welcome back to PC Builder I'm Jason this is our Q&A part two for December 2023 we're going to be talking about all the great GPU questions we didn't answer last time including where GPU prices are going Nvidia versus AMD dlss versus FSR and of course we'll talk about what's coming next for PC Building in 2024 remember if you get value out of this video give it a like it makes a huge difference to the channel and of course subscribe click that Bell icon that way you get notified when we release cool content hey with that let's jump into it before that this video is sponsored by vipd key say goodbye to crazy expensive Windows 10 licenses and that terrible activate Windows 10 Watermark right now use the links in the video description head over to vipd key and get a Windows 10 home or Pro OEM license for a great price pick your product license then use the PC Builder discount code pc25 for an additional 25% off go to the activation settings on your PC put in the Cod and boom you have a fully licensed Windows 10 for a crazy low price which can be upgraded for free to Windows 11 use the links in the video description below let's jump into those GPU questions remember last time we got so many good GPU questions we cut our Q&A in half the other Q&A that we already put on the channel I'll leave a link to it down in the video description and I'll link it at the end of the video you can just click right into it you don't need to watch that one first to watch this video but we talked about the GPU Market as a whole what about the RTX 4000 super series coming specs performance pricing and what impact do we expect on the market in this video I want to talk about AMD versus Nvidia versus Intel the feature sets dlss versus FSR versus xss all those crazy questions do they even matter or are we blowing them completely completely out of proportion let's start off with fantastic fantastic ask 7900 XTX or RTX 480 what's the difference in dlss and FSR okay let's set the 7900 XTX and 480 question aside for just a moment obviously we got the 480 super it's going to depend on the price pricing and the performance of that card though we don't expect that much of an uplift over the 480 because while like for instance the 470 super they're actually going to take a 4070 TI die and they're going to drop it down into the 4070 so there's going to be a bigger performance boost there and same with the RTX 480 die they're going to drop one of those dies down into the RTX 470 TI super what a crazy name for a GPU and they're going to give it 16 gigs of vram for the 4080 they're not going to drop a 4090 die down because they they can't even make enough 490 guys right now they're selling like hot kicks there's no reason for them to come up with a discounted version of it basically they're going to already do that for China to have the 490 Dragon version so they can sell that into China and avoid the US export requirements out there but they are going to do a slightly better bin version of the 4080 that's going to become the 4080 super we're expecting about H 9% 10% possibly better performance it's they're probably going to jack a lot more power into it going to soup it up a little bit and it's all going to depend on where the pricing is for my money I still like the 7900 XTX I still think that architecture is going to age better I also think that if you look at rdna 3 versus RTX 4000 series as you go up in resolution the 7000 series does better than the 4,000 Nvidia series that's actually the opposite we saw of the 3,000 Nvidia series versus the 6,000 series it was the other way around last generation that as you went up from 1080p to 1440p to 4K the Nvidia gpus just did better and the gap between them started to grow this is completely flipped on its head for RTX 4000 versus RX 7000 series gpus but let's answer the meat of the question here dlss versus FSR let's throw in xss which is Intel's upscaler as well first of all what are UPS scalers basically let's say you're playing a game at 4K your GPU is struggling to render enough frames so what this does is rather than render the frames at 4k on your GPU it renders at a lower resolution like 1440p for instance and then it uses a solution a software solution or a hardware solution to upscale that to 4K so that you can get a relatively similar frame rate at 4K that you would at 1440p not exactly but you get the basic idea and dlss uses actual Hardware on the GPU on the Nvidia GPU that's why you can only get used dlss with an Nvidia GPU meanwhile FSR xss are are basically open sof they're software Solutions so you can use those with any GPU even an Nvidia GPU there's different versions out there some have implemented FSR 2 fsr1 the FSR 2.2 that you get the idea so the implementation itself is a little bit Patchwork right now though I I will say it's getting better these Technologies largely worthless however at 1080p largely worthless at 1440p well marginally useful probably at 1440p their real value is at 4K and the real value is either where you got Ray tracing turned on and you're not quite getting enough fpn s to kind of make it over the hump and you need dlss or you FSR in order to kind of get you to something that feels more either playable or more playable kind of tips you into a higher refresh rate experience from like 60 FPS or or you're playing with a GPU say like at 4K that probably shouldn't be playing at 4K to begin with and in order to render it you should turn on dlss or FSR now there is some utility if you already have a GPU and you're gaming at 4K say you have like a 7900 XT yeah you can turn on FSR or if you have like a 4070 TI you can