AMD announced a Radeon RX 6500 that is supposed to be $199 and “25-50% faster than an RX 570” which I’m guessing would be in 1060 Super territory. Hard to tell based on that metric.
Nvidia is supposed to be launching an RTX 3050 for around $250 which, by the dirty math of adding/deducting the tier by one per generation, would be 3050 = 2060 = 1070 as a very rough metric.
Of course retail MSRP doesn’t mean much when buying from scalpers and AIB markups and all the rest of it.
Unless those cards are made on a different process, allowing them to be produced without the backlogged semiconductor factories, there’s no reason for them to exist. People aren’t looking for a cut down, better value proposition because those things will end up selling for 2-3x MSRP anyway, you might as well pay an extra couple hundred bucks and get a much better card.
You’d be better off firing up old designs like the 2060/70/80 on older processes if there are any fabs free to do that.
Interestingly, the 6500 XT will be on a 6nm node whereas the more powerful 6000-series AMD cards are on a 7nm node. So these are, in a sense, more advanced than their bigger brothers.
While I don’t disagree about the difficulty in obtaining one for MSRP, there WAS considerable grumbling about the price points of the RTX 3060 and RX 6600 XT and a lot of “The entry level tier is abandoned by Nvidia/AMD and dead” pontificating. I guess this addresses that (at least on paper).
Intel also is supposedly launching an entry level card with around RTX 2060 levels of performance.
Yeah it’s the Intel one I’m curious about. My biggest concern is compatibility. I assume the driver situation will be a clusterfuck to start out with.
I think I need to accelerate replacing my current 10 year old desktop with a new brain – I hope to keep my current case and power supply. (and my C: drive which will become secondary storage)
I really don’t game that much (most of gaming is board games on yucata.de and Board Game Arena), but I’d like to be able to run older games just in case – current thought is a Ryzen 5 5600G will be fine until when and if video cards became reasonable.
I figure memory (I think 16G will be enough for me) and SSD (1 TB is probably OK) are pretty much commodities as long as I pick something reasonable and compatible.
Motherboard is where I’m having some issues. Will I still likely need to update the BIOS? How can I tell if a board can flash BIOS? My case can handle a 12x9.6" board, but leaning towards micro ATX.
Any suggestions appreciated.
Brian
I wonder if a micro ATX motherboard would be more difficult to work with in a regular ATX case than just a regular ATX motherboard would be. I have no idea. I feel like you might have to move standoffs around and fiddle with it to seat properly. But maybe not.
Nominally, but it’s more the annoyance of having everything cramped when you’re plugging in cables and stuff rather than an issue with case compatibility.
I agree that an AMD Vega graphics CPU is your best bet and paying for a discrete GPU in this market to play old games on is a waste of money. I would hope that newly produced AMD boards are equipped with an updated BIOS at this point and the whole “Have to borrow a CPU to flash your BIOS” nonsense is well behind us but I haven’t done an AMD build to be recently informed. That was the issue, by the way: Any board can flash the BIOS but they typically require a CPU to be in them to reach a point where you can flash it. So if you bought a new CPU and motherboard and they weren’t compatible without a flash, you were out of luck. Places like Microcenter were (are?) offering loaner CPUs or in-store BIOS flashing but that was for Microcenter purchases, naturally. And, to be fair to AMD, this was an unintended side effect of using the same socket forever which is generally considered a good thing for consumers versus Intel making everyone buy new boards every other generation.
CPU less BIOS upgrade appears to be not uncommon, though I haven’t figured out how to determine which boards have it and which don’t.
I have no problem going to full ATX.
Brian
Most bios updates tend to be tied into manufacturer specific tool suites provided with the motherboard. They often check online, download and allow you to place a new bios into position to be used on the next boot of the machine. I’ve seen live bios updates on my machines for years now, at least the last two (from 2014 and 2020). I’d not worry about cpuless bios upgrades unless you can’t boot the machine at all.
It sounds as though the AMD issue was still a thing in late 2020 with the 5000 series processors though mainly on lower end boards. Mid-high end boards had methods to flash without a CPU.
You might have a new CPU that is not supported on your motherboard without a BIOS update. The CPU is physically compatible with the motherboard, and it will work just fine after a BIOS update, but the system will not POST until you update the BIOS.
This is happening right now to many people who have bought a new AMD Ryzen 5000 Series processor, planning on using it with a new B550 or X570 motherboard. This is also happening to people who have bought new Ryzen 5000 APUs, such as the Ryzen 5 5600G and the Ryzen 7 5700G. Most B550 and X570 motherboards will need an updated BIOS to work with these APUs.
[…]
Now, most mid-range and above B550 and X570 motherboards have a feature that lets you flash the motherboard BIOS without even installing a CPU, memory, or a GPU.
