The computer and electronics super geek thread

[mikeszekely]

31 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Of course, right now we don't know how the 5070 performs, so we can't really sa* how much of an upgrade it is.

We know how nVidia claims it performs, but manufacturer claims in this industry range from "optimistic" to "bald-faced lies". And personally, nVidia leans a bit strongly towards the latter for my tastes. I personally believe their "5070 performs like a 4090" claim is "with the 4090 rendering every frame at 3840x2160 resolution while the 5070 upscales from 1920x1080 and does three frames of motion interpolation for every frame it renders"... or just "4090 DLSS off vs 5070 DLSS Performance" if you'd prefer to conceal the reality with marketing buzzwords.

Yes.

But we should be able to confidently say that it's some upgrade in raw performance without DLSS and Frame Gen over a 3070.  Because, even if it's native performance is only on par with a 4070, the 4070 was already on par with the 3080.

[davidwhangchoi]

30 minutes ago, mikeszekely said:

Yes.

But we should be able to confidently say that it's some upgrade in raw performance without DLSS and Frame Gen over a 3070.  Because, even if it's native performance is only on par with a 4070, the 4070 was already on par with the 3080.

i do think having a 5000 series card is an advantage with exclusive DLSS  benefits, the 5070 will be more close to a 4070 ti with the benefits of 5000 series frame gen.  the only issue i have with the 5070 is the limited 8GB ram, most likely going to have bottleneck with incoming games.  if your current gen card has more vram, i'd wait or consider the 5070 ti unless you want frame gen badly and don't care about 8gb's of vram.

 

I sold my desktop EVGA 3080 card at the peak of data mining for about 2,300 usd (EVGA 3080 was about 850 retail when i got it) and sold the rest of the desktop parts for 500 (edit: ryzen 5700x and some decent parts in 2021) Been waiting ever since to get a desktop but the prices were ridiculous for a while. Might jump in this generation depending on market availability and prices of the gpus.

 

Edited 10 hours ago by davidwhangchoi

[kajnrig]

I'm late catching up on all the CES happenings - been too busy playing Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown in my free time, it's pretty fantastic. It seems someone at Lenovo shared my thinking that the Z2 Go would be a good fit for an entry-level handheld. The Legion Go S previewed at CES seems to complete the "Steam Deck Pro" transition started by the Steam Deck OLED:

• adds VRR support to the high refresh rate screen,
• adds 2280 M.2 support,
• upgrades the SoC with a focus on the GPU (12 CUs vs 8 )

It gets rid of one trackpad and downsizes the other, but otherwise it's almost an exact hardware match for the Deck, including its use of SteamOS in lieu of Windows. And it's only $500, too. Or, well, "only." I wonder if it could have afforded to shave itself down another $50-100, to REALLY hit the value sweet spot. Even as is, it's a really decent package all around... provided it still hits the performance efficiencies of the Deck. I'm hopeful it does, or even improves on it. That's one of the only issues still plaguing the other handhelds out there; they can outpace the Steam Deck, yes, but they have to bump up the TDP from 5-15 to 15-25 to do so. If the Z2 Go can eke out a decent performance improvement at the same TDP, that would really be impressive.

All in all, AMD's CES showcase was a shitshow, they demonstrated such a lack of confidence... but their actual products all look great. Them being mum on the 9070/XT is endlessly frustrating, but the rumored performance claims that are all we have to fill their silence paint a cautiously optimistic picture. They relegated FSR4 to their exhibit hall booth demonstration, but it looks like it's a major step forward. Their Strix Halo is super impressive - in addition to the Phawx video above, LTT took a look at the same device and disclosed much more information than the Asus reps allowed Phawx to do - and I'm incredibly excited/anxious to see reviews of it (and in a form factor other than a... giant tablet, seriously am I missing something? in what context would THAT be the right device to put this thing in?). Regular Strix continues to look great and be great on the low-power end. And so on and so forth.

SteamOS is chugging along nicely and I can only hope it eventually becomes the de facto standard over Windows, at least for the PC gaming community.

I think the biggest issue I have with Nvidia's presentation was its heavy focus on AI frame generation... when frame generation already exists, AND multi-frame generation already exists, AND it doesn't require any bespoke Nvidia hardware to pull off, AND it already looks and plays great*. Like... they haven't done anything to fundamentally change the paradigm of frame generation, AI-implemented or not. Some of the more technically-minded comments I've seen have been heaping praise on their change from CNNs to transformer-based image reconstruction for DLSS, which... I don't get. Does anyone know any more about this and why it is or is not a Big Thing? All that aside, their cards look perfectly fine, exactly as class-leading as they ever were. They're just not particularly exciting.

