024, but ... even 95% of AT'ers, are like 1% or less of the INSTALLED BASE of gaming PCs worldwide.

I’m with @VirtualLarry on this. As of today or the recent past does ANY game state it requires an ssd or even a sata 100 drive? As far as I know that requirement simply doesn’t exist and nearly every game will run on a slow drive with longer load times.
Same with video cards, I am not aware of any spec requiring a certain bus speed for the card because there isn’t that much of a difference between performance & cards bus speed.
We are literally just beginning a period where old school i5s are the minimum base spec

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I'm hesitant in general to recommend buying a whole new gaming PC today because we don't really know how the next-gen consoles will affect things.

Most games will probably be released for the PS4 and One for the next two years, but I wouldn't be surprised if games four years from now require a fully DX12 Ultimate compatible card or higher, as well as 8C/16T CPU and an SSD. Both the Series X and PS5 will use that and PC users will simply be told to keep up.

We hear this every generation and it never matches exactly as the console’s chip. I’m going to predict 8 core machines will work fine provided they have a decent amount of memory.
Just a guess but I’ve seen predictions for a long time and they are never right.

 

[Pumice]

With an eye towards future / upcoming CPU and GPU upgrade potential, better to go AMD/X570 or Z490 / Core I9-10900k ?

I am planning to get the Samsung NVMe M.2 970 evo plus 1tb as my only storage device. The website specs says PCIe Gen 3 x4 ? What does the "x4" mean?

 

[MrTeal]

Do you really think that by 2024, 95% of the gaming PC market will lack PCIe 4.0 SSD's?

Always hard to say, but NVMe has been available for what, almost 6 years now? What percentage of gaming PCs sold even today ship with NMVe SSDs in them? Considering we don't know when Intel will even have a PCIe 4.0 capable mainstream solution I wouldn't be surprised if the installed base at the start of 2024 was single digits.

 

[Arkaign]

With an eye towards future / upcoming CPU and GPU upgrade potential, better to go AMD/X570 or Z490 / Core I9-10900k ?

I am planning to get the Samsung NVMe M.2 970 evo plus 1tb as my only storage device. The website specs says PCIe Gen 3 x4 ? What does the "x4" mean?

4 PCIe lanes.

Neither one will necessarily be better for long term potential as a blanket statement.

The 10900K offers vanishingly little over the 10700k even for gaming, the only thing where Intel shines in the high end sphere (when combined with HIGH end GPU and Gsync/Freesync high refresh displays).

The Zen2 system will support Zen3 CPUs, but there's no guarantee what that will actually entail, and both of these platforms will be stuck with DDR4.

DDR5 is coming, all new sockets and mobos for everything next year, along with PCIe 5.0, so it's almost a fool's errand trying to future proof anything right now.

It really does feel like the late DDR2 era to me again, Phenom II and Core 2 Quad Penryns all about to get wrecked by the shift to DDR3 and genuine leaps forward.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It really does feel like the late DDR2 era to me again, Phenom II and Core 2 Quad Penryns all about to get wrecked by the shift to DDR3 and genuine leaps forward.

I hope that you're right in your "feeling". We certainly could use some "Genuine leaps forward".

 

[CHADBOGA]

I was pointing out the size of the INSTALLED BASE. If someone releases a game that won't play on 95% of the INSTALLED BASE of gaming PCs, be my guest, but they will be first to go bankrupt, after no-one can play their game upon release.

How much did the makers of Crysis suffer?

Sure it does, if you claim that 95% of gaming PCs will have PCI-E 4.0 NVMe SSDs, then that means that the INSTALLED BASE in 2024, needs to start building TODAY, and if there are NO pre-built PCs with NVMe PCI-E 4.0 SSDs in them being sold, how can you build that sizable of an INSTALLED BASE by 2024?

I never claimed that 95% of gaming PC's will have PCI-E 4.0 NVMe SSDs in the installed base by 2024. I disputed that 95% of PC's will NOT have PCI-E 4.0 NVMe SSDs in the installed base by 2024.

Surely, you realize, that the few of us, on a forum like this, that build our own PCs, and use state-of-the-art stuff like PCI-E 4.0 CPUs, mobos, and NVMe SSDs (and GPUs), are really, the cream of the crop of builders, and entirely outside of the mainstream INSTALLED BASE.

Sure, your average AT'er might have a PCI-E 4.0 NVMe SSD by 2024, but ... even 95% of AT'ers, are like 1% or less of the INSTALLED BASE of gaming PCs worldwide.

