Digital Foundry: Future-proofing your PC for next gen

Digital Foundry released a video today on what type of PC you'll need going into next gen.

An interesting thing in the video is that even though the RTX 2060 is weaker it may have an even playing field with the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 due to the fact that you don't have to prioritize 4k resolution on PC and because of DLSS. DLSS may be a big game changer for PC graphics. At 19:13 of the video Digital Foundry pointed out how a RTX 2060 performed better than the Xbox Series X at running Minecraft at 1080p with ray tracing on. Even though the RTX 2060 used DLSS 1080p and the XsX used native 1080p the images were nearly the same with the RTX 2060 getting better performance. Despite the XsX supposedly being around RTX 2080 level performance it doesn't have anything like DLSS on its hardware so the performance of an actual RTX 2080 with DLSS in Minecraft DXR will be even higher at a higher resolution as well.

This means that people on PC with RTX GPUs on par with the XsX and PS5 may technically have a noticeably more powerful PC if the game they're playing supports DLSS.

Anyway for the rest of the video they state that the type of PC you'd need going into next gen would be the recommended following:

A motherboard/platform that supports 6+ core CPUs, next gen CPUs and PCI Express 4.0

6 core/12 thread CPU minimum: R5 3600

16GB DDR4 3000mhz

DX12 Ultimate GPU - 8GB VRAM minimum

Personally I think PCI Express 4.0 for SSD is overkill we're not even guaranteed that games must and will take advantage of SSD speeds of that level.

The only game we've seen take advantage of SSD speeds besides Star Citizen is Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and we don't know if the game even needs reading/writing speed as high as the PS5s SSD speeds. Also factoring in the cost of a PCIE 4.0 SSD it would seem to unrealistic at the moment to make it a requirement. Since it is way to costly for just 500GB which would be barely enough for 2-3 AAA next gen games. Devs should realistically have a requirement for 2000mb/s as recommended and 500mb/s as the minimum or even it as the recommended.

Guess im already future proofed. Come fall I'll be super future proofed.

3080? Me too, been holding back a new card for a while now. My GTX 1080 has been great the last four years.

The Series X has some level of Machine Learning that can be used in the same manner as DLSS. As of now, I only aware of it being used for uprezing textures. If you can uprez textures you can uprez the framebuffer.

MS is working on the tech but I can't confirm support with the Series X. Link

Yes sir, unless AMD pulls off a miracle with Big Navi I'll be going with the 3080.

Isn't DLSS just fancy upscaling? I expect both consoles will do some version of that. The fact the PS5 can do native 4k with Raytracing is a surprise to me.

Even if they pull of the performance expect BBQ ready heat.

Personally, don’t attempt to futureproof at the time of a console launch. Save up and spend on the product lines the release after the console launch and upgrade as needed 4-5 years if you want to laughingly outperform the TV-tethered boxes.

Granted, this has been the guiding mantra for the past two console generations, but it doesn’t mean it will continue to apply. My hunch based on available tech and where PC resides is that there is still a lot of headroom before PC starts to approach a plateau of diminishing returns that would minimize its advantages.

Well this sucks. There’s nothing for me to do to my PC... :(

The term "Futureproof" is a touchy subject. Futureproof isn't a thing, but I'm sure when people say it, they don't really mean it. they mean - Futureproof just means something will last a long time until the next major upgrade breakthrough. Non-futureproof stuff is obsolete when you buy it.

For me, my specs:

• RTX 2070
• Ryzen 7: 2700X
• X570 Motherboard
• 16GB Ram
• W10
• 2 SSD 1TB & M.2 Nvme 500GB

I'm a struggling Weeb but my PC still holds up as the high-end class and as long as I'm playing the games on my personal resolution/performance settings, I'm a happy camper.

I can't take you PC Enthusiast seriously, just enjoy the games you are playing in ultra settings, not seeking out newer PC components.

The less upgrading the better.

The last part of the video was pretty funny as they reminded their viewers that a lot of the stuff the new consoles are bringing, they probably already have.

