I'm gonna take advantage of the 12 months no interest. It's normally how I buy every big ticket thing. Divide total cost by 11 months and just set it to autopay.
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What a dim comment.

Build a computer with whatever components you like, then we'll plug in a 6700XT and a 3070 and not tell you which is driving the game and you won't be able to tell the difference as you play.
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Take a look at https://pcpartpicker.com/ ... I really liked using that when I was building my PC's (which is greatly overdue again)
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Yep, priced it out on Newegg and Microcenter...for an extra $150 AVADirect will assemble, test and ship the system...just not worth it to build it yourself anymore. Plus I get a warranty on the system.

Here is what I'm looking at...any alternatives I should consider?



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I havent been paying much attention to the advancement in memory since I'll just be upgrading my current rig eventually instead of building a new one, but is there a reason to go with DDR4 in a system that supports DDR5?
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$$
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The 13th gen for Intel has gotten massively better reviews than the 12th gen, so it might be worth the extra $$$$.

I have the 3060TI and it has been great for 1440p gaming. The cost to performance ratio for the 3060TI is better than the 3060 so that may be worth considering. The TI seems to be the best card until you start getting into big $$$$$$$.
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I checked out your site and the PC I want to build is almost 4500. I can build it myself for around 3800
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if you're dealing with more high end components, sure

make sure you're including tax and shipping on your "build it yourself" list
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No, other than being cheap for lesser performance equipment. If financially possible, you should definitely go DDR5 if your mobo supports it. The Microcenter CPU/Mobo combo I posted above is the DDR5 version. Personally, I wouldn't upgrade right now unless it's DDR5. That makes your motherboard PCIe5 compatible. Making you 100 future proof. DDR5 memory is blazing fast. And you can even overclock the memory if you want. If you're looking to upgrade right now, definitely go DDR5 and PCIe5.
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You would absolutely be able to tell the difference. Sorry, but you're just wrong here. There's a reason AMD typically has double the VRAM, yet still lesser performance than comparable NVidia cards. I've had the opportunity to see a 6800XT vs a 3070 Ti in the same machine. The RTX capability is an insane game changer and NVidia is heads and tails ahead of AMD, and the only people who would argue otherwise are AMD fanboys who bought the cheap cards. NVidia RTX is simply years ahead of AMD's attempt at RTX. And that doesn't even take into consideration DLSS.

Intel and NVidia remains king. Power requirement be damned.
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Totally agree.
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AMD's biggest customer last year was Sony. The one AMD machine I have is my PS5.
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I'm not going to argue that raytracing isn't the future or that Nvidia doesn't do it better, because that would be a blatant lie.

To me it just comes down to would I rather spend damn near double the money to get a Nvidia card right now, or save a few hundred bucks and get something that is more than capable of getting close enough in performance to the point where I generally wont be able to tell outside of niche situations like a reflection in a glass window. For a complete degenerate nerd like that Anthony guy who eats, sleeps, and breaths computers and studies the sway pattern of tree shadows, you can tell, but for the average person just casually walking through 95% of a game... questionable.

Don't get me wrong, raytracing is clearly the future of graphical design just because of how much easier it is to build a game because designers dont have to creating lighting for every single piece of architecture they put in, but for me it's not worth the extra money, yet... and it probably wont be before the time I'm ready to replace my next GPU upgrade.
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I'm certainly not an AMD hater by any means. They have come a long way in the CPU/GPU market over the last 10 years. And I certainly appreciate the market competition. But I have to admit is does annoy me when AMD fanboys try to say they're just as good at half the price. They're not. That's why they're priced significantly less while still having double the VRAM.

Is AMD acceptable for CPU/GPU gaming purposes? Absolutely, it's a perfect solution for cheap PC gaming. Is it just as good as Intel/NVidia at half the price? :-) no. Once you experience what ray tracing is capable of, it's hard to accept anything lesser. Certainly for me anyway. And it is absolutely the future of gaming tech. The next technological step in gaming graphics technology is going to be path tracing. Guess who's already positioned to lead that race? And that's not even touching on DLSS. Which is straight black magic fuckery by NVidia. 30-50% performance increase with no visual decrease in quality. It's really quite amazing what they're doing.
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