As the title says, would you rather go mid-range say upgrade every 4 years, or would you rather go high end and upgrade every 6 or something like that? Vote above, and maybe reply for justification, just curious
I prefer a high-end system with a rebuild every 5 years or so. Nothing less than a Core i7 or Ryzen 7 CPU. What I really want is to get a Threadripper for my next system so I can have quad-channel DDR4 and a TON of cores. Well, that and the insane 64 PCIe lanes. I hate bottlenecks, so I tend to go overkill on things.
I have most of the time done best bang for the buck builds, but now I have something that might be classified as a high end and surely it is much nicer. 200 has been usually max I have invested to GPU, but now after experiencing high end GPU, I would say that bite the bullet and get high end, constant adjustment of graphics settings attempting to find balance between visual quality and solid fps, sure one can get by lot cheaper, however with high end it is more of a set and forget. But for example with CPU cost goes up a lot, however one does not gain so much, still it is rare to find situations where all 8 threads of CPU would be a limit, usually 4 threads would be enough to be as limited as with 8 thread. From mid range to high end performance of 1 thread of CPU is not making gigantic leaps either. So especially with Skylake i3 or i7 is pretty much the same, with newer there might be bit more difference, but then again still 4 threads and higher 1 core speed is better for most of the time, so thinking with CPU mid range can be even better than high end when GPU is high end. Or does it go like low - mid - high - enthusiast? I mean 1060 and especially 1070 is perfectly able to do everything, but 1080 or 2080 is there for beyond high end? So, best to find compromise, there are diminishing return after certain level.
Actually, compiling code and using 7-zip can easily use 8 threads. Heavy multitasking can too. It just depends on your software usage. For me, an 8-core CPU would be of large benefit but for most it would not make a difference. Many people I know even get by with a basic dual-core. As for diminishing returns... yeah that's why buying an Intel Extreme Edition is a really bad idea. Those are the kings of diminishing returns. They always have been but are even more so these days priced at almost $2k! I can get a first-gen Threadripper 8-core for the same price as a Ryzen 7. Since I would then get quad-channel memory and 64 PCIe lanes... I'd say that's a pretty great value.
Yeah, in gaming use etc. there is not so much use for many cores yet, that is the thing of near future though. First gen Threadripper just is not so big in games, it might do better in a future games though, but right now it is a compromise and Zen2 right behind the corner, things are getting complex Only thing is rendering, video or 3d that I really get to use full potential of i7, but I do so little of those that there is not too much of benefit. Then in BeamNG with AI cars it can be useful to have more cores, but that is where things get expensive as still needs strong single core too when using maximum graphics quality. But over 20 cores surely would be nice to have, not that I would have use for them, but just in case
I currently have a gtx 1050Ti intel i5-8300H laptop, it is not high end but for all of the games I use it for I often get semi-stable 60fps at a bit of a graphics downgrade. I could go and build a high-end desktop but for now my laptop is more than decent enough. If I`m going to build a pc (want to do it) I`ll wait till my laptop is either giving up or horrible compared to recommended game specs and when said time comes a mid-range pc will be more than enough to beat alot of todays hight-end pc`s, which would mean that I would probaly have acces to vr and all of the recent games (at a graphics downgrade). I realise that said assumption might be horribly incorrect but I have a bit of confidence in it and regarding the graphics downgrade unless I where to experience far better graphics than my gtx 1050Ti produces I`ll be satisfied with current day graphics seen as it is more than detailed enough.
I used to go for high end, but there are inherent drawbacks besides how long until you need to upgrade again. I also take into account performance per $ and per watt. High eng stuff has very low efficiency per core and per Mhz. Mid range cards make the best use of all aspects and you don't need an expensive board, cooling or PSU to support it, so that brings it down in cost even more. With the high end now dominated by the RTX 20 series, they are out of the reach of most gamers and in the range reserved for the pros. They are priced simular to Titan and Quarto, which is insane since those are used for producing and rendering 3D products. The problem is you used to get around 50% more bang for new gen high end cards, but now it's more like 20%, and the prices have gone up 100%. The second gen Ryzen 5 CPUs in the <$200 range are amazing more than enough for this game with many cars.
