Updated requirements; Core i9? Really?

[Walrus Beard]

I was able to score an RTX 4080 for myself recently which is destroying pretty much every game I play, but my CPU is a 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11700K. For years now games have usually been more GPU bound than CPU bound. Does anyone really think a Core i9 will be necessary to get decent performance with overdrive ray tracing? Would be interested in hearing from people who are knowledgeable about computer tech. I just can't see it.

[Gamefever]

Well, you may be experiencing some good performance but,
Do you have PCLE 4th gen lanes?
RTX 4080 is gen 4 PCLE.

Myself I have met and exceeded all suggested high end specs but only just built a new PC after almost hmm 11 or more years, so I went overboard figuring I play enough and my last PC monster was quite a good enough PC for a long time.

To address your question,
I think you need 8 cores and you have that, moving forward may be good enough for a while. However at the high end understand these are not "requirements" they are suggestions. You could wait and try it out at 2160p see how it goes and if the FPS and Framerate are not to your liking try out 1440p.

But for hitting those high frame rates with everything turned on yes your going to need a really good CPU, have been considering waiting for the intel refresh on LGA 1700 socket until deciding on a 13th or 14th gen here. In the meantime my gaming has been just fine though.

[Dravic]

You have access to DLSS3 Frame Generation, you'll be absolutely fine even if you had 9th generation i5. But you don't. You have 11th gen i7. Why are you even pretending like you're going to have CPU issues?

[Dravic]

Originally posted by Gamefever:

Well, you may be experiencing some good performance but,
Do you have PCLE 4th gen lanes?
RTX 4080 is gen 4 PCLE.

There's like 3% performance drop on RTX 4090 once you move from PCI Express 4.0 x16 to PCI Express 3.0 x16.

In other words, it doesn't matter.

[Vanryth]

companies always exaggerate with requirements

[Gamefever]

Originally posted by Dravic:

Originally posted by Gamefever:

Well, you may be experiencing some good performance but,
Do you have PCLE 4th gen lanes?
RTX 4080 is gen 4 PCLE.

There's like 3% performance drop on RTX 4090 once you move from PCI Express 4.0 x16 to PCI Express 3.0 x16.

In other words, it doesn't matter.

I can not say I agree with where that goes, although I might offer an olive branch.
IF the game performs well and in such case may be ~100 FPS, there is really not much reason to upgrade.

[Dravic]

Originally posted by Gamefever:

Originally posted by Dravic:

There's like 3% performance drop on RTX 4090 once you move from PCI Express 4.0 x16 to PCI Express 3.0 x16.

In other words, it doesn't matter.

I can not say I agree with where that goes, although I might offer an olive branch.
IF the game performs well and in such case may be ~100 FPS, there is really not much reason to upgrade.

There's nothing to agree with or disagree with, I stated objective fact. RTX 4090, the fastest consumer graphics card in the world right now, doesn't show any major bottleneck when using PCI Express 3.0 x16 transfer speed. The difference is completely negligible and within low single digit %.

Originally posted by TechPowerUp:

In this review, we are comparing the RTX 4090 in its native PCI-Express 4.0 x16 setting, with PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (identical bandwidth to PCI-Express 4.0 x8), and older generations of PCIe from an academic curiosity. We are forcing older PCIe generations using settings in the motherboard's UEFI setup program.

Source:

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-pci-express-scaling/28.html

[jidaeng]

They said : "It’s important to highlight that it doesn’t mean the game will stop working on the previous minimum requirements. However, following the next update to the base game we will discontinue active support for them and stop testing the game on those setups."

"The reason for making these changes is that updating the requirements is an important part of the game improvement process, and of enhancing and adding new features."

So yes, your actual settings will continue to work with maybe less fps than before due to the enhancing of the game and new features that's all.

[Graf Erik]

Originally posted by Snarfblatt:

For years now games have usually been more GPU bound than CPU bound.

Yeah, not really.

For quite some time gaming was all about GPU, because GPUs work per design in parallel and that scales quite well. That started to change maybe 5-10 years ago, when game developers finaly started to write games that properly utilize multicore CPUs. And thats not really optional. For a long time CPUs became faster with each generation, but not anymore. Nowadays the dont become faster, they gain more cores, thus the ability to do more things at the same time. But unfortunately you cant just switch a game to 'multi-core'. You have to write the whole thing from the foundation in a way that can utilize parallelization. Its a pita for the developer, but its well worth it. It is the way! Its the only way to really use modern hardware.

For me Kingdom Come Deliverance was the turning point. Beautifull open world rpg, uses cry engine. And back then I had a brandnew 1080ti... and it ran like crap for me. Why? Cause it uses up to 6(?) threads, and I had an older 4 core CPU. That was 5 years ago.

Doesn't mean you'll really need a i9-12th, but CPUs arer becoming more important for high-end gaming.

