General Discussions

[colesdav]

Zen 3 announcement due on on Octrober 8th 2020. What are your thoughts about it?
Will you be upgrading your existing processor and motherboard immediately after reviews or have you decided to wait for a while and see what user experience is with the new processors and motherboards?

[pokester]

I was really hoping that RDNA2 would be cheap but since they raised the price of the new CPUs I am thinking maybe they will keep the GPU prices high. I think that would be a huge mistake on the GPU side. Time will tell. I really do think that RDNA 2 will be a more satisfactory launch than Navi was but on the other side as we see the complaints daily in these forums the 2020 interface is a disaster. That alone along with the Audio issues the last driver prior to the current one fixed but this latest driver re-introduced really has me back on the fence of considering the AMD GPU. I guess the good news is that I have plenty of time to see how it all pans out before buying a new GPU. 

[pokester]

I won't replace any of my 3xxx series cpus. However if I am at a point next year I can swing a new motherboard I might consider replacing my office 7700k. More likely though I will be a buyer for Zen4 with DDR5 and PCIe 5. This doesn't mean I am not impressed with Zen3, because I am. My money would just be better spent on another better GPU in the near future. 

[pokester]

Shame we could not have been given a benchmark from Control with ray tracing enabled. 

[black_zion]

Going to have to see if third party reviews back up AMD's numbers and see if the 6900XT's performance really varies between even with the 3080 and 8% slower than the 3080, though if it is 8% slower then $650 is 8% less than $700...

[pokester]

I agree though that they can't price it that way and it would be a mistake. They don't have parity in features or the drivers. Even if they do day one have great drivers, not many at this point are going to give the benefit of the doubt. If they wan't to gain market share back and restore a lot of the faith lost in the past few years this product needs to perform better in every way than the price point it compares to on the green team. In this case that means to me it needs to be the same price as the upcoming 3070. 

[colesdav]

Give it at least 2 years before Control works on AMD GPU with Raytracing..

[pokester]

Sadly probably true. But if the game is written to the DX standard and I think it is and AMD is conforming to the standard it should work right now and if not, not take much to fix it. As we know what should be and reality are often very different things. If AMD has not worked behind the scenes to have the few ray tracing titles currently available ready for their launch, well, add that to the list of big mistakes.

[colesdav]

Back to the CPUs - No Coolers apart from 5600X which has a wraith steath - which is pretty useless:
AMD's high-end Ryzen 5000 CPUs don't come with coolers because they're 'optimised for enthusiasts' |... 

See what they have done?
Used the Ryzen 3*00XT excuse to get more profit.
https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/cpu-cooler-solution 

[hardcoregames_]

AGESA 1.1.0.0 should support every AM4 CPU AMD ever made onwards to Zen 3.  Given no new chipset etc, means I can sit pat with my R5 3600 for a while and see how pricing in the market evolves.

My Athlon 3000G is parked on my old B350M board where I test low end SSD drives with it. My old R5 2400G is parked on the X470 Gaming Plus. The old boards with the lower capacity 16MB bios chips are not as useful had they been provisioned with a larger 32MB device.

I have tools to swap a BIOS chip but is it really worth it?

[qwixt]

I will wait for 3rd party benchmarks and reviews, then at least 3-6 months before even considering it, if it seems like an upgrade. In actuality, with an 8700k CPU, and given that I watch netflix/browse/game on the PC, there is little reason for me to upgrade for another couple of years. This 8700k appears to have a lifespan equivalent to my previous longest lived PC with a i7-2600k. Interestingly, I built both have gigabyte motherboards.

I do look forward to getting a 10c/20t or more CPU in the future. Just for giggles. Which ever is top dog single thread CPU, combined with good 4 core performance, I will get. AMD still has a lot further to go before earning my trust back about the VII fiasco.

[ajlueke]

Sounds like NVidia has conceded to the bots and scalpers and punted 3000 FE sales to Best Buy.  Hope AMD can do better.

[hardcoregames_]

ajlueke wrote:

Sounds like NVidia has conceded to the bots and scalpers and punted 3000 FE sales to Best Buy.  Hope AMD can do better.

I heard some 20,000 or so units have been sent to Best Buy. Not sure how long they will last.