End of Year PC Build

           

An old GPU will work fine in a newer system as long as its the same interface type bus. Also yes you got it correct about backwards compatibility. What Energizer Bunny 211 refers to only happens when they shift GPU connection interface: AGP to PCIe for instance. And new OSs come along and the GPU maker doesn't make drivers for the older hardware or discontinue support as Nvidia did with the old GPUs from the AGP days I believe back in 2021.

As to the VRAM issue...
Correct me if I am wrong but the 1080 TI has a 352 bit bus interface. 
The 4080 is the first card in the 4000 series to be 256 bus -so still an undercut if you ask me. 
The price on all though... ouch. If you need that massive amount of VRAM I am sorry to say its probably better to go AMD

The 4070ti has 12GB where its AMD GPU counterpart has 20GB: 7900XT and its got a 384 bit bus. 
Sure you may lack RT and DLSS but at least you would have the VRAM to cover what your doing.
Another benefit of the AMD GPUs -they still use the traditional connector so you will not have to worry about the power issue.
The irony is the 7900XT is going about the same as a 4070ti now.
Well this 7900XT on Amazon is at $720 -not sure the exchange rate over there. 

A possibility...  
I wonder...
Did the Tech guy clone Kappa's hard drive and then put it on to the M.2 but made it a GPT partition when 10-1 the old drive was a MBR partition. 
That would explain ALOT. 

How long? Two to four hours? I have cloned traditional hard drives in that time. OS ones though usually do take longer that I will attest. Not necessarily if its cloned with EaseUS. In which you can clone an OS MBR drive to another drive in GPT mode. Drives of the same size are preferred since it uncomplicates the process.


For when you enact it the process of setting things up to transfer from the MBR drive it then boots to DOS and copies everything -including system files onto the GPT drive. The process must be exact though. IF drives are different sizes -especially if cloning an OS drive the locations and partitions MUST match in my experience. The math gets tedious trying to match but if done correctly you notice no change or if you fail errors are prevalent.

I wonder if this is what may have been done and it could have borked. Again this is only if the cloning process was used -still an unconventional method of doing this and I have only done this going from 1TB to a 2TB standard drives and never the reverse. Still a good thought on the MRB to GPT thing. 

EDIT: Syntax fixed. 

I actually just cloned a 512GB SSD to a slightly smaller 500GB SSD for one of my spare laptops.

I used EaseUS and it did it without any issues. So as long as your target drive is large enough to fit everything, it will work.

Did that include the OS? 

I thought it was very clear that Kappa Neko accidentally told them to go ahead and format the SATA SSD where the old OS and all the games were.

They didn't the clone it because they thought only the old OS was on the drive and it wasn't needed. So they wiped it along with the games that were on the other partition.

I loved Anthem, like really. We played the hell out of it when it came, but I basically stopped when the 2.0 did not drop.
I dont have it installed right now but I am thinking of doing some runs in that world again. Really liked flying around with other players

For people who don't care about ray tracing AMD is a no-brainer right now. BUT I do and I think DLSS3 is too good to ignore on the lower end cards. Probably adds a couple if years to the longevity of those cards.

Here are the cards listed by current price (sale) in Germany and their rasterization performance relative to the 4090, and RT performance:

RTX 4070 Ti 850€ (780€) 66% (RT 65%)
RX 7900 XT 900€ (809€) 74% (RT 58%)
RX 7900XTX 950€ (900€) 85% (RT 65%)
RTX 4080 1170€ (1100€) 81% (RT 80%)
RTX 4090 1650€ (1550€) 100% (RT 100%)

The 7900XT is the worst deal right now because for just 100 bucks more you get the much more powerful XTX. at least one XTX deal a week with dropping prices because apparently nobody is buying this expensive model while there are basically no deals for the XT. Don't know why.