I don't think you are grasping how far away 2024 is and how fast technology moves AND that I never said the installed base of PCI-E 4.0 NVMe SSD's will be at 95%.

I also dispute the notion that all the big blockbuster games aim to give a good experience on 95% of gamer's PC's.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Crap, I’m tempted to install my old pci 66(?) 20GB mechanical drive and test out some current games. I’d bet the only noticeable difference will be longer load times.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I don't think you are grasping how far away 2024 is and how fast technology moves AND that I never said the installed base of PCI-E 4.0 NVMe SSD's will be at 95%.

I also dispute the notion that all the big blockbuster games aim to give a good experience on 95% of gamer's PC's.

Then I mis-read you, and I'm sorry. But you were saying that over 5% of the installed base of gaming PCs, by 2024, would have PCI-E 4.0 NVMe SSDs, is that not essentially your argument?

And if a "big blockbuster gamer" doesn't aim to give a "good experience" to 95% of gamer's PCs (*), then they're in the wrong business, quite frankly.

That's the essence, of PC gaming, for the most part, that you can tweak GPU settings and other game settings, to tailor the experience, to the gamer's tastes, desires, and budgets. Contrast to console gaming, which is basically, the visual presentation is take-it-or-leave-it.

(*) That meet the "minimum requirements", more or less. I know anyone still gaming on a Pentium IV is probably not going to have the greatest experience.

 

[Tabalan]

Having just heard/read about the XT refresh , I am leaning towards the Ryzen 9 3900XT, which looks to be about the same price as the Core i9-10900K

Does the X570 mobos support the new AMD CPU reputed to be coming out in the Fall? I am thinking if I go AMD then I have the option of replacing the 3900XT with the Zen 3 CPU when it comes out, without getting a new mobo.

Intel's new chip will use a totally different socket right? So if I go Core I9-10900K I will have to replace the mobo when Intel's new CPU comes out?

Do any AMD graphics cards support ray tracing? Do I need ray tracing for current and upcoming games?

Both Intel Z490 and AMD X570 support PCIe 4.0, but with Intel you will have to wait for Rocket Lake to utilize this feature. Rocket Lake will fit same motherboards.
Tbh, if you're focusing on gaming and Solidworks (both not very heavy on multi threading), while Photoshop is lower priority (at least you don't render very complex projects every day), I'd go with Intel i7 10700 or AMD R7 3700X.

 

[Schmide]

With an eye towards future / upcoming CPU and GPU upgrade potential, better to go AMD/X570 or Z490 / Core I9-10900k ?

I am planning to get the Samsung NVMe M.2 970 evo plus 1tb as my only storage device. The website specs says PCIe Gen 3 x4 ? What does the "x4" mean?

If you do go with a ryzen pcie gen4 check out the Inland brand. (sold on amazon and microcenter) For about the same price you get a SSD that is marginally faster than the 970 almost fully saturating the gen 4x4. (esp if you get the 2gb)

In the end you prob won't notice any of this till later if at all but it's good piece of mind.

 

[Schmide]

4 PCIe lanes.

Neither one will necessarily be better for long term potential as a blanket statement.

The 10900K offers vanishingly little over the 10700k even for gaming, the only thing where Intel shines in the high end sphere (when combined with HIGH end GPU and Gsync/Freesync high refresh displays).

The Zen2 system will support Zen3 CPUs, but there's no guarantee what that will actually entail, and both of these platforms will be stuck with DDR4.

DDR5 is coming, all new sockets and mobos for everything next year, along with PCIe 5.0, so it's almost a fool's errand trying to future proof anything right now.

It really does feel like the late DDR2 era to me again, Phenom II and Core 2 Quad Penryns all about to get wrecked by the shift to DDR3 and genuine leaps forward.

Wow the FUD. Lets hype intel's new socket at the cost of good information. Shame.

 

[LightningZ71]

Just my 2c, and its based on some of what I've been reading about the PS5 and the XbX...

The big deal for the newer game systems is the much improved texture qualities and the ray tracing. However, the game systems are still going to have a relatively cramped RAM living space. With 16GB of RAM to share between the system and the GPU, and knowing that high quality textures can keep 8GB VRAM video cards quite busy, that's not a lot of space to store textures when the gpu isn't using them. To get around that restriction, they implemented a compression/decompression engine in the silicon, allowing the data to come from the SSD in a compressed format, significantly increasing the usable data transfer rates of the SSD and allowing it to load textures in real time during the game;s normal operation. This is supposed to eliminate constant stutters when new textures get loaded as you move around an open world.