  

22 minutes ago, davidwhangchoi said:

the only issue i have with the 5070 is the limited 8GB ram,

I thought it's going to have 12GB?

Edited 10 hours ago by kajnrig

[davidwhangchoi]

16 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

I thought it's going to have 12GB?

ah, apologies! i was looking at the 5070 laptops last night and got mixed up today. @mikeszekely, i guess 12gb is okay.   

[azrael]

3 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

 i guess 12gb is okay.   

It's debatable. It's better than 8GB but considering AMD released the RX 7800XT (which is the closest price point card), a card released back in 2023, with 16GB, it feels like Nvidia is still under-loading their mid-range and lower cards. Even Intel's new B580, a budget card with respectable performance, comes with 12GB. That's why a few of us here are eyeing the 5070Ti since it feels like the lowest option that doesn't feel like Nvidia is spitting in our face.

 

[davidwhangchoi]

57 minutes ago, azrael said:

It's debatable. It's better than 8GB but considering AMD released the RX 7800XT (which is the closest price point card), a card released back in 2023, with 16GB, it feels like Nvidia is still under-loading their mid-range and lower cards. Even Intel's new B580, a budget card with respectable performance, comes with 12GB. That's why a few of us here are eyeing the 5070Ti since it feels like the lowest option that doesn't feel like Nvidia is spitting in our face.

i agree. i'd be more comfortable with16gbs for current/next gen cards.

The mobile versions of each version are worse: the 5070 mobile carries only 8gb and 5070ti mobile carries 12gb. (apologies for the prior post, was looking up laptops for mike last night and got the specs for the desktop mixed up with the mobile)  the mobile hasn't really bumped up ram for this gen

My Legion 7 has a 3080 mobile card with 16GB and that's from 2021, 4 years ago. Hopefully, we'll see some reviews and benchmarks coming as soon as the embargo lifts.   

 

 

 

[JB0]

1 hour ago, azrael said:

That's why a few of us here are eyeing the 5070Ti since it feels like the lowest option that doesn't feel like Nvidia is spitting in our face.

Honestly, every GeForce for a few years has felt like nVidia spitting in my face. I've only had Radeons for a long time, and part of that is nVidia keeps finding new ways to be awful.

[Test_Pilot_2]

5 hours ago, azrael said:

It's debatable. It's better than 8GB but considering AMD released the RX 7800XT (which is the closest price point card), a card released back in 2023, with 16GB, it feels like Nvidia is still under-loading their mid-range and lower cards. Even Intel's new B580, a budget card with respectable performance, comes with 12GB. That's why a few of us here are eyeing the 5070Ti since it feels like the lowest option that doesn't feel like Nvidia is spitting in our face.

I've been trying to get better educated on the frame gen bit and I will say aside from micro artifacts and some shenanigans, frame generation is pretty amazing. However it's still sleight of hand software magic to me. There was a video posted about a year ago where a reviewer extracted all the frame gen frames and put the side by side actual frames in a spider man game and it makes a compelling argument for the AI generated frames.

I watched another video of someone streaming the new Indiana Jones game on a 16 gig card. About 10 minutes in frames tanked to 20 or less. The cause was the card running out of VRAM. No need to run around with hair on fire yet, because the reviewer failed to turn off the highest quality texture setting when transitioning from a lower resolution test to a higher one. However, it lends strength to 16 gigs just not being enough especially if you want the best textures and highest refresh rate.

In computer terms I'm a generational dinosaur although I can still build with the best today :P. My son's Christmas upgrade is just obnoxiously fast and at a budget. My other twin son's EGPU upgrade built off the remnants of his brother's old PC is spectacular, too. We scored an LG 34" 144hz monitor for 200 bucks (down from 500) at microcenter for him, too. One of the best PC deals in a while there. Anyways, his Ally X + rx6700 hand-me down has Space Marine 2 running maxed out on his new monitor.

I'm old man rambling... Which brings me back to my criticism of frame gen... Maybe I'm just sitting in my rocking chair on the porch griping about the "good old days," while not giving this new tech a fair shake.

I kinda wish we were back in the ATI 9700/9800 pro era. That was such a good time... When I saw AMD adopted a 9000-series number for what feels like a least breath GPU release something twisted a little inside :(.