[Deventh]

Just get i9 lil bro. If you buy 4080 you can afford i9 lol

[Gamefever]

Originally posted by Dravic:

Originally posted by Gamefever:

I can not say I agree with where that goes, although I might offer an olive branch.
IF the game performs well and in such case may be ~100 FPS, there is really not much reason to upgrade.

There's nothing to agree with or disagree with, I stated objective fact. RTX 4090, the fastest consumer graphics card in the world right now, doesn't show any major bottleneck when using PCI Express 3.0 x16 transfer speed. The difference is completely negligible and within low single digit %.

Originally posted by TechPowerUp:

In this review, we are comparing the RTX 4090 in its native PCI-Express 4.0 x16 setting, with PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (identical bandwidth to PCI-Express 4.0 x8), and older generations of PCIe from an academic curiosity. We are forcing older PCIe generations using settings in the motherboard's UEFI setup program.

Source:

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-pci-express-scaling/28.html

A loss of 3 FPS is still a loss.

Coincidentally using PCLE 5th gen provides gains.

So there is a difference of a paltry 7 fps when using PCLE 5th gen over 3rd gen.

There are further gains using a 13900K, but these are larger over a 10th/11th gen by a much wider margin than a 12900K.

Then there is the RAM, and we can go round an round in circles and provide citation and counter citation posts.

I am assuming 2160p is the usage case here, otherwise in 1080p and 1440p we are talking about dozens of FPS.

[Walrus Beard]

Originally posted by Deventh:

Just get i9 lil bro. If you buy 4080 you can afford i9 lol

I mean, technically yeah, but to get the i9 that it says is required, I'd need a whole new motherboard as well. Seems like a lot of money and trouble to have better looking shiny surfaces, especially when this is pretty much the only game where the ability of my setup is a question mark. Based on the replies I've received, it sounds like I'll probably be able to run the game decently well with my setup.

[Dravic]

Originally posted by Gamefever:

Coincidentally using PCLE 5th gen provides gains.

None of the current generation consumer graphics cards have a PCI Express 5.0 interface. That is to say, nope - none of them benefit from PCI Express 5.0, they literally will work in a 4.0 compatibility mode when slotted into 5.0 slot.

[Gamefever]

Originally posted by Dravic:

Originally posted by Gamefever:

Coincidentally using PCLE 5th gen provides gains.

None of the current generation consumer graphics cards have a PCI Express 5.0 interface. That is to say, nope - none of them benefit from PCI Express 5.0, they literally will work in a 4.0 compatibility mode when slotted into 5.0 slot.

Correct, however there are consumer grade motherboards that have 5th gen slots, EVGA z690 and z790 series, ASUS god boards as well. I happen to have a EVGA Dark Kingpin am not messing around here.

4080 money is I have money to buy a new board and CPU money.

[Gamefever]

OP it is not a question of can you play the expansion,

It is a question of how good will the graphics and performance be?
So the only way to know for certain is to wait for the game and play it at desired resolution and graphics settings.
When that happens you can know for certain if you need upgrades.

My point bringing up the motherboard is that since you are already likely needing a CPU upgrade that means you will get a PCLE 4th or 5th gen slot(s)....All of that further boasts your performance.

Right now got a guy that has no idea what this is all really about.
Its about cutting hairs on performance and min/maxing for best performance at top settings, clearly since you would not be sporting a 4080 otherwise and wanting to bring up graphics.

IF your feet are cold well heck man sure its going to play and you will have plenty of wiggle room to use less than top end settings and have great game ahead of you at good or great FPS.

I advise, just wait till the game comes out....In the meantime keep your eyes on what sort of boards and cpu's you may be interested in, there could be sales. In the case of Intel you may find that later this year intel drops a refresh so maybe buying a CPU from them might be a better idea in quarter 4. AMD meanwhile well go look at a microcenter they were selling them cheap over there just a week ago.

[Mathalis]

Originally posted by Snarfblatt:

I was able to score an RTX 4080 for myself recently which is destroying pretty much every game I play, but my CPU is a 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11700K. For years now games have usually been more GPU bound than CPU bound. Does anyone really think a Core i9 will be necessary to get decent performance with overdrive ray tracing? Would be interested in hearing from people who are knowledgeable about computer tech. I just can't see it.

I recommend you use a bottleneck calculator before pushing upgrades in the future. The i7-11700k processor is way to weak to get anything out of the 4080. Your old card will probably run smoother at 1080p monitors. The CPU is just as important as the GPU. You also need to compare your harddrive. I recommend a NVMe over SSD or mechanical hard drive. Your 4080 needs a 13th gen processor and at least 4000mhz/32gig ram and at least a 4800 mhz HD.

The equivalent of this in the car world would be putting a giant super charger on a honda that can't handle it. The engine (cpu) needs to have enough horsepower (processing speed) to be able to handle the supercharger and the suspension/frame (RAM) needs to be strong enough (speed) to handle the extra weight. Otherwise you will put a bunch of stress on components not designed for it and burn your system out faster than it should.

I recommend going to Microcenter's website and using there PC builder to get an idea of what you could get from current gen.