1080p? 1440p? Temporal reconstruction and checkerboarding? What is this last gen stuff pc people discussing?

My current PC is still going strong, even though it's a 4 year old build now. Im definitely excited to build a new one more so than buying a new console.

I still need to at least update my CPU. There's a rumor that Ryzen isn't releasing the 4000s until next year, which is some bullshit. Probably a back door deal with the console makers. We need the new chipset if I'm gonna do any kind of futureproofing within this gen. We need those mobos for DDR5.

Future proofing anything requires constant upgrading and unlimited funds. You want to be able to run at max specs for your life span? Yeah... that's cash and constant upgrades.

Definition of enthusiast

: a person filled with enthusiasm: such as

a : one who is ardently attached to a cause, object, or pursuit a sports car enthusiastb : one who tends to become ardently absorbed in an interest


It's not about just playing games for me. It's about enjoying the best that technology has to offer. Gaming is just a bonus.

@goldenelementxl: If that's how you see yourself, more power to you.

Well how do you see it?

The Ryzen 4000 delay may be because AMD is switching it to the 5nm node instead of 7nm+, which imo would be really good news. It's a relatively small delay that will see much larger gains for the last AM4 chip.

DDR5 will probably have serious growing pains, just like DDR4 did. Personally, I'm not too eager to be an early adopter for DDR5 like I was for DDR4 with Intel X99. It was expensive, it was slow, and it was sometimes unstable.

ur miracle will be 3080 for 1400 and Big navi for 700 with only a 10-15% better performance. **** overpriced shit.

Pretty confident it will be nowhere near that price.

I aint upgrading until I need to. I run current gen games just fine.

Glad you gotta to spend $5000 to keep up with consoles.

Probably only upgrade GPU, perhaps more ram too. Think prices will skyrocket after December, may as well make the purchase while I can.

What is inside of the consoles that costs $5000 to keep up with?

Ulta fast ssd's.

Hmm didn't think of that. Maybe I should buy 16GB RAM kit and get some of the basics.

DDR5 is supposed to come out maybe next year, however.

How much do those cost?

A lot. You can't even get the speed to match consoles. Consoles are on another league.

DDR5 will be super expensive on release, and will take a year or two to mature. You should have at least 16gb ram, perhaps even 32gb.

It sounds like we don't know what they will cost when they release on PC and that current consoles don't have them either, so technically consoles can't match them now either and the same SSD speed wise will be released on PC by the time the next consoles release most likely. I don't think they will cost anywhere near as much you think, without any pricing info you are simply guessing, Are you talking about the PS5 SSD specifically? As the SSD in the Series X is pretty standard. I also don't think the SSD will affect game visuals and performance that much. So consoles will still fall behind in CPU and GPU power as well. So even if what you stated was true PC would not need to keep up as it would be ahead in 2 out of those 3 areas. PC of course will be ahead in all 3 soon enough either way. I say you can be well ahead of the consoles by the time they release for less than $2000, still allot of money and the consoles are a great value for sure, but saying it will cost $5000 to keep up with consoles is simply not true and the amount it will cost for a PC will decrease the longer the consoles are out. I am glad you are excited about the new consoles coming out but I would wait and see what things cost before going too crazy about guessing prices of PC parts.

I think by the time it's needed, 6/12 threads won't be expensive. The latest i5 is 6/12 threads. Also it's early to worry about SSDs. We need to see how they're implemented on the PC as a requirement for games first. As for the graphics cards, I'd say wait for the Nvidia Ampere line up.

Considering that even MS want their games to work with current consoles, you won't need any of this next gen hardware for some time.

I don't know how SSDs can become a requirement for pc games when so many people still use HDDs.

like gpu's with dx11 being required when plenty of people still had dx9 cards?

worst time to buy a pc right now, with consoles that strong around the corner, if they release one next gen game that's exclusive to the next gen system a lot of people will be fucked.

But that just won't happen, they'll try to keep on milk gamers with current gen hardware and shovelware

It doesn't have dedicated hardware for that. It has hardware acceleration but you have the same CUs doing the ML so you can either do ML or rasterization but not both.