On a PC, you don't have to live in that restricted space. Most gaming PCs that I'm seeing these days have at least 16GB of RAM (2 8GB sticks) and many are starting to show up with 32GB (2 x 16). In addition, while the bulk of add in dGPUs have only 4GB of VRAM at present, more modern gaming PCs are coming with 6GB and 8GB (1660/5600 on up). That's a pool of 22-24GB (or 40GB in case of 32GB of system ram) of space available (with maybe only 2GB taken up by the OS) to work with on keeping textures ready to go for new scenes. With all of that room available, there isn't anywhere as much demand on the SSD to supply the massive amount of data constantly that the game systems will require.

If I was to build a system specifically for gaming, today, and I wanted to keep it within some sort of reasonable budget while also having it deliver some kind of comparable gaming experience to the new consoles, I'd likely do something like the following:

3700X CPU
X570 motherboard
2 X 8GB DDR4-3600 CL14 or better
Nvidia RTX 2060 Super (only because I want at least some level of ray tracing in hardware available and 8GB of VRAM)
2 X 512 GB M.2 NVME SSDs in RAID 0 + one 8TB HDD (backup of mirror plus data storage)
adequate cooling and PSU.

All of that is over $1000 easily, and doesn't even meet the GPU throughput of either console. However, it'll easily be able to keep up with the texture passing needs of any game proposed at this point. That system is likely overkill for most of the games that will be released in the first year or so however.

 

[Schmide]

Just my 2c, and its based on some of what I've been reading about the PS5 and the XbX...

The big deal for the newer game systems is the much improved texture qualities and the ray tracing. However, the game systems are still going to have a relatively cramped RAM living space. With 16GB of RAM to share between the system and the GPU, and knowing that high quality textures can keep 8GB VRAM video cards quite busy, that's not a lot of space to store textures when the gpu isn't using them. To get around that restriction, they implemented a compression/decompression engine in the silicon, allowing the data to come from the SSD in a compressed format, significantly increasing the usable data transfer rates of the SSD and allowing it to load textures in real time during the game;s normal operation. This is supposed to eliminate constant stutters when new textures get loaded as you move around an open world.

But I like elevator rides. This seems to be where the next line will be drawn. Seamless loading. Consoles because of their install base will often drive the development process. Sweeney's talk and the Sebastian apology ironically moved the knowledge base on this. (not implying that you didn't know this before).

One irony I see in all this. Previously cheaper SSDs relied on controller compression to make up for cheaper nand that truly didn't have the bandwidth to fill the interface. With Sony's reveal of their new custom controller I wonder if any of that will ever make it to the PC space?

If you don't get texture compression in the controller like Sony's you can only equal it with a higher performing SSD and some compute power.

On a PC, you don't have to live in that restricted space. Most gaming PCs that I'm seeing these days have at least 16GB of RAM (2 8GB sticks) and many are starting to show up with 32GB (2 x 16). In addition, while the bulk of add in dGPUs have only 4GB of VRAM at present, more modern gaming PCs are coming with 6GB and 8GB (1660/5600 on up). That's a pool of 22-24GB (or 40GB in case of 32GB of system ram) of space available (with maybe only 2GB taken up by the OS) to work with on keeping textures ready to go for new scenes. With all of that room available, there isn't anywhere as much demand on the SSD to supply the massive amount of data constantly that the game systems will require.

If I was to build a system specifically for gaming, today, and I wanted to keep it within some sort of reasonable budget while also having it deliver some kind of comparable gaming experience to the new consoles, I'd likely do something like the following:

3700X CPU
X570 motherboard
2 X 8GB DDR4-3600 CL14 or better
Nvidia RTX 2060 Super (only because I want at least some level of ray tracing in hardware available and 8GB of VRAM)
2 X 512 GB M.2 NVME SSDs in RAID 0 + one 8TB HDD (backup of mirror plus data storage)
adequate cooling and PSU.

All of that is over $1000 easily, and doesn't even meet the GPU throughput of either console. However, it'll easily be able to keep up with the texture passing needs of any game proposed at this point. That system is likely overkill for most of the games that will be released in the first year or so however.

(I really like this post)

I recently built a system (3900x) and I avoided raided SSDs. I went for a really fast main SSD (inland 1gb 4x4) will prob add a less expensive 2gb nvme as a game/scratch drive. I did enable raid for the nvme because I always do. (IMO raid is better)

I do raid my HDs this is where I think raid really shines.

 

[IntelUser2000]

When the next generation of GPU's and SSD's come out it might matter a lot more than it does currently.

Maybe in 5-10 years, and with radical technologies as Optane DIMMs, ReRAMs, MRAM, etc.