turn on and you're not running out of vram for for whatever reason you can turn on dlss and you can get more frames than you normally would if you look at the use case it pretty much chops out most gpus anything below a 7,800 XT really has no business turning that on most of the time although look in some titles it'll give you a small bump so why not take a free Small Bump of course but I see people all the time when they're looking for a GPU they're like oh I need an Nvidia GPU so I'm going to get the 30602 GB for $289 instead of the 6700 XT 12 GB for 10 bucks more and you ask yourself why why are you doing that say oh I have to have dlss you're like do you realize the 6700 XD is 50% more powerful than the 3060 that's where I think people just kind of lose their minds over this especially given the fact that they're probably going to end up paying a lot of games at 1080p with that 3060 whereas if you bought a 6700 XT instead you'd be playing most games at 4 14 40p at good frame rates so really if you look at the testing that gets done of dlss FSR xss it occurs at 4K because that's where these Technologies actually have some utility with gpus that struggle to run at 4K but what do you need to play at 4K you need a 4K gaming Monitor and you probably need a 4K High refresh rate monitor so you probably already spent $ 500ish dollars on your gaming monitor rather than like relatively High refresh rate 1440p mon you can get for $180 and you could have pumped that money into your GPU instead so it just there's a lot of things that are required in order to get value out of dlss out of FSR out of xss at kind of a the scale that I think would influence my Graphics uh card buying decision I'm not saying that there's no value ever I'm just saying when I'm looking to buy a GPU I'm looking for raw horsepower here because of the fact that the use cases on these are relatively narrow and that's what the their greatest benefit occurs in these narrow use cases so I would really really focus in on Raw horsepower on your GPU don't short Change yourself chasing a technology that's not really going to help you we continue to get a lot of questions about the best 1440p GPU raft G and we've got stash boy basically saying 7800 XT versus the 4070 or should they wait for the 470 super honestly I would say no matter what I would wait for the 4070 super just see what they're going to announce I mean it's only another week I don't think in fact the uh 7800 XT pricing had kind of peaked around $550 it was crazy $550 during the holiday period but now that it's after Christmas I'm filming this one um after Christmas the prices seem to be trending back down towards the MSRP so I think that's good and it always gives AMD an opportunity once Nvidia does their announcement to announce the next day that they're going to do price cuts on the 7800 XC so I would just stand Pat but let's talk about the performance of the three gpus although I do believe it's going to largely deter be determined by pricing again we talked in our last video about where does Nvidia want to go with the 4070 super I still think 12 versus 16 gigs is kind of a selling point it's not necessarily for now but maybe two years from now I could see 12 gigs starting to run out you can already see it running out when you have Ultra Ultra details set at a higher resolution and you turn on rate tracing and the 4070 struggles with some vrm in some some particular titles now I don't think that that makes the 4070 unusable for 1440p I mean just don't do rate tracing in those titles or or turn go from Ultra to high details instead and you won't run out of vram but I think it's a harbinger of where we're going in terms of vram usage I kind of feel like with the 8 gigabyte thing kind of blowing open the Dam's broken open at this point I think developers are going to see this as a green light to use more and more vram especially as we get we're going to get nextg consoles what 2026 and they're definitely going to have probably have quite a bit more uh vram than we have right now so I just don't don't expect 12 gigs to hold forever out there I still like 16 gigs on this even if the 470 super comes in a little bit faster that being said let's see where pricing comes in check out our our previous Q&A for more in depth on that but right now I would definitely call a timeout and wait and see all right Kirby Louise great question what's the future PC Building in 2024 he says as we close out 2023 what are my thoughts what are the major and minor changes in 2024 and Beyond what's going to be the next big Trend well as I look at it we have been in a golden age of PC Building and this is what I said even during the GPU shortage that once the GPU shortage ended because ethereum went to proof of stake in crypto mining died with gpus that we would enter this Golden Era and we have we have and largely also because AMD and Nvidia despite the fact that I was screaming it from the rooftops clearly weren't listening to me and they massively over produced gpus in the RTX 3000 and 6000 series respectively and we've been using those good value gpus to kind of power this generation of PC Building where for instance check out our December best builds 7 $50 for a 1440p capable gaming PC brand new very very capable if you want to do video editing or anything else I mean I compare that to what the build the very first build we did on the channel in 2019 where for $800 and something dollars and remember inflation is a thing that $800 today would be more like $1,000 we only get us to 1080p because it had a 1660 super in it so just look at the insane value that we're