well we promised it it was sponsored by
lg and see sonic and it was here at ltx
we're actually tearing down right now
but this is part two where we're gonna
be showing you guys 2015 the big upgrade
2016 gpu die shrink
finally 2017 we skipped a generation
2018 intel gets scared in 2019 of course
amd strikes back we'll be going through
the gaming experience of all these rigs
and how they changed over the years
right after the intro
the first part of the series was
basically a story of amd struggling to
keep up with a surging intel and then
near the end intel kinda slowing down
and i think you're gonna find that that
slowdown is gonna be a big pattern for
part two let's start then with 2015. the
year the apple watch was finally
released after being announced eight
months prior the paris climate accord
was finally negotiated and windows 10
was finally released with much acclaim
from those who hated windows 8. there's
no start menu there's no place to it's a
lot of finales but there's more to come
because we're finally getting some
momentum back in the pc space thanks to
two major cpu releases the first of
course is our skylake processor so we've
got a 6700k processor cooled by an
october nhd15
and what a freaking overclocking and
performance combination those two
skylake brought major improvements like
their dmi 3.0 interface for much faster
connectivity to things like nvme storage
as well as high speed networking on the
100 series chipsets and as the talk
counterpart to the seldom used broadwell
architecture skylake saw some relatively
significant performance optimizations as
well and it also included for the first
time ddr4 support yes my friends ddr4
made it to the consumer space it also
came with the release of the geforce gtx
980 ti which gave us a very significant
performance boost that would hold up for
quite some time at the time of release
it was the most powerful and the largest
non-titan gpu in the consumer space and
it's much larger frame buffer and
comparable gaming performance so the
radeon fury x made it the better choice
in the long run at just shy of 2100
i think we'll see a significant
improvement in raw performance if not
performance per dollar over our 2014
year to say nothing of the ui
improvements of windows 10. to sweeten
the deal this year also was the year
that gta 5 finally hit pcs fallout 4
launched and of course we can't forget
metal gear solid 5 the phantom pain
overall it was a pretty amazing year for
pc gamers it's funny to me that our list
of amazing games for that year was so
full of amazing games witcher 3 didn't
even make it in it was a huge year this
thing on hardware from that era
it looks freaking awesome you've got
like the cloth effects
in geralt's clothing there it actually
really looks like wet leather yeah the
reflections off the sword are actually
somewhat believable if i had a camera
behind it like that yep it actually
plays off the light like that and the
textures have aged really well as well
the road looks fantastic the character
modeling is great
now the facial animations i don't think
have stood the test of time quite as
well they weren't that great at the time
either to be honest can lightning strike
again in 2016
yes and also no on the other hand there
were a lot of high profile releases this
year like battlefield 1 titanfall 2
dishonored 2
and overwatch but on the hardware side
not really here we see
the elusive skylake in its natural
habitat wallowing in its own self
grandeur not really caring about
anything going on around it
in other words we didn't get a new cpu
this year we do pick up a larger nvme
ssd this time around though allowing us
to do away with the hard drive for the
last time in this series the gtx 1080
turns out not to be a major performance
improvement over last year but pascal's
improved efficiency lets us get the same
or better performance as last year at a
lower price and thermal output bringing
us back down to just over eighteen
hundred dollars as i'm sure you've
guessed by now windows 10 is here to
stay but there's a certain shadow rising
over this build
these guys with the shields are kicking
my ass doom was a beautiful game doom is
a totally awesome game like look at the
reflections the grit and dirt in the
environment careful attention to the
animations of all of this like you can
tell it's the kind of game that they
just gave so many cares about this game
has really aged well yeah and it runs
like a champ too on pretty much any
hardware oh come on see i can't even
blame the computer for that that was the
problem you were getting frames too
quickly
thanks i appreciate the
confidence
it's really a shame shadow of the tomb
raider didn't come out in 2017 because
that would have made for a great segue
but there were quite a few good ones
like sonic maniacs destiny 2 cuphead
shadow of war and we can't of course
forget pubg and fortnite this was also
the year of amd's big comeback with
ryzen though early teething issues did
make for os scheduler and memory
compatibility problems that made ryzen a
little bit more difficult for us to
recommend than the performance numbers
might have at first suggested intel
would remain on top for gaming
performance with kaby lake as the final
step in their process architecture
optimization paradigm that killed
tick-tock which they then also
immediately killed by releasing coffee
lake which was characterized mostly by
the extra course that they stopped into
it though core clocks and memory speeds
did also increase in practice this meant
that the core i7 8700k was the winner so
our build for this year runs it coupled
with 16 gigs of ddr4 memory the pricing
of which ballooned this year
we also went with a tangibly faster gpu
this time around we got the gtx 1080 ti
which at the time of release performed
on par with the titan x pascal pricing
didn't increase by more than we were
accustomed to though bringing us just
shy of 2100
now it's funny that this is the one pc
that has had update issues that have
made it so that we actually can't run a
game for this segment of the video
because with pubg and fortnite coming
out this year this was the year of the
always online experience and i'm not
just talking like you know checking in