Dedicated gaming systems don't have to worry about the things PC does. PCs are general purpose, and the hardware, file system, and development is done minding all that.

How much did the makers of Crysis suffer?

Crytek engine was also licensed to tons of developers. In various qualities too. Some of them are set so low in graphics quality you can't really recognize they are based on it.

 

[DrMrLordX]

With an eye towards future / upcoming CPU and GPU upgrade potential, better to go AMD/X570 or Z490 / Core I9-10900k ?

I am planning to get the Samsung NVMe M.2 970 evo plus 1tb as my only storage device. The website specs says PCIe Gen 3 x4 ? What does the "x4" mean?

Z490 looks like a bit of a dead-end. Rocket Lake-S = possible meh. It's another 14nm CPU for crying out loud. At least x570 has Vermeer headed its way. You will be waiting awhile if you want the "next" generation beyond that. Alder Lake-S and Zen4 are still far enough out that we can't see clearly when they'll be available.

 

[Tabalan]

If I was to build a system specifically for gaming, today, and I wanted to keep it within some sort of reasonable budget while also having it deliver some kind of comparable gaming experience to the new consoles, I'd likely do something like the following:

3700X CPU
X570 motherboard
2 X 8GB DDR4-3600 CL14 or better
Nvidia RTX 2060 Super (only because I want at least some level of ray tracing in hardware available and 8GB of VRAM)
2 X 512 GB M.2 NVME SSDs in RAID 0 + one 8TB HDD (backup of mirror plus data storage)
adequate cooling and PSU.

All of that is over $1000 easily, and doesn't even meet the GPU throughput of either console. However, it'll easily be able to keep up with the texture passing needs of any game proposed at this point. That system is likely overkill for most of the games that will be released in the first year or so however.

Pretty sure that Ryzen 3600 + B450/B550 mobo + RTX2070 Super would outperform your spec in games.
Fast NVMe drive doesn't do much for games:

SATA vs. NVMe: Should You Upgrade Your SSD System Drive?

Is your once roomy boot SSD getting full? Now that there are lots of options for NVMe models, it's worth considering whether you should snag one for your upgrade.

www.extremetech.com

 

[Arkaign]

Wow the FUD. Lets hype intel's new socket at the cost of good information. Shame.

Huh? No, I'm not hyping either AM4 or whatever stupid stopgap s1200 ends up being.

It's just that substantial leaps are coming in the form of DDR5 and PCIe 5, both of which will feature in AMD and Intel's 2021 era plans. Thus, 'future-proofing' with current tech is a fool's errand. Build now for what you want to do now, which is either Intel (high refresh gaming + high end GPU) or AMD (literally everything else, including sub-144hz gaming or any combo of GPU less than a 2080 Super).

Reread my post and take your rage glasses off, and you'll see there's nothing 'hyping' about any current stuff up to and including Intel 10th gen.

It's simply too late in the current cycles for future proofing to be the remotest idea of feasible. The last times that was even possible would arguably be X370 from a decent MFG, or Sandy Bridge + Z series Mobo, both of which would offer 4ish years of solid relevance at least on or near the top performance with good surrounding components and optimization.

In fact, I think especially the 10900k is an almost idiotic SKU, as the only thing it's good at (high end gaming) is just as well if not better served by a OC/tune 10600k or 10700k as seen by Gamers Nexus. Heavy mulitthreaded work tasks it is still inferior to 3900X and *far* weaker than 3950X, thus it's a useless offering.

 

[IntelUser2000]

@Schmide RAID is iffy for SSDs because the overhead impacts latency somewhat.

You can see with Optane with its super low latency, RAID 0 can nearly double it. 10us isn't a big deal to NVMe SSDs with 80us latency but its still a loss.

 

[Arkaign]

I hope that you're right in your "feeling". We certainly could use some "Genuine leaps forward".

DDR5-8400 and USB 4.0 🔥🔥 (and almost certainly PCIe 5.0) for Zen4

AMD's Zen 4 Based 5nm Ryzen 5000 Desktop CPUs Allegedly Feature DDR5 Memory And USB 4.0 Support On AM5 Platform In 2022

AMD's next-generation Zen 4 based 5nm Ryzen 5000 desktop CPUs are rumored to get DDR5 & USB 4 support on the AM5 platform in 2022.

wccftech.com

Given recent history, it wouldn't surprise me to see AMD extend their lead with Zen3+ and Zen4. In fact I hope they retool Zen3 to release AM5 early so we could plan some longer term builds via Zen3+ revision perhaps summer/fall 2021.