getting right now I think it's unparalleled absolutely unparalleled but is that going to last into next year I think yes as long as we have have cheaper gpus and cheaper CPUs to rely on then we're going to be able to build really really great gaming PCs I think the 7800 x3d has bowed really well because it's pulled the price of the highest end CPUs for gaming down from this like5 $600 range down to about 350 bucks and they probably kind of keep kind of tilting down a little bit around 350 who knows maybe Intel will finally cut prices to a level that will actually allow them to be competitive in DIY PC they're getting creamed right now if you look at uh the sales data they're getting absolutely stomped by AMD it's not even close it's almost like it used to be with Nvidia and AMD in the GPU Market that's what it is right now with AMD and Intel in the CPU Market meanwhile AMD has really made a comeback with the 7,000 here espcially 7800 XT I maybe it was just a matter of them not having high-end gpus and finally developing one and it took to the 7,000 series to really submit in people's minds that they are a more premium solution again so we're seeing that balance out as well I think GPU prices we're going to see a price War I think that that's super exciting for me I am a little disappointed that AMD canceled their high-end uh rdna 4 Series because they can't get the multi- chip module working uh supposedly so we'll have to wait and see and and of course we were expecting the RTX 5000 series gpus to launch in 2024 but now Nvidia is dropping hints that that might not happen because they might not feel like they have to do it and they want to produce AI gpus on the hopper architecture rather than shifting everything in Black so we'll see we'll see how that all goes if you're like Jason oh did I miss the boat did I miss the best value you might have missed the absolute like peak of the mountain but we're still on I feel like we're on the Mount Everest right now of value so we just got so much value so even getting slightly less value in 2024 it's still going to be historically good PC Building value so I'm I'm really bullish on PC Building I think they're going to really start crushing the consoles the consol's now three four years old that's why you know Sony's looking at a refresh of the the PS 5 Pro out there they're starting to struggle to run some of these newer games especially at 4K even with upscaling they're targeting like 20 to 30 FPS it's starting to feel like an old console again if you're playing at 4K out there on some of these consoles and I think people are like well this doesn't feel like a gaming experience that i' I've come to expect that's where PC gaming comes in so I think value is going to continue cases have gotten better they've gotten cheaper psus have gotten better they've gotten cheaper ssds I think will continue to remain affordable though the price is going to go up a little bit same with ram affordable though it will tick up a little bit and I just see great things in terms of CPUs and possibly even gpus out there to keep that value really really solid for 2024 let's talk about bottleneck this is always one of my favorite things to talk with folks about because I think it's so misunderstood got leeva logs totally mispronounced that I apologize how can we make sure we have the right combination of Hardware where it comes to bottleneck in either the CPU or the GPU well actually I will say we we do a video every year which is the best CPU GPU combo where we go through this in detail in some detail so I'm going to leave that link down in the video description and I'm going to urge you to check that out we go through what makes a CPU and a GPU bottleneck basically we always want our GPU when we're gaming to be our bottleneck we always want that to be the thing where we're maximizing the performance of it we never want to have a situation where the CPU is binding our GPU except except sometimes given like the the dollar Gap right given that this GPU cost $250 more than that GPU or this CPU only cost $30 more than that CPU sometimes it makes sense to up our GPU with the same amount of money because we're going to get more frames even if we introduce a slight CPU bottleneck so let me give you an example a $1,000 price point has been really really tough to hit and it's just been this kind of gray area between ryzen 5000 Intel 12 gen and then on the other side you know you know Intel 13th or 14th 14th gen LOL or ryzen 7000 which are higher performing CPUs and the difference is the gpus that you're using right now like for instance a ryzen 5600 will get almost all the frames that you need out of anything like an RX 6800 or below and introducing a CPU like a 7600 which is faster but a lot more expensive like $150 $200 more in the overall build the difference you get there is not as significant as just sticking with that 5600 and pumping spend that $150 and just pumping your GPU up especially when in the future you can always drop in a 5800 x3d or who knows 5700 x3d we'll see where that where that shakes out so that's our CPU GPU combo we go through specific recommendations kind of at every budget level we talk about when it makes sense to upgrade your CPU and upgrade your GPU but that's it in a nutshell basically we're always just trying to get the most FPS we can for our money and not really as focused on the bottlenecks but there are some kind of general rules of thumbs that will help us get there here's another question I feel like we see all the time on the channel I just want to take an opportunity answer it which is should you get just the