On paper this looks very favorable for AMD if you ignore what DLSS3 can do. I checked benchmarks for Cyberpunk overdrive, and yes it's an ridiculous exception but hear me out: on the XTX, AMD's most powerful card (!) it's a slideshow of 7 fps native and 15 with FSR2!!! That's a complete joke. You can get around 60fps with a 4070 with DLSS3!!! That's so shocking I don't even know what to say. Four times the performance for a card almost half the price. DLSS3 is stupid powerful for weaker cards. What good is more vRAM if I can't run the games as smoothly and pretty? Which sadly is what I do care about. Modding/pretty graphics is why I even play on PC and not console.

AMD is really baiting hard with the Starfield bundle now, it looks like fate is pushing me to go AMD but it feels more like the devil tempting me to screw myself over, lol.

On paper the 4070 Ti and 7900 XTX have the same RT performance but in reality with DLSS3 it's not even close. A 4080 is 200€ more expensive but has decent RT and then also DLSS. Imo that's worth the extra money even at just 16GB. I watched a German video weeks ago how AMD vRAM is less efficient and 20GB of AMD is like 18 or 16 for Nvidia, I don't remember exactly and can't seem to find the video anymore. So it's also not as straight forward as it looks. I dislike Nvidia's insulting prices but AMD is also charging too much for all the downsides their cards have. They are both greedy and living off each other rather than fostering competition that should result in better prices. No, they are fixing the whole market together! Inflated prices on ALL current cards so people buy their old stock. And it's working like a charm.

So for me it's still the question which overpriced Nvidia card I should buy. 4070 now and hope for a 5070 with 16 or 20GB in two years? Or 4080/4090 hoping to keep it for 5-6 years. Hmmmm.

In the US, Nvidia's 40-series GPUs are still very much overpriced while we're seeing major price cuts on the 7900 XT and 7900 XTX.

We can now buy a brand new 7900 XTX for only $800 USD versus the RTX 4080 for $300 more. It's a shame that the 7900 XTX failed to live up to AMD's expectations, but at least you can now get a good deal out of it.

I suspect AMD thought they could get close to RTX 4090's performance through driver optimization before the official release, but clearly they couldn't. They thought they had a 4090 competitor but the actual performance ended up being closer to the 4080 instead. The chipset design GPU saves AMD more money, but it also makes their GPUs consume more power compared to Nvidia's monolithic GPUs.



A lot of people like to quote articles talking about RTX 4090's massive 600 watts power draw, but they would say otherwise if they all had actually used a 4090. Nvidia's 40-series GPUs are impressively efficient. With the framerate capped at 60 FPS, my 4090 can run GTA 4 using only 35 watts of power. That means it's technically running the game at idle. When I swapped out my 3090 for a 4090, it actually lowered my system's temperatures by a couple degrees. The 4090 uses about 100 watts less than the 3090 in Cyberpunk 2077. That's with max graphics settings and Psycho Ray-Tracing settings. DLSS 3.0's Frame Generation also completely removes all framerate drops that I used to get in busy market areas. I have most games locked at 140 FPS due to my 144hz monitor and G-Sync. In Cyberpunk, I went from 60-90 FPS to completely maxed out at 140 FPS without any framerate drops.

Ultimately, it's still not worth paying the premium for an Nvidia GPU over an AMD unless you really want to use ray-tracing and DLSS. Though if you also have money to burn, I definitely recommend an RTX 4080 or 4090 over a 7900 XTX.

With Nvidia unless there is a CEO change hope for more but expect less. Nividia are the kings of milking the cow dry and then still continuing.

If it were me I would probably do one of these scenarios:
1. I would get a 3090ti and overclock it to a 4080 and that way you still get more VRAM but shelling out 2 grand is overkill. 
2. Get a 4090 -its around $200 to $300 cheaper than a 3090 ti and then never go AMD or Nvidia again and hold out till Intel comes home to roost as GPU king. 
3. Get a 4070 TI and use it with things set down to 1080p and hold out till the 5000 series to do your RT. 
4. Chuck the whole PC thing and go console.
BONUS Option:
5. Become the CEO of Nvidia and set things right for us common folk.

I have nearly 500 games on my Steam account, but I only keep a couple installed on my PC.