And buy a xx60 series like a plebeian?
Go for the new 2080ti++ when it’s announced! Only $1700.
The problem is, there are no deals anymore. The cards cost what they cost, and maybe you can snipe a sale, but inventory doesn’t just sit around.
So, the upgrade from that 330 dollar 970 to a 2070 is 500 dollars for the same “line” of cards.
a lot of things change in 4 years I guess.
I would like to point out that I just purchased an entire Alienware Aurora for my son a couple weeks ago and it cost $350 less than your video card.
Point taken, noted and giggled at.
Too late (perhaps?) for Brian, but others might benefit from this deal:
$1350 for a really nice i7-8700/1080 with 16GB RAM + 16GB of Intel’s new Optane memory.
Why do they not put SSDs in these things, seriously.
The Optane memory is supposed to give you near SSD responsiveness, with the size of HDD drives. I don’t have any personal experience with Optane, but the reviews I’ve seen are impressive.
Agreed, though, that tossing on at least a smallish boot SSD, and raising the price by $100, would have probably been a better option. On the other hand, this would let a buyer stick on a bigger SSD and not be stuck with a small, pre-installed SSD.
Still a good price on a Alienware system with those specs.
Right, but the part you’re ignoring is that Brian has a really nice monitor, and needs something that can output 1080p at 60fps. That’s going to need a real beast of a GPU.
That is a fucking phenomenal deal.
Also, there are Alienware configurations with SSDs. They also do hybrid drive options.
I snickered.
Hah. Funny.
Am I correct in assuming that CPU is one that is still affected by Meltdown and Spectre? I’m not talking about whether there is a software patch; just whether it is one of the CPUs that is still slowed because of the patches necessary for Meltdown and Spectre?
Also, when are the new CPUs that are not so affected going to be publicly available?
For Intel it will be generation 9.
Yes, every currently available intel CPU is still impacted by Meltdown.
Spectre will be around for a very long time, but upcoming generations will have hardware mitigations to help with the slowdown.
Not yet, gonna wait until the video card ships.
So friends, benchmarks for the 2080 Ti are coming out, and apparently it’s more geared towards 4K stuff. Anyone have any suggestions for a good 4K monitor?
I would actually suggest a slightly different tack – get one of the 34" ultrawide 3440x1440 100hz models with G-Sync. I have this ASUS model and love it, but there are others with basically identical specs.
My reasoning is that:
- The jump from 1440p to 4K is pretty subtle, especially with moving content in games. It’s a bit more noticeable in text, but 1440p is still really damn sharp, and putting extra performance into going even sharper can be diminishing returns, when you could put that performance into smoothness or broader field of view instead.
- Extending your peripheral vision on each side is great for immersion and situational awareness, letting you see a spaceship approaching from the side that much sooner.
- Running at a steady 90+ fps is HUGE. It’s so absurdly smooth you’ll wonder how you ever thought 60 was adequate.
- It’s great for productivity too – I love being able to have two basically full-size browser/IDE windows right next to each other. Or run a game in a full-size window, with chat/music/browser/streaming/whatever off to the side.
- It’s roughly equivalent in terms of total graphics power needed to run at maximum potential. 3840 x 2160 x 60Hz and 3440 x 1440 x 100Hz both multiply out to around 500 billion pixels per second to be drawn. But the latter scales down much more gracefully in the case of particularly demanding games. Either dropping to letterboxed 2560x1440, or dropping to 60 fps will be a much nicer experience than running 4K at a non-native resolution or going to 40 fps.
Admittedly, not every game supports ultrawide or higher refresh rates (or requires fan patches or ini tweaks to support them), but they provide such a great experience that they’re easily worth it in my book.
So right now I have two monitors, a small 14 inch one for stuff like OBS and chat, and a 27 inch one for games, streaming and the like. Would that 34" effectively replace both?
