Munx wrote on 2026-01-19, 18:53:

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-01-19, 16:36:

Historically, I don't think doubling up on GPU RAM ever paid off. By the time minimum spec reached the high amount of RAM for that card, the GPU was too slow or didn't have the features.

Historically, graphics cards used to come with more VRAM than you needed for that time and would double that amount every couple generations or so. We have not gotten much of a VRAM bump for almost a decade now. Had the 3070ti come with 16GB of memory instead of 8, I would still be very happy with it and would not have upgraded.

yeah the games market isn't selling games for which the hardware doesn't exist, though it might improve with later hardware. So first half of a generation with a RAM bump you're probably very happy for RAM, the second half, games are shipping that use all of the default amount on them.

Well my latest silly ebay purchase came in today and it works nicely. RTX4070 12GB from an Acer desktop.

pete8475 wrote on 2026-01-23, 02:49:

Well my latest silly ebay purchase came in today and it works nicely. RTX4070 12GB from an Acer desktop.

Woa... what kind of case are you using for that modern rig? Looks like it's got to be a retro sleeper.

The missing piece for my new pc arrived today 😀

After a couple of years thinking I should upgrade but unable to justify it to myself given the actual use I make of my current main pc, after seeing how prices shoot up without apparently any chance they get back to normal any time soon, and after seeing my veteran GTX 950 card refusing to work after I took the pc apart for cleaning, I finally said "now it's the time" 😀

I think I overpaid 150-200 € compared to what I could have paid if I had done it 1-2 months ago, but it was now or never (or more precisely, now or "maybe in a couple of years").

So, Ryzen 5 9600x, Radeon 9060xt 16GB, 32GB DDR5, and a 1tb nvme (the first one I've ever bought!) will replace my definitely aging
Xeon e3-1240v3, GTX 950 2GB (rest in peace, thank you for your almost 10 years of service), 32GB DDR3, and 500GB SATA SSD.

Only thing I lost is ECC, but since prices are what they are and the 32GB "only" costed me 250€ last week, I won't complain.

carlitosbala wrote on 2026-01-23, 08:34:

The missing piece for my new pc arrived today :) […]
Show full quote

The missing piece for my new pc arrived today 😀

After a couple of years thinking I should upgrade but unable to justify it to myself given the actual use I make of my current main pc, after seeing how prices shoot up without apparently any chance they get back to normal any time soon, and after seeing my veteran GTX 950 card refusing to work after I took the pc apart for cleaning, I finally said "now it's the time" 😀

I think I overpaid 150-200 € compared to what I could have paid if I had done it 1-2 months ago, but it was now or never (or more precisely, now or "maybe in a couple of years").

So, Ryzen 5 9600x, Radeon 9060xt 16GB, 32GB DDR5, and a 1tb nvme (the first one I've ever bought!) will replace my definitely aging
Xeon e3-1240v3, GTX 950 2GB (rest in peace, thank you for your almost 10 years of service), 32GB DDR3, and 500GB SATA SSD.

Only thing I lost is ECC, but since prices are what they are and the 32GB "only" costed me 250€ last week, I won't complain.

Nice! That will be an absolutely massive upgrade. Very similar to the one I did for a relative last year. He went from an i5 4430, GTX 1050 Ti and a 720P 32" TV to a Ryzen 7 7700X, 9060XT 16GB and a 240Hz Curved VA display. And also, lots of RGBs, because that made him smile. Needless to say, that thing is his baby and he treats it as such. I was the one that helped his family get the old refurbished i5 system probably 12 years ago and I did the upgrades and maintenance over the years so he could play games, so it was cool to see it last this long without exploding. His Dad hooked the old system up to the TV to browse the web, so it is still going... 😅

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-01-23, 07:40:

pete8475 wrote on 2026-01-23, 02:49:

Well my latest silly ebay purchase came in today and it works nicely. RTX4070 12GB from an Acer desktop.

Woa... what kind of case are you using for that modern rig? Looks like it's got to be a retro sleeper.

It's an Inwin brand micro atx beige case that I've had for probably 20+ years, I don't know the model name but it's old enough that it didn't have any front usb or audio. I've added front USB 3 and a card reader.

I might have posted pics before on here so I'll look for those, if not I'll snap a few shortly.