cheapest version of that GPU or should you spring an extra 50 or $100 or more sometimes to get a more expensive version that's what release the kitties I love the name by the way release the kitties hey Jason why does the powercolor Red Devil GPU cost more than stuff like the XFX Merc for instance is it uh like a name brand versus offbrand kind of things not really although I will say some Brands like Asus for instance typically will charge a premium for like their rcts gpus a lot of it has to do with the Aesthetics of the GPU so there's a couple different reasons to buy for instance let's take an RTX 470 right 12 gab GPU if you just want like the base version you can get like the MSI ventage version or like a Zotac version typically for $530 $550 right now somewhere in that range or you could spring a lot of money for that to Sous STX now the Sous STX version might cost $100 $150 more comes with a a beefier cooler it looks cool cooler comes maybe RGB maybe you get an all-white version and you're into the Aesthetics of it that's really the reason to get it I will say typically gpus under the highest end gpus not a lot of difference between them not a lot of difference between them although I will say the 7800 XT for instance uh we have the gigabyte gaming OC one actually it's sitting right here not testing byas testing by Tech testers found that this was actually if you wanted to go ahead and overclock this GPU because the cooler on it is super super heavy duty you could actually get the best performance out of this card and it's at the MSRP was well at least it was at $499 so I I've saw it creep up over Christmas and hopefully it'll kind of trickle back down now that the Christmas shortage is over that's an example where there was a difference between like one version of the 7800 XT and maybe like the reference version it was like a 9% difference I think they they found at 1440p that's not an insignificant difference if you only want to spend a little bit of time overclocking your GPU especially given that the Radeon software makes overclocking your GPU way way less complicated than it used to be hey let me know by the way would you like to see a GPU overclocking guide uh for us let me know down in the comments if that's something you like you'd like to see in the future but of course the gpus where this probably matters the most is like the highest end so the highest end 490s yeah if you go to like the liquid cooled Solutions and you want to spend a lot more money you can e out more performance out of those you're going to pay through the nose for them but there's not really an option to go up to the next GPU tier whereas kind of more in the middle it usually makes more sense if you're going to end up spending on your GPU just to go from a 4070 to a 4070 TI or from a 4070 maybe to a 7900 XT if you don't mind switching Brands something like that instead rather than just getting a more expensive version of that base card all right call me teror and says can you tell us some of your plans for YouTube in 2024 or is it a surprise it's not really a surprise we uh in fact we recently pulled folks in terms of what more kind of stuff You' like to see on the channel the good news is me personally I'm no longer in grad school I was actually in grad school and I was previously working another full-time job while doing this I'm now completely dedicated to the YouTube channel which two thumbs up there and of course to the the film stuff that we do with my wife so we have big plans for 2024 but we're just not exactly sure how they're going to shake out a couple things that I would love to do and let me know down in the comments what kind of stuff that you would like to see I'd like to expand the number of guides we do I love to for instance do like a gaming mouse buying guide a gaming keyboard buying guide maybe like an audio buying guide I'd also like to do more maybe GPU overclocking guides kind of some more advanced after you build guides so you know we do everything right up to you build and set up but I'd like to go a little bit beyond that so again let me know down in the comments we could you know talk about what games are coming every month uh for PC what kind of Hardware requirements you're going to need you know should you be upgrading your GPU so let me know what kind of stuff you'd love to see in the future of course we're going to continue to put out the same content we can we put out we're going to put out great guides for you know how to build a PC how to set up your PC build guides based on you know like ryzen 8600 whenever that comes ryzen 8800 X 3D you know the next generation of Intel as well we're going to continue to do all of that as well as our our regular market watch reports on GPU prices and of course we're going to continue to do boost my build in this Q&A series but we'd love to spice it up a little bit so let me know what you'd like to see I also just wanted to take a second and say thank you to everybody we are just about to hit 400,000 subscribers I can't I I don't know if this video is going to be out before 400,000 or just slightly after it but either way it's Monumental we're super excited about that so remember if you got value out of this video give it a like you know the deal right give it a like makes a huge difference to the channel and of course subscribe become one of our 400,000 plus subscribers out there it's been a wild ride remember we have part one of the Q&A where we go through the entire GPU Market what do we expect in 2024 in terms of pricing availability launches Etc right here check it out and we'll catch you on the next one
