There are very affordable g-shocks with multi band, using radio signals to accurately set the time every night with an atomic clock as the source. I mean if accuracy is an issue.

The solar models also charge using sunlight and fluorescent lights but will still last about 1-2 years in darkness. Regular wear will always keep it charged.

Not to say an Apple Watch isn’t right for you. Just stating that non-smart watch options exist for those who just want to tell time, date, weekday, accurately with added stuff like alarms and stopwatch etc.

I think the category you’re looking for is premium games. On mobile it appears to mean that the game is complete and not sold in pieces.

So a faster CPU might improve performance in Act 3 of BG3? Sign me up! It did indeed seem like a CPU issue since there was no stuttering or frame drops, but characters just standing around thinking long and hard about their turns during combat. Partial towards that upgrade since the 2600x is fine for most cases and this specific issue is likely to be patched by devs.

I’m leaning towards AMD mainly because I have had no bad experiences with dealing with their drivers on Linux and because their mid-range cards actually have more VRAM than the card from 2017 that I’m trying to replace. My RM650x should be fine driving a RX 6700xt or even a 6800xt, so neither should be too power hungry for this setup.

Those are all fair considerations. My free time outside of work mostly consists of some housework, dog-related activities, and gaming. I honestly doubt it’s going to change much until we can afford to finally buy a house, and children are out of the question for us. Even when the house-buying day comes it’ll probably only be a brief disruption to our normal schedules for a few months before we settle back into the routine. Of course with the extras that come with keeping a house in a livable condition.

Yeees, that must have produced a noticeable improvement. :P

What did you replace the 1070 with? Are you planning a full platform change or just a beefier CPU in the AM4 for your next upgrade?

I built it about 4.5 years ago now. I’d say with the amount of use I’ve gotten out of it that it’s definitely provided value, not exclusively as a gaming platform. If I didn’t care much about demanding gaming, high graphics settings, and FPS I’d probably just keep it as it is now for another 4-5 years. There’s not really much wrong with it and it does run Terraria.

Parts are currently on sale which is why I’m considering this upgrade only now, unless I’m being bamboozled by the online store. Gotta cross-check with historic prices and other stores first.

Yeah, cheers! I feel that, this 580 has been serving for way longer than I expected it to when I first bought it. Had some issues with crashing first couple of days after getting Baldur’s Gate 3, but it hasn’t crashed since I replaced the thermal paste couple of weeks ago. I guess it was a perfect storm of dried up thermal paste, brand new game, and ungodly high temperatures here with no AC.

My bios is probably ways out of date since I typically only flash it when I need a fix or a feature such as in this case. Thanks for the heads up!

All excellent points. It’s tempting to get a 6800xt.

After reading up on benchmarking data it appears I can still get a real performance gain from the 6800xt over the 6700xt still without swapping the CPU. This makes me think the 5800x3d is way overkill for the kinds of GPUs I’m looking at. I have the impression that it will be bottlenecked by the GPU unless I’m getting a 7900XT or something super high-end to pair with it.

At least with the 6700xt the benchmark data I found looked almost identical between a 5800x and a 5800x3d, though not sure how accurate the data is. All that said the price difference between the 6700xt and 6800xt can fully pay for a 5800x which may offer a more balanced upgrade for the system overall. Then I can overclock the GPU once we can afford a house with AC in 30 years or so.

I’m honestly not sure where I was going with this post. Perhaps probing to find out if I’m choosing a cost-effective upgrade. Appreciate the comments though!

Yeah, I feel like I haven’t rushed the upgrades too soon with the GPU. It has been almost impossible to get one at a normal price these past three years though.

Some spending is flowing over the top of the spending dam, but I don’t think it’s about to give structurally. We’re also spending a bit on vacation around this same time, it feels worse to spend a lot at once but honestly it doesn’t make a difference if we spend it now or spread out as long as it’s isn’t a pattern.