Specs:
Intel i7-11700k
Asus Prime B560M-A
32GB DDR4 Corsair (2x16GB 3200MHZ)
RTX4070 12GB
Teac DVD-RW (beige of course)
~5TB of SSD storage

I added an intake fan at the front of the case and an exhaust fan at the back. I had to cut holes for both. I also have a 27" LCD bolted to the side of it and a carry handle on top.

Here's a post I made years ago about my setup, it's still on the same desk with the same screens. I'll snap a pic of the front of the comptuer after I have something to eat.
Re: post up pics of your "computing area"

EDIT - I made a little support bracket for the card from a PCI expansion slot cover. Probably unnecessary but this 4070 is a bit longer and heavier than the 3070 that was in here. When it's not -30C here I'll bring it outside and blow the dust out. 😁

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-01-23, 20:31:

Nice! That will be an absolutely massive upgrade.

It truly is. Everything happens so quickly now 😁

My old Xeon system was not only "desktop pc" but also nas, local server, and at some point even firewall / router. It is still running because I decided the new machine is desktop only, but any mini pc could do its job (except for the nas duty) so I'm not sure what will I use it for.

I couldn't quite decide if these were modern or retro at this point, but I think they're still fast enough to be modern even if they can be found in some very fast retro rigs as well.

I bought a couple of i7 5775C processors for a bit less than half of what they normally go for. I honestly didn't think I'd get them for this price, so it was a bit of a surprise... but I figured I'd find a use for one eventually, and I think I have a good use case for the other.

I have a relative that doesn't have the money or the desire to build a whole new PC right now, but he does play some strategy and simulation type games that thrash one or two cores of his i7 4790 (non-K). The system I built him several years ago is currently using a Gigabyte Z97-HD3 board, 2x8GB DDR3-2133, a pair of decent SSDs and an EVGA GTX 1080 SC that I just installed last week (upgrading from a GTX 970).

From everything I have read, it sounds like the 128MB of EDRAM L4 cache on the 5775C processor could provide an pretty decent improvement in these types of games... similar to the improvement seen with a Ryzen X3D chip, though nowhere near as large since the cache is a lot slower (and the 2133Mhz DDR3 is relatively fast for the platform, which offsets some of the L4 gains). I think if I can easily get the processor to run stably at 4Ghz all-core turbo it may be worth the upgrade for him considering the pretty reasonable price I paid for these chips.

Sadly, there isn't a ton of benchmarking data for these CPUs because they were quite uncommon at the time, and hardly any of the data that exists involves simulations or single-thread-heavy strategy games. It would be a bit annoying to go through the whole process and not have it give any discernible benefit over the 4790 in cases where he would like some improvement.

Anyway... I don't have the chips yet, but I am happy to have some coming my way. Honestly never thought I would own one of these or get to tinker with one.

If anyone has used a 5775C and has any input or suggestions, let me know.

I finally decided to upgrade the graphics card in my daily driver.

AMD has cheated me twice. I owned a 9600 Pro back in the mid-2000s and at the HD7000 series when I learned they used up the 8000 series names for OEM cards I was hoping I can upgrade to an HD9600 series card. They skipped that and went with the R9/7/5-2xx series. Then now after the RX7000 they skipped the 8000 series again, instead of selling me an RX9600 they went with 9060. I guess it's still better than having a soft spot for the 8000 series which always gets skipped.

Anyway, it came with a free mouse which normally sells for around 80€. I'll be trying to sell it for 60 and consider it a discount. As for my old RX480, I don't know what to do with it. It has good Windows 7 era performance and maybe(?) still have driver support, while it's value on the used market is around 60€ where I live, which is not a lot of money for something that served me well for almost 6 years. But I have better chance at selling this than the mouse and currently I don't see myself doing a W7 nostalgia build.

This is going to sound odd but RX480 8Gb cards are surprisingly still in demand on eBay . .no idea why but they still sell well enough, same for RX 580 8Gb models.

My guess is due to the vRam shortage driving the costs of most current day GPUs through the roof that these older 8Gb cards are now being sought after, throw in Lossless Scaling and FSR and these GPUs can still game at 1080p well enough for many and they still have quarterly driver support.

RAM crisis may be over soon, Chinese spinning up new DDR5 plant and churning them out. Micron et all will have lost all "biodiversity"in their customer base and gone monoculture, pissing all those customers off, who will buy from the new guy, then things look shaky for micron if they have crop failure or demand collapse.

