How do you get to the top?
Very carefully!
PC Build Specs
August 2019 build:
Intel Core i9 9th Gen - Core i9-9900KF Coffee Lake 8-Core, 16-Thread, 3.6 GHz
ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 2080 Overclocked 8G GDDR6
MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Plus LGA1151
Fractal Design Define R6 USB-C Black Brushed Aluminum/Steel ATX Silent Modular Mid Tower
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz - upgrade (TEAMGROUP Elite DDR4 32GB Kit (2 x 16GB) 3200MHz)
CORSAIR HXi Series, HX750i, 750 Watt
Oversized case, cooler and power supply mean that my power supply fans never spin up even during intense gaming. This means my PC is quieter than my power strip even when the GPU is at 100% usage!!
Results @ 1440p:
165 fps Fortnite - custom settings
50 fps Cyberpunk2077 High * Now medium setting
80 fps Cyberpunk2077 Low
Hint: Polly = PC -> Wilson soccer ball = AAA titles
*2024 update. Cyberpunk 2077 has added two more modes, ultra and overdrive! So, what was once high setting is now medium. Ultra and overdrive shred my card. I'm not going to mention FPS. Do you disagree with my analogy above now? Remember, Polly isnt a very big dog!
PCs are all about GPUs!
Not true! But kinda...
What are all those #'s
You're talking about the RTX2080OC? RTX is ray tracing and helps cast realistic shadows. It's only marginally important to most gamers as the 1080Ti is pretty much the standard of modern gaming. Let's break down the rest:
2080OC - (twenty-eighty oh-see)
X0Y0ZZ
X: Chip generation. In my case 2. 2nd generation. When comparing same models, higher is always better
0: 0 (Just a placeholder in two locations)
Y: Model. The higher the better. Starts at 5 (laptops). In my case, 8. Is there a 9? No, not until the 3rd generation
ZZ: Modifier. Can be 1 or 2 of these terms: FE, OC, S, Ti
FE: Founder's Edition. Uses original chip on board assembled by Nvidia.
OC: Overclocked. Means 3rd party vendor has purchased chip from Nvidia, then added extra fans, increased board size, and increased boost clock. The increased board and fan sizes should allow for similar power profile with a higher boost clock.
S: Super. Higher binned i.e. selected for high performance - faster clocks and more cores - from standard process. Can either be FE or OC.
Ti: Titanium. This is a different process chip that has substantially higher performance. Can be as much a jump as increasing model # by 1.
Confused? Of course you are. Using a 3070 as an example, you could have a 3070FE, a 3070OC, a 3070SFE, a 3070SOC, a 3070TiFE, or a 3070TiOC...
I don't think there is a 3070TiS though!!**
** Ha! I was just browsing graphics cards again. I'll leave it up to you to wonder why... I did confirm that there isn't a 3070 TiS, but sure enough, there is a 4070TiS!! At least we undertand the system, so I don't have to explain what it means...
2080OC specs
- Graphics Processor: TU104
- Cores (CUDA Cores): 2944
- Texture Mapping Units (TMUs): 184
- Raster Operation Units (ROPs): 64
- Memory Size: 8 GB
- Memory Type: GDDR6
- Memory Bus Width: 256-bit
- GPU Base Clock: 1515 MHz
- GPU Boost Clock: Up to 1710 MHz (Boosted to 1860 thanks to ASUS!) *this is the OC part
- Memory Clock: 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective)
- Maximum Power Draw: 215 W (this might be a little higher when running the boost clock at max)
CPUs aren't important?
They are. But for gaming or basic productivity, you don't need the best. Remember, gaming doesn't take more than 6 cores and doesn't need threads. Threads can help for productivity, but I've never personally used them as far as I know. My CPU was purchased in 2019 and I don't think I've ever even used much more than 25-40% of my capability.
My CPU has clearly been overkill so far, but it's nice to know that I could use this well into the future. Upgrading CPUs usually requires a motherboard swap so it's not completely trivial. Especially if you have my heat sink, which is huge.
Probably the best reason to change a CPU seems to be if it bottlenecks your GPU. Since my CPU is still so good, it could probably support any modern card except for the 4090 (best current card), which is nice...
9900-KF specs
9 - Generation
9 - Model (3,5,7,9) 3: laptops, 5: no threads, 7: threads, 9 threads + faster
K - Overclocked - higher binned for better performance
F - No integrated GPU
- Processor Name: Intel Core i9-9900K - Coffee Lake 14nm++
- Cores: 8
- Threads: 16
- Base Clock Frequency: 3.60 GHz
- Max Turbo Boost Frequency: 5.00 GHz
Is your PC a harbinger for Nvidia's current dominance?
Maybe...
Harbinger - a person or thing that announces or signals the approach of another.
Dominance? - you decide
I'm not so sure about harbinger, but there a few clues here. What's 14nm++? 14nm refers to minimum semiconductor feature size (gray area that is hard to define) and ++ is a generic tech term for incrementation, so would be considered an upgrade. As amazing as the 9900 has been, people were very surprised that it wasn't on a 10nm process. This was a clue that Intel was having trouble keeping up with Moore's Law on the process side. Instead, they had to make up for it with clever engineering (the ++ part)
The other clue is that I can use 100% of my GPU performance, while I haven't even used more than 40% CPU. Look at the # of cores. 2944 vs 8. It's not apples to apples, a CPU core is much more complex. But, it illustrates the concept. The GPU has lots of simple cores, while the CPU has a few complex ones.
The GPU is doing a simpler job, just displaying an image on a screen instead of doing complex calculations and memory movement. This is why it is massively parallelized. But, this turns out to the key factor in gaming. And, it turns out to the the key factor in LLMs and even in data centers. I don't know if this how it necessarily had to be, but my guess is that it's further proof Moore's Law is slowing. From what I've read, this is fundamentally due to heat dissipation is becoming an intractable problem. Everything that deals with heat, (stacking, cooling) requires tremendous complexity. Honestly, I've even read that heat transistors are in the future!! But, in the near term, it is getting harder and harder to deal with heat without more investment return. Doesn't mean that it will stop, but video ganers aren't going to foot the bill this time.
Portable Solution
Samsung Chromebook Plus v1 (2015 model)
Not impressed with my 2&1 compared to my quiet beast of a PC? You've probably never tried ChromeOS then. I run Debian 12 natively through Penguin to run my full stack!
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