My last build was 2015 so the funds are sitting in my account waiting for the end of this year/early next year. Nvidia 3080 & AMD 4000 series here i come!

Might get a console as well though most games end up on PC anyway and the cost of these new consoles is placing them a bit out of reach for a dual system setup.

Depends on Nvidia tax, hope Navi is at most 15% slower.

Dude there are 2080ti models that cost $1300 and the 3080 is say to have one expensive ass cooler let alone the rest of the tech inside it,i don't see it going for lower than $1000 and even much more than that when the innevitable Ti version hits.

As of now the cheapest 2080ti is like $1,150 the 2080 regular is like $600 and up.

I sure hope so, old tech has got to go!

Silly article, in my opinion. The beauty of PC is the only standard you have to upgrade towards is your own. I upgrade individual components when I need to in order to achieve whatever improvement I want. I'm rocking pretty old hardware right now, and you know what? It's fine. I think my next update will be CPU (my i5 6500 is getting tapped out sometimes - but very rarely!) and a better monitor. But who knows when. It will have nothing to do with the next gen console releases, that's for sure

Nope. There's competition now with AMD actually putting out a promising architecture and the new consoles coming. It will be $799 max. And if they do overprice I'll just go Big Navi and so will everyone else which is why Nvidia won't.

We don't know the level of implementation of ray tracing the PS5 games are using. They could be using an implementation inferior to ray tracing titles on PC. Heck there is multiple settings for ray tracing on PC where each one gives you a different amount of ray counts and for low settings in some of them you're better off playing without ray tracing because the visual difference is miniscule.

DLSS isn't just upscaling but AI reconstruction. It takes a frame from a lower internal resolution, creates a "perfect" frame by using super sampling or accumulation and then has the AI generate a frame with more pixels added to it instead of one that is anti aliased. DLSS has dedicated hardware which is the tensor cores on RTX cards. The consoles don't have anything like them as PC_Rocks said, they're capable of machine learning but don't have hardware dedicated for it so it will use shader cores which means less shader cores you can use for rasterization so you may not get a decent pay off trying to use something like DLSS on hardware that has nothing dedicated to it.

$100000000 to match Cell.

Honestly I'm sort of over "value" or "matching performance" (easy to say when I have an RTX 2080, I know, but six months ago I was happy as a clam with my 980...). PC has best hardware, sure, but I'm here pretty much for the games, community, other things that make PC great.

Yeah thinking that "futureproof" is an actual thing will cause you to never upgrade because the next big thing is always months away. "Oh I should upgrade in six months" six months go by "Wait, the next video card series in coming out in five months? I can wait". Repeat.

I think it is a very loose meaning, a misnomer. As you said, you're just making sure your upgrade will last a long time, but I guess "longevity-proofing" doesn't have the same ring to it.

Good thing I live in my mom's basement and only play 2D indie games that cost five dollars, otherwise I'd never save that much money!

digital foundry doesnt have access to NVIDIA AMPERE, RYZEN 4000 series, AMD RDNA2 or INTEL COMET LAKE S cpus. Till then, Assumption is the the mother of all SCREWUPS!!!!!

P. S: people need to look at more sites other than digital foundry. Everyone acts like its the holy grail for gaming. There are far better sites like tomshardware, anandtech, arstechnica, overclock3d, phoronix, kitguri, techradar.

It's always hard to make a good video for this topic. In fairness they do say this is advice for people who upgrade every few years. in that context its good advice they give overall (though at this stage waiting for RDNA2/RTX3000 series makes a lot of sense).

for me though it doesn't really apply. I tend to have fewer but larger leaps so for me right now is an awful time to consider an upgrade (my current PC is a bit of an exception. very mid range when i bought it but holding up well). I currently have a 1500X on a B350 mobo with 16GB of ram and a Vega 64 (and would be happily motoring away on my old RX580 if it wasn't for VR).

Whenever i do build my next PC i will be looking for a leap at least similar as the leap from a PS4 pro to an XSX. Once it's built i wont be planning to upgrade anything in it for 5-6 years.

Agreed