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-05-12, 13:34:

This is going to sound odd but RX480 8Gb cards are surprisingly still in demand on eBay . .no idea why but they still sell well enough, same for RX 580 8Gb models.

As I see Ebay prices are the same as the local ones and I can't price competitively for the international market anyway because of international shipping here is expensive.

RandomStranger wrote on 2026-05-12, 15:01:

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-05-12, 13:34:

This is going to sound odd but RX480 8Gb cards are surprisingly still in demand on eBay . .no idea why but they still sell well enough, same for RX 580 8Gb models.

As I see Ebay prices are the same as the local ones and I can't price competitively for the international market anyway because of international shipping here is expensive.

That's fair, Australia is in the same boat with shipping costs and import taxes now totaling more than the item you are buying usually.

Me Id find a family member or friend who doesn't have a modernish 8Gb GPU and throw it in their PC, done that a number of time myself as a way of not just tossing older GPUs that still have good life in them but don't sell for enough to make it financially worth listing..

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-05-12, 13:34:

This is going to sound odd but RX480 8Gb cards are surprisingly still in demand on eBay . .no idea why but they still sell well enough, same for RX 580 8Gb models.

My guess is due to the vRam shortage driving the costs of most current day GPUs through the roof that these older 8Gb cards are now being sought after, throw in Lossless Scaling and FSR and these GPUs can still game at 1080p well enough for many and they still have quarterly driver support.

They are still powerful enough to run most games and alternatives in that tier have some pretty big compromises (6/3GB of memory on the GTX1060, 6/4GB on the GTX 1660/1650, RX 5500 being super rare, RX 6500 being trash, 2050 being non-existent and 3050 being over-priced). And forget about buying something new - even the trash RTX 5050 is ~300EUR.

I guess the crypto miners who were unloading them have run out of stock - I was buying 8GB RX 570 cards for 30EUR just a year ago.

Munx wrote on 2026-05-13, 11:27:

I guess the crypto miners who were unloading them have run out of stock - I was buying 8GB RX 570 cards for 30EUR just a year ago.

I suspect its the contending demand for tech and materials and time in data centers, ai stuff and just the general squeeze on everything in recent years. graphics cards are at such high prices that to get a upper quartile specced gaming PC now is really expensive, probably more so in "real terms" than comparably placed machines in the past right back to early days. You can go to any pc builder company website and the moment you spec more ram and a graphics card, even rtx3050 type, it drives the price up hugely. Even on ebay used cards in the 8gb category onwards are expensive and competed for,

Minor thrift store haul...

Couple of dual 1Gbit PCIe 1x NICs, Intel SAS card PCIe 4x, m.2 128GB SSD, and more vintagey 4 random RAM sticks and an MSI TV card... Along with PCIe 16x extenders, internal to external SATA cables/brackets. It was bagged/bundled.

Anyway, SAS card opens up cheap storage options, I know the prices went up again, but they're still cheaper per TB while being better than SATA for spindles. I avoided the SAS idea in the past due to 3 figure pricing on SAS adapters, but picking one up for $5 is another story. Didn't get any cable adapters with it though. Might have to pick up a 1to4 SATA at first and have a screw around array made up of spare 250GB laptop drives or something, until I score enough SAS capacity to be worth the effort (Thinking 10TB up) So would be setting up a NAS/Server type box with a spare motherboard and pile it with drives. Not sure if all the NICs would go in it, or just the one for a modern box backchannel.

Damn though, thought SCSI starting over again would avoid all the 50pin, 68 pin, wide, fast, thicc, nonsense of parallel this time, but nope it's another forest of sorta work together stuff.

TV card is nothing much, analog only, but is pretty low profile, so might be a good add in to a rig I didn't think would need one, such that 8 bit or console can play through to it's display. MSI TV @nywhere/TVR deally.

Vintagey RAM is a 4GB stick of DDR3 which is still useful, a 2GB DDR3 SODIMM which isn't, a very "chippy" 256? MB SDRAM which probably means BX friendly, and a weird IBM SDRAM which might be low capacity and barely work with anything (looks like HD chips wired lengthways as it were)

Also got a couple of 2.5 to 3.5 trays, which are more for any rig I might give away to fam, because I don't care if I bolt to one side of cage off center.

Edit: gah, seems I got the "special" intel SAS HBA that only works in one series of intel server boards... unless you get alternate LSI firmware flashed to it, then it might get useful.