Keep in mind that a "1600" with AF in the serial number is actually an R5 2600 click... and it’s nearly 80% cheaper than an R5 3600...
The R5 3600 would be a solid choice if your next GPU upgrade is going to be more powerful than an RTX 3080—meaning something like an RX 5700 for 1080p resolution (anything higher isn't really necessary).
fadedsailor17 said:Wait, are you actually telling me that with my current GPU, I won't see any real difference between 1600 and 3600?
Of course you won't see a difference...
When reading reviews, you really have to pay attention to which graphics card they are using for their benchmarks. Those massive 20+% performance jumps usually happen when they're testing with an RTX 2080Ti—or at worst, a GTX 1080Ti if the reviewer wasn't geared up at the time—and those cards are easily three times more powerful than what you're running.
Paul Howard7 said:Do you think we might see a slight dip in prices at our local retailers like Links or Instar soon? Since foot traffic in physical computer shops is pretty much at a standstill for the foreseeable future—or at least it should be—it’s bound to lead to a massive drop in overall sales volume.
Based on everything I'm seeing, this situation could drag on for weeks, if not months. They might decide to slash their margins to the bone just to maintain some semblance of liquidity—which, honestly, would be a win for us buyers. What’s your take on that?
Here’s the deal: prices are about to skyrocket. It all comes down to China—if they stop production or cut off shipments, prices will go through the roof. Local retailers and importers here don't have much of a stockpile to fall back on.
Sell that thing for, say, $267 and take that extra $500 you were planning to sink into an R5 3600 to pick up a used GTX 1070 instead.
That’s where you’ll actually see the performance jump. Besides, for an R5 3600 to offer even a 20% boost over what you have now, you'd pretty much need an RTX 2080Ti to even notice the difference.
Kevin Newman6, what happens if you actually need to use the warranty? If you buy it in the States, service centers here in the US are just going to turn you away, with the possible exception of EVGA. And trying to ship stuff back to the States is either a massive expense, a total headache, or it’ll take forever to get anything done.
The extension is handled through insurance. These types of schemes have only recently started appearing—for instance, I’ve got a unique warranty displayed on my monitor right now. Whether they actually deliver when things go south or just offer empty promises, we won't know until someone's hardware actually dies during the coverage period.
It might be worth looking into what people's experiences have been with laptop insurance, since those kinds of policies have been around much longer.
Far Cry isn't a reliable benchmark because the engine just struggles to utilize hardware efficiently. It’s essentially a massive bottleneck for your system.
I haven't uploaded anything yet, so I'm not sure if you've been messing with your RAM settings, but a buddy of mine dealt with an unstable overclock on his Haswell build because of the memory, and he didn't realize it for the longest time.
The RX 5500 XT is a poor choice, and the RX 5600 offers even worse value compared to the GTX 1660 Super. Plus, his CPU would end up being a bottleneck (though depending on the title, he might see some stuttering with either one anyway).
I’d actually aim even higher—maybe a GTX 1660 Super. Then, for about $75, you could just grab a Xeon with 4 cores and 8 threads from a site like AliExpress to fit your motherboard's CPU support list. Toss in an upgrade to 16GB of RAM if you haven't already, and you've got a rock-solid PC for serious AAA gaming.
wanderingbison9 said:Check out these Puget Systems benchmarks for Adobe: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/ar...-3rd-Gen-1628/
I don't see how Intel is crushing AMD in Adobe... the differences are negligible. It looks like the Core i7-9700K is actually the best bang-for-your-buck option here.
P.S. If the OP actually has the budget for a Core i9-9900K or a Core i9-9900K (which we don't know), I’d suggest putting that extra cash toward a better GPU with 8GB of VRAM instead. Adobe is perpetually stuck in the past with terrible multi-threading scaling, so they just keep porting more effects over to the GPU.
It turns out the best value might even be the Core i5-8400 at $100 😁 (if you subtract a bit from the 2600X in the chart), because the 2600X consistently lags behind the top CPU by about 20-25%.
Take a look at those Epson Ecotank models—I'm not sure about the exact specs, but they run well over $667, and if you're looking at an A3 version, you might be looking at even more. Apparently, they handle high-volume color printing quite well. Plus, they come standard with duplexing, Wi-Fi, and all that other good stuff.
Exactly. If you want to stay within the G-Sync range, just tweak your in-game settings so your FPS never dips below the minimum threshold. I’d recommend capping the frame rate about 1 or 2 FPS below your maximum refresh rate (say, at 70 if you're on a 72Hz screen). Since limiters can struggle to hit an exact integer and refresh rates are rounded numbers, leaving that 2 FPS buffer is much safer.
My second approach—and honestly, how I’d play it—is to skip the FPS cap entirely. Just let G-Sync do its thing when the frames are low, and when the FPS climbs above the refresh rate, you actually get better frame timing. That’s definitely the sweet spot for competitive multiplayer shooters, since G-Sync is really there to save you when the performance dips.
Then there's the whole Radeon Chill combo to consider, but we can dive into that later.
The R5 3600 actually outperforms the I5 9400 when running Photoshop; it boasts superior IPC along with higher clock speeds. In fact, if you bring an i5 9600K into the mix for comparison, the Ryzen still comes out on top overall.