I would expect that, by now, newly manufactured motherboards would have BIOS compatible with the 5000 processors since it’s 2022.
Both Gigabyte and MSI motherboards had the cpu-less boot feature for flashing BIOS when I checked this past summer/fall. (I was checking for a theoretical 5600G build.)
For MSI motherboards in particular, there’s a switch in back you can see in the pictures on Newegg so you would 100% know it would have the feature. I’ll see if I can dig up a link to show you what I mean.
EDIT: The first MSI board I checked has the button, and I think they all do. For what it’s worth, I have an MSI motherboard, albeit for Intel. Steve from GamersNexus isn’t particularly complimentary toward MSI motherboards, but I like mine.
Check this out on @Newegg: MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK AM4 AMD B550 SATA 6Gb/s ATX AMD Motherboard MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK AM4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Newegg.com
That Newegg link includes 12 pictures, and picture 8 shows the backplate. In that backplate picture you can see clear as day the “Flash BIOS Button” which lets you flash the BIOS without a CPU.
EDIT2: I assume gigabyte boards have a similar button in back you can look for in pictures. I just didn’t happen to when I checked last summer or just now.
For Gigabyte motherboards, they apparently call it a “Q-Flash Button” which they even tout in their pictures. Here’s a cheap $70 Micro ATX Gigabyte board that points out the Q-Flash Button in picture 2:
Check this out on @Newegg: GIGABYTE A520M S2H mATX AM4 4+3 Phases Digital PWM, GIGABYTE Gaming GbE LAN, NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2, 3 Display Interfaces, Q-Flash Plus, RGB Fusion 2.0, Motherboard GIGABYTE A520M S2H AM4 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Newegg.com
I think it’s the cheapest one on Newegg so I would assume Gigabyte includes the feature on every single model. Pretty sure MSI does as well. Most of them probably do at this point.
EDIT: The 5000 series means PCIe Gen 3 for your M2 drive. The Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB is around $120. It was $160 when I bought mine a year ago. The cheaper alternative I would recommend, the Crucial P5, is only like $10 or $15 cheaper at this point. So I would just go with the Samsung.
I got up around 6:30 this morning to use the bathroom and thought I heard Chippie choking on something. Turned out that my computer was playing an automatic pistol slide racking sound effect on an infinite loop.
I didn’t even know Steam could do that! I assume one of the cats had been on my keyboard and got the sound effect playing. Ended up having the computer restart; it wanted to update, anyway.
My motherboard supported the 5000g right out of the box (and said so on the box). Some tight quarters issues and I plugged the CPU fan into the CHA fan by mistake.
More info once I get more installed (posting this on my tablet)
Brian
Here is what I got (all from newegg – ordered Tuesday, got Friday)
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/njgCp2
so far, so good
Brian
Yeah that’ll work nicely. I thought the 5600G was $300. At $240 it’s a bargain. At first I thought the parts list was incomplete but then I realized the stock cooler should be fine, and you already have a case and PSU. That’s awesome.
Make sure your memory is running at its max speed and not the default speed the board often sets. Makes a real difference for AMD processors and even more for the integrated graphics.
For the record the previous motherboard was a micro-ATX so I had to move some the spacers.
It was awfully tight and I realized too late that for some cables it was easier to attach BEFORE mounting the board (I mounted and unmounted the board several times, including once where a screw got stuck and I had to remove all the other screws to extricate it).
One weird thing – the micro ATX version of this motherboard has a PS2 port, but the full ATX does not. Luckily my work had a bunch of USB keyboards destined for the trash.
Also, my monitor only has DVI connections but luckily I had a spare HDMI-DVI adapter (I ordered a HDMI to DVI cable)
I am very amazed of how small the 1 TB SSD is – compared to the 8GB memory sticks – yes I know the RAM is working at MUCH higher speeds.
I will check on the RAM speed, but right now this is so much faster than my 10 year old CPU/motherboard/spinning HD I’m OK (I still have the HD)
I have not tried any 3D stuff yet.
Brian
From Task Manager, just click on the Performance Tab and click Memory. It should say 3600 for your memory speed. If it doesn’t, reboot and go into BIOS/UEFI and go to AI Tweaker → AI Overclock Tuner → Select DOCP. F10 and OK and the system will reboot with (hopefully) your full memory speed.
I get that you’re happy with the faster system so when you do this is up to you but you did pay the extra money for a 3600 set of RAM and it makes a legitimate difference so no reason to run it at 2400 or whatever the default it. Or maybe you’ll look and it is 3600 and all is good.
So I ordered Skyrim (anniversary edition for the PC) Saturday – got an email said completed and gave me a link. I’ll have to check, but I don’t think there was any indication on how to get it. I finally contacted customer support and it turns out I have to go the Windows Store App and then “library”. will be downloading and hopefully playing this weekend.
Brian