with the server you know to make sure
that you're authenticated or whatever
else i'm talking you absolutely need to
be online to experience this game in any
way shape or form so uh
yeah
this was the experience
2018 was an interesting year for pc
gaming first because of the games like
shadow of tomb raider battlefield v
octopath traveler and far cry 5 and
second because ryzen's second gen showed
that not only did amd mean business
intel had to rush their timetables to
counter them after unsuccessfully
arguing that gamers didn't need eight
cores as a result yet more cores were
packed into the same package
substantially increasing thermal output
or reducing core clocks in practice
still the core i7 9700k remains the
better choice for raw gaming performance
so we'll grab one of those and pair it
with essentially the same platform as
the previous year even the z390 chipset
isn't a big advancement over z370 and
our gpu is the same gtx 1080 ti too at
least we get eight cores for our twenty
one hundred dollars this is such a leap
forward and visuals compared to any of
the highlight games we talked about for
the previous year like look at these
soft shadows soft shadows became a thing
starting in around 2015 but it really
started to
make its way into the mainstream around
this time well the thing was that with
reasonably high end or even mid-range
hardware which means that it's easier
for game developers to target it you
could actually run it without giving up
so much performance that the game was
basically unplayable yeah i remember
trying to the different soft shadow
techniques that gta 5 shipped with
and never really settling on anything in
particular because they all had their
problems facial animations are amazing
like look at that so much detail you can
really tell the way that the light is
hitting the skin subsurface scattering
yeah beautiful it's a thing that took a
long time to actually get right which
brings us to 2019 the current year where
we've again got a lot of high profile
games hitting our ssds apex legends
sakiro metro exodus with more to look
forward to in the back half
but if 2018 gave us eight core cpus
how many will 2019 give us
it turns out the answer is up to 16
thanks well pretty much exclusively to
amd and unlike previous years where
amd's ryzen cpus were pretty darn okay
for gaming amd took a big step forward
with ryze and third gen coming up on par
with intel and even surpassing them in
many cases at the top end of their third
gen lineup
so welcome back to the high-end amd your
ryzen 7 3700x is powering our final
build here because your 16 core isn't
out and also we were targeting the
around 2 000 price point which
well say a lot of our budget was taken
up by our graphics card because over the
last couple of years we have really seen
a spike in how much of your budget the
gpu makers nvidia in particular expect
you to spend on your graphics card so we
did go with a geforce rtx 2080 ti for
that ray tracing goodness in the handful
of games that do support it but it will
probably be several years before we'll
really be getting the most out of that
feature it's not like we have a choice
because you can't run out and buy a 1000
series graphics card so
there you go pretty much suck it up our
price for this build is 2600
were you just waiting to load the whole
time yeah i've been trying you can tell
the animations are tied to the ping do
you think it's fair to say that we've
kind of come to a point where
game developers are less concerned about
making it look better for the sake of
looking better and are really focused on
gameplay right now and sucking in the
player
yeah and you know what that's a great
thing
because while great graphics are great
obviously at a certain point they're
good enough
and at that point you can sink so much
more time and effort into actually
developing the other aspects of your
game but this is the thing like with
engines like unreal engine people can
just plop in assets and focus on
building their game some of the games
that were supposed to have rtx support
when the cars launched did finally get
it but it's only applicable to a certain
type of game like i loved running rtx on
in shadow of the tomb raider but it's
not the kind of thing that i would
actually ever turn on in a game like
battlefield 5 where you're trying to
kill other players and you really really
need those fps so really the main story
of the last five years from a hardware
standpoint has been a return to
competition i mean amd and intel have
gone back and forth since the 386 days
but part one of our series here didn't
involve a lot of back and forth whereas
part two
really has seen amd come back to
competition and even to prominence so
let's take a look at how things changed
starting with this half of the decade
and when we expand these charts to
include the rest of the builds going
back to 2009 we can clearly see the
leveling off of cpu performance gains
from 2011 through 2015. this period of
stagnation particularly from 2012 to
2014 when gpus were also stuck at 28
nanometer is a stark reminder of the
importance of competition in tech and
the pattern of sudden loss and a
surprise return to innovation is rare in
any market let alone one that impacts
our everyday lives like this one so even
if you're not a gamer i think the last
couple of years are an indication that
the future keeps getting brighter so
here's to another 10 years of pc gaming
minus tech tips and what the heck
another 10 builds anthony 10 years from
now you know what 20 29 10 more builds
why not why not
builds are fun i mean especially if lg
and seasonic will show up to sponsor it
again so all of our builds were powered
by sea sonic power supplies if you want
a trustworthy power supply we can't say
enough good things about them and of
course all of our rigs all of our gaming
experiences are running on lg's
ultra-wide gaming monitors which provide
an incredibly immersive gaming
experience but of course i think i've
said a lot about those over the years so
guys just check out the link in the
video description to check them out and
to learn more
so thanks